INTERLUDE
It was the quaking that awoke her.
She opened her eyes when she felt the trembling beneath her paws, but she only accepted that it wasn't her imagination playing tricks on her when a trickle of dust landed on her black fur.
It had been a long time since she had felt safe trusting her instincts, but when her ears twitched as they picked up the sound of fighting in the distance, a thrill of hope shot through her.
Almost instinctively, her entire body quickly tensed, as she expected the Dementors to swoop past her cell at any moment and steal her fragile hope from her as they always did.
But this time they never came.
She only felt safe enough to relax her body when a few minutes had gone by, and only then because she was worried that she would miss her opportunity if she dithered for too long. Carefully, she approached the cell door when she could no longer deny that the tiny breeze that was cooling her wet snout was very real.
Her heart leapt when she realised that whatever had caused the fortress to quake had also loosened her cell door from its frame, creating the thinnest of cracks, just enough for her hope to bloom. Not waiting around for the Dementors to swoop in and steal it from her, she scrambled forward and used her paws and claws to try and widen the crack.
It would have been easier to do this if she transformed back into her human form, as dogs unfortunately lacked opposable thumbs, but she had spent so many years as Padfoot that she didn't feel comfortable turning back into herself. At least, not until she could be certain of her safety.
Finally, when the crack was wide enough that she felt certain she could slip through it without getting stuck halfway, she squeezed through and, for the first time in over a decade, stepped outside of her cell. Her trained instincts, the ones that had been beaten into her during her Auror training, told her to stick to the shadows and out of sight until she could be certain of the current situation.
Doing so, she saw that almost every cell in the corridor, the lowest in the fortress and the only one the Dementors had free reign over, had been forcibly opened and the inmates set free. Her stomach clenched as she realised that there was only one person who would free every inmate but her, as he would be the only one who knew for a fact that she was not one of his.
If it really was Him, then that meant the last of her family was under threat.
The thought of her little godson in danger was what made her run for the exit, her old recklessness coming back to her, but not out of her previous fearlessness but instead a more intense sort of fear, one that centred on the only person she had left.
She smelt the salt of the sea air and heard the sounds of battle increase in volume before she saw the massive opening that had been made in the western wall. Clambering through, she stuck to the shadows, using the blackness of her fur to blend in and avoid the battle entirely as she carefully made her way around the fortress through the barren island.
Ten years ago, she would have been in the thick of it, ready to put her life on the line for her comrades and the caused she believed in, but now, after a decade of imprisonment, she found herself wishing that both sides would simply kill each other off and save her the trouble of having to deal with any of them.
She only made it around to the eastern side of the island just as the sun was peeking over the horizon beyond the sea. Knowing that her time to make her escape was limited, she ran into the water without hesitation, despite not even knowing where the closest landmass even was.
Maia Black was unafraid of drowning, as it would be sweet release compared to the hell she had just escaped from.