The Daily Prophet and other periodicals typically had two editions. The newsstand and the subscription. The newsstand was just made from a duplication charm and would fade over time, without contact with a witch or wizard and their magic to sustain it, until it vanished completely. However, the subscription was printed and delivered directly to an individual who would be responsible for keeping or disposing of it. Every subscription had a stamp embedded in each page so if someone left theirs laying around for muggles to find, then the Ministry would know who to blame.
In Azkaban, Sirius had a subscription, but now he had to keep on the lookout for newsstand editions and pick one up before they faded into nothingness. Because he was out late, he managed to find one of the special editions claiming that he was the notorious lead singer of the Hobgoblins.
After his one-night stand had reported him, Aurors had broken into the home of the real Stubby Boardman to find him naked and tied to his bed and calling for help. It was later determined that he had been there for two days as a result of the woman he had been sleeping with finding out he had been cheating on her, with her sister.
The article discussed the show at the pub, commenting repeatedly on the horrible idea to have a Sirius Black dress-up night. One of the attendees mentioned that, in hindsight, none of the songs performed by 'Stubby' were from after 1981, the year Sirius Black was put in prison.
He finally learned the name of the reporter he had slept with, Marisol Selic, as she described having seen Sirius in prison a few days before then encountering a much different man at the pub only for the reveal in the morning when the note had details of their interaction at the prison.
The reporter writing the story managed to get a quote from Minister Fudge as well, "I should have seen something like this coming. Miss Selic was making eyes at quite a few of the prisoners during the tour, and I should have excused her then. I know some women like a 'bad-boy' but this man is a murderer. At this time, she has been removed from the ministerial press pool and I hope she can seek professional help to deal with her strange attractions."
Sirius put the newspaper down, and thought, 'Not cool Fudge, not cool. Even if she was making eyes at the prisoners, you just ruined a woman's career so you could try to look good.'
Making up his mind to fight back, he took some papers and a quill he had stolen from The Weasleys and wrote a quick letter.
Bonjour.
I sincerely apologize for getting you into this situation and hope I might offer you a way out. If you're looking to get back at that fat bastard who was quoted in the paper, try to look up my trial transcript, it makes for a very good read. Especially if you remember that our Minister said he was the first on the scene to arrest me.
I'll always remember our time together and I wish you all the best in the future.
Au revoir,
Not Stubby Boardman
The closest magical post office was not open in the middle of the night, but there was a box outside with a coin slot. He had a couple of Sickles he had stolen from the bodies of the men he had killed, so he wrote the woman's name on the outside of the letter, and dropped it in the box along with the proper postage, then headed on his way.
It was quite astounding how much crime there was in England. As he slowly made his way up to Scotland and Hogwarts, The Grim guided him through the worst humanity had to offer. Murders, rapists, thieves, abusers, kidnappers, and more. There wasn't much creativity that came from the deaths of these men and women, nor was there any need to be when they were not expecting it, so he did not need to make detailed plans in advance like he had to do for some of the inmates of Azkaban. They were either caught in the act and dispatched or he could smell the wickedness in their souls and would sneak into their homes and kill them in their sleep.
The muggle press had reported on a chain of animal attacks at the beginning of his spree but had now switched over to saying it must be the work of a human serial killer, attacking criminals and obfuscating his kills with signs of a large wolf. One paper called him the Werewolf Killer while another openly called that idea stupid as he killed the whole month and not just on a full moon.
Regardless, Sirius had to work on suppressing The Grim as the muggle police were now out in force looking for his animagus form while the Aurors were looking for Sirius Black. The Prophet had also finally reported on the four men he had murdered near the pub. Azkaban Aurors were quoted as saying this was the work of The Grim of Azkaban, hunting and killing magical criminals while it was after Sirius Black for escaping prison. One anonymous guard even said that he felt safer when he was at Azkaban with The Grim going after the worst of the worst and that it never even looked at Aurors the wrong way, only the inmates.
Finding his way to Hogwarts wasn't at all difficult. One might think so due to the amount of warding and secrecy regarding its location. The fact that it was unplottable made little difference when it was right next to Hogsmeade which was plottable.
You could look at a map of the area and see the only all-wizard village in the country along with a large forest, lake, and countryside next to it, but couldn't label it: Hogwarts, school, castle, or other things that might describe it. It took the remainder of August to reach Hogsmeade and then he camped out on a hillside above the town to wait for the train to arrive. However, before the train, something more unpleasant touched down.
Flying in ahead of the train were around two dozen dementors. They flew through the air so gracefully that might look beautiful to someone who had no idea of the horrors they were looking at. As if hearing his thoughts, they collectively let out a terrifying scream that would have been bone-chilling to Sirius if he wasn't so used to it. To him, the scream sounded sad, like they were looking for a lost family member.
In a way, they might be.
Aurors greeted the train and provided the students a pathway into the school grounds, lined with Patroni to keep the effects of the dementors away. He was too far away to recognize anyone but he saw a group of gingers exiting the train and one student being carried on a stretcher. As the elves started to arrange the luggage for students by their houses, Sirius snuck off to the Shrieking Shack to settle down for the night.
The Shrieking Shack wasn't always named that, as it used to be a home for vagrants for decades before Sirius had attended Hogwarts. He was told by a few older students when he arrived in his first year that when he was old enough to visit the village, that's where you went to buy all sorts of illicit potions, should you require them.
However, halfway through the first year, there was a gruesome killing of all the residents of the shack, and the building was condemned. The spirits of those who had been killed would scream and claw at the walls on the nights of the full moon when the ghosts were at their strongest. They seemed to be trapped in an endless cycle, repeating their own grizzly deaths, unable to escape their fate.
Of course, all that was bullshit, made up by Headmaster Dumbledore and fed into the gossip network of Hogwarts to be built up into legend through the telling and retelling by old portraits and excitable students. In their third year, when Sirius, James, and Peter discovered that their friend Remus was a werewolf and snuck off to the shack every full moon, the pieces fit perfectly. Of course, that didn't stop them from telling ghost stories to frighten younger students or threatening to lock them in the shack to be tortured by poltergeists.
The shack had now become a tourist destination.
Without a werewolf inside it one night a month, it was just a shack, with no shrieking to be heard. Someone, probably the Headmaster, had put a minor fear ward around the property, which felt as powerful as a cotton candy snowball after thirteen years in Azkaban. It used to have a secret entrance, but that too had been removed. It was now only accessible from inside the school grounds and the secret tunnel.
With that option out of the equation, Sirius still knew about a cave system in the hills above the town that was close enough to the Forbidden Forest to hunt small game for food. He would go there and plan how to break into the school to kill Peter.
