Epilogue

(Or Chapter 13, if you would prefer.)

I twisted the diamond ring that had been on my left hand for the last twelve years and smiled as I read the headline of the day`s Daily Prophet.

"BLACK STILL AT LARGE" covered the majority of the front page in large, bold, blaring letters. The letters seemed to be shouting louder than usual because they were at least a three times their normal size (if you were to read it at the volume the print insisted on, even a deaf person would hear it).

It figured that Sirius would be the first person ever to escape from Azkaban. If anyone could find a way out of that place, it was him. But why now? Why not years ago? If he knew how to get out, which he clearly did, then why didn't he until now, and what had made him want to escape?

I tried not to think about the last twelve years, which were by far the most terrible of my life. Unfortunately, there was no stopping the flood of memories that were rushing back like blood from a wound that would not heal. I thought of Melody`s funeral, Sirius` lack of a trial, Lily and James` funeral, and the attack on Alice and Frank. I remembered how Remus had avoided me at the Potter`s funeral and sent my letters back unopened, and how Mary had moved to Scotland three months after the end of the Great Wizarding War. I visit her every now and then, but it`s not the same. Violet and Fabian too were silent.

Glancing again at the newspaper, I decided to visit Melody and bring her the news. It was about time to bring her fresh flowers too, the others must be just starting to wilt again. I put my empty teacup in the sink, got dressed, grabbed the paper, and was on my way out the door to go to the florist`s down the road (my hand inches from the doorknob) when someone knocked loudly on the door.

I opened the door to find Kingsley Shacklebolt and John Dawlish standing on the front steps.

"Hello…" Trying to remain outwardly calm, I considered what would bring them here. Why would two of the best Aurors in the Ministry of Magic be at my house? I didn't remember breaking the law recently…

Shacklebolt looked at me from over his clipboard. "Good morning. Are you in fact Matilda Bell?"

"Yes I am. Is something wrong?"

"We have a few questions for you. This won`t take very long." Dawlish held up a poster with 'Have you seen this wizard?' inscribed on it in print similar to the morning`s Prophet. Underneath the words was a picture of Sirius, looking despicable as ever. "Are you familiar with this man, Sirius Black?"

"Yes." Did they want me to say anything else? I didn't feel like telling the Ministry a complete in-depth report about Sirius, so I left it at that. Sadly, it seemed from their expressions that they were apparently not satisfied and wanted some details. That`s to be expected from Aurors, I suppose.

"How exactly do you know him?"

"He was in Gryffindor in my year when we were at school." I said the absolute minimum and abridged version, not mentioning our friendship in the hopes they would just give up and leave. But no.

"Is it true that you were engaged to marry Black before he was arrested and sentenced to Azkaban?"

The short one was eyeing the ring on my hand, so I figured I`d throw them a bone. "Yeah, we`re engaged."

"And when was the last time you saw him?" Personal questions, much?

"About twelve years ago, before you shipped him off to Azkaban without a trial, when I went in to the Ministry to explain that I had witnessed Peter Pettigrew blow up the street and kill those Muggles and the Ministry claimed I was lying to protect Sirius. They allowed me five minutes to talk to him, out of pity." I looked to Dawlish. "You remember, right? You were one of his guards. Upgraded since, I see."

Dawlish ignored me and Shacklebolt continued. "Have you had any contact with him since? Letters? Have you seen him?"

"No. And before you ask, yes, I would swear that under the influence of Veritaserum." I felt my eyes watering, and I pretended to fix my hair as I quickly wiped the tears before they got any farther. The last thing I wanted was for them to see me crying.

"That won`t be necessary. Thank you for your time, and he does attempt to contact you, immediately contact us by owl. Anyone who contacts us with information on the whereabouts of Sirius Black will get a large amount of galleons that is still being determined and free ice cream for a year at Florean Fortescue's Ice Cream Parlour."

"That`s nice, I`m lactose intolerant." I lied. What kind of government bribes people with ice cream?

"Oh…Have a nice day." Dawlish said before they apparited off.

I had to hold back from laughing at their comically hasty exit.

At the graveyard, I propped up the newspaper next to Melody`s headstone. Somebody had recently come and laid some sunflowers next to the roses I had brought last time. I put the daisies that I had brought next to the sunflowers, making it so the flowers lined the headstone.

I wonder who brought the sunflowers. I was the only one who visited Mel on a regular basis.

"I wish you were here. Everything`s changed. Everyone`s changed. Violet`s a workaholic, Remus is angry, Alice is damaged, Mary`s melancholy, Sirius` gone, James and Lily`s son is famous, and Katie`s almost all grown up now. And I`m…" I didn't know how to finish that sentence, so I just let the silence eat up the sentiment before turning back home.

About five minutes after I got home, there was another knock on the door. This time, it was large, shaggy black dog with a rose (not so different from the I had recently placed on Melody`s grave) in its mouth.

I`m pretty sure my jaw hit the floor as I gasped and stepped back. I held back a scream of delight (I`m totally not the type) and opened the door wider to let him in before anyone who was watching the house could get a good look at him.

Locking the door in the event any more Ministry members came knocking, I didn`t even try to restrain my grin. With a pop, he transformed into a human, swooping me up in his arms and kissing me. "Merlin, I`ve missed you."

"Don`t you dare do that again."

Sirius was much thinner now and his scraggly hair was almost as long as mine. His eyes were much older now, and his face weathered, like he`d aged twenty years in prison instead of twelve. But the familiar juvenile spark was still there, slightly dimmed but still there. He was here, actually tangibly here, and that`s what counted.

"Don`t worry, soon it`ll be all over and I`ll never leave again."

"What do you mean, 'all over'? What are you going to do?! What made you escape now?" I demanded, my body turning rigid as fear coursed through me. I took a step back

Sirius pulled out a torn bit of newspaper from his pocket. It was a picture of a happy family in Egypt. "Wormtail`s at Hogwarts." He pointed to the youngest boy in the picture, who was way too tall and confident to be Peter.

"You`re mad! That`s just a boy!"

"No, no…" He pointed to something I had previously thought was a smudge in the picture. It was a rat. Not just any rat, though. A rat with a missing toe. Peter Pettigrew. I gasped.

"How are you going to find him?"

"The article said the boy he`s with is at Hogwarts. That`s also where Harry is."

"And you`re going to just going to waltz your public-enemy-number-one self into a school and kill a rat? You do know that the school is now surrounded by dementors who will suck out your soul without hesitation if you get anywhere near them?"

"I`ll go as a dog and use the tunnels to sneak into Hogwarts. When I kill him, I can use his body as proof that I'm innocent and my name will be cleared. Then James and Lily are finally avenged, Harry will be safe, and I`ll be free. When I'm free, we can finally get married."

He was going again. But I had waited twelve years, and there was a necessity to wait a little longer.

"Alright, but promise me you`ll be safe. Promise me you won`t let revenge destroy you. Promise you`ll come back."

"I promise. I`d unbreakable vow, if we had a third person here."

We hugged one last time before he said he had to go. As I closed the door behind him, I couldn't help but feel like I was never going to see him again. There was an old muggle saying, 'If you love something, set it free. If it comes back, it's yours. If it does not come back, it was never meant to be.' I had (unwillingly) let Sirius go, and he`d come back. Didn't that mean he wasn't supposed to leave again? I leaned against the back of the closed door and closed my eyes.

A little over a year later, he showed up at my door again with a hippogriff.

"Is THAT how you`ve been evading the ministry? By flying around on a hippogriff?"

"His name is Buckbeak. He`s on the run too. He`s a good friend."

That`s all Sirius said about his companion, and I decided not to get into the details of how exactly a wild animal could be wanted by the ministry.

In the week in November that he stayed at my house (he said that he had to leave incase the ministry stopped by again, because he didn't want me arrested as well), he only asked to use the fireplace on the night of the 22nd to talk to Harry. It was a little weird that he wanted to use it at one in the morning to talk to a kid who probably should have been sleeping or studying (knowing James, he had probably inherited the preference for mischief), but I agreed on condition that he got a haircut at the muggle barber shop down the road. He did get his hair cut, but only after days of protesting and trying to negotiate. In the end, he lost his hair in a bet, and it made him look much less like the wanted posters.

Right before he left, he asked me to marry him. We both agreed it would be worth it to no just settle for a quiet muggle wedding, and he wanted to make Harry his best man.

"The Order is slowly making me less of a priority, and once they`ve finally cleared my name, we`ll have the biggest wedding England has seen in years."

I tried not to think about how most of the original members of the wedding party were dead.

And then he left again. The last thing he said before he flew off on Buckbeak was "I`ll be back."

That was the last time I saw Sirius Black.

I was never a member of the Order Of the Phoenix.

During the first wizarding war, two of my older brothers were among the wizards in our society who approved of what You-Know-Who was doing and disproved of those who interfered. When they heard I was going to join the resistance, they immediately came over and Imperiused me into making an unbreakable vow that I would never join The Order. They meant well, claiming they didn't want me getting hurt when the resistance was crushed, and they said it was 'for my own good. Luckily, my third and oldest brother, Quince, upon hearing this made them unimperius me.

He couldn't, however, take back the vow.

When The Order became more active again, I was forced to continue on with my muggle job and continue on with my mundane life. I did get letters from Sirius telling me about how the Order was now operation out of 13 Grimmald Place every now and then, but since most of the stuff going on was confidential and he had to stay in his house, he didn't have much to say in his letters (although he did say that The Order was making preparations for us to finally get married in the summer, possibly somewhere in France, since the ministry didn`t seem to be letting up anytime soon). Due to the vow, I couldn`t go to Grimmald Place, but I canceled my subscription to The Daily Prophet though, because it was the only pro-Dumbledore thing I could do.

So I though, anyway, until the day when I wished I had a news source to tell me what was going on.

It was an abysmal day, the only one that could hold a candle to the day Mel and the Potters died.

It didn't crash and burn, however, until Remus Lupin showed up at the counter of Bethany`s Blooming Beauties (After over ten years of constantly buying flowers from Bethany`s, the muggle shop owner offered me a job. I took it, because a. I get discounts on flowers that I still buy weekly and b. I`m not really doing anything else with my life anymore, so I might as well) eleven minutes before my lunch break.

I almost didn't recognize him at first. It had, after all, been almost thirteen years since I had seen him, due to his stubbornness to hear from me why Sirius had gone after Peter and who exactly had betrayed the Potters and his ability to hold a grudge for a very long time. And, fine, MY ability to hold a grudge might have had something to do with why I hadn't seen him in the past few years even though he sent apology owls after Sirius told him what really took place the night He-who-must-not-be-named fell from power.

He walked up to the counter with this grave look on his face, not unlike the one he had when I had seen him last, at James and Lily`s funeral.

"Mattie, we need to talk."

"We are talking. What would you like?" I replied bluntly while arranging some flowers to avoid looking him in the eyes.

"I need to talk to you outside."

"I`m on the clock. Besides, you had your chance at the Potter`s and Melody`s funerals."

"It`s important."

"And so is my time, which is why you need to ether buy something or get out."

"Fine. I`ll take that funeral flower arrangement." He said, pointing to the one in my hands. He was obviously doing this to irritate me.

"Who`s the lucky corpse?"

"There is no corpse."

"Of course not. You`re just buying it because you want to try and make up for the fact that you should have listened to-"

"I`m sorry. I`m so, so sorry that I didn't listen to you, alright? But remember how you felt when I was mad at you and just wouldn't let you tell me what happened? Can you spare me for two minutes so I can tell you something without you making a scene? Please, Mattie."

"Fine." I stalked into the back room and told my boss, Nigel (Bethany`s brother), that I was taking my lunch break early.

Once we were outside the shop, I walked alongside a silent Remus.

"So… What was so bloody important you had to make me leave work for it?"

"I told Dumbledore HE should be the one to tell you, but he wouldn't listen."

"Tell me what?"

"I knew it would just make it worse."

"Just tell me already!"

He pursed his lips and took a shaky breath. "There was an attack last night, at the Ministry. The Death Eaters were trying to trick Harry Potter into helping them retrieve something from the Department of Mysteries. The Order arrived, and Dumbledore fought You-Know-Who…"

"Yeah, so?"

"Bellatri-"

"What did that b-"

"Stop cutting me off! I`m trying to tell you something extremely important!"

"Sorry,"

"So, Bellatrix was dueling Sirius-"

"I hope he killed her."

"Mattie!"

"Sorry, sorry, I know, no interrupting. This is the last time, I promise."

"… anyway, they were dueling when she shot him with something that made him trip backwards. He fell backwards into a veil in the Department of Mysteries. He`s gone. I`m sorry."

I squeezed my eyes shut and leaned against the wall. I saw kid who`d been attached to James` hip all his life, till death did them part. I pictured the boy I once knew, the one with the attention span that was much shorter than his hair. I saw the man with a tendency to drive his flying motorcycle on the roves of houses just to mess with people. Gone?

"He`s not gone. Gone means not here. That`s hopeless. He`s here, we just can't see him. Not like Nick, or Peeves. Like Lily and James. Do you really think they would leave their son all alone in this cold, lonely world?" I looked up at Remus, "I think I have to hold on to the hope that they wouldn't completely abandon those of us left behind, because otherwise…. Well, what else is there to hope for?"

He nodded. "I know what you mean."

After a long pause, I said "Thanks."

"For what?"

"Coming."

Several minutes ticked by with the only sound being the calls and squeals of the children at the playground across the street.

"How are you feeling?"

"Okay."

"Does 'Okay' mean not okay at all? 'Cause I`m okay too."

I tried to smile at Remus through my tears.

We stood there in silence for another eight minutes, until I remembered that I had a job. I took out my muggle mobile and called Bethany`s. I knew there was no way I could go back today.

After I hung up, I turned to Remus.

"I have missed hanging out with you."

He smiled. I saw a familiar sadness in his eyes. It was familiar, because I had it too.

We were the only ones left.

"You okay, Bell?" Williamson yelled to me over the roar of the battle.

"Yeah, I`m fine!" I stunned a Death Eater who was just about to kill a third year. As the Death Eater was hit, my head started throbbing and it felt like it was on fire from the inside out. I concentrated on the memory of being inducted as an Auror last year. This was my job. Technically, I wasn't with the Order. But I had found a way to help.

"Get to Hogsmeade NOW!" I yelled, ushering the kid to safety.

"I want to help!" The young boy said, bravely. I looked at his coat. Gryffindor. Figures, they were the hardest to evacuate.

"This is not up for debate! Go!" I glared until the boy set off running in the direction of safety.

I turned back to the battle and was shocked to see none other than Mary McDonald battling her way through the crowd. "Mary! Mary!" I navigated over through the crowd blocking curses as I went.

"Mattie?" Her face lit up. "I`m sorry I left!" She called.

"Thanks for coming back."

He-who-shall-not—alright, Voldemort was battling three people at once, and so was Bellatrix. She was one of the reasons I decided to quit my old job at Bethany`s and become an Auror. So that I could end her reign of terror once and for all.

I was about to attack her and avenge Mel and Sirius, when Molly Weasley stepped up.

After the battle, I walked away from Hogwarts and into the Forbidden Forest. I couldn't face those halls full of corpses. I couldn't see another one of my friends with that same vacant expression - Mary and Remus were in there, somewhere, among the dead. I didn't want this burden to bear alone. But who else was left?

Nobody.

I was the last.

I passed the Womping Willow, fondly remembering when I stupidly thought not being noticed and not being a Marauder was the end of the world. What a fool that girl had been.

After several minutes of walking, I stumbled on a log and almost fell, when a small well-polished stone catching my eye among the leaves. I picked it up; amazed someone would lose such an interesting and ominously beautiful rock. It was shaped unnaturally, perfectly cut in a way that was defiantly wizard-made. It had a strange engraving in part of it. I remembered another black stone I`d heard stories about when I was really little… a Resurrection Stone. Could it be? How did it get here?

I turned it over three times.

A ghostly figure appeared, with long, shaggy hair and a young happiness in his eyes that I hadn`t seen in a long, long time. I put my hand out to touch him, but I couldn't, as if the veil he had fallen through still separated us.

"I told you I`d be back."

I held back tears. "You look so..."

"Transparent? Ghostly? Scary?"

"Happy."

He smiled.

"Everyone is there with you now, right? James, Lily, Mary, Remus, Mel… It must be just like the old days, huh?"

"Not exactly."

"… and if everyone`s there, why did you leave the party? You love parties. Why did you come when I used this? Why didn't someone else, if you were having so much fun?"

"I can`t leave just yet, I`m waiting for someone."

"Harry? Is he what`s keeping you here?

"No."

"Vi and Fabian? Because they`ve got kids, they can't just up and die just-"

"It`s not them, Mats. Do you really need me to give you a hint?"

"Well yeah, that would help." I put my hands on my hips stubbornly, forcing him to say it.

He smiled. "It`s you, Mattie. I love you, and I don't want to be separated like this. Will you come with me?"

"With you as in….." I left his meaning unspoken. "Can I?"

"Are you sure you want to?"

I nodded.

"How…?" My unfinished question hung in the air.

He had a very Sirius look in his eyes. "Matilda Rose Bell, do you trust me?"

"Yes, completely."

He held out his hand. I reached out, and took it. The second my hand touched his, the wood around me started to fade away as if fog was rolling in very fast, paling and paling until all around me, where there had been trees and rocks, all I could see was fog. I looked up into his eyes and smiled.

And I knew this was just the beginning.

A/N: Thank you to everyone who has stuck with this story to the very end, you guys are the best!

If you liked The Black Files, there are several stories that go along this one, featuring many of the same characters. The full list is on my profile, but The Green and the Gold (about two sisters) overlaps with this one, and Harry To The Future largely features an alternate universe Mattie. If you`re looking for more of the Lily and James side of things, or Lily and Sirius, there`s also A Cliched Challenge and Heartless Affections.