12 years after Lily and James had died, Cornelius Fudge- the minister for magic- came to Azkaban for an inspection and he was surprised at how sane Sirius was (most people went mad in Azkaban). Sirius asked if Fudge was done with his newspaper and he was, so he gave it to Sirius. Not long later, Sirius was the first ever person to escape from Azkaban. He escaped because he saw Pettigrew as a rat on a boy's shoulder- a boy, who would be going to Hogwarts for his 3rd year after the summer holidays, a boy who was best friends with Harry Potter and was called Ron Weasley. Sirius transformed into a dog and swam to land away from Azkaban to escape. He had to go into hiding because everyone thought he was a murderer and thought that he had escaped to kill Harry- he hadn’t of course, he had escaped to kill Petigrew. Everyone was looking for him, everyone thought that he would try to find Voldermort and get him back to power after killing Harry, but he never got caught. Sirius had to stay as a dog the whole time, so he wouldn’t be found because he was an unregistered animagnus. He snuck into Hogwarts through the Shrieking shack, apart from the two times where he had attempted to get into Hogwarts to kill Petigrew, and when he had gone to watch Harry Potter play quidditch. At christmas he sent Harry Potter a firebolt as a present, but he didn’t say who it was from. He made friends with a cat called Crookshanks, who tried to help him get Pettigrew, but couldn’t. This cat belonged to Hermione Granger-Harry Potter’s other best friend.