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The Marauder's Map


Remus, Peter, Sirius, and James were all standing before the tapestry of Barnabus the Barmy. It was later in the afternoon after the Lake Incident and Sirius and James had spent the remainder of the morning getting a Thorough Talking To in Professor McGonagall’s office, along with a detention assignment for the following Saturday. She’d released them finally and they’d hurried back to the Gryffindor common room to find that Peter and Remus had been dutifully preparing for the afternoon’s plans of mapping the Secret Room. Peter had gone and gotten sandwiches from the kitchens and bottles of pumpkin juice, too, while Remus sharpened his pencils and carefully packed the parchment map in his bookbag.

Now, here they were, staring at the span of seemingly empty wall space opposite the ballet-dancing trolls. “There isn’t even a door here,” Remus said, his voice dripping with skepticism.

“Not yet,” Sirius agreed.

“How did you lot find this place again?” Remus asked, looking ‘round at them.

They’d told him the story probably eight times already since confiding to him about the Secret Room. “We were looking for a place to hide the bicorn horn we stole from Slughorn’s office,” started James.

“And Peter went to get the list of secret passageways in the dormitory, but he couldn’t find it,” Sirius added.

“So I thought there had been one of the passages some place around here,” James said.

“We came up here while we waited for Peter and we’d agreed to meet by Barnabus the Barmy here,” Sirius continued.

“And I was pacing and mumbling ‘bout needing a place to hide the bicorn horn, driving Sirius mad…” James said.

“... and then a door appeared,” Sirius finished.

Remus shook his head, “Wow. And it just so happened to be full of all the stuff you needed to make the potion?”

James nodded, “Pretty lucky, ‘ey?”

“I was thinking more along the lines of suspicious,” Remus answered.

Sirius rolled his eyes, “Aw c’mon, don’t be such a worry wart. It’s bloody brilliant. It’s as though the room were made just for us!”

“See, statements like that make me feel it’s even more suspicious,” Remus said. He rubbed his chin, “Who all have you told about this animagus nonsense?”

“Nobody! ‘Cept you,” Sirius said.

Peter looked nervously between Sirius and Remus. “Are we suspecting foul play?” he demanded, twisting his fingers together.

“No,” James said, rolling his eyes at Peter, “Calm down, will you?”

“Well I wouldn’t rule it out,” Remus corrected James. “I mean, think about it. What’re the odds of you lot happening to find a mysterious door and it happening to be full of potions equipment and the like?” He looked between Sirius and James with a raised brow. “That’s insanely impossible odds, you know, with all the other sorts of rooms it could’ve been. Finding the room at all sounds a near impossible feat!”

James shrugged, “There’s no way it was faked.” He paused, then turned to Sirius, “Unless McGonagall figured us out and stocked the room herself.”

Sirius shook his head, “McGonagall wouldn’t have known we were coming up here by Barnabus the Barmy. Plus, she would have said something. Especially when she met me as Snuffles!”

“Maybe she didn’t wanna bust us in front of all the other Resistance people,” James suggested.

Sirius shrugged, “I don’t think it’s anybody’s set it up, I think it’s just what the room is.”

“You lot are way too trusting,” muttered Remus.

“And you’re way too cynical!” Sirius said back. He went up to the wall and took a deep breath, “We need to show Remus the Secret Room,” he told the wall, walking back and forth, “We need to show Remus the Secret Room… We need to show Remus the Secret Room…”

Remus’s skeptical look remained until the gold ribbon of light began to twist and curl it’s way about on the way, slowly forming a door as it unfurled. His eyes widened when the knob popped out and the door’s brightness faded and there it was - an actual door in the wall. “Whoa,” he murmured, and he stepped up to it, pressing his palms to the wood and feeling it, amazed. “But, that’s… that’s… whoa.”

James, Sirius, and Peter exchanged glances and smirks. “C’mon in mate, give it a look-see,” said Sirius and he grabbed a hold on the knob and wrenched the door opened, walking inside, “It’s the perfect room, exactly what we needed for brewing the Draught of ---” Sirius stopped mid-sentence. “--- ….er.” He turned back to look at James, who looked as stunned as Sirius felt.

For what they’d expected was not there at all. The room was entirely different from what it had been last term when they’d snuck down to brew the Draught of Change. The room was easily four or five times as large, if not even more, and the counter with the cauldron and the bicorn horn were both gone, replaced by what looked like it may have once been a huge open space but that had since been packed full of the wildest assortment of things imaginable. “What the bloody hell is this?”James asked.

Peter was inspecting a sneakoscope that was tilted on it’s side, still desperately trying to hum and lift itself back up, but unable to do it. Beside it was a box of Filibusters and behind it a stack of empty cages. There were textbooks and framed photos, smiling and waving up at them, and old robes with nasty stains. There were cabinets and torn bed curtains and a snapped broomstick. All four of them turned and moved among the stacks of things that were piled like great pyramids, their eyes taking it all in as they walked.

“This stuff was not all here before,” Sirius said.

Remus ran his finger over a dusty shelf filled with hiccoughing tea cups. “That can’t be. This stuff has been here a very long time. Look.” He held up the thick layer of dust he’d picked up, “Years.”

James shook his head, “No it’s true, this lot wasn’t here before.”

“Maybe you have the wrong secret door,” Remus smirked.

“Rey,” Peter said, “They’re telling the truth.”

Remus looked around, “Then where did it all come from?”

“I dunno!” Sirius said, “This is so bizarre!” James rubbed his chin, thinking, as Peter picked up a tarnished tiara that had fallen onto the floor and looked it over. Sirius took up a book from a table and turned it over in his hand, looking at the back. “Look at this. A book of funny spells.” James bounded over to look.

Remus started moving onward, getting several feet ahead of them, his eyes roaming over the stacks of stuff. There was just so much stuff, he thought, there was no way somebody could look through all of it in a single day. He picked up a box of self-shuffling playing cards and accidentally knocked over a box that went spilling across the floor. He moved forward quickly to pick it up and found it was filled with a bunch of tiny bottles of some sort of gold liquid that seemed to glow as he laid them back into the box.

“Blimey, look at this,” James’s voice carried through the piles of stuff and Remus turned back to see James was holding up a sword and swishing it about.

“Put that down,” Remus said, “Before you chop off somebody’s arm or something.” He turned and walked back towards the other three quickly, realizing they clearly needed a supervisor as James dropped the sword clumsily back into the umbrella stand he’d found it in.

Sirius was clearing off a space on an old desk anyhow and he waved Remus over, “Here, let’s add it to the map.”

Thinking this the perfect way to distract James from messing about with things like swords, he hastened to get over to the desk and lay out the map. It was quite a lot more detailed than it had been even last time they’d gone out to work on it. Remus had been working on it during the summer back home, adding little details and flourishes so that it looked much nicer. He’d also gone over a lot of the penciled in bits with a crimson ink that stood much more stark against the yellowy parchment.

“Wow, that’s looking banging,” Sirius said, grinning at the map from Remus’s shoulder. “You’re so good at drawing, Rey.”

“Yeah, that looks incredible,” squeaked Peter.

James nodded his agreement.

“It’s taken a lot of work,” Remus admitted, proud of how they were admiring it. He withdrew the quill and inkpot he’d brought a long and quickly worked through all the folds of the paper until he found the seventh floor corridor bit and laid it flat. He moved his finger through the corridors they’d drawn on, finding where Barbabus the Barmy was and quickly dipped his quill into the inkpot. “Here we are…” he murmured, and lowered the quill to the page, drawing the door on the wall… but the quill was without ink. Remus gave a funny look to the quill and turned it over, sure enough, the ink had gone. He dipped the quill again and brought down the tip once more only to find the same thing had happened again.

“You must not be getting it actually in the ink,” James said.

Remus pushed the pen into the ink pot and brought it up dripping. “Definitely have some now,’ he said, and he swept the quill against the edge of the pot to keep it from dripping on the parchment page and dragged the tip over the spot for the door again. Still no marks were made. “What the bloody hell?” he asked, looking at the other three.

Sirius held out his hand for the quill and quickly scribbled a bit on the inside cover of the book of funny spells that he was still holding. The marks showed up just fine. Once he’d confirmed the pen was working, he leaned over the parchment and tried to draw the square shape of the room on the map. But nothing happened.

Remus said, “Perhaps the room’s unplottable.”

“Must be,” Sirius agreed. “Wow, that’s pretty cool.”

Remus drew in Barnabus the Barmy’s portrait without any trouble. “There,” he said, “We’ll just need to remember it’s opposite of that, should we ever need to give directions to this place with the map.” He shrugged, “It’s the best I can do.”

“That’s a good one, Rey,” Sirius answered.

James slid the map his way as Remus was cleaning off the quill, flipping through the folds that depicted each of the floors. Remus’s work really was stunning. He’d made up the shapes in words that curled and coiled about themselves, describing what it was you were looking at, filling in basic lines he’d drawn as they’d walked through the school on their mapping adventures. There were tiny notes and lots of intricate details, like little windows and ornaments drawn here and there to make the map look really nice.

“I think it needs a title,” James declared.

“A title?” Sirius asked.

“Yeah, you know, something catchy people will be able to call it. Just calling it a map of Hogwarts doesn’t do it justice. I mean look at it, it’s a work of art!”

Peter looked over James’s shoulder at it. “What would we call it, though?”

They all thought about it for a long moment.

“What about Hogwarts Unleashed?” suggested Sirius.

Remus made a face. Then suggested, “Hogwarts: A Comprehensive Overview.”

“The Corridors of Hogwarts?” Peter asked.

“The Mischief Makers’ Map,” laughed James, jokingly.

Sirius’s eyes lit up, “The Marauder’s Map,” he declared, “Because that’s what McGonagall’s always accusing us of doing - marauding about.”

James laughed, “That’s brilliant.”

Remus nodded, “I like it, too.”

“So do I,” Peter said, even though nobody had asked him.

“You’ll have to make a title page now,” Sirius said with a laugh, “Something fancy and we’ll put on it that it’s by all of us so when it’s handed down through the ages, people remember who’s done it and we’ll be famous.”

Remus looked hesitant, “Do we really want people knowing we made it? With all these secret passageways and all on it? Wouldn’t it be better if nobody knew?”

James asked, “But, then where’s all the glory?”

Remus said, “The glory, I’d expect, would be in not spending the rest of our lives in detention for it.”

“He has a point,” Peter said.

Sirius frowned, “Yeah, I s’pose. We can talk about it, we don’t need to go doing it right now. But I do like that title. We should always call it that from now on. The Marauder’s Map. I love it, it sounds like us. It’d be a cool gang name.”

James laughed, “Because we’re a gang now?”

“We’ve always been a gang,” Sirius replied. “And now, we always will be.” He smiled as Remus folded the map up carefully and tucked it into his bag with the inkpot and quill. “Do you lot think whoever left this stuff is coming back for it?” he asked.

“Given the thick layer of dust on it? I doubt it,” Remus answered.

Sirius held up the book. “Good. Finder’s keepers on this then,” he said, tucking it into the pockets of his robes.

“Here, take some of these, too,” James said, grabbing a couple Filibuster’s Fireworks from a big box of them. “You never know when we might need some of these.”

Remus said warily, “Just don’t go setting them off in the dormitory, you’re likely to lose a leg that way…”

“You’re awfully obsessed with the idea of somebody losing a body part today, Rey,” James said, laughing, “Don’t worry, I won’t take off anybody’s extremities.” He grinned and stuffed the rest of Sirius’s pockets, as well as his own, with the fire crackers.