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Moony

“You know what this place needs is a bloody map!” exclaimed Sirius.

It was Monday, and they were lost trying to find their way to their Defense Against the Dark Arts lesson. Remus had no idea as he’d never been, having been “ill” the week before, and none of the other boys seemed to have a clue where they’d gone. They’d just followed Lily before.

“A map would be spiffing about now,” James agreed, looking agitatedly up and down the corridor. “Blimey, they all look the same, don’t they?” he asked.

“I think we’ve seen that portrait before,” said Remus, pointing at a small square on the wall featuring a knight with a fat pony. The knight had just been thrown from his steed and he was trying to climb back on but kept getting his armor stuck in the horse’s saddle footholds.

Peter looked up at it, “Yeah. Sir Cadogan.”

“Sir Cadogan the Lame,” muttered Sirius. “Oi! Seriously!” They’d just rounded a corner and found themselves at the mouth of the stairs that led down to the entrance hall again. They’d been back to this point several times.

James looked at his watch. “We’re quite late.”

Remus frowned. “I’m never going to learn any defensive theory at this rate.”

“There you are!” The boys turned around to find Professor Tutman coming up behind them, Lily Evans in tow, carrying a box under one arm. “We’ve been looking for you,” he said jovially.

“We’ve been looking for you, too,” James said.

Professor Tutman waved them along, “Our class is outside today,” he said, leading the way.

The boys charged down the stairs with Professor Tutman and Lily, across the entrance hall and out onto the grounds. It was a crisp early autumn day, one that promised a cold winter ahead. Lily pulled the sleeves of her sweater down over her hands and Sirius rubbed his palms together. Professor Tutman led them all down to the lake where there was a big oak tree and they set themselves down under it on the grass and Professor Tutman set the trunk he’d been carrying down on the ground.

“The reason I’ve brought you out here is so that I can show you some of the dark magic detectors I’ve got that simply won’t work in such close quarters of the other students within the castle,” he said. He reached into the trunk and pulled out a bunch of shiny instruments, some of which Remus recognized from having seen them before in Dumbledore’s office. Professor Tutman set them up on the trunk for them to see. There was a great big silver thing that looked like a top that seemed to levitate on its spindle, a mirror, a set of scales, and a couple other odd shaped things that James was keen to crane his neck to see from where he sat slightly behind Peter Pettigrew who had combed his ashy blonde hair upwards that morning, trying to make it look messier, like James, but had only succeeded in making it bushier.

Once all the instruments were laid out on the trunk, Professor Tutman waved his wand to activate them and they started to move and flash. The top-like thing spun, blurring with it’s wobbling speed, and the mirror fogged up with shadowy figures while another thing that looked like a long rectangular box with lights on it blinked madly. “Well, either we are not far enough from the school as I had thought or else someone here has a very dark secret,” Tutman said, looking around at them.

Remus furrowed his brows, trying to look as concerned as the others, but under his Hogwarts robes he felt very hot indeed. Were Professor Tutman’s tools sensing that he was a werewolf?

“Well blimey everybody’s got a secret!” Sirius said with indignation.

Professor Tutman chuckled, “Perhaps. But these are special tools and won’t pick up on things like shirking off homework to play gobstones. They are tools used by aurors at the Ministry of Magic.”

Most of the first years looked deeply impressed.

Lily raised her hand.

“Yes, Miss. Evans?” Professor Tutman asked, looking at her with amusement because she’d bothered to raise her hand at all in such a small class. The boys always just spoke out of turn.

“What is an auror?” Lily asked.

“You don’t even know what an auror is?” Sirius asked, incredulous.

“Excuse me for being muggle born,” snapped Lily, turning to look at him, “Does it bother you?”

Sirius looked surprised at the heat in her words. “No,” he said, “Not even a bit.”

She glowered at him anyway, then turned back to Professor Tutman, who was frowning at them both for the outbursts. “Sorry, Professor,” Lily said.

“Yeah, sorry Professor,” Sirius muttered, too, not to be outdone.

“No worries,” Professor Tutman replied. He cleared his throat, “Now… as we were saying… Lily, aurors are sort of like a muggle police investigator, except for the wizarding world. They’re dark wizard catchers. They go out and arrest and testify against known doers of evil and they guard the wizarding prison, Azkaban, along with the help of some of the most fearsome creatures imaginable… the Dementors.”

“Dementors?” Sirius asked.

“Don’t know everything then, do you?” Lily hissed.

Professor Tutman cleared his throat. Lily looked abashed. “Dementors are creatures which feed off people’s happiness, they suck the joy out of everything… When a dementor is near and feeding off of you, you feel as if you’ll never feel happiness again. Ever.” Tutman looked around at them. “You feel as if your entire world has gone black, all the colors have gone. They’re mighty dark creatures, dementors, and they have no allegiance, no loyalty. They’ll go wherever they can feed the most. They are most useful as guards at the wizarding prison for they keep the prisoners feeling so dismal that they lose the will to fight. Some go insane or die from depression within those walls. Particularly nasty inmates will suffer the dementor’s kiss, which is much like a muggle death penalty. A dementor’s kiss means they’ve sucked out your soul and you’re worse than dead.”

They were all wide-eyed, staring up at Tutman.

“This,” Tutman said, turning to his silver instruments, “Is a sneakoscope. When it spins, it is detecting the presence of a sneak - someone with a dark secret is around, usually that indicates an enemy but there are many forms of dark secrets, many reasons why one might keep them, and the sneakoscope cannot judge the difference between a good and an evil secret keeper, only that there are secrets being withheld.” The students all looked ‘round at each other, wondering who it could be that had a secret like that. Remus hoped that his stares had been convincing enough.

Professor Tutman turned next to the mirror, “This is a foe glass. In the glass, you see not your own reflection but the shadowy figures of your enemies - unless of course your worst enemy is yourself. I suppose there are some who peer into the foe glass and see themselves in perfect clarity. The closer one’s enemies are, the more clearly they can be seen in the reflection.”

“Wow, neat…” James said, leaning closer, his eyes wide. “This is cool. Can’t see anything, though.”

“Good thing, isn’t it?” Professor Tutman said, smiling, “Means you haven’t got any enemies around.”

Tutman went over the other instruments over the rest of their lesson, going on about the uses of them and the sorts of dark magic that they each detected. James kept glancing at the foe glass as a figure wove in and out of the shadows in the glass, a face nearly appearing but not quite becoming recognizable.

They walked back across the grounds to the castle, following along behind Professor Tutman. Lily Evans was talking to him about the instruments, chattering away and keeping Tutman distracted. Sirius looked around at the other boys. “I’ve been thinking. We should really do something about that map idea I had.”

“Do something?” Remus asked, “Like what?”

“Like make one,” Sirius said. “The three –“ he paused, seeing Peter’s hopeful stare, “—four of us.”

“How? We don’t know where anything’s at in the castle,” Remus pointed out.

“Like any real map makers do,” Sirius answered, “Exploring.”

“But we haven’t got time to explore,” Remus argued. “During the days we’ve got classes, the evenings we’ve got homework…”

“We could go at night,” James suggested.

“Brilliant,” Sirius chimed, grinning.

Remus shook his head, “We couldn’t go at night, that’d be against the rules. We aren’t supposed to be out of the dormitory at night.”

James grinned. “Rules were meant to be broken.”

Remus looked uncomfortable.

Sirius was grinning, too. “We could sneak off after everyone’s out of the common room. The only one we’d really need to watch out for much is Filch.”

“And Mrs. Norris,” Peter piped up.

“But what if we get caught?” Remus asked. He was thinking of how carefully Dumbledore had been to get him into the school. Could sneaking out of bed at night get him expelled?

Sirius smacked his hand to his forehead, “Detention! That’s right, too, I’ve got that ruddy detention today with Madam Hooch and Snivelley.”

“Sounds exciting,” James laughed.

“Very,” Sirius agreed. “But this is exactly the sort of situation that our map would come in bloody handy; I haven’t a clue where Madam Hooch’s office is.”