Dwelling on Dreams (A Marauders Fan Fic)

The Marauder's Map

James darling,

Just a short note to tell you that that’s a brilliant suggestion; we’d love it if Sirius would stay with us over Christmas; he sounded very unhappy about his family in the summer. Can’t say I’ve ever been a fan of Walburga and Orion so I don’t blame him personally; we’ve met them a couple of times over the years and the way Walburga treated that sweet boy when she picked him up in summer was positively disgusting. Make sure you tell him he needn’t feel bad about staying with us – our house is open to him whenever he wants to spend time there. We’ll pick you up from the station next Friday; can’t wait to see you darling!

Here are some sweets to put you in the Christmas mood and keep you going; we’ll see you soon.

Lots of love,

Mum

“Well that’s settled then; all you need to do now is tell your parents you won’t be going home for the holidays,” said James to Sirius over his toast.

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Mum,

I’m just writing to let you know I’ve been invited to stay at James Potter’s again for Christmas so I’ll be going back with him straight after the end of term. Don’t worry about picking me up and taking me back to Hogwarts, they’re taking us back to platform nine and three-quarters at the end of the holidays.

Have fun with Regulus; if I’m not invited to stay with James in the summer holidays I’ll see you at the end of the year.

Sirius

“There. Short and to the point. She won’t be able to get angry with me over that; not like she ever would. She’ll probably be glad to have her hands clean of me,” he said bitterly as he attached the note to his owl and let it through the window.

“Poor Sirius; you’re so unloved,” said James as he stood up to leave. “Quidditch practice,” he said as he answered Sirius’ questioning glance. “If it makes any difference to you my mum seems to prefer you to me, so someone loves you,” he said wryly before climbing out of the portrait hole.

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“So we’ve got the dungeons,” said Lupin as they sat in the common room after the Christmas holidays poring over the piece of parchment spread out in front of them. “And we’ve marked the secret stairway going from here to there,” he said, marking it with his finger. “Do you think we have everything for here?” he said as he appealed to James.

“Looks like it to me, I can’t think of any other passages or anything that we’ve found. What about the ground floor?”

“We’ve done all the ground floor and mapped out every secret passage, staircase, everything but it’s going to be really hard to make them all connect up on the finished thing”

“The actual drawing is going to be hard too because of all the floors,” added Sirius. “We really need it to fit onto one piece of parchment; either that or we’ll need flaps and stuff which could get quite bulky, especially if it’s supposed to look like a spare piece of parchment because what if someone unfolds it?”

“What if we enchant it so that you can’t unfold it until you’ve said some sort of password?” suggested James. “That way if someone goes snooping round, all they’ll see is a piece of folded parchment and all the extras are inside.”

“Good plan James!” said Peter excitedly.

“We have the first floor too, don’t we?” asked Lupin.