The Marauders: Year Seven Part Two

Up to No Good

Sirius, Remus, and Peter had rushed out of the Great Hall, up the stairwell in the Entrance Hall and to the Charms corridor to a secret passage that somehow let them out in a corridor three floors above, without having ever sloping upward or going up any stairs. They looked about in the corridor on the fourth floor, saw no one was about, and crossed the hall quickly, disappearing into an empty, unused room. Sirius turned and set a lock upon the door the moment they'd got inside, as Peter lit the lamps with his wand, and Remus went to an empty, dust-covered desk in the middle of the room, swept it off with his jumper sleeve, and laid the blank, stained and care-worn parchment down upon the surface. Sirius and Peter gathered round so that the three of them stood, hovering above the blank parchment, staring at it carefully.

"It's got to be it!" Sirius said reverently, "It's got to be our map."

Peter reached out and gingerly touched the parchment, running his stubby little fingers over the page, feeling the texture of it, his heart racing.

"Prongs is going to be so pisser that he missed this!" Sirius beamed vengefully. "Go on, Moony. Give it a go."

Remus cleared his throat and raised his wand, putting the tip of it squarely in the center of the parchment, he announced, "I solemnly swear that I am up to no good."

The effect was, of course, as it always was, instant. The ink seeped up onto the page, fading into view, slicing across the parchment in spidery lines that shivered along, tracing all of the rooms and passages, the thin, messy handwriting of Remus Lupin. The entire map slowly came into sight, revealing the secrets it had to tell, and like confetti showering over it there came the little moving feet, names floating next to them to reveal where exactly every single person was in the entire castle.

Sirius crowed with excitement as Peter clapped and jumped up and down. Remus simply grinned at the map as though he were greeting an old friend, his eyes twinkling as he gathered it up in his hands. He had to restrain himself from hugging the bloody thing - he was just so excited to see it again, he hadn't thought that he ever would.

"Our legacy has returned to us!" Sirius beamed.

"I wonder who DID return it then?" Peter asked, looking at it. "Someone had to of got it out of Filch's drawer, after all."

"Someone who knows about the map..." Remus pointed out. "But nobody really knows about it but us."

Peter lit up. "Lily knows about it."

They looked at one another, then back at the map.

"I'll bet Evans got it somehow and sent it to us as a sort of consolidation for having taken away Prongsie," Sirius said.

"Consolation," Remus corrected.

Peter nodded eagerly, "Yes, yes! I bet it was Lily! It makes perfect sense."

They quickly set to inspecting the map, looking over it to make sure it was working alright. It seemed to be. They were able to quickly locate themselves on the map, standing in the empty room, and there was Dumbledore in his office with Professor Eurquart, and over there was Frek in the DADA classroom. They could see Alice Prewitt and the others still at the Gryffindor table in the Great Hall, and Hagrid out on the grounds. Filch was in his chambers and Mrs. Norris was skulking around the 7th floor, just about to run into Madam Pomfrey, who was walking toward the stairwell that would lead down to the hospital wing.

And then they saw, lurking about in the corridor outside the astronomy tower, tucked into a corner in a jumbled cluster - and clearly hiding behind a suit of armor - was Wally, Dexter, and Ollie.

Remus pointed. "What's that lot up to?"

Peter smirked, "Hiding from Mrs. Norris, most like."

"Little hellions," Sirius snickered. He grinned wickedly. "Let's go scare the bejeebers out of them."