The Map

The Map

Chapter 1

Sirius brought the tip of his quill up to his mouth. The ink soaked nib was almost touching his lips before Peter interrupted him.

"Siri! It's not sugar." Sirius turned to face Peter, refocusing.

"Huh?"

"The quill. It's a real one. Not sugar."

"Oh right. Thanks." Sirius flicked a wave of hair from his eyes and surveyed the corridor in front of them. "So what do you reckon, hundred and six yards?"

"Pads, I don't care, just measure it and then we can go."

The dark, dank corridors of the Slytherin dungeons were beginning to get to Peter. Sirius, though he'd never admit it, wasn't happy either and was starting to get bored. His companion could sense trouble brewing. The sooner they finished, the faster the two boys could leave.

A wave of Sirius's wand sent a yellow beam of light down the corridor, and bouncing off the wall at the end, returned to the boys. It stopped in front of them. With another flourish of Sirius's wand, and the stream of light twisted into three numbers: 1 0 4.

"One hundred and four yards. I'm getting good at this," Sirius muttered to himself, and then lent his parchment on Peter's back to draw the corridor to scale on his map.

"Siri?"

"Umh?"

"Why do you think there's a corridor with nothing leading off of it?" Peter sounded confused, but Sirius gave the smaller boy his full attention. Peter was right: the corridor was odd. A smirk unfolded on Sirius' face.

"Let's find out Mr. Wormtail." And with that he strode off down the passage.

With a sigh, Peter pointed his wand at the base of the wall. "I solemnly swear we are up to no good," he muttered and followed Sirius.

At the entrance to the corridor, a little rat was carved into the wall and glowed before fading but the carving remained. Neither boy was to be seen.

* * *

"Where are they?"

Remus Lupin was pacing back and forth in the Room of Requirement.

"Would you just relax? Sirius probably stopped to chat up some Slytherin slut en route." James was lounging on the sofa playing with his stolen Snitch and observing his friend with vague amusement.

"You're right of course." Remus stopped pacing to look at the other boy. "But still, say they've run into Severus and there's been trouble, then what?"

James rolled his eyes, as though Remus was being ridiculous. "Then we would have heard the curses from here. Now Moony, pour yourself some Fire whiskey. Ah! Mssrs Wormtail and Padfoot, how nice of you to join us."

The remaining pair of boys swept into the room, and at James's greeting, Sirius bowed elegantly while Peter bounced, waving the completed dungeon map.

Remus swallowed his smile. "You two are late."

Sirius looked up, affronted. "Don't you use your prefect voice on us, Mr. Moony, thank you all the same. We have risked life and limb for this hair-brained scheme."

"That you came up with, I might add."

"Precisely. And all you can say is 'you two are late'!"

Peter smirked. "Next time we won't bother."

"Too right Peter. James, pass the Fire-whiskey." Sirius deposited himself on the only part of the sofa not taken up by James. Both boys shifted almost unconsciously to give each other equal space and Sirius started on the Fire-whiskey. Shaking his head, Remus crossed the room to sit on the floor by Sirius, holding up a glass to be filled. Peter grinned at his friends and collected the maps the four of them had already drawn: Gryffindor, Hufflepuff and Ravenclaw. He then settled on the armrest above James. Peter never drunk, but it didn't matter. The boys were rarely reckless with their drink, so Peter wasn't missing much. Sirius lit up, passing the deck of cigarettes to Remus, who took one and Sirius's Zippo lighter. The others had bought it for his sixteenth birthday and it had an engraving of a dog's head on one side.

"Let's have a look at these maps then." Peter passed the maps down to James.

There was a moment's silence. "Merlin, there's a lot of secret passages in these house areas."

Sirius smirked. "Lots of marauding for us then."

Remus raised an eyebrow. "Marauding?"

"Yeah, I read about it in a book. And it seems to fit us."

James slowly began to smile. "Then this shall be," the boys all grinned at each other, "The Marauder's Map!"