Peter
It had started when they were in their second year; half-illegible words scrawled between carefully constructed blueprints in the corners of parchment when they should have been taking notes. A little note about a secret meeting room. A message about the discovery of a hidden passageway. It began as a way to plan and execute their infamous pranks without anyone prying or trying to stop them. Then Remus started ripping their messages and diagrams off the parchments of notes and saving them for future reference.
It was Sirius who had come up with the idea to compile all the information they knew into a map. Every room, every passageway was carefully drawn by his steady hand. It was tedious work. They took to carrying spare bits of parchment in their pockets to make notes of rooms they passed, what staircase they took to get there and then passed that information along to Sirius, who worked magic with his quill.
That first night the boys had morphed into their Animagi to help Remus with his transformation, Peter found himself dashing with ease between the whipping branches of the Whomping Willow to press the knot that would immobilize the thrashing tree. Peter was thrilled to realize the potential for his Animagus, being small enough to disappear into the shadows would prove to be a valuable asset.
*
Peter scurried along, quietly and out of sight. He was comfortable here in the dark and dank dungeons of Hogwarts. It was the perfect place to blend in as a rat. He made one last turn and ran along the edge of the corridor, stopping once to remember where he had come from, before following another corridor back towards the stairs.
At the foot of the stairs, he paused and looked around to make sure there was no one around and then morphed back into a human. He dashed up the stairs to the ground floor and proceeded to make his way up the marble staircase towards the Gryffindor common room. Bursting into the dormitory, he took the boys by surprise but the wide, ecstatic smile on his face put them at ease.
“I’ve done it!” he exclaimed. “I’ve got the last of the dungeons done. We can finish the map.”
Sirius whooped in excitement and jumped off his bed to pull the map out his trunk. James patted Peter’s back in congratulations and commended him on his dedication as the four of them stood around Sirius’s small desk.
“Put a corridor along here,” he said, drawing a line with his finger. “There are three rooms along here “ two here, one here. Storage.”
Sirius drew rooms and corridors, following Peter’s descriptions accurately. When he was finished, the boys looked at the map in amazement. They had finished documenting the grounds last week “ having been able to discover every nook and cranny while roaming around as Animagi “ and now they had mapped out the final corridors of the dungeons. The map was complete.
“I can’t believe it,” Sirius breathed, staring at his masterpiece. “It’s beautiful.”
James looked at Sirius strangely. “It’s a map, Sirius,” he said. “Do you want some alone time with it?”
Sirius gave James a mock glare before elbowing him in the gut. Peter shook his head in exasperation, but he too felt a strange thrill, a giddy restlessness now that the map was complete. It was beautiful, and it was theirs.
But then Remus tilted his head and looked at it and he said, “Well, what do we do with it now?”
James and Sirius stopped wrestling and stared at Remus as though he was a two-headed dragon.
“What do you mean what do we do now? It’s a map. It shows every room, corridor and secret passageway in Hogwarts. We can use it to sneak out of the castle and plan pranks without anyone eavesdropping!”
Remus blushed and stuttered when he first began to explain how he understood what the map was for, but still, he felt a sort of incompleteness to it, as if something was missing. The boys stood around and stared at it, trying to figure out what was missing.
“Do you know what would be wicked?” James mused, his eyes all squinty behind his glasses the way they got when he was thinking really hard about something. He expanded on his thought, “If the map could tell us where everyone was in the castle at any given time. Not only would it show us the secret passageways, but we could avoid Filch if we’re out of bed, we could use it to easily find Slytherin targets…”
“Yes!” Remus cried out. “That would be brilliant. I think I could do it.”
“Really?” James asked excitedly.
Remus was nodding his head. “Yeah, yeah, I’ll have to do some research…we might have to cast quite a few charms, but I think I can figure something out.”
“We also need to find a spell that will hide the ink but could reappear maybe with a password? We don’t want just anyone to be able to see it,” Sirius added in.
Remus was furiously writing down notes. “I think I read about something similar to that. I can’t remember which book it was though,” Remus replied. “I’ll have to do a lot of research.”
“I’ll help,” James offered. “It was my idea after all.”
“Yeah? All right,” Remus said, looking down at the parchment in his hands. “Want to take a stroll to the library, then?”
“We’ll all go,” Sirius added, glancing quickly at Peter, who nodded his assent, eager to help. “Between the four of us, it won’t take nearly as long.”
The excitement between them was palpable; James’s hands were shaking with adrenaline and Sirius was grinning stupidly. They were really going to do this. They were going to create a magic map that no one had ever seen the likes of before.
They were going to be legends.
*
Sirius
*
Sirius was not known for his patience. He was used to getting everything he wanted when he wanted it, even if it meant angering people in the process. So the fact that it had been weeks since they first started researching spells to turn their ordinary map into something extraordinary was starting to grate on his nerves. James and Remus had been brilliant so far, he wouldn’t deny them that, but there were still some kinks they couldn’t quite figure out. The map would show some students but not others, or some students would appear twice…in two separate places. They had already figured out how to track the students and staff on the map.
They were hidden in an unused classroom on the fourth floor, piles of books surrounding them. Nothing in the book he was reading seemed to be worth a second glance. He slammed it shut and tossed it into the ever-growing pile of discarded books.
“What are we doing wrong?” he demanded, he bit a hangnail off one finger while running his other hand through his hair in frustration. The boys muttered amongst themselves but no one had a definitive answer.
“Wait!” Peter exclaimed. “I think I might have found something. Try this,” he said, shoving the book in front of Remus, his stubby finger pointing out a passage.
Remus raised an eyebrow as he read and said, “I don’t know if it needs to be more specific though.” He shrugged. “But it couldn’t hurt to try it.”
He pulled his wand from his robes and grabbed the map from the center of the table. He moved his wand in a complex weave and muttered, “Sciens omnia.”
They watched and waited with bated breath. Floating dots began to whip across the map, names began appearing and Peter let out an excited squeak. “I think it’s working!”
“This is absolutely incredible,” James said in awe. “Look “ there’s Filch!” He pointed towards a dot skulking through the dungeons. He barked a laugh. “And there’s Snivellus sitting all by himself at the library!”
Sirius felt a surge of pride as he watched his friends’ delighted faces. They did this, created something so magnificent and brilliant, together.
“We need a password,” James reminded them all. “Has anyone thought of anything?”
Sirius felt his lips curve up in a grin. He had spent many nights thinking of a password, actually, and he was excited to share his thoughts, eager to meet their approval. “I was thinking that in order for us to read the map, we should say, ‘I solemnly swear that I am up to no good.’ Then when we want to make the map disappear, we could say, ‘Mischief managed.’”
James laughed, hearty and loud and reached across the table to ruffle Sirius’s hair affectionately. “That’s perfect.”
“We should call it The Marauders Map,” Peter suggested as Remus muttered some spells for the password.
“I’ll do that!” Sirius said, grabbing a quill and snatching the map from Remus. Sirius was always proud of his calligraphy. Years of tutelage under his mother’s watchful eye ensured that Sirius had impeccable handwriting.
“We should put our names on it,” Remus proposed as he watched Sirius title the map.
Sirius was trying to rub off the ink he smudged on his fingers with the hem of his robe when he asked, “What about nicknames instead?”
“We don’t have nicknames, Sirius,” James pointed out.
“We could make them up right now. I always wanted a nickname. Something only your closest friends would know.”
“We’re the only ones who know that we’re Animagi,” Peter said. “We could have nicknames based on our animals?”
“James can be Buck!” Sirius joked.
“You can be Flea-bag,” James shot back with a saccharine smile.
“Prongs,” Remus said suddenly. He motioned to his head. “Your antlers.”
James nodded. “I like it,” he said.
Sirius did too, but he didn’t want to tell Remus that. He chewed absently on a fingernail, or what was left of one since he had mostly chewed them all to stubs, as he tried to come up with creative nicknames.
“Wolfy? Raging Beast? Moony?” he tossed out some ideas randomly.
“I like Moony,” Remus replied quietly. The boys agreed it was a fitting name considering Remus’s life revolved around the cycles of the moon.
“What about for you, Peter?” James mused. “You’re a rat. You could be called…Ratty.”
Sirius coughed to cover up his snort of laughter. “How clever.”
“Like Wolfy was?” James retorted.
Sirius scrunched his nose up in irritation before kicking James under the table.
“For goodness sake!” James exclaimed. “Why are you always beating me up?”
Sirius grinned salaciously and waggled his eyebrows. “You like it, Prongs,” he said, slipping in James’s new nickname, finding it slid off his tongue with ease. “Don’t deny it.”
“You guys are disgusting,” Peter said, throwing a ball of parchment at Sirius’s head.
“And you still need a nickname! Do we have any more obvious statements to make?” Sirius asked, rolling his eyes. “You could be Naked Tail.”
Remus choked on his laughter. “Honestly, Sirius, where are you coming up with these names?”
“I’m a genius with words,” Sirius replied casually. A light smile played on his lips for he was glad that Remus seemed to be lighter these days, less consumed by the darkness of his disease, now that he knew the truth behind their absences. He was horrified to think that they had acted that way, knowing it wasn’t intentional that they had isolated him.
“His tail kind of looks like a worm,” James said. “What about Wormtail?” He looked to Peter for his approval.
Peter responded, “Better than Naked Tail.”
Sirius shrugged it off with a laugh. He loved this casual banter between the four of them and enjoyed their easy friendship. It was hard when he was first Sorted into Gryffindor; being a Black was all he knew, and it was expected that he would be Sorted into Slytherin. He was so reserved and for the first time in his life, he wasn’t the confident, cocky boy he had always been. But the boys were persistent, especially James, and they were able to drag out the rebellious, rambunctious boy kicking and screaming. His parents hated them all for it.
Remus nudged him under the table, knocking him out of his musings. He looked concerned but Sirius just shook his head and offered a reassuring smile. “So,” he said, breaking the silence, “I still need a nickname.”
James looked at him innocently. “What’s wrong with Flea-bag?”
“You kind of look like the Grim,” Peter supplied unhelpfully. “You could be…Grimy.”
“Prongs, Moony, Wormtail and Grimy? I don’t think so,” Sirius said. It didn’t sound right on his tongue.
“Moony, Wormtail, Padfoot and Prongs,” Remus said. “It flows nicely, don’t you think?”
“Padfoot? Where did that come from?” James asked curiously.
“I don’t know…dogs have pads on their feet? It just sounded right.”
“Well, I like it,” Sirius declared proudly as he flourished his quill. Above the flowing script of the title he added ‘Messrs. Moony, Wormtail, Padfoot & Prongs are proud to present.’
“I can’t believe we’ve done it,” James murmured, staring at the final product.
“Wait, one last thing!” Remus said as he picked his wand back up and muttered another incantation. He finished with a smirk. “Now if anyone tries to look at it without the password, the map will spew insults at them.”
The boys chuckled at Remus’s creativeness. Sirius looked around the table and felt an overwhelming surge of pride for what they had just completed, for what they had accomplished this year alone. Their loyalty to one another was a bond he thought nothing could break, evidenced by their complete disregard for Wizarding laws when they had become unregistered Animagi for Remus’s sake “ and maybe, a little bit, because they thought it would be fun. Then this, this ingenious piece of magic that had become their pride and joy. The amount of planning and magic that went into this map was astounding and Sirius had never met a more dedicated group of students. His heart was so full of love for these boys he thought it would burst out of his chest. They were the very best friends he could have ever hoped for.
All That's Beautiful Drifts Away by forsakenphoenix
Chapter Notes: As usual, I don't own anything. Characters borrowed from J.K. Rowling, story title and summary comes from W.B. Yeats.