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sam_storyteller) wrote2005-07-07 01:21 pm
sam_storyteller) wrote2005-07-07 01:21 pm
Entry tags:
Laocoon's Children, Year III, Ch. 16
During the writing of this chapter I have used dialogue or description from canon. In this instance, text pertaining to the Marauder's Map as well as highly recognisable quotes from HBP have been used.
***
The Quidditch match was on the twenty-seventh of November, and at that point Remus was still well enough to attend. On the twenty-eighth he came down to breakfast but soon after begged off all invitations to come outside with the students or take tea with the professors, and by the twenty-ninth he was in bed not just awaiting the full moon that night but also with a bad head cold. Snape was annoyed; it was hard to gather accurate data on the potion when the subject was sick. Remus was just grateful he'd prepared his notes ahead of time, so that Tonks could take over his classes with a minimum of fuss.
All the students were glad to have "Professor" Tonks back again, and were suitably exuberant during their lessons. Remus was already a beloved teacher, but his style was very quiet and he demanded good discipline. Tonks was a bit more lax, the sort of professor who doesn't mind the occasional note being passed or joke being made as long as it isn't too disruptive. Indeed, in her second lesson she tripped on her own robe, went flying into the desk, and came up laughing so hard that everyone else laughed for at least five minutes, and giggled quietly for the rest of class.
It was Tonks, giving a lesson in how to distract a dueling opponent, who gave Harry his Great Idea. It deserved the capital letters; it was quite the most complicated prank he'd ever thought of. He scribbled down a brief play-by-play, Quidditch style, before class ended.
"Now," Tonks said, as the clock ticked towards the end, "Are there any questions today?"
Theo Nott raised his hand, a sly look on his face. Harry braced. He'd learned that Theo loved to stir up trouble for the pure joy of it, which was not necessarily a bad thing but was misapplied in the clever young Slytherin.
"All right, Nott?" she asked.
"Are you and Professor Snape going to get married?" he asked. The class snickered.
"Ten points from Slytherin for being a nosey-parker," she replied easily, and dismissed the class.
Outside, in the corridor, Harry collared Padma on her way to another lesson.
"I've got something," he said.
"Well, there are creams for that -- " she began mischievously, but he interrupted her.
"A use for your Time-Turner," he whispered, taking her by the arm and pulling her closer so that the others wouldn't hear. There was a sudden tension in her body, and he glanced at her face; she looked oddly embarrassed, but she gave no sign in her voice.
"Something really devious?" she asked in a hushed voice.
"Oh yes," he grinned. "I'll tell you all about it at breakfast tomorrow."
***
"Married!" Severus Snape said, looking truly astonished for only the second or third time in all the years Dora had known him. "What on earth put that idea into their heads?"
"Well, you don't need to sound so skeptical about it," Dora teased gently. They were sitting by the fire in the professors' common room, which was empty except for McGonagall, who was marking papers, and Dumbledore, who was serenely reading Jane Austen, both at the far end of the room. "It is a possibility, one of these days."
"A poss -- it's only been five months!" he said.
"A little more than six," she replied. "I'm not demanding a proposal, Severus, I thought you'd be amused, that's all. No need to be frightened."
"I suppose children will talk," he grumbled.
"They will do," she agreed with a smile.
"I am too old for you," he pointed out. "And I can't ever aspire to the kind of wealth your parents have; it would be an entirely unequal match."
"You're very old," she agreed. He scowled. "But the bride's family is supposed to pay for everything anyway, and it's their money, not mine. It's not even all mine in potentiality -- half'll go to Neville, at least. Besides, they're young yet, they might spend it all."
"Children gossiping -- this is what comes of professors living at the school," he muttered. She leaned across the little tea-laden table between them and rubbed his arm.
"Why don't we just keep on, and see where we end up. I'm not in any hurry," she said quietly. Severus covered her hand in his. And he did smile, a little. "Besides, if you really believed that trash about being too old and poor, you'd already have broken it off. I just can't allow that; I insist on being the one to break up with my boyfriends."
"Headstrong tart."
"Mouldering relic."
They were interrupted, before things could escalate to the heights of passion, by shrieks and laughter in the hallway. Severus, who distrusted laughter on general principle, stood and walked quickly to the door, leaning out to inquire what the noise was about.
Dora sat back in her chair and studied him: the long line of his body as he leaned through the door, the robes brushing the tips of his shoes, the way his close-cropped hair never quite got smoothed down properly in the back. She could hear his voice, though not what he was saying, and ten years ago would have cringed away from it. But ten years ago he'd been charged with teaching her, and since then she'd grown to enjoy the sound.
She wished now that she hadn't told him. Severus was a solitary man, always had been from what she could judge, and it had been an adjustment for him, learning to consider another person's thoughts and feelings, learning to allow someone else to sleep in his bed and to be comfortable with her presence at hours when normally he would be alone. The idea of marriage -- of having her present every morning and evening, of sharing his bed every single night, of his having to consider her before he made decisions -- was plainly frightening.
Still, fear was never got over by not talking about it, and she had planted the idea in his head. And, if it came to all that, in a month or two she could propose to him. Besides, the emotional advantage was not entirely on her side. He was older, much more well-read in some areas, and, though he was not terribly experienced sexually, he was far moreso than she was.
Wealth didn't concern her a bit; she earned a wage that paid her rent and had no need of her inheritance, which she would gladly and with a sisterly heart split with Neville. She'd heard her parents discussing it once and been thrilled to know that Neville would be considered a full, blood-related brother by their legal will. There had even been some talk of adoption, though it seemed Ted and Andromeda were waiting until Neville was older, perhaps old enough to understand better how to cope with loving the Tonkses and not feeling that it betrayed his living parents to do so.
She looked at Dumbledore and McGonagall, sitting across the room. Dumbledore smiled, winked at her, and exchanged a significant look with the deputy headmistress. McGonagall glanced at Tonks, favoured her with a rare warm and unrestrained smile, and nodded slightly.
Well, good to know that the faculty approved.
***
It took no less than three days and two timetables to plot out the intricacies of the Great Monster Caper.
The two timetables were necessary because of the Time Turner, and because Neville and Draco needed a chart in order to understand it all. Harry was reminded of a Rube Goldberg device, something he'd read about in one of Sirius' books: what do you get when you combine a Time Turner, an invisibility cloak, some stolen Hogwarts robes, an applied knowledge of physics, a handful of booby-trap charms, and two taxidermied animal heads borrowed from a storage room in the Dungeons?
Neville was instrumental as their native collaborator. His was the hardest part, because he would deal not only with Harry and Padma as they were, but Harry and Padma having traveled in time. Draco's job was simply to be present and accounted for, so that he would have an alibi, and to improvisationally distract the twins if need be. Draco preferred to think of himself as the Trojan Horse. And so, in a sense, he was, though the Gryffindors were more indifferent than the Trojans and Harry and Padma more subtle than the Spartans.
Months later, when they tried to set down the story for posterity, they ran across confusion right from the start, in how much to reveal and how much to keep hidden until the end. They all agreed that one had to start with Draco getting into Gryffindor, but what then?
At any rate, Draco did get into Gryffindor's common room, with the aid of Neville, the inside collaborator. Once he'd seen Neville's sign from the Gryffindor window that the twins were in the common room, he came banging on the Gryffindor Portrait's frame (very upsetting to the Pink Lady, who denounced him loudly) and convinced Neville to open the door. Neville left the door open after Draco was well inside.
"Come on," Draco said, agitation evident in his face. "Someone's hexed the Christmas Tree in the Great Hall!"
"So?" Neville asked.
"So it's spitting balls at everyone and loads of people are stuck there! Harry and Padma too! Come on, we've all got to go help get it under control!"
That was more than enough for the twins and, if truth be told, the rest of Gryffindor House as well. The students raced down the stairs, clattering and crashing and drawing others into their orbit as they went. A herd of students stampeded into the Great Hall, Draco and Neville conspicuous as leaders, and then stopped dead as the giant Christmas tree flung tinsel at them in torrents. Most of the students backed away, shielding their faces, and Neville was hit in the head with a fake candy cane.
"OW!" he shouted, diving for cover. Fred and George had already overturned a table and were using it like a shield to advance slowly. Nearby, Padma and Harry were trapped under another table.
"TURN THEM OVER!" Fred shouted.
"YOU CAN'T GET CLOSE ENOUGH!" Padma shouted back. "WE TRIED!"
She pointed to an overturned table very near the tree as proof. She and Harry seemed to confer for a moment, while the twins and a few other hearty souls fired freezing charms and anti-hexes at the rogue evergreen. As one, they lifted the table like a turtle's shell and ran for it, sliding down again once they'd reached the twins. The tables now formed an impenetrable fort, one blocking them from the front and the other blocking anything the tree might lob over the top.
A steady barrage of tiny Baby Jesus ornaments rained down on them as they advanced. On their left flank, Neville and Cricket Creevey were moving forward with serving platters in front of their faces, while Draco used a sturdy angel treetopper as a Beating bat, defending against the flying ornaments. The twins began to advance their position, firing through the cracks between tables.
"Just get out!" Hermione Granger called from the doorway, where she, Ron Weasley, and Parvati were trying to draw fire.
"NO SURRENDER!" chorused the twins.
They had nearly reached the tree and were defending against another onslaught of tinsel when McGonagall arrived, pushing through the children in the doorway and putting an end to the chaos with a swift and powerful "Finite incantatem!"
A few final brightly-coloured balls fell to the ground and shattered. Draco, his hair covered in tinsel, looked sheepishly at the Deputy Headmistress.
"What on earth has happened here?" she demanded.
"Rogue tree," Fred Weasley answered. "We were just trying to help. Padma and Harry got trapped."
"Wasn't us, we've got alibis," George added.
McGonagall studied the hall, which was covered in broken glass and Christmas ornaments. Draco carefully set the angel down on the ground. One wing was missing.
"I think you had all better go about your business," she said carefully. Her lips just barely twitched. "I am certain we will locate the perpetrator in due time."
The students left the battleground triumphantly, if carefully, and Neville was very keen to be visible to Fred and George all the way up to the Gryffindor tower. Draco went with them as far as the library, where he was seen entering by at least ten students, and Harry was with them all the way to the doorway, where he and Padma broke off.
"I'll walk her back to Ravenclaw," he told Neville, who grinned and nodded. Harry and Padma ambled off in the opposite direction from Gryffindor, under full view of most of the House.
When they were alone in the corridor, they pulled up short and ducked into a doorway for what cover it could give them. Harry took out his invisibility cloak, unbuckled the clasp, and threw it over both of them while Padma dug the Time Turner out of her shirt.
"How many turns?" Harry asked.
"Two ought to do it," Padma replied in a whisper. "Wasn't it clever of me to hex the tree?"
"Utterly brilliant. When it started raining mangers I was hard put not to laugh," Harry answered. Padma placed part of the Time-Turner's chain around Harry's neck and they huddled close. She held one of the little dial-knobs delicately between two fingers and turned the hourglass in the gold rings.
The corridor around them began to dissolve. Harry felt as though he were flying backwards very fast, a blur of colour and noise and wind rushing past him. He had not been expecting it to be so -- so intense, so real. By the time he was drawing breath to shout, however, it was over and everything was settling back into focus.
"That was -- " he began, and then didn't know how to finish. Padma hushed him.
"We've just got to wait for Draco now," she whispered. As if on cue, they heard pounding footsteps somewhere far down the corridor.
"All right, let's go," Harry said, but Padma put a hand on his arm.
"I'll lead," she said. "You go behind me."
"Why?" Harry asked, confused. Padma's ears turned red.
"Just because," she ordered, and shoved in front of him to lead the way.
Draco was running towards Gryffindor, white-blond hair disordered and eyes wild with glee. He skidded to a stop in front of Gryffindor and cast about wildly.
"We're here," Padma whispered.
"Neville gave the sign," Draco whispered back, then dashed to the portrait and began pounding on it. When it swung open, he leapt inside and Padma and Harry followed, immediately dodging around Oliver and a couple other sixth-years and nipping into the gap created by two bookcases that didn't quite reach each other.
"Come on," Draco said. "Someone's hexed the Christmas Tree in the Great Hall!"
"He's a very good actor," Padma whispered to Harry, who nodded. The common room began to empty out, and soon they were the sole occupants, triumphant intruders with one thing on their minds.
They went first to the third-year dormitory, to get the things stowed in Neville's trunk. Then they dragged them up to the fifth years' room and made sure nobody was there before hauling them over to Fred and George's beds.
The robes and taxidermied animal heads were affixed together to create terrifying, if not particularly convincing, monsters that lay reasonably flat under the blankets. Once completed, they would have to hurriedly set the booby-trap charms that would make the monsters leap up at the twins if they got too close. Then Harry and Padma could get out the same way they'd come in -- all with the knowledge that downstairs, they were their own alibis for this particular prank.
Harry was just putting the finishing touches on his monster when he dropped a handful of bells he was going to hang from the animal's ears for sound effects. They rolled away under the bed, and he got down on his knees. He definitely was not going to go rummaging around under George Weasley's bed without looking first -- that was a good way to lose a few fingers.
The bells had rolled to a stop against a bit of folded parchment, and he used the parchment to roll them back out before crumpling it up and tossing it over his shoulder into the middle of the room. He saw something black scuttle across it as it went flying off, and thought it might be a spider; he had the notion of catching it and putting it in the bed too, which was the only reason he ran across the room to recover it.
"Harry, hurry up!" Padma hissed.
"Just a mo -- " Harry picked up the parchment and smoothed it out. It wasn't a spider at all; it was a word.
Ouch, it said. There's no need to be careless.
Harry's eyes grew wide.
"Stop what you're doing," he said.
"But Harry -- "
"No, I mean it. I've found something," he replied. Padma stopped in the middle of a complicated charm and leaned over his shoulder.
"What do you suppose it is?" Harry asked.
Master Padfoot begs to inform the messy-haired bearer that it is none of his business.
Harry dropped it as if he'd been burned. They both stared down at it.
Master Moony thinks His Shortness should be more careful where he puts his parchment.
"Padma," Harry began, then paused. Padma was stiff with tension behind him, and he remembered belatedly that she'd had certain...dealings with paper that talked back. "I think we'd better clear out. And take the monsters with us."
"Burn it," Padma whispered.
"It's not like the diary," Harry said. "Go on, get the things."
"Harry -- "
"Do it!" Harry said sharply. He gathered up the parchment, shoved it in his pocket, and quickly dismantled the monster in George's bed. Padma had already taken her monster to pieces and was waiting for him with the invisibility cloak.
They heard a crashing noise downstairs as the Gryffindors poured back into the common room.
"Buggery and bollocks," Harry said feelingly. "What should we do?"
"We can't hide up here, they're bound to trip over us," Padma replied. "We've got to chance the stairs."
"There are landings for the other years -- we can stop there if we have to," Harry agreed. "I say we chuck the monsters out the window."
Padma was already at the window, watching the Hogwarts robe billow out around the plummeting deer's head. Harry threw his over and it likewise tumbled down, bouncing off rooftops as it went.
"Let's hope nobody's looking out the window," he said as they shrouded themselves in the invisibility cloak again.
The descent from the fifth-year dormitory was, they later agreed, the longest stairwell they'd ever encountered. Three times they had to rush back up the stairs to a landing as unknowing Gryffindors went up to their bedrooms. When they finally got to the common room, it took nearly fifteen minutes to get Neville's attention and get him to let them out again. He had to excuse himself and claim he was going to the library.
"Now I'll miss everything!" he said to them, when they were safely down the corridor. "I wanted to see their faces!"
"We didn't do it," Harry said, shedding the cloak.
"You what?"
"We didn't do it. We stole this instead," he said, holding it out. Padma made a small gagging noise in her throat.
"Parchment?" Neville asked skeptically. Harry put it in his hands.
"Say something," he said. Neville blinked.
"What's this all about?" he asked.
Master Moony believes he may be as clueless as he looks.
"Moony...that's -- " Neville looked at Harry, astounded.
"Padfoot and Moony are nicknames," Harry said to Padma. "Remus and Sirius used them."
"I think we'd better go find Draco," Neville said.
***
At their table in the library -- the one Pince couldn't see from her desk -- Harry spread the parchment out and all four of them examined it. It was larger than the usual composition-parchment, perfectly square and rather well-worn around the edges. At the moment it was blank.
"Why would Fred and George Weasley have something with Remus and Sirius' names on it?" Draco asked, tilting his head to one side.
"You used to know the Weasleys when you were little, didn't you?" Neville asked Harry. "Might be a present they gave them. A bit of parchment that makes rude insults when you ask it questions."
"Dunno," Harry said. "Maybe they nicked it or something."
"Parchment, what are you?" Draco demanded, touching his wand to the center of the page. All four of them watched as words formed on the blank surface.
Master Prongs and Master Wormtail beg leave to insult his noseyness.
Master Padfoot insists that you keep your pointy face out of our business.
"That doesn't sound like Sirius," Draco said. His face was screwed up in a dubious scowl, and did look rather pointy.
"Wormtail -- isn't that what they called Peter Pettigrew at school?" Neville asked.
"Let me try," Harry said, replacing Draco's wand with his own. "My name is Harry Potter! What are you?"
Ink welled up.
My name is Harry Potter, it said mockingly. Nyah, nyah, nyah.
Harry took a deep breath.
"James Potter is my father," he added. The ink burst apart.
James Potter's son, it said, shrinking and fading slowly. James Potter's Son James Potter's Son James Potter's Son
"You broke it," Neville said, disappointed. "It's going to tell you it has an out-of-cheese error next."
"Hush, it's doing something," Harry said. New words replaced the old.
Operation Manual and Lifetime Warranty
For
The Marauder's Map
Courtesy
Moony, Wormtail, Padfoot, and Prongs
(But this part mostly Moony)
A small hand appeared, one finger pointing towards the edge of the parchment. Harry tapped it with his wand. The text scrolled away.
To Close The Map:
Tap once with wand and say "Mischief Managed".
To Open The Map:
Touch wand to parchment and say "I solemnly swear that I am up to no good."
Harry glanced at the others. Draco was still looking sulky, Neville intrigued, and Padma --
Padma was biting her lip, her fingers tightly knotted together on the table.
"Sirius wouldn't make anything that would hurt us," Harry said.
"If that's really Sirius," she replied.
"Only one way to find out," Neville said. Before Harry or anyone else could stop him, he touched his wand to the page and said, "I solemnly swear that I am up to no good."
Thin ink lines began to spread across the page like a spider's web, all originating from the point where Neville's wand touched. They joined each other and darted away again, filling the parchment from edge to edge as words began to blossom here and there. Across the top, an enormous banner was unrolling with giant curly green words on it:
Messrs. Moony, Wormtail, Padfoot, and Prongs
Purveyors of Aids to Magical Mischief-Makers
are proud to present
THE MARAUDER'S MAP
"It's Hogwarts," Padma said, forgetting all caution for a moment. It was indeed the general shape of Hogwarts, and showed the floor they happened to be on, complete with four small dots in the library, each labeled with their own names. As they watched, another dot labeled Pince circled around her desk and started off in the opposite direction from their table, on her hourly rounds.
"Harry, do you see what I see?" Neville asked, eyes traveling over the page.
"I see at least two hidden doorways..." Harry touched one of them and it glowed brightly for a second. The ink seemed to rearrange itself, blurring for a moment, and suddenly they were looking at a map of the floor below the one they were on.
"I definitely see that," Padma said, pointing to a statue in one of the hallways. Harry, somewhere outside of his confusion and glee at this new discovery, realised that the text was all in Remus' neat handwriting. Next to the statue were the words, Cellar of Honeydukes.
"We'd better hide this somewhere really good," Draco whispered. "Fred and George'll know it was us, even if you didn't prank them. They'll know."
"We have alibis," Harry said.
"They'll know!"
"Well, all right, we should hide it," Padma agreed.
"And soon," Neville said. He'd somehow figured out how to get up a level again, and was studying the corridor beyond the library. "Fred and George are coming this way."
Harry cleared the map with a quick "Mischief Managed!" and folded it up, tucking it in his pocket again. He threw the cloak around his shoulders and Draco buckled it for him even as he disappeared from view.
Neville vanished silently into the stacks, tossing Padma a book, and she and Draco bent over it casually. She even had the presence of mind to make sure it was the right way up.
"I'm going to the Dungeons," Harry whispered as he ran out the door. He passed silently by Fred and George, who didn't appear to have noticed the theft yet, and ran onwards, down the stairs. When he reached the Slytherin entrance he slipped in behind Pansy and bolted through the common room so fast that Theo swore he felt a draft.
Up in the dormitory, Harry shed his cloak and wrapped it around the map, shoving both of them down to the bottom of his trunk and triple-locking it. Then, heart pounding, he flopped back onto the bed.
Snake, who had been drowsing in the canopy, dropped down via the bedpost and slithered across the pillow, tickling Harry's cheek with his tongue. Harry grinned and reached up to stroke his head.
Sleeping well? Harry asked.
Very well, Snake answered. You taste funny.
I imagine so. I've been having adventures.
Boring, said Snake. Is it naptime now?
Harry laughed.
After the day I've had, it might well be.
To the Next Part
***
The Quidditch match was on the twenty-seventh of November, and at that point Remus was still well enough to attend. On the twenty-eighth he came down to breakfast but soon after begged off all invitations to come outside with the students or take tea with the professors, and by the twenty-ninth he was in bed not just awaiting the full moon that night but also with a bad head cold. Snape was annoyed; it was hard to gather accurate data on the potion when the subject was sick. Remus was just grateful he'd prepared his notes ahead of time, so that Tonks could take over his classes with a minimum of fuss.
All the students were glad to have "Professor" Tonks back again, and were suitably exuberant during their lessons. Remus was already a beloved teacher, but his style was very quiet and he demanded good discipline. Tonks was a bit more lax, the sort of professor who doesn't mind the occasional note being passed or joke being made as long as it isn't too disruptive. Indeed, in her second lesson she tripped on her own robe, went flying into the desk, and came up laughing so hard that everyone else laughed for at least five minutes, and giggled quietly for the rest of class.
It was Tonks, giving a lesson in how to distract a dueling opponent, who gave Harry his Great Idea. It deserved the capital letters; it was quite the most complicated prank he'd ever thought of. He scribbled down a brief play-by-play, Quidditch style, before class ended.
"Now," Tonks said, as the clock ticked towards the end, "Are there any questions today?"
Theo Nott raised his hand, a sly look on his face. Harry braced. He'd learned that Theo loved to stir up trouble for the pure joy of it, which was not necessarily a bad thing but was misapplied in the clever young Slytherin.
"All right, Nott?" she asked.
"Are you and Professor Snape going to get married?" he asked. The class snickered.
"Ten points from Slytherin for being a nosey-parker," she replied easily, and dismissed the class.
Outside, in the corridor, Harry collared Padma on her way to another lesson.
"I've got something," he said.
"Well, there are creams for that -- " she began mischievously, but he interrupted her.
"A use for your Time-Turner," he whispered, taking her by the arm and pulling her closer so that the others wouldn't hear. There was a sudden tension in her body, and he glanced at her face; she looked oddly embarrassed, but she gave no sign in her voice.
"Something really devious?" she asked in a hushed voice.
"Oh yes," he grinned. "I'll tell you all about it at breakfast tomorrow."
***
"Married!" Severus Snape said, looking truly astonished for only the second or third time in all the years Dora had known him. "What on earth put that idea into their heads?"
"Well, you don't need to sound so skeptical about it," Dora teased gently. They were sitting by the fire in the professors' common room, which was empty except for McGonagall, who was marking papers, and Dumbledore, who was serenely reading Jane Austen, both at the far end of the room. "It is a possibility, one of these days."
"A poss -- it's only been five months!" he said.
"A little more than six," she replied. "I'm not demanding a proposal, Severus, I thought you'd be amused, that's all. No need to be frightened."
"I suppose children will talk," he grumbled.
"They will do," she agreed with a smile.
"I am too old for you," he pointed out. "And I can't ever aspire to the kind of wealth your parents have; it would be an entirely unequal match."
"You're very old," she agreed. He scowled. "But the bride's family is supposed to pay for everything anyway, and it's their money, not mine. It's not even all mine in potentiality -- half'll go to Neville, at least. Besides, they're young yet, they might spend it all."
"Children gossiping -- this is what comes of professors living at the school," he muttered. She leaned across the little tea-laden table between them and rubbed his arm.
"Why don't we just keep on, and see where we end up. I'm not in any hurry," she said quietly. Severus covered her hand in his. And he did smile, a little. "Besides, if you really believed that trash about being too old and poor, you'd already have broken it off. I just can't allow that; I insist on being the one to break up with my boyfriends."
"Headstrong tart."
"Mouldering relic."
They were interrupted, before things could escalate to the heights of passion, by shrieks and laughter in the hallway. Severus, who distrusted laughter on general principle, stood and walked quickly to the door, leaning out to inquire what the noise was about.
Dora sat back in her chair and studied him: the long line of his body as he leaned through the door, the robes brushing the tips of his shoes, the way his close-cropped hair never quite got smoothed down properly in the back. She could hear his voice, though not what he was saying, and ten years ago would have cringed away from it. But ten years ago he'd been charged with teaching her, and since then she'd grown to enjoy the sound.
She wished now that she hadn't told him. Severus was a solitary man, always had been from what she could judge, and it had been an adjustment for him, learning to consider another person's thoughts and feelings, learning to allow someone else to sleep in his bed and to be comfortable with her presence at hours when normally he would be alone. The idea of marriage -- of having her present every morning and evening, of sharing his bed every single night, of his having to consider her before he made decisions -- was plainly frightening.
Still, fear was never got over by not talking about it, and she had planted the idea in his head. And, if it came to all that, in a month or two she could propose to him. Besides, the emotional advantage was not entirely on her side. He was older, much more well-read in some areas, and, though he was not terribly experienced sexually, he was far moreso than she was.
Wealth didn't concern her a bit; she earned a wage that paid her rent and had no need of her inheritance, which she would gladly and with a sisterly heart split with Neville. She'd heard her parents discussing it once and been thrilled to know that Neville would be considered a full, blood-related brother by their legal will. There had even been some talk of adoption, though it seemed Ted and Andromeda were waiting until Neville was older, perhaps old enough to understand better how to cope with loving the Tonkses and not feeling that it betrayed his living parents to do so.
She looked at Dumbledore and McGonagall, sitting across the room. Dumbledore smiled, winked at her, and exchanged a significant look with the deputy headmistress. McGonagall glanced at Tonks, favoured her with a rare warm and unrestrained smile, and nodded slightly.
Well, good to know that the faculty approved.
***
It took no less than three days and two timetables to plot out the intricacies of the Great Monster Caper.
The two timetables were necessary because of the Time Turner, and because Neville and Draco needed a chart in order to understand it all. Harry was reminded of a Rube Goldberg device, something he'd read about in one of Sirius' books: what do you get when you combine a Time Turner, an invisibility cloak, some stolen Hogwarts robes, an applied knowledge of physics, a handful of booby-trap charms, and two taxidermied animal heads borrowed from a storage room in the Dungeons?
Neville was instrumental as their native collaborator. His was the hardest part, because he would deal not only with Harry and Padma as they were, but Harry and Padma having traveled in time. Draco's job was simply to be present and accounted for, so that he would have an alibi, and to improvisationally distract the twins if need be. Draco preferred to think of himself as the Trojan Horse. And so, in a sense, he was, though the Gryffindors were more indifferent than the Trojans and Harry and Padma more subtle than the Spartans.
Months later, when they tried to set down the story for posterity, they ran across confusion right from the start, in how much to reveal and how much to keep hidden until the end. They all agreed that one had to start with Draco getting into Gryffindor, but what then?
At any rate, Draco did get into Gryffindor's common room, with the aid of Neville, the inside collaborator. Once he'd seen Neville's sign from the Gryffindor window that the twins were in the common room, he came banging on the Gryffindor Portrait's frame (very upsetting to the Pink Lady, who denounced him loudly) and convinced Neville to open the door. Neville left the door open after Draco was well inside.
"Come on," Draco said, agitation evident in his face. "Someone's hexed the Christmas Tree in the Great Hall!"
"So?" Neville asked.
"So it's spitting balls at everyone and loads of people are stuck there! Harry and Padma too! Come on, we've all got to go help get it under control!"
That was more than enough for the twins and, if truth be told, the rest of Gryffindor House as well. The students raced down the stairs, clattering and crashing and drawing others into their orbit as they went. A herd of students stampeded into the Great Hall, Draco and Neville conspicuous as leaders, and then stopped dead as the giant Christmas tree flung tinsel at them in torrents. Most of the students backed away, shielding their faces, and Neville was hit in the head with a fake candy cane.
"OW!" he shouted, diving for cover. Fred and George had already overturned a table and were using it like a shield to advance slowly. Nearby, Padma and Harry were trapped under another table.
"TURN THEM OVER!" Fred shouted.
"YOU CAN'T GET CLOSE ENOUGH!" Padma shouted back. "WE TRIED!"
She pointed to an overturned table very near the tree as proof. She and Harry seemed to confer for a moment, while the twins and a few other hearty souls fired freezing charms and anti-hexes at the rogue evergreen. As one, they lifted the table like a turtle's shell and ran for it, sliding down again once they'd reached the twins. The tables now formed an impenetrable fort, one blocking them from the front and the other blocking anything the tree might lob over the top.
A steady barrage of tiny Baby Jesus ornaments rained down on them as they advanced. On their left flank, Neville and Cricket Creevey were moving forward with serving platters in front of their faces, while Draco used a sturdy angel treetopper as a Beating bat, defending against the flying ornaments. The twins began to advance their position, firing through the cracks between tables.
"Just get out!" Hermione Granger called from the doorway, where she, Ron Weasley, and Parvati were trying to draw fire.
"NO SURRENDER!" chorused the twins.
They had nearly reached the tree and were defending against another onslaught of tinsel when McGonagall arrived, pushing through the children in the doorway and putting an end to the chaos with a swift and powerful "Finite incantatem!"
A few final brightly-coloured balls fell to the ground and shattered. Draco, his hair covered in tinsel, looked sheepishly at the Deputy Headmistress.
"What on earth has happened here?" she demanded.
"Rogue tree," Fred Weasley answered. "We were just trying to help. Padma and Harry got trapped."
"Wasn't us, we've got alibis," George added.
McGonagall studied the hall, which was covered in broken glass and Christmas ornaments. Draco carefully set the angel down on the ground. One wing was missing.
"I think you had all better go about your business," she said carefully. Her lips just barely twitched. "I am certain we will locate the perpetrator in due time."
The students left the battleground triumphantly, if carefully, and Neville was very keen to be visible to Fred and George all the way up to the Gryffindor tower. Draco went with them as far as the library, where he was seen entering by at least ten students, and Harry was with them all the way to the doorway, where he and Padma broke off.
"I'll walk her back to Ravenclaw," he told Neville, who grinned and nodded. Harry and Padma ambled off in the opposite direction from Gryffindor, under full view of most of the House.
When they were alone in the corridor, they pulled up short and ducked into a doorway for what cover it could give them. Harry took out his invisibility cloak, unbuckled the clasp, and threw it over both of them while Padma dug the Time Turner out of her shirt.
"How many turns?" Harry asked.
"Two ought to do it," Padma replied in a whisper. "Wasn't it clever of me to hex the tree?"
"Utterly brilliant. When it started raining mangers I was hard put not to laugh," Harry answered. Padma placed part of the Time-Turner's chain around Harry's neck and they huddled close. She held one of the little dial-knobs delicately between two fingers and turned the hourglass in the gold rings.
The corridor around them began to dissolve. Harry felt as though he were flying backwards very fast, a blur of colour and noise and wind rushing past him. He had not been expecting it to be so -- so intense, so real. By the time he was drawing breath to shout, however, it was over and everything was settling back into focus.
"That was -- " he began, and then didn't know how to finish. Padma hushed him.
"We've just got to wait for Draco now," she whispered. As if on cue, they heard pounding footsteps somewhere far down the corridor.
"All right, let's go," Harry said, but Padma put a hand on his arm.
"I'll lead," she said. "You go behind me."
"Why?" Harry asked, confused. Padma's ears turned red.
"Just because," she ordered, and shoved in front of him to lead the way.
Draco was running towards Gryffindor, white-blond hair disordered and eyes wild with glee. He skidded to a stop in front of Gryffindor and cast about wildly.
"We're here," Padma whispered.
"Neville gave the sign," Draco whispered back, then dashed to the portrait and began pounding on it. When it swung open, he leapt inside and Padma and Harry followed, immediately dodging around Oliver and a couple other sixth-years and nipping into the gap created by two bookcases that didn't quite reach each other.
"Come on," Draco said. "Someone's hexed the Christmas Tree in the Great Hall!"
"He's a very good actor," Padma whispered to Harry, who nodded. The common room began to empty out, and soon they were the sole occupants, triumphant intruders with one thing on their minds.
They went first to the third-year dormitory, to get the things stowed in Neville's trunk. Then they dragged them up to the fifth years' room and made sure nobody was there before hauling them over to Fred and George's beds.
The robes and taxidermied animal heads were affixed together to create terrifying, if not particularly convincing, monsters that lay reasonably flat under the blankets. Once completed, they would have to hurriedly set the booby-trap charms that would make the monsters leap up at the twins if they got too close. Then Harry and Padma could get out the same way they'd come in -- all with the knowledge that downstairs, they were their own alibis for this particular prank.
Harry was just putting the finishing touches on his monster when he dropped a handful of bells he was going to hang from the animal's ears for sound effects. They rolled away under the bed, and he got down on his knees. He definitely was not going to go rummaging around under George Weasley's bed without looking first -- that was a good way to lose a few fingers.
The bells had rolled to a stop against a bit of folded parchment, and he used the parchment to roll them back out before crumpling it up and tossing it over his shoulder into the middle of the room. He saw something black scuttle across it as it went flying off, and thought it might be a spider; he had the notion of catching it and putting it in the bed too, which was the only reason he ran across the room to recover it.
"Harry, hurry up!" Padma hissed.
"Just a mo -- " Harry picked up the parchment and smoothed it out. It wasn't a spider at all; it was a word.
Ouch, it said. There's no need to be careless.
Harry's eyes grew wide.
"Stop what you're doing," he said.
"But Harry -- "
"No, I mean it. I've found something," he replied. Padma stopped in the middle of a complicated charm and leaned over his shoulder.
"What do you suppose it is?" Harry asked.
Master Padfoot begs to inform the messy-haired bearer that it is none of his business.
Harry dropped it as if he'd been burned. They both stared down at it.
Master Moony thinks His Shortness should be more careful where he puts his parchment.
"Padma," Harry began, then paused. Padma was stiff with tension behind him, and he remembered belatedly that she'd had certain...dealings with paper that talked back. "I think we'd better clear out. And take the monsters with us."
"Burn it," Padma whispered.
"It's not like the diary," Harry said. "Go on, get the things."
"Harry -- "
"Do it!" Harry said sharply. He gathered up the parchment, shoved it in his pocket, and quickly dismantled the monster in George's bed. Padma had already taken her monster to pieces and was waiting for him with the invisibility cloak.
They heard a crashing noise downstairs as the Gryffindors poured back into the common room.
"Buggery and bollocks," Harry said feelingly. "What should we do?"
"We can't hide up here, they're bound to trip over us," Padma replied. "We've got to chance the stairs."
"There are landings for the other years -- we can stop there if we have to," Harry agreed. "I say we chuck the monsters out the window."
Padma was already at the window, watching the Hogwarts robe billow out around the plummeting deer's head. Harry threw his over and it likewise tumbled down, bouncing off rooftops as it went.
"Let's hope nobody's looking out the window," he said as they shrouded themselves in the invisibility cloak again.
The descent from the fifth-year dormitory was, they later agreed, the longest stairwell they'd ever encountered. Three times they had to rush back up the stairs to a landing as unknowing Gryffindors went up to their bedrooms. When they finally got to the common room, it took nearly fifteen minutes to get Neville's attention and get him to let them out again. He had to excuse himself and claim he was going to the library.
"Now I'll miss everything!" he said to them, when they were safely down the corridor. "I wanted to see their faces!"
"We didn't do it," Harry said, shedding the cloak.
"You what?"
"We didn't do it. We stole this instead," he said, holding it out. Padma made a small gagging noise in her throat.
"Parchment?" Neville asked skeptically. Harry put it in his hands.
"Say something," he said. Neville blinked.
"What's this all about?" he asked.
Master Moony believes he may be as clueless as he looks.
"Moony...that's -- " Neville looked at Harry, astounded.
"Padfoot and Moony are nicknames," Harry said to Padma. "Remus and Sirius used them."
"I think we'd better go find Draco," Neville said.
***
At their table in the library -- the one Pince couldn't see from her desk -- Harry spread the parchment out and all four of them examined it. It was larger than the usual composition-parchment, perfectly square and rather well-worn around the edges. At the moment it was blank.
"Why would Fred and George Weasley have something with Remus and Sirius' names on it?" Draco asked, tilting his head to one side.
"You used to know the Weasleys when you were little, didn't you?" Neville asked Harry. "Might be a present they gave them. A bit of parchment that makes rude insults when you ask it questions."
"Dunno," Harry said. "Maybe they nicked it or something."
"Parchment, what are you?" Draco demanded, touching his wand to the center of the page. All four of them watched as words formed on the blank surface.
Master Prongs and Master Wormtail beg leave to insult his noseyness.
Master Padfoot insists that you keep your pointy face out of our business.
"That doesn't sound like Sirius," Draco said. His face was screwed up in a dubious scowl, and did look rather pointy.
"Wormtail -- isn't that what they called Peter Pettigrew at school?" Neville asked.
"Let me try," Harry said, replacing Draco's wand with his own. "My name is Harry Potter! What are you?"
Ink welled up.
My name is Harry Potter, it said mockingly. Nyah, nyah, nyah.
Harry took a deep breath.
"James Potter is my father," he added. The ink burst apart.
James Potter's son, it said, shrinking and fading slowly. James Potter's Son James Potter's Son James Potter's Son
"You broke it," Neville said, disappointed. "It's going to tell you it has an out-of-cheese error next."
"Hush, it's doing something," Harry said. New words replaced the old.
Operation Manual and Lifetime Warranty
For
The Marauder's Map
Courtesy
Moony, Wormtail, Padfoot, and Prongs
(But this part mostly Moony)
A small hand appeared, one finger pointing towards the edge of the parchment. Harry tapped it with his wand. The text scrolled away.
To Close The Map:
Tap once with wand and say "Mischief Managed".
To Open The Map:
Touch wand to parchment and say "I solemnly swear that I am up to no good."
Harry glanced at the others. Draco was still looking sulky, Neville intrigued, and Padma --
Padma was biting her lip, her fingers tightly knotted together on the table.
"Sirius wouldn't make anything that would hurt us," Harry said.
"If that's really Sirius," she replied.
"Only one way to find out," Neville said. Before Harry or anyone else could stop him, he touched his wand to the page and said, "I solemnly swear that I am up to no good."
Thin ink lines began to spread across the page like a spider's web, all originating from the point where Neville's wand touched. They joined each other and darted away again, filling the parchment from edge to edge as words began to blossom here and there. Across the top, an enormous banner was unrolling with giant curly green words on it:
Messrs. Moony, Wormtail, Padfoot, and Prongs
Purveyors of Aids to Magical Mischief-Makers
are proud to present
THE MARAUDER'S MAP
"It's Hogwarts," Padma said, forgetting all caution for a moment. It was indeed the general shape of Hogwarts, and showed the floor they happened to be on, complete with four small dots in the library, each labeled with their own names. As they watched, another dot labeled Pince circled around her desk and started off in the opposite direction from their table, on her hourly rounds.
"Harry, do you see what I see?" Neville asked, eyes traveling over the page.
"I see at least two hidden doorways..." Harry touched one of them and it glowed brightly for a second. The ink seemed to rearrange itself, blurring for a moment, and suddenly they were looking at a map of the floor below the one they were on.
"I definitely see that," Padma said, pointing to a statue in one of the hallways. Harry, somewhere outside of his confusion and glee at this new discovery, realised that the text was all in Remus' neat handwriting. Next to the statue were the words, Cellar of Honeydukes.
"We'd better hide this somewhere really good," Draco whispered. "Fred and George'll know it was us, even if you didn't prank them. They'll know."
"We have alibis," Harry said.
"They'll know!"
"Well, all right, we should hide it," Padma agreed.
"And soon," Neville said. He'd somehow figured out how to get up a level again, and was studying the corridor beyond the library. "Fred and George are coming this way."
Harry cleared the map with a quick "Mischief Managed!" and folded it up, tucking it in his pocket again. He threw the cloak around his shoulders and Draco buckled it for him even as he disappeared from view.
Neville vanished silently into the stacks, tossing Padma a book, and she and Draco bent over it casually. She even had the presence of mind to make sure it was the right way up.
"I'm going to the Dungeons," Harry whispered as he ran out the door. He passed silently by Fred and George, who didn't appear to have noticed the theft yet, and ran onwards, down the stairs. When he reached the Slytherin entrance he slipped in behind Pansy and bolted through the common room so fast that Theo swore he felt a draft.
Up in the dormitory, Harry shed his cloak and wrapped it around the map, shoving both of them down to the bottom of his trunk and triple-locking it. Then, heart pounding, he flopped back onto the bed.
Snake, who had been drowsing in the canopy, dropped down via the bedpost and slithered across the pillow, tickling Harry's cheek with his tongue. Harry grinned and reached up to stroke his head.
Sleeping well? Harry asked.
Very well, Snake answered. You taste funny.
I imagine so. I've been having adventures.
Boring, said Snake. Is it naptime now?
Harry laughed.
After the day I've had, it might well be.
To the Next Part
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