Unleashed
Fred Weasley was slumping in his chair, trying to block out Filches droning on about the
Dungbomb in the hall. Something about detention and disembowelment. Blah, blah, blah.
If Fred and his twin George had heard it once, they'd heard it a thousand times. Fred put
his legs up on the desk. Filch glared at him and pushed him off.
Fred suddenly noticed that George was trying to get his attention. He gave George a
What's up? look. George glanced at something behind Filch then back to Fred again.
Fred looked. It was a filing cabinet and one of the drawers was labeled Confiscated and
Highly Dangerous. Fred raised his eyebrows and slowly slid a Dungbomb from out of his
pocket, just so George could see it. George gave a slight nod and pretended to listen to
Filch.
Fred counted in his head. 1,2,3…He threw the Dungbomb. It exploded all over the
room. He could her Filch cursing and coughing and saw George pull open the drawer,
and yank something out of it. Then they both ran out of the office as fast as they could.
~~~~~
Later, Fred and George sat in the Gryffindor common room, admiring their cleverness.
"That was pretty smart, Fred, throwing the Dungbomb like that!"
" Yes, yes it was, but now lets see what you got from that drawer."
George nodded and pulled out a long piece of rolled up parchment. " Oh, maybe it's
some kind of powerful curse or something." He unraveled it. It was blank. Fred snorted.
"Great, that's nice. What the heck could be highly dangerous enough about this to be
confiscated?"
" I don't know," George said. But suddenly an idea came to him. " What if it's written in
invisible ink?!" He got out his wand and tapped the parchment. " Er… show yourself!"
Nothing happened.
" That's not going to do anything! Here, let me see it." Fred said pulling the parchment
over to him. " Let's see, if it's supposedly confiscated and highly dangerous, the
password's probably something…mischievous. Or frightening. Unveil your hidden
horrors!" He yelled dramatically. Still, nothing happened. " Well, how about something
like this: Frog slime? Bat wings? Spider legs? Newt's eyes? Open sesame? Oh, I give
up!" Fred cried, banging the parchment so hard he nearly broke his wand. " For all I
know it could be ' I solemnly swear that I am up to no good!'"
Suddenly something started to happen to the paper. As soon as Fred's wand touched
the parchment, ink started spreading onto it. It swirled and twisted until it formed a map.
A map of all of Hogwarts. On the map there were little black dots, each labeled with a
name. Filch was still in his office, it told, and Mrs. Norris was prowling the hall near a-
"That doesn't look familiar," George puzzled. " Do you think… do you think it's a secret
passageway?"
" Fascinating," was his twin's reply. " We're going to have a lot of fun with this thing!"
From then on the twins used the map practically everyday, just to see were the
passageways went. They knew almost all of them by heart. But one day in October as
they were looking at the map again, George spotted a tunnel that he had never seen
before. " That's funny, this didn't seem to be there before."
" Where is it?" Asked Fred. " In the dungeon," George replied.
" Well, why don't we investigate?" said the former. " We'd have to go at night, because
Snape usually hangs around there during the day."
" Okay then, lets do it tonight."
" Right."
*****
Fred and George crept down the stairs toward the common room, whispering excitedly to
each other. " I wonder how you get into it?" " I wonder it leads!" " I wonder if we'll be
expelled if we're caught!"
They were in the common room now. Fred took out the map from his robes and
touched it with his wand. " I solemnly swear that I am up to no good!" He said, a little
too loudly. " Shhhh!" George said.
Suddenly a voice rang out, " What do you think you are doing?!"
The twins froze.