"Your own brother!" Ron exclaimed, causing the bed springs to squeak under him—or possibly it was the Boggart hiding under the bed.
"Our own brother isn't helping us fund our shop."
"You gave it to him before that!"
"Er, guys, I think I should leave you to have this conversation without me," Harry said, annoyed that the extra pounds he'd put on since coming to Grimmauld Place would probably stop him from squeezing past Fred and George where they stood blocking the doorway.
"What for?" Ron asked, his eyebrows furrowing in genuine confusion. Ginny choked on a laugh.
"Well, Ronald-" Hermione started to explain, just as Sirius and Remus pushed through the twins like they were a pair of bedroom curtains.
"What's all the shouting about, huh?" Sirius grinned in the way that made him look ten years younger.
"Nothing!" Fred said, trying to once again block their view, but Sirius had already spotted the Marauder's Map laid out on the bed in front of the group of teenagers. It had acquired a few new stains since it had come into Harry's possession—rings from where he had set his Butterbeer on top of it, mud from dropping it inside one of the secret tunnels—and for a moment, the young wizard's insides squirmed uncomfortably.
"Hello, old friend," Sirius spoke casually. He didn't seem to notice the stains.
Instantly, words started forming over the page like a rapidly growing spider web.
"Mr. Padfoot returns the greeting, Handsome."
"Mr. Moony also sends his best wishes… that Mr. Padfoot has become a little less vain or a lot better looking in the future since he insists on giving himself exaggerated compliments."
"Here, here!" added the handwriting of Mr. Wormtail.
"I think you mean old friends, don't you, Paddy?" The sentence wrote itself beside the last signature.
There was a silence in which everyone just stared at the map. Harry would have given up the fortune in Gringotts for a sentence from his mother, too, but the words were already fading, sinking into the parchment like quicksand.
"What…just happened there?" Fred began, quickly, at the same time George said, "You know about the map?"
"And how come-"
"—it's so nice to you?"
"Last time we tried to get it to show us more stuff, it called us both soulless gingers."
"Yes, well," Sirius said, scratching the back of his head. "I think at the time we were making it Lily had just turned James down for the 50th-"
"53rd," Remus corrected.
"53rd time and…" Sirius trailed off, finally realizing the rest of what the twins had said.
"Harry!" he shouted, sounding shocked and a little disappointed, "You never told them we're the Marauders?"
"The…" Fred's mouth gaped open.
"Stop pranking us," George said, but there was a hopeful gleam in his eye.
"Padfoot," Sirius assured, pointing to himself.
"Moony," he added, slapping Remus on the back of the head, and receiving an "ouch" in return.
"Prongs Jr.," he mentioned, as an afterthought, pointing at the blushing Harry.
"Nope, not buying it," George said, shaking his head as if he had just taken a shower and was trying to rid himself of water.
On the bed, the map made a crinkling noise, drawing everyone's stares to it. I'm afraid he's quite Sirius…
Lupin sighed heavily, the map writing down his words just as he said them. "Every time I hear that joke, I hope it will be the last. And I am always disappointed."
"You mean to say… we were actually taught by a Marauder," Fred breathed, looking an awful lot like Hermione used to look back in 2nd year when she talked about Gilderoy Lockhart. "What do you think of our Puppet Projectors? All of those kids asleep in class, who kept raising their hand anyway? That was us. Of course, I said that was against our code of honor. It's our job to help the slackers keep on slacking, but this guy over here-"
"Fred, focus for a second," George insisted, turning his bright brown eyes on Harry in a surprisingly good impression of an angry Mrs. Weasley. "Let me get this straight, Potter… we gave you one of our most prized possessions—over our own brother, no less-" Ron gave a huff. "And you couldn't find a moment to mention this to us?"
"I guess… it slipped my mind that I hadn't told you," Harry said, realizing he had given them 1000 galleons to use to exact whatever bright, smelly, embarrassing torture they wanted on him.
"And all the rest of you knew?!"
"Well, Ron and I were with Harry when the whole thing with Sirius happened, so it was kind of hard for us not to know…" Hermione pointed out, biting her lip.
"You and Harry went through the thing with Sirius twice," Ron mumbled, prompting Ginny to throw a pillow at him.
"And what about you, little sister?"
"Harry told me after I caught him looking at the map last year. I might have been giving him a little trouble, see, after following the directions of an inanimate object and…"
Harry was wincing with the memory. "A little? I went from barely hearing you talk at all, to having your voice permanently recorded on my eardrums."
"I like it better this way though," Harry was quick to point out when he saw a frown starting to form. "And you know, when you talk to me at a normal volume, too."
Sirius gave a snort, "Too much like James, sometimes."
"Alright, boys," the self-identified Mr. Padfoot said, putting an arm around each of the twins' shoulders. "As much as this was a grievous error on my godson's part, there's already one too many people planning his destruction at the moment… so how about instead, Moony and I show you a few tricks of our trade, huh? We've actually been meaning to update the Map for a while, ever since Harry told us about the Chamber of Secrets and the layout of the Slytherin dormitories…"
"You went to the Slytherin dormitories without us?!"
"Oh yeah, Harry, you're in trouble."
~oOo~ 1 year, 8 months later ~oOo~
Gryffindor had won the house cup, he had just kissed Ginny Weasley, and somehow, Ron was okay with it. Harry knew, without a doubt, this was the kind of moment a true Patronus is made of.
"Where are we going anyway?" Ginny laughed, with that unique sleigh bell laugh of hers.
Harry's first thought had been that they would take a walk of the grounds, but already, he could hear the noise of Quidditch fans, both happy and disappointed, outside on the lawn. What he wanted more than anything right now was to just be focused on her, not the buzz of gossip that he was sure was already starting to build in energy.
"Hold on one moment," he said, pulling the Maurader's Map from one of the inside pockets of his robes.
"I solemnly swear that I am up to no good," he promised, pointing his wand at the map.
Oy! Not with our sister you're not! A new handwriting appeared on the map out of nowhere.
We've had our suspicions about you two for a while now-
-And it looks like the map's only showing well-lit, heavily populated hallways for you to stand very far apart in.
Mr. Padfoot, on the other hand, is very happy for you, Harry.
Ginny grabbed the map away from Harry as his cheeks burned increasingly red. "Why don't we just head to the Room of Requirement, okay?"
"Great idea," Harry stuttered. And here he thought Ron was going to be the biggest problem…