Fred and George Weasley carefully snuck around a corner in the corridors of Hogwarts castle, barely managing to hold in their giggles until they were safely out of sight. The hallway was silent, apart from their muffled footsteps – but not for long. Behind them, there was a sudden clatter, and then a bellow of rage. Fred and George looked at each other, identical grins on their faces, and then broke into a sprint. Sadly, however, the 11-year-olds were not fast enough. They rounded a corner, panting, thinking they had left Filch far behind them, and came face to face with Mrs. Norris. The cat meowed loudly at them, glaring so hard the twins feared she would burn a hole in their robes. They paused, silently debating on whether they could get around her or not, but before they could decide they heard a wheezing noise, and the Hogwarts caretaker grabbed them by the back of the neck. He smelled terrible, and the two boys threw each other another mischievous smile as Filch hauled them off down the corridor. Detention might be coming their way again, but at least they'd proven that the Dungbomb-under-the-doorhandle prank was definitely a success.
"Just you wait until I get my hands on those forms," Filch wheezed in their ears, dragging them back to his tiny office. "If I had the powers I used to have, oh yes, there wouldn't be any more of those filthy Dungbombs in my office and little twerps like you would be strung up by your thumbs in the dungeons..." He continued to mutter threats, but Fred and George weren't paying attention. They'd heard enough of this sort of empty talk from Filch already in the few months they'd been at Hogwarts, and knew that the worst he could do was issue them with yet another detention slip.
Today, however, when the entered the by now familiar caretaker's office, something caught their attention. The steel filing cabinet behind Filch's desk, which generally boasted a multitude of locked drawers, had one small difference to the last time they'd seen it. A drawer up in the corner, with a nearly illegible label on it, was pulled out slightly, with a corner of paper sticking out as though it had been hastily jammed in.
Fred looked at George. George looked at Fred. Filch was busily searching through his desk in search of the detention slips. The two boys carefully edged towards the corner of the room, doing their best to make their movements look casual, and soon were near enough to the filing cabinet to read the label scrawled on the drawer. It read "Confiscated and Highly Dangerous".
"Are you thinking what I'm thinking?" Fred muttered to his twin, keeping an eye on the caretaker, who was looking more and more frustrated as his search turned up nothing.
"If you're thinking what I'm thinking, then yes," George murmured back. He slipped a hand into his pocket, carefully concealing it from Filch's view, and drew out something that made Fred's eyes light up with glee.
"You drop it, I'll grab that, we run?" Fred whispered.
"On my count," was George's response. "One..."
Just then, Filch emerged from the depths of his desk, waving a sheaf of parchment triumphantly. "Aha! You shan't escape this time, I'll make sure McGonagall knows all about this misdemeanour of yours - "
"Three!" George yelled.
Filch stared at him in shock. George threw the Dungbomb he was clutching at Filch's desk. In the ensuing cloud of smoke, Fred leaped towards the filing cabinet, his fingers scrabbling around until they encountered a corner of parchment. He gave said parchment a sharp yank, nearly falling backwards as it came out of the drawer, and clutched his other hand to his mouth, his eyes watering. George was already waiting at the door, a hand clamped over his own mouth and nose. Filch's incoherent mutters of rage and fury were left behind as the twins sprinted out of the office, down the corridor, and into a hidden staircase.
The twins paused, gasping for breath. The tapestry they'd slipped behind would hide them from Filch's view, but if he came near enough he would definitely be able to hear them, so after a moment they crept up the staircase as silently as they could. Emerging behind a portrait on the third floor, they took a moment to glance around. Satisfied that the only moving things nearby were the paintings, they took a moment to grin at each other in a very satisfied manner.
"Excellent work there, George."
"Once again, we've pulled off a plan of genius, Fred."
They high-fived gleefully, and Fred realized that he was still clutching the parchment he'd stolen from Filch's office. He turned it over in his hands.
"What do you reckon this is?"
George shrugged. "Open it and see."
Carefully, Fred unfolded the multi-layered parchment. Identical red heads bent over it, eagerly awaiting the reveal of – nothing. The parchment was blank.
Fred frowned. "That's odd."
George nodded. "Not even Filch would find a blank parchment dangerous enough to confiscate. I mean, the worst it can give him is a paper cut."
"There must be some reason it was in the 'Confiscated and Highly Dangerous' drawer, though," Fred mused. "He must have gotten it from someone he suspected of something, right?"
George nodded. "Filch wouldn't have put it in there unless he thought it was dangerous somehow. The students he got it from must have been up to no good, I wonder what they were doing with a blank - "
Fred shushed his twin abruptly, gaping at the parchment. "Look!"
George gaped in turn, staring at the thin lines of ink that had suddenly appeared at random intervals. "What - "
Before he could say anything else, though, they faded back out of existence, leaving the parchment as empty as before. George frowned.
"Okay, how did that happen? In fact, what happened?"
Fred smiled happily. "I'm not sure, but we're going to find out. Come on," he cast a glance up and down the corridor, "let's go find somewhere we're not so likely to be interrupted."
The twins crept off through the halls of the castle, glad that it was a sunny afternoon and most students were outside, leaving no one to impede their progress. They soon found themselves crouched in a hidden nook behind a statue on the fourth floor, the parchment spread out on the floor between them.
"It must have been something you said," Fred mused aloud. "I wasn't doing anything to it, I was just holding it. What exactly did you say?"
George frowned, thinking. "I said I wondered what they were doing with a blank parchment?"
The twins stared hopefully at said parchment, but it remained stubbornly empty. George thought harder, trying to remember what he'd said before that.
"They were up to no good!" Fred exclaimed suddenly, startling his twin.
Next second, though, they'd nearly banged their heads together in their eagerness to look at the parchment. The spidery lines they'd seen earlier had reappeared, spreading out to form some sort of pattern – but before they could tell what it was, the ink had faded away again, leaving the parchment blank once more.
Fred settled back on his heels, trying to work out how they could crack the secrets of this mysterious paper. "Okay, so we definitely have to say something - "
"To get it to open," George chimed in. "Like a password - "
"Or a magic phrase of some sort..."
"Like that Open Sunflowers thing Dad was nattering on about."
"Sesame, you mean," Fred corrected his twin.
George shrugged dismissively. "Whatever, that was Muggle stuff. I'm sure this must be something magical."
Fred pulled out his wand and tapped the parchment with it. "Alohomora!"
George raised his eyebrows. "Really, the Unlocking Charm?"
His twin shrugged. "It was worth a try."
George shook his head determinedly. "What was that one McGonagall mentioned last week?" He tapped the parchment with his wand in turn. "Specialis Revelio!"
His spell had the same effect as Fred's, in other words, none. Fred shook his head. "That's not going to work either. We weren't saying a spell when we made it do something the first time, it has to be some sort of phrase that makes whatever it is appear."
"All right," George agreed. "So what kind of phrase would open a secret parchment?"
"Well," Fred settled back against the wall to think, "it definitely includes the words 'up to no good'."
His wand was still lying on top of the parchment, and at his words the ink lines flared up for a third time, before vanishing just as quickly. The twins studied the parchment for a moment.
"This must have belonged to someone Filch considered trouble," George said contemplatively.
"Someone brilliant," Fred chimed in.
George nodded. "Someone like us."
"So," Fred said determinedly, "what sort of phrase would we have used to lock away secrets?"
"It would have to be something that only worthy people could open," George said solemnly. "Only people who intended to use said secrets for their intended purpose..."
"But what is their intended purpose?" Fred inquired.
George scoffed. "It obviously must have been used for some sort of mischief."
Fred studied the parchment for a moment. "I'm up to no good," he said at last.
The parchment flickered to life again, the ink lines appearing a bit more widespread and lasting a bit longer before they vanished. George scrambled into a kneeling position excitedly. "Did you see that? We're getting closer!"
Fred grinned. "We certainly are. I don't think that sentence is enough, though. Did you see, the lines are still too weak for us to actually figure out what they mean."
"Maybe the phrase isn't strong enough," George said slowly. "Maybe we need to be more, I dunno, certain of ourselves..."
"I'm definitely up to no good!" Fred proclaimed. The parchment, however, remained stubbornly blank at his words. George shook his head.
"Going down the wrong track there, I think. How about… I promise I'm up to no good?"
The lines appeared again, darker and more widespread than before, and before they faded away Fred and George were able to catch a glimpse of a cramped scrawl that read "Entrance H". The twins stared at each other.
"If that said what I think it said..." Fred said in a hushed voice.
"Then we could be holding a magical map to Hogwarts!" George concluded gleefully. "Come on, Freddie, think! We have to figure out how to get into this. Imagine what we could do with a map to the whole castle..."
They spent several moments imagining it, and then Fred tapped the parchment purposefully. "We first have to figure out how to crack this, though. It responded better to 'I promise', so maybe we should try something along those lines."
"How many words that mean promise are there?" George asked.
Fred grinned. "I don't know, but we're about to find out."
20 minutes later, the twins had come up with a lot of synonyms for promising, but had unfortunately not managed to unlock any more of the map's secrets. George settled his head back against the wall with a sigh.
"I'm sure we're on the right track here, but none of these are working. How else can we phrase this?"
Fred shook his head. "I honestly don't know." He sat down next to his twin, staring out into the corridor, letting his thoughts roam. Suddenly, he froze, staring at a tapestry on the opposite wall – or to be precise, at the motto underneath it. "George..."
"What?" George followed his twin's line of sight, and his face took on a hopeful expression. "Might as well try it, yeah? Can't be any worse than everything else we've come up with."
Fred took a deep breath, pointing his wand at the still-empty parchment. "I swear I'm up to no good."
The boys stared with bated breath as lines began to appear, growing darker and larger by the second. But they weren't quite the same as the ones they'd seen before…
"Wait a minute," George stuttered. "Is it – is it really – "
"Ssh," Fred admonished him. "Look what it's saying!"
There, scrawled across the top of the parchment in a cramped handwriting, were the words "Mr Moony presents his compliments to the finders of this map, and advises them to take it a little more seriously."
The twins stared at it, and then at each other, identical looks of surprise and awe spread across their freckled faces.
"It's talking to us," Fred said quietly.
George gave the map a suspicious glance. "Freddie, do you think it's – safe? Remember what Mum always says about things..."
"Aw, it's fine," Fred said dismissively. "Hasn't done anything to Filch, has it? I'm sure it can't be Dark magic." All the same, he gave the map a slightly apprehensive look.
Next second, he was gripping George's arm tightly, staring at the parchment. Under the first sentence, another one had appeared, but the writing was very different.
"Mr Prongs agrees with Mr Moony and would like to add that the magic is intended for managing mischief, nothing more."
The twins slowly looked up at each other. "It's listening to us," George said quietly.
"But it's trying to help," Fred said eagerly. "Come on, let's try again, one more can't hurt..."
"Try what, though?"
Fred tapped the parchment with his wand. "I swear that I am seriously up to no good."
Instead of giving them the lines they'd seen previously, the map produced yet another sentence, in a third cursive.
"Mr Padfoot would like to register his astonishment that the solemnity of the occasion is not taking precedence."
Fred frowned. "It's like a riddle of some sort… What does it mean?"
"Maybe you have to change the word order," George suggested. He tapped the parchment in turn. "I seriously swear that I'm up to no good!"
A fourth sentence appeared below the other three.
"Mr Wormtail bids you good luck and advises you to read the words carefully."
Fred squinted at the fourth part, and then his face cleared up. He tapped the parchment with his wand one last time.
"I solemnly swear that I am up to no good."
The handwritten sentences faded away, to be replaced by the spidery lines the twins had seen before. This time, however, they spread across the whole parchment, darkening and connecting until there was an entire network spread out in front of them. And – the twins leaned closer – could that be tiny moving dots? Each had a label, and as their eyes skimmed the parchment they realized that not only was this a map of the castle, but it showed the location of absolutely everyone inside it.
Identical, evil grins spread across their faces. Just think of everything they could get away with now… As they turned their heads down to study the map again, they noticed a title unfurling across the top of the parchment. The writing was identical to the first sentence the map had addressed them with. The sentence read:
Messrs Moony, Wormtail, Padfoot, and Prongs
Purveyors of Aids to Magical Mischief-Makers
are proud to present
THE MARAUDER'S MAP