Messrs Moony, Wormtail, Padfoot and Prongs
Celestia0909
[A/N at the end]
"You're a bloody menace Padfoot."
"I fucking concur Moony, and you Wormtail?"
"I arsing second that Prongs..."
Sirius rolled his eyes at his boring friends and stretched dramatically in the uncomfortable wooden chair. All three of them glared at him in turns and he couldn't be bothered feeling sheepish. It was his fault that they were stressing out over the piece of parchment in the first place.
They had been taking it in turns to cast spells and counter-spells on the parchment, and the most that they had achieved was to make it look a bit older.
"Can you just explain to us, again, what you did to it?" Remus sighed, his face lined with weariness in the candle light.
Sirius huffed out a breath and leant forward onto the table, his shaggy curls getting into his eyes.
"I told you. I was trying to fix the lag on it, remember? It had a two second lag on the damned thing, and I tried to fix it with a couple of spells. And now, it's bloody frozen."
"You're an absolute tit, we agreed not to do anything unless we had the express permission of the rest of the group!" James hissed. "Remember when Wormtail tried to make it look nicer? Bloody took us weeks to fix it!"
"Oi!"
"Sorry Pete, but that was a bloody stupid idea in the first place. I was just trying to get rid of the lag, Prongs!"
"You should've told us what you were going to do… instead of stealing it from my drawer and mucking about with it!" James swiped his hand through Sirius' hair.
"OI! Rule number one, don't sodding touch my hair! How many times do I have to tell you that you don't touch my mane," he hissed angrily as he fixed his curls and ran a hand through them. Sirius was confident enough in his masculinity to admit that his hair was his most prized feature about himself. He wasn't ashamed about letting people know how much product and time it took to maintain it. Looking like Jim Morrison came at a price – but this is what it took for the girls to like you.
"What? That manky mop of, wait, what'd he call it Wormtail?"
"I think he called it a mane, Prongs…" Pete said in a dreamy, breathy, voice.
"Looks just like our old sport Snape's hair if you ask me. Hair is probably a bit of a compliment for what it is though." James smirked and his eyes lit up with mischief behind his glasses. Sirius tried to duck away from his roving hand but it was too late. His spidery appendages had ruined his perfectly maintained hair and Sirius tried to shove his best friend off him.
In the background, Sirius heard Peter cheering James on, and he noted that he'd need to acquaint himself with Peter's dresser for payback later. He may find all of his white school shirts had turned pink or green.
"Ger'off me you git!"
"Not until you admit that your hair's just as greasy as Snape's!"
Sirius struggled from James' vice grip and his legs flailed, hitting the table and knocking over a few pots of ink. The black ink spread quickly on the table and they were too slow to stop it from infecting the map they'd been working on. James released his hold on Sirius and his eyes peered at the map.
Four pairs of hands reached for the map to snatch it away, but unfortunately when four people pull a piece of paper in different directions, it didn't bode well for the thing being pulled. Especially if the thing was a fragile piece of parchment that had already been battered with spells.
A loud ripping noise filled the void of silence and nobody cared about the tipped over pot of ink. Sirius' eyes grew wide as he stared at the piece of parchment in his hand, one edge of which was jagged. He looked up and glanced at his friends, noticing that they were each holding a piece of ripped parchment and had shocked expressions on their faces.
"Fuck…"
"Bugger!"
"Shit."
"Fuckin' hell," Sirius hissed at the exact same time as his friends. A table of Ravenclaws adjacent to them looked over with matching faces of disapproval before darting back to their work.
It was a shambles. The map that they'd worked on was a temperamental and fragile piece of magic. It was entirely complex and multi-dimensional and it would be the crown jewel in their mischief making arsenal. And Sirius had broken it. Broken it with his stupid attempt at making it better and broken it by spilling jet black ink on it. He had also broken it, along with the other three, by ripping it to pieces.
The four of them sat on their wooden chairs and slumped in defeat as they fingered the ripped parchment in their hands. They each had equally contributed to the map being ruined, but Sirius was reluctant to admit that he had played the biggest role in the destruction of their prized map.
Truthfully, Sirius felt far guiltier than he'd care to admit. They had spent their entire fifth year working on the map and in the space of five minutes, he'd shattered the thing to pieces and now, they were frantically trying to glue their work back together. Figuratively of course… glue would do fuck all now.
"I'm sorry lads," he admitted as he ran an agitated hand through his hair. A trait that he had picked up from James. "I was just trying to be clever, I shouldn't have done anything without telling you first…"
"You shouldn't have…" Peter grunted before Remus shot him a glare. "Well he shouldn't have!"
"I think what Peter is trying to say, is that he accepts your apology. I think we all accept your apology, but you're a still a git," Remus patted Sirius' shoulder, Peter shot him a tentative smile, and James rolled his eyes and shrugged his shoulders in agreement. The guilt that had settled into his stomach disappeared as they laughed it off and put their pieces of parchment down on the table.
James scratched his chin as he stared at the pile of weathered yellow parchment on the table and frowned, "That's a year of our lives wasted, gents."
Sirius snorted and struggled to keep himself from bursting out into a fit of laughter until Remus shot him a warning look. He coughed behind his hand and James grinned as Peter opened a brown paper bag full of biscuits and started eating.
"I propose that we start again."
"Are you mad Prongs? As you so eloquently put it, it took us a year to get it working," Sirius scoffed offhandedly.
"Yeah but we know what to do now, I reckon we can get a new one ready by next term," James announced as he leant back in his chair and rocked it with his feet. "What do you say?"
Sirius looked at Peter and Remus questioningly and saw the conflicted expressions on their faces. He knew what they were thinking. They were thinking that Prongs had gone absolutely bonkers; that it would take them another year to make a new one; and that actually, James was making a lot of sense by proposing it.
Come to think of it, his idea was bloody brilliant and nobody else had come up any another alternative. They had six months to work on it – three of which would be during the summer holidays. Three months when they wouldn't be able to do any magic on it – which really meant that those six months would become three. Three months to make a new map before the new school term.
"What do you say?" Remus leant forward onto his elbows and glanced at Peter and Sirius.
"Wo'," Peter groaned with a mouth full of biscuits and water.
"Pull it together lad!" James ruffled Peter's blonde hair.
"Manners maketh man, Pete. Haven't you heard of eating with your mouth closed?"
Peter frowned and put two fingers up on either hand at James and Sirius. His normally pale face, turning even more pink as the seconds passed.
"You two, d'you reckon we should take up Prongs' proposal?" Remus reminded them as he pulled at a loose end on his maroon wool cardigan.
"I'm in," Sirius raised both his thumbs up as he grinned at James.
"So am I."
"Well, there's only one thing left to do…" Remus pushed his sleeves up and swept his hair away from his eyes. "Go and get as many books as you can. We're not leaving this library until we've got an outline of the grounds and castle."
Sirius pulled out a blank piece of parchment from underneath one of the books they'd collected and used a simple spell to enlarge it. A new map, he thought.
So, that's how Sirius and his friends spent their Saturday; sitting in the library, surrounded by books, and arguing in hushed voices about the scale of the grounds and whether the Hufflepuff common room was in the right side of the castle. They were kicked out at nightfall by Madam Payne, which didn't matter much to them as they had achieved the goal they'd set out to do anyway.
And on October thirty in nineteen-seventy-six, the Marauders – hunched over a piece of parchment at eleven-thirty in the Gryffindor common room – shouted with joy as the map accurately traced Lily Evans' steps as she passed by them and entered the girls' dormitory.
Author's Note
Word Count: 1,598
Written for the Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry (Challenges and Assignments)
Assignment # 5
Subject: Home Economics
Task: 1, Write about something fragile
I hope you all enjoyed this story x
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Until next time, Andy x