In the weeks after Remus confiscates the Marauder's Map from Harry, he doesn't look at it. He carries it back to his office from Snape's classroom, the worn, crackling parchment dry between his fingers and he locks it in the bottom-most drawer of his desk, covering it with other documents and a few heavy books. When he had stepped out of the fire into Snape's office and seen it sitting on Snape's desk, writing in four all-too-familiar hands shining on its pages, it had felt like being socked in the gut. He had recognized it, and Snape knew he had recognized it, and Harry knew there was something he wasn't telling. Remus had taken it, had returned to his office, had whispered the words "mischief managed" around a very tight throat and slid it into his desk. He tries not to think about it at all.
The Marauder's Map burns like a lit match in the bottom of the drawer.
It's an unwelcome intrusion into the neat patterns Remus has built into his day-to-day life at Hogwarts, and an unwelcome reminder that there was a past in these halls that still remains. He's been trying so hard to convince himself that the things they did back then, the rule they broke and the elaborate prank they pulled, aren't important. That it doesn't have anything to do with the break-ins at Hogwarts, with the Ministry's inability to locate and capture Sirius Black.
He kept a lot of secrets from me, Remus makes himself think. He doesn't want to. This dark magic I didn't know he could do, just another one.
Remus is secretly a little pleased to know that it somehow survived being destroyed by Filch and made its way, now almost 16 years later, into James Potter's son's hands. Acknowledging its anything more than a parchment confiscated from a student would be opening the door to a hallway Remus has no desire to go down, memories he has no desire to dig up. Especially not here.
Fate likes to laugh, and its favorite subject of ridicule has always been Remus.
When Dumbledore had owled last spring, Remus had been in South America. When Dumbledore owled him a second time, Remus had been in England for the first time since 1981, tidying up his father's affairs. He had been left a house, a cottage really, in Wales. He had been thinking about settling into it and working more or less permanently at the tiny library in town when Dumbledore had showed up on his doorstep.
"I don't think it's a good idea," Remus had said over tea and biscuits at the scrubbed wooden table that had been his parents'. "I can't—I. I just don't think it's a good idea."
"If you're concerned about the transformations," Dumbledore had started. Remus had snorted, and Dumbledore had nodded, as if to acknowledge that this was a bit of an obvious point. "You have heard of the Wolfsbane Potion, I'm sure."
"And I'm sure you've heard how much it costs," Remus had said.
"I have a solution to that too," Dumbledore had smiled and sipped his Darjeeling and Remus's truly legitimate reason to say no had vanished. He did need the money badly, and there was still a tiny part of him still connected to the boy who had sat in Minerva McGonagall's office at 16 and confessed he wanted to teach magic. And anyway, it was hard to say no to Dumbledore after everything he had done for him.
Snape is an expected problem, as is the almost painful nostalgia for seven years of his life that now seem little more than a dream. The sight of Hogwarts from the train in September had dropped memories so heavy and bright on him that they had stolen his words. He feels the weight of the past 12 years settle onto his shoulders like a mantle. He sees the shining anticipatory faces of the students crowding his classroom on the first day and knows that, once, he had been sitting in those very same chair, breathless with anticipation and fear and joy. He passes through hallways and cupboards and desks in the library and that one spot under a tree near the lake where he had sat, played, studied, laughed, fought, kissed. It's easier not to speak about these things, so he doesn't.
Remus decided, years ago, that he would do his best to forget he had ever known and loved a boy named Sirius Black, who had a wicked grin and an incredibly stupid laugh, who took too much sugar in his tea and was embarrassed to admit he enjoyed reading books. The boy he remembers with that name never existed, he reminds himself over and over and over. The man who lives with that name is a stranger.
Remus tries his best to ignore the map too, though it's a persistent, nagging reminder at the back of his mind, like a splinter wedged in the skin under his fingernail. He doesn't poke at it, because he knows if he does it will bleed.
He nearly gives in a few days after the House Cup Quidditch match. He goes so far as to slide the map out of the drawer onto the surface of his desk, spread it flat and hover his wand over the surface. It's got a new stain on one corner that looks like grape jelly, it's dustier and more cracked around the edges than it was when they wrote it. A testament to how much time has passed, to how much grey is in Remus's hair. He brushes his fingers over its surface and feels old.
He can't get the words out, so he puts it away again.
Two weeks later though, finals are over and Remus purposefully scheduled a practical exam so as to not have to grade papers over the coming full moon. He's sitting in his office, flipping through the pages of an uninteresting Daily Prophet, the anxious, angry energy that builds in his veins before every change boiling. The Wolfsbane Potion deals with the symptoms but he feels the wolf can tell in some way it's being repressed; he feels feverish and he can't sit still. He thinks idly that a walk on the grounds might do him some good, then remembers Hagrid's hippogriff is scheduled for education and Cornelius Fudge and somebody from the Department for the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures are undoubtedly in the castle, and Remus doesn't feel he can deal that, not today.
He fiddles with the paper and rearranges the pens on his desk and finally sighs heavily and digs the Map out of the drawer.
"I solemnly swear that I am up to no good," he whispers before he can stop himself, and taps it with his wand.
Ink blooms across the page like a flower in sunlight, twisting and curving and crossing to form lines and words and symbols so familiar to him he could draw them in his sleep. Peter and James had inked out most of the passageways, the walls and stairwells. Remus himself had done the words, names of places and people and the curving title. Sirius had added the flair, the tiny footprint-shaped markers, the flags and scrolls and intricate details. They had spent months drawing the map out, poured their energy, their effort and a small portion of themselves into the document. It had been their crowning achievement, the greatest test of their brilliance, their ingenuity and their friendship.
Remus smiles a little as he watches the dot labeled 'Minerva McGonagall' moving back and forth in the staff room. He searches for his own name and finds it and notices, with a start, there is somebody directly outside his office door. One dot, labeled 'Severus Snape.' A second later, there is a knock on his door.
"Come in," Remus calls, hurriedly seizing a handful of parchment from a drawer and sliding the Map under it. Snape strides into the room, holding a goblet full of the potion.
"Just dropping this off," he says. "Your last dose."
"Yes, of course, thank you," Remus says hurriedly. "I'll take it straightaway."
"As you should," Snape sets the goblet down and turns to go, to Remus's relief. He pauses at the door and turns around. "Did you hear, Lupin, the fate of Hagrid's hippogriff? The one that attacked Malfoy?"
"Yes," Remus says slowly. "Most unfortunate."
"Honestly, I think it's about time," Snape says. "It's a violent creature and deserves to be put down."
He leaves, and Remus finds he is clutching the edge of the desk so hard his nails have left curved indents in the wood. Remus slides the map out again and watches Snape's dot travel back down several flights of stairs towards the dungeons. They travel, idly, to the Great Hall and then out of curiosity he glances towards Hagrid's hut. He sees what he expects to see; three additional dots, labeled Harry Potter, Hermione Granger and Ronald Weasley, standing alongside the Rubeus Hagrid dot.
They're good kids, Remus thinks idly, watching the Harry Potter dot move around the Hagrid one, undoubtedly comforting him. All three of them are good kids, but Harry most of all. James would be—
Remus pauses, frowning, as the three dots quickly file out of Hagrid's back door. Not three dots, but four. He must have overlooked it in the crowded space of Hagrid's hut and it was very nearly eclipsed by Ron's name.
Four dots head up the pathway back towards the castle and the hidden one, the one he almost didn't see, suddenly takes off in a different direction. Remus can read it clearly and for one horrible moment he thinks he is going to vomit.
It didn't—it can't—
And yet, it is.
Peter Pettigrew, running away from the three students who are giving chase.
Bile rises again in Remus's throat and he forces it down, forces down the slow, creeping fire that is surging through his veins. "You have to think about this," he says to himself. He nearly shouts it. "Think it through."
The most obvious solution is that the map is wrong. But the map is never wrong. It is infallible.
Really, the most obvious solution is that he has finally gone mad. But if he accepts that, it's over. Remus still has his own mind. He still has that.
So this means that Peter is alive. All this time, alive, in hiding. Almost undeniably hiding as a rat, on the grounds of Hogwarts—
Remus's mind drifts to Ron Weasley and his pet rat. He remembers overhearing that the rat had been ill and then killed by Hermione Granger's cat. Sometimes a rat is just a rat, he thinks. There could even be a legitimate reason that Peter would want to go into hiding after everything, but wouldn't he want the protection of Dumbledore? Remus thinks slowly, Why would an innocent man want to spend twelve years as a rat?
Another dot appears on the map suddenly from the forest, moving very fast. He knows what it will say even before he reads it.
Sirius Black.
Remus lets out the breath he's holding. He's been holding his breath for a very long time, twelve years maybe. Something is aligning itself with horrible, brutal clarity in his mind.
Remus seizes his wand and flings his cloak around his shoulders. He leaves his office at a run. On his desk the map sits, still unfurled, next to a quietly smoking goblet.
"We have to come up with a password for it," James is hunched over a giant stack of parchment, scribbling down ideas. "So not just anyone can use it."
"We could bewitch it to look like something else to everyone but us?" Peter suggests tiredly. They've been in the library for hours, hiding in a corner in the back out of Madame Pince's line of sight. The four of them had spent more time in the library during those six months than the rest of their school years combined. Remus remembers even he was finding it a bit ridiculous.
He remembers exhaustion, but also elation, a deep-seated, burning excitement because they were brilliant, they were glorious, they were seventeen and their whole lives stretched in front of them, unaware of what was coming. And most importantly, they were done.
"Nah," James shakes his head. There's a light burning in his eyes; it ignited whenever he had an idea he thought was good, or when he was thinking about mayhem. "Because what if someone else finds it in the future?"
"It has to be the right kind of password," Sirius has ink on his face, smeared just above his upper lip. Remus remembers how his fingers had itched with the desire to reach out and rub it off. "So only someone really worthy of using it can get into it."
"What do you think the likelihood of anyone figuring out it's a map and then guessing a random password to unlock it actually is?" Remus, the voice of reason, interjects.
"They have to be really worthy," James demands. It isn't worth arguing. The four of them, seated in a circle around the map, stare down at it. Peter is chewing on the end of his quill and James is drumming his fingers on the table. Remus's fingers itch.
"I've got it," Sirius says, delight spreading slowly across his face. James's eyes light up. "What about this," Sirius clears his throat and speaks the next words with great care. "I solemnly swear that I am up to no good."