Hello, welcome to Chapter 4! We're APPROACHING having something of a plot now; there are some hints in this chapter, and also some hints of things to come in the books, I think. I don't have a beta reader, so I apologize in advance for spelling errors and left-out words and things that I tend to do when I write late at night and I'm on a roll. Once again, I don't own anything I've ever written a fan fic about, Harry Potter included. My initials are nowhere near JKR . . . So, if you're still interested in this story up to this point, it would really mean a LOT if you left me a review. Thanks! And enjoy!

In an instance of good luck, Sirius and Lupin were placed in the same detention, cleaning out Kneazle cages with Hagrid, who was always kind to them. Hagrid spent most of the time wondering aloud to a sympathetic Lupin how long Professor Kettleburn would stay around to teach Care of Magical Creatures, having lost his left hand the previous week to an irate young chimera, while Sirius chatted with James through his two-way mirror.

Having scourged away the final bit of filth from the last Kneazle cage with a flourish, Lupin sunk exhaustedly into the nearest chair at Hagrid's table.

"Alrigh', Remus?" Hagrid asked Lupin concernedly. "Ya look a bit peaky. Wan' ter stay fer a cuo o' tea?"

"Nah," Lupin breathed politely, getting quickly to his feet again, "I've got too much homework tonight. Some other day, Hagrid." And he and Sirius left, bidding Hagrid goodbye.

When they finished dinner, Lupin not having much of an appetite, and returned to the common room, there was still a good hour and a half before sunset and the rising of the full moon. When Lupin announced to his three friends that he would indeed be using this time to do some homework, they all three gave him rather pitying glances and left the common room, to get up to their own separate mischief. He could just see Sirius stealing James's invisibility cloak as the door swung shut. As Lupin spread his books across the table and Elizabeth rubbed against Lily and Octavia's legs over in corner, apparently preferring their company, he sighed, the recent cut on his arm from his duel stinging incessantly in a sort of sick rhythm with the throbbing of the scar from his werewolf bite from so many years ago . . . He turned back to his books. He always got this feeling of mingled excitement and dread before every transformation at Hogwarts . . .

James, meanwhile, was on a mission. He had made precious little progress on the Lily Evans front since the beginning of the year. Sure, she had laughed at his joke in the common room yesterday, but then so had everyone else present. She still rolled her eyes at him, avoided him, and reprimanded him at every opportunity. She still liked Lupin so much more than him. It was time for a more direct approach, so he'd have a good feeling before he joined Lupin in his transformation this evening.

He was going to give Lily a bouquet of lilies from the greenhouses. Sure, it wasn't a grandiose gesture, but you could be direct and still small and sweet. Small and sweet like Lily herself . . . and with a few sensitive-sounding and well-chosen words, she just might not throw them back in his face . . .

As he was leaving the Greenhouses with a handful of beautiful stolen lilies, he heard menacing voices around the corner. As he rounded it, he saw a gang of five Slytherins surrounding Peter.

"And you can tell your half-breed pal that I prefer the Riverdance," Avery was saying, while Carrow laughed trollishly.

"And I'd be happy finish what Severus started, and spill the rest of the filthy half of his blood any day," concluded Antonin Dolohov.

"And as for you, fatso –" began Macnair, but James cut him off.

"Is there a problem, boys?" he asked coolly, getting defensively in front of Peter, who was crumpled against the wall, apparently already having sustained some damage from them. James, seeing this, became irrationally angry, and yet another fight ensued between two Marauders and five Slytherins. As their best fighter, Snape, was not there, however, and the Marauders' best fighter, James, was, it ended rather differently, with all five Slytherins paralyzed on the ground with various hex marks sprouting unpleasantly on their faces.

"Well," breathed James, in a combination of outrage and satisfaction as he helped Peter down the long corridor and towards the stairs, "since we didn't get to join in the fun last night in this place, I suppose this compensates nicely." He grinned around the basement hallway. "And we didn't even get in trouble for it. So, where were you headed, Wormy? The kitchens?"

"Hufflepuff common room," Peter told him. "I have a date with Lucy."

James turned quickly. "But Peter, it's full moon tonight. Surely you didn't forget this time! We have to go to the grounds, have to be with Moony."

"But I planned this with Lucy," Peter faltered.

"So cancel it!" demanded James.

"But Lucy will be mad . . ." he continued weakly.

"So will we!" James declared. "You need to sort out your priorities. This is a sacred tradition!"

"Not so sacred on that last full moon of last year, though, was it?" Peter spat bitterly. "You just left me, sleeping in the common room . . ."

"I already apologized for that!" James snapped. "And you got a butterbeer out of the deal, and you made a solemn vow not to betray us again, after you did so with the very same girl! Moony will feel betrayed – you know how sensitive he is sometimes."

"I made that vow after I was publicly humiliated!" retorted Peter hotly.

"It was a joke, Pete. Why would you even hang out with us if you can't take a joke?" James demanded.

"I didn't find it funny."

"Well how are we going to freeze the Willow without you?"

"Use a stick – you had no trouble with it last year."

"I just saved your hide from five Slytherins!" James added finally, and a long silence followed while the two boys glared at each other.

"I'm going with Lucy," Peter said defiantly. He experienced a moment of panic in which he truly thought James was going to curse him, and almost relented. James was most certainly a more accomplished duelist than Lucy, but Peter had also been warned that 'hell hath no fury like a woman scorned'.He knew that James would never betray him to such a degree, so an angry Lucy frightened him much more.

"Fine," James said finally, in a disturbingly curt voice grating with scorn. "Have fun with little Lucy. And stay off the grounds if you don't want to die."

Peter said nothing, but whipped around so quickly and forcefully that his robe flew up and ruined James's bouquet, scattering petals on the ground. James, resisting the urge to hex Peter and leave him there with the five Slytherins, instead checked his watch and left the corridor.

When Sirius returned to the common room, it was to find that Lupin's homework had spread to cover two tables, and Lupin himself was throwing a book aside, pausing in his progress to sigh in aggravation, and rubbing his hand across his pale, sweaty face.

"Heya, Moony," said Sirius, placing a mug of cocoa on the edge of Lupin's table and reaching over to scratch Elizabeth, who had settled on top of his Ancient Runes book. "This is for you. How're you holding up?"

"I feel like rubbish," he said rather miserably, nodding his thanks to Sirius and taking the mug. "The moon's a harsh mistress, as they say. I just wish she'd get it over with. And I'm going to fail Muggles Studies."

"How on earth can you fail Muggle Studies when your mother's a Muggle?" Sirius demanded.

Lupin didn't answer. "I'm not going to be any fun tonight, am I?" he asked plaintively instead, gulping his cocoa. "You and Prongs and Wormtail are going to get bored out of your minds . . . you'll fall asleep in the middle of the forest and then I'll get loose and bite someone . . ."

"Don't be a prat, Moony. It doesn't suit someone who gets better OWLS than half the Ravenclaws," Sirius told him. He didn't know if he was amused or alarmed; usually Lupin wasn't this depressed before his transformation. Perhaps he'd grown accustomed to unpleasant, solitary ones over the summer . . .

"Anyway, speaking of Prongs and Wormtail, have you seen either of them?" Sirius asked. "Because I have the Cloak and we'll have to all be under it again . . ."

"We should look," Lupin breathed, beginning with difficulty to stand, but Sirius pushed him back down.

"Take it easy," said Sirius gently. "They'll show up eventually, they always do, but I just wish there was a way we could always find each other . . ."

Lupin was taking a scrap of parchment out of a nearby book. "I wonder . . ." he began, his eyes narrowing. He snatched his wand from where it sat on his History of Magic book and began to tap it and mutter. "Not this quick, but with a bit of development . . ." He trailed off again and looked back up at Sirius, who didn't know what he was talking about and was giving him a quizzical look. It was then that James burst into the room, chucking bits of ruined lilies on the ground and looking most ill-tempered himself.

"Peter's not coming," he told Sirius coldly.

"What?" demanded Sirius. "The prat! Where is he? What's he doing?"

"Somewhere with darling Lucy Smith," said James venomously, tossing the final remains of his mangled flowers onto Lupin's books, startling Elizabeth, while Lupin stowed the parchment back in the book. "I mean, honestly, he can't like her anymore than I love Lily, but I never . . . I never abandon you fine gents for her!"

"How are we going to get into the passage?" demanded Sirius.

"He said, 'Use a stick,'" James repeated gratingly. "And after I saved his sorry skin from five Slytherins and everything!"

"What?" demanded Lupin in a horrified voice.

"Five Slytherins – all Death Eaters, I think – cornered Pete and attacked him," James explained. "They mentioned you – and something about preferring a Riverdance . . .?"

Sirius could help laughing as he remembered Avery's spell-induced dancing. Lupin, however, looked even more horrified. "Oh my – my word, I started this! I started it with that stupid duel! Now they're going after Peter! It's all my fault!" He now looked more miserable than ever, and checked his watch. "I should – I should get to the hospital wing, so I'm not late again." He stood and strode shakily to the portrait hole, looking back with a weak smile, and said, "Well, I'll see you in a bit, if – you know, if . . . you still want to come."

There was a tense silence after the door swung shut behind him. Then Sirius turned back to James, handing him the Invisibility Cloak, and said, in a very serious voice, "I still reckon Avery was better at the Tarantella."

James laughed, but it was half-hearted, and Sirius knew his friend pitied Lupin again. He glanced over at Lily, who was gazing in their direction, but who quickly hid behind her Arithmancy book when she saw him. He grinned. Score, Prongs.

They always waited about ten minutes before going down to meet Lupin in the Shrieking Shack. They had made the mistake of following him directly in the Invisibility Cloak once, but actually watching him transform had been agonizing; it had given poor Peter nightmares for a week, and James had nearly cried for witnessing such pain. If it was so horrific to watch, none of them could imagine what it must be like to actually do it. Since then Lupin said he preferred to be alone when he transformed, and they had gladly complied.

While they waited, Sirius amused himself by looking through the enormous amount of Lupin's books on the table. The one he had stuffed the parchment into was a novel, published the previous year, entitled Hairy Snout, Human Heart. Lupin's Muggle Studies book was lying open in front of his now-empty chair, in a section about wizards' perceptions of Muggles. On a piece of parchment beside it his homework was copied: to 'write an essay defending both sides of the Muggle debate.' Nearby, his Defense Against the Dark Arts book was also open to the chapter about Dark creatures, with a gruesome picture of a werewolf captioned 'The very Darkest of Dark Creatures' . . . Passing over these depressing items, which no doubt had contributed to Lupin's downcast mood, he found beneath them a most unexpected item: Moste Potente Potions. He wasn't even taking Potions! What did he have that for?

The only person in the room he knew for sure was taking Potions was Lily Evans. Sirius watched James walk away from the ever-dejected Nicholas Sky and towards Lily, no doubt for the sole purpose of spoiling her newly-formed better opinion of him.

"Prongs!" Sirius called, and James turned to look at him. "It's time."

The night passed as the usual daring adventure under the glowing moon – except that James and Sirius were slightly more scraped-up due to the Whomping Willow and the absence of Peter's assistance in passing it. It had been something of a relief, in other ways, that they had not had to continually keep checking to see if the little rat was keeping up . . .

When the moon had waned away, the three boys, now all thoroughly exhausted and thoroughly human again, made their weary, grinning way back up to Gryffindor tower to catch a half an hour's sleep before class started. They shared some newly-traditional breakfast chocolate, this time supplied by Lupin, a tradition that was shaping up to exclude Peter, before they returned to their dormitory and threw their weary selves onto their beds, looking determinedly away from the snoring boy already there.

Awakening from an untroubled but entirely too short rest, they dragged themselves through the drudgery of the day; In Trasfiguration, both Sirius and James fell asleep and Lupin was an inch away from it, so he kept raising his hand and answering McGonagall's questions just to keep himself interested, though he was perhaps the most tired of all three.

Because they also slept through most of lunch, only to be awakened by Lily, (who somehow found it in her heart to be annoyed at Sirius and James for their laziness, yet pity Lupin's fatigue and be worry herself over his health, much to James's outrage) they were the last to arrive in Charms. James and Sirius immediately found the a pair of seats near the back and sat there together, leaving Lupin to lower himself wearily into the last remaining desk, right next to Peter's.

While they did not speak and were unnaturally attentive while Flitwick gave his lesson, the moment he left them to begin practicing the Supersensory Charm on their partner in the neighboring desk, Lupin turned to Peter and asked casually, "So, Peter, how was your date with Lucy?"

Peter looked most taken aback by his friendly tone, and answered, "Um . . . it was . . . um, nice. She let me kiss her four times in a row by the end . . ."

"Nice," said Lupin lightly. "So, you want to try the charm first, or should I?"

"You're gonna forgive him just like that?" demanded Sirius forty minutes later as they made their way to Care of Magical Creatures, their last class of the day. "After what he did to you?"

"Mmm?" said Lupin distractedly, turning his weary eyes back on his friend, pulling his robes (already fully fastened) closely about him and tightening his scarf as if to fend off chills.

"You know, I really don't think it's a good idea for you to try and go to classes the day after your – well, the manifestation of your furry little problem," said James, cautiously watching as some Ravenclaws passed by. "You should spend more time with Madam Pomfrey, like you used to."

"Oh – no – I'm – I'm just . . . tired," Lupin said, though his limping gait and the greyness and amount of Band-Aids on his face somewhat contradicted him. "What were you saying?"

"Wormtail," said Sirius vehemently. "He betrayed you more than any of us – and yet you're the one who acts like nothing's happened."

"He was busy," Lupin dismissed. "He's entitled to be busy, to have a girlfriend . . ."

"Yeah, but to have a date on the full moon? He knows that's our time!" James raged.

"Maybe she asked him," Lupin said.

"Well, then how hard would it have been to say 'how about the next day?' or 'how about right after class?' Honestly!" James said harshly.

"Maybe he was scared she'd get mad?" Lupin suggested lightly.

"Then he needs to man up or find a nicer girlfriend," Sirius concluded.

"Well, you were all doing this as a favor to me anyways, so if he didn't –" began Lupin.

"Oh, it's become more than that, I'll tell you," said James. "No offense. That passage we found last night – and, and that funny little place called the Room of Doom – that's all part of it now. Now this ritual is a part of the Marauder Code, and no one breaks the Marauder Code . . . it's just wrong. Betrayal."

"There's a Marauder Code?" demanded Lupin.

"In his own mind, Moony," Sirius told him in a stage whisper. "But he's right. It was wrong. Wormy is a slimy rat until I say otherwise."

"Look – people make mistakes!" said Lupin desperately. "We have to stay together – we can't break apart like this! I don't . . . I don't want to lose my friends."

His earnestly was not lost to his friends, but before they could remark on their loyalty or give him any comfort, Professor Kettleburn announced that today they would try to tame the chimera that had eaten his hand.

When class was over and the students dispersed (most nursing small injuries and murmuring death threats to Professor Kettleburn) Lupin returned immediately to his dormitory. Assuming he was going to have a good long nap to recover from the ills of his transformation, Sirius waited a few minutes before going in to steal James's Snitch and tick him off. When he entered, however, it was to find that Lupin was not asleep, but poring over a piece of parchment, wand sitting nearby, quill on the other side. It was the same parchment he had been looking at when Sirius wanted to know where Peter and James were the previous night.

"Are you going to tell me what that is?" he asked, making Lupin jump.

"It's a map," he replied. "A map of Hogwarts I've been drawing. I just added that new passage and the Room of Doom."

Sirius tore it out of his hands and examined it. When he lowered from his eyes, he was grinning. "You are such an overachiever, Moony."

"But there's more," said Lupin, scrambling to his feet and taking the map back. He pointed to a miniscule dot in the section of the map representing the trophy room. In tiny ink were written the words "James Potter".

"No way," said Sirius. "It shows where people are?"

"Well, just him, so far," said Lupin modestly. "But I'm trying to figure out how to have it show more than one person. Then I'll add the rest of us, so – so we can always find each other."

"A sentimental overachiever," Sirius amended, smacking Lupin on the shoulder. "But that's a pretty useful type of friend."

Lupin looked pleased. "I might need some help finishing it . . ." he admitted. "But I think I'd like to call it . . ."

They finished in unison: "The Marauders' Map."