"This was such a bad idea."
"OW-that's my foot, Mansfield!"
"You just screamed that in my ear, Sirius. Never mind that we're invisible and shouldn't be talking at all-"
"Shhhhut up, Remus!"
"Your foot is showing, Peter!"
"Oh! Sorry!"
"Quiet!"
"Shhh!"
"WHOSSAT!?"
Nobody moved. Then, as one, the small mob of boys shuffled into a corner behind a statue of a humpbacked wizard with daisies springing from his ears and nostrils. They pressed together, sucking their guts in. It was one thing to fit the four Marauders under the cloak on a regular basis- usually one or two of them volunteered to hang back. It had been easier when they were younger, but the added height of puberty had made traveling under the cloak much riskier than it had been. Now, with the addition of Geoff, they found a group of five to be a bit of a crowd.
Lamplight flooded the floor before them and they held their breaths. Filch slunk by, sniffing the air as though he could seek out trespassers by the smell of their fear alone. It took a few minutes, but Filch finally passed by and the light disappeared around the corner. The boys breathed again.
"Right, I reckon we're close," said James, pulling out a large piece of parchment. Geoff watched him unfold it.
"What is that?" he asked. James glanced at him.
"Nothing," he said, returning his attention to the map. He muttered under his breath with his wand tip against the parchment and suddenly ink crawled out from the center like a spiderweb, bleeding over the surface right to the edges. Geoff stared, and he gasped as he recognized the pattern of the webbing.
"Is that a map of the school?" he asked, but Sirius shushed him, bending over the parchment with James.
"Rosier's in his room," he noted.
"Snape's still up," muttered James. "We'll have to wait for him to leave. Of course he'd be the insomniac."
"Wish we could get Mariah to do something about it," said Remus. "Where is she?"
"She's with Kurt," said James. "Oh..."
"Oh what?" asked Sirius.
"That's probably why Snape's still out there. They share a dormitory, don't they?"
There was a very uncomfortable exchange of glances, and a groan from Sirius.
"But you said Rosier was in his room!" James consulted the map again.
"Oh...that's not his room...that's Marcia Snook's..."
They looked at each other.
"What do we do?" asked Geoff.
"We need to get him out of there," said Remus. "Geoff, I think we're going to have to send you in to find Emilie. Try to distract Snape or get him out of there so we can look around. We'll follow you. You know the password?"
"I think so," said Geoff, trying to distinguish the most recent Slytherin password from a long string of offensive magical objects, ingredients, and slurs that had been the rotation of passwords from the rest of the year.
"Right, let's get close and then you can go ahead," said James, folding the map in one hand.
They crept out from behind the humpbacked statue and made their way down the sloping hall towards the dungeons. They were just around the corner from the wall that opened to the Slytherin common room when a sound made them stop in their tracks and press against the stone wall. A cackle followed by the clang of crumbling armor echoed down the halls and they glanced at each other in panic.
"Shit! It's Peeves! He'll lead Filch right to us!" hissed James. He pulled out his wand and steadied his aim at the corner of the hall just as Peeves swooped around it. He began looping the hall in wider and wider swoops, coming dangerously close to them. James hissed a spell and Peeves's hand suddenly began punching himself in the face repeatedly. Peeves cursed and stopped his swooping, staring around for the culprit, but the punching hand was too distracting and he flew off, still fighting it.
A shadow caught James's eye and he saw Mrs. Norris flit around the corner after Peeves.
"Shit shit shit shit..." James hurriedly stuffed his wand into his pocket but the map slipped out of his grasp and slid out from under the cloak. They heard footsteps.
"Get it, get it," hissed Sirius, pushing Peter out from under the cloak. Peter grabbed the paper and put his wand to it quickly, stammering, "Mischief managed," just as a light rounded the corner.
"Thought we'd take a tour of the castle, did we?" Filch. He bore down on Peter as the shortest Marauder stood rooted to the spot, clasping the map tightly in his hands. "What's this then?" asked Filch, ripping it from his fingers. He unfolded it, turned it over, then folded it back up and shoved it in his pocket. "Thought you'd pull some prank, aye? Don't lie! I've got you now, boy. I've always known you were as bad as the rest of 'em. Filthy, lying, leaving dungbombs all over my office, buckets full of rabid newts-"
Filch seized Peter by the scruff of his robes and marched him down the hall, still listing personal offenses caused by three of the boys still hidden under the cloak in the dark behind them. It was a long time before they breathed again, and even longer before they continued their journey.
They had lost the map. Outside the common room, they decided Geoff should go in and make sure the coast was clear, as he had the best excuse. Geoff glanced back at the empty air behind him before clearly stating the password, basiliskto the wall before him. It swung open with barely a creak, and he proceeded inside, sensing rather than hearing the footsteps that followed him.
Snape's dark eyes flicked up from his textbook and fixated on Geoff, his thin lips forming a scowl beneath his hooked nose. "Mansfield."
"Er - hi, Snape. Severus?" He gave a hopeful, tentative smile which the Slytherin boy did not return, his pallid features still frowning across the common room. Geoff's smile evaporated and he shifted his weight from one foot to the other. "The lighting in here is... unique?" he tried, gesturing at the greenish windows. "I guess we're under the lake? Do the merpeople have some kind of bioluminescent-"
"As riveting as your small talk is, Mansfield, I'd much rather you shut it and get out of my common room. What are you doing in here, anyway?"
"Looking for Emilie."
Snape cocked an eyebrow, unconvinced. "She isn't here. She's at the library. You two didn't make plans to meet tonight?"
"I thought I'd stop by and surprise her."
"Well, surprise, she isn't here. There's the door." Snape jerked his head in the direction of the common room's entrance, indicating the door's location with his abnormally large nose as he idly flipped a page in his book.
Several moments passed in which Geoff stood rooted to the spot, opening and closing his mouth several times as he tried to think of anything else to say to stall. He heard a muffled curse behind him as an end table shook, rattling the lamp that sat on it, as one of the Marauders presumably bumped into it under the cloak on their slow trek toward the dormitories. Snape's dark eyes darted up from his book and narrowed as they landed on Geoff, who abruptly jumped backward nearly a foot, grunting in pain and clutching at his leg. "Ran into a table," he said quickly as the Slytherin frowned at him. "There's so much furniture in here - don't see how you lot manage to walk around without running into anything, ha ha..."
The weak laugh died on his lips under Snape's glare, and the ginger Gryffindor quickly turned and fled the common room, hoping the others knew what they were doing.
Once the wall panel that served as the entrance had shut behind Geoff, Snape snapped his book shut and rose from his seat, drawing his wand from an inner pocket of his robes as he began prowling around the common room. Something was amiss, and he'd bet all the Galleons in Gringotts that James Potter and Sirius Black were behind it.
James Potter and Sirius Black, meanwhile, had managed to steer themselves, Remus, and the cloak to the other side of the common room without running into any other furniture, and were deliberating in low tones whether the boys' dormitory was down the stairs to the left or to the right while Remus served as lookout, keeping a wary eye on Snape as the Slytherin made his rounds through the common room, prodding and poking at pillows, chairs, lamps, and even empty air on occasion.
"It's the left, Padfoot," James muttered. "That's how it is in Gryffindor Tower."
"Prongs, have you ever even looked at our map?" Sirius hissed back. "The girls' dormitories are to the left down here."
"I don't make a habit of checking up on the blighters every night before bedtime and memorizing their House layout! I'm telling you, boys' dorms are to the left."
"Check up on them? I don't check-"
Remus elbowed the both of them to silence them as Snape's greasy head swiveled around to look in their direction. He silently pointed to the hallway on the left, and the three of them shuffled their way to the stairs, heading down further into the dungeons. The first door they passed was labeled First Year Girls, and after quite a bit of shuffling around, the three of them managed an about-face and headed back up the stairway, Remus now leading them. The worn dungeon steps were not the most even of stairs, and just as they topped the staircase and were about to emerge back into the common room, Remus tripped over the top stair, tumbling out from under the cloak and crashing into a nearby chair.
Sirius and James took one look at Snape's face as the Slytherin turned sharply at the noise, wand raised, and they quickly began scrambling to try and cover their friend back with the cloak before Snape spotted them, but it was too late. His yellow teeth bared in a triumphant grin, Snape swooped down on to Remus, grabbing the Gyffindor by the collar of his robes as he regained his feet.
"Well, well, first Mansfield and now Lupin. Potter and Black must be around here, too. Where are they?"
"M-Mansfield was here?" Remus asked, trying to affect a look of surprise. "Must have been to visit his girlfriend, I don't know anything-"
"Don't lie to me, Lupin, I know you're all up to something, and I'm going to find out what it is. Now where are Potter and Black?"
"Haven't seen them all night-"
"Where are Potter and Black?"
Remus's eyes flicked involuntarily over Snape's shoulder at the spot where Potter and Black had last been, and the Slytherin was turned around in an instant, flinging Remus vaguely in the direction of one of the many elegant chaises strewn about the common room as he threw himself toward the spot. His grasping hands met only empty air, however, as James and Sirius had crept over to the other staircase and disappeared down it.
Snape rounded back toward Remus and bellowed, "WHERE ARE POTTER AND BLACK?"
Meanwhile, down the staircase to the boys' dormitories, James was wrestling with having left Remus behind to deal with Snape. A few curious Slytherin boys had poked their heads out of their bedrooms, looking up and down the hallway for the source of the commotion, though most of the younger ones quickly ducked back into their dormitories.
"D'you really think we should have left Moony up there? We were already down two from our original five," James muttered. "Now it's just going to be the two of us poking around."
"Moony can handle Snivellus," Sirius reassured him. A pair of Slytherin upperclassmen passed by them, discussing amongst themselves what the shouting could be about, and Sirius was thankful that he was invisible, otherwise James might have seen the look of doubt that flickered across his face. "Besides," he went on as they continued down the stairs, hugging closer to the wall as a few more Slytherins passed them, "five of us would have just been tripping over each other down here. This will be much more efficient, trust me."
"Whatever y-" James was cut off as Mulciber came barreling up the staircase, attracted by Snape's shouting, running headfirst into him and knocking him out from under the cloak.
The Slytherin threw out an instinctive hand and caught James by the front of his robes before he hit the stone steps, staring at him for a moment before recognition dawned. "Potter?" He stared at him blankly for a moment, then his eyes narrowed as more shouting erupted from the common room. "What in Merlin's name is-"
"Just checking up on you lot, making sure you're still here." James said hurriedly. "And look at that, you are! I'll just be heading back-"
"I don't think so." Mulciber shoved him up the stairs toward the common room, following close behind him, leaving Sirius to finish the last few meters to the seventh years' dormitory alone.