"Okay guys, hear me out," said James, putting several sheets of blank parchment of the table in front of the group. "We should make a map of the school."
"I would assume something like that already exists," said Remus. "I mean, the castle's hundreds of years old. Surely someone has done that at some point."
"Nope," said James. "I checked through most of the library's books on Hogwarts, and there was nothing about a map ever being created. I even asked Dumbledore, and he said he wasn't aware of it existing."
"You told Dumbledore about potential rule breaking?" asked Peter. "Isn't that the opposite of what we want to accomplish?"
"Relax," said James. "I told him I was just curious about some of the cool hidden secrets within the castle, and he said he'd be curious about that too. Apparently, there are some rooms in the castle that even he can't locate. Things like a room he accidentally came across full of chamber pots when he really needed to…"
"Gross," said Sirius. "But it also sounds like he's giving us permission to do this."
"That's what I got from that too," said James. "What do you guys think?"
"How did you get 'make a map of the school' from 'I found a room full of chamber pots'?" asked Remus.
"You just need to read between the lines," said James dismissively. "But what do you say? Peter could use his rat form to check out hard to access areas, me and Sirius can use our animal forms outside, we have the invisibility cloak…"
"Do you have any idea how many rules we'd be breaking?" asked Remus.
"Most of them," said James with the wave of his hand. "Are you in or not?"
"I'm happy to help," said Sirius. "Just one thing: wouldn't this take months? It's a huge castle, with hundreds, if not thousands of rooms. Hell, there are seven floors of the core castle, followed by all the basements, dungeons, and extra towers. Then there's all the grounds to cover. And we have to prepare for our O. W. L.'s this year."
"Did I say this was going to be easy?" asked James. "I'd be amazed if we finished this by the end of the school year."
"One last problem," said Remus. "Hogwarts is one of the last places that's not threatened by You-Know-Who. Something like this map could fall into the hands of him, or one of his followers. And then…"
"Way ahead of you," said James. "What we have to do is create a spell that makes us the only people able to read the map."
"That's even more difficult than the plan to create this thing in the first place," said Remus.
"I take it you won't be helping us then?" asked James.
"I didn't say that," said Remus, sighing. "I'm going along with this, only because if I don't, the rest of you will do something stupid and get hurt."
"Excellent," said James. "Now, next we have to work out shifts."
"Shifts?" asked Peter.
"Well, yeah," said James. "I mean, we can't all be doing stuff every night, otherwise we'd be up every night and not getting any sleep."
"James, how long have you been planning this?" asked Sirius.
"…Let's not worry about that," said James dismissively. "Now, obviously Friday and Saturday nights are fine since we don't have classes the next day, and we don't have anything too strenuous on Tuesdays or Fridays so I think…"
"You HAVE been planning this," accused Remus. "How long for, and why?"
James just sighed. "About a year," said James.
"A year?!" asked Sirius. "You've been planning this for a year?"
"Basically, since we worked out how to become animagi," said James. "I mean, we've already broken a ton of international wizarding laws by doing that, why can't we use it to learn more about the castle?"
"I mean, there's gotta be some cool room that no-one knows about," said Sirius.
"Exactly," said James. "And I learned a new spell so we can get everything to scale."
"How the hell is it that you can put this much thought and effort into rule breaking, but only have an A average for your grades?" asked Remus.
"Shut up nerd," said James. "Now, when we make this map, we gotta sign it, and…"
"You want us to sign our names to something we shouldn't even be doing in the first place?" asked Remus. "And I thought you'd thought this whole thing out."
"Not our actually names, obviously," said James. "We need a nickname, or a code, or something…"
"Why do we need all this?" asked Peter. "It just seems like unnecessary extra work."
"It'll look professional," said James. "Can you imagine some kids fifteen to twenty years from now finding the map and thinking 'wow, these guys were really cool?'"
"No, I can't imagine anyone thinking that about Peter," said Sirius.
"HEY!" objected Peter.
"Okay, everyone think about your nickname, and I'll figure out who explores and when," said James, getting up and leaving the group.
"What did we just sign up for?" asked Remus.
"The better question is how did he convince all of us?" asked Sirius. "I mean, I understand Peter, but me and you aren't pushovers."
"HEY!" yelled Peter again.