Chapter 98

The Homonculous Charm

Sirius barreled through the portrait door and stormed up the stairs a ridiculously large book under his shoulder. The people in the common room stared at the staircase, a foreboding sense of dread settling in their hearts. Rumors sprouted up before Sirius even made it all the way up into the fourth year dorm. He climbed into the room shutting the door, locking it with a charm and silencing the entire room with another.

James, now wide awake for the first time in a week, perked up at his friend's actions, expecting something good.

"Looks like someone had a productive trip." Remus had a smile. "What did you find?"

Sirius didn't say anything, he walked over to Remus' bed and dropped the book in front of him and flipped it around so Remus didn't have to read it upsidown.

"I'm pretty sure this isn't allowed to be out of the library." Remus said not really telling him off rather than making an observation.

"Nicked it." Sirius admitted, unashamed, as he flipped to the page he'd been reading.

"The homonculous charm: when cast onto a map it enables the user to track the movements of all those who are in the mapped area."

Remus looked open-mouthed at Sirius' smile. The smile looked almost crazy and his eyes had a dark edge to them that put even the werewolf on edge.

James came over and skimmed over the page they were referring to, being careful to not rip the page.

"Merlin's beard, Sirius! Did you even look at this spell? We couldn't even do patronus charms."

"We can do it," Sirius shrugged.

"I admit it's cool, and I can imagine how useful it would be. But don't you think you're biting off a little more than you can chew?" James warned, Sirius knew he was referring to the animagus training.

"It's been a while since we've all worked on a bit of magic together like this." Sirius' smile didn't waver.

"That is true." Remus agreed, though he was hesitant to promise anything.

"We'd have to do every single page!" James sounded exhausted by the very thought.

"Not if we made it only one page."Remus said, his eyes were distant for a moment before he pulled out a book that Sirius had let him borrow back when they needed to learn a spell for sending secret messages in class. He'd completely forgotten about it.

"What? It's way too big for that."

Remus found the book using the summoning charm and the page using the finding charm, which he had to do three times, he still hadn't mastered the spell.

"This one isn't quite as complex as the other. You know those bags that have extension charms on them? It's kinda like that, but for paper." He said as they looked through the much newer and much smaller book. "Medical researchers use them to keep from being overrun by their notes and report, it's got this way of just knowing what piece of information you're looking for and showing it to you without being told or anything."

"You know…" James started hesitantly. "There was that one potion Slugbreath mentioned, something about giving inanimate objects a shadow of your personality, like the stuff they use to develop pictures… I thought at the time that it might be useful for keeping it safe from anyone who might use it to hurt people."

They looked at each other silently and James groaned. He was rather confident that the nap he'd just had would be the last for quite a while. He slumped over to his potions book, quite sure that Sirius was completely insane for giving them all another project to complete before they'd even got through the hardest part of the animagus training.

"What are you doing?" Peter asked Sirius peeking curiously over his shoulder.

"What does it look like I'm doing, ruddy sod, I'm drawing another map, it's not like we can practice on ours, can we?"

"Be nice, Sirius." James reminded, pulling out the textbook and plopping it down on Remus' bed beside the other two.

"Make a couple, Sirius. That way we have something to use the extension charm on." Remus said, not looking up from his intense study of the literary version of the extension charm.

It was complex, Sirius could have done it quicker but he was going to have his hands full with the homonculous charm.

It would seem as if Remus had the lighter load, not having to sneak out of the dorm in the middle of the night anytime they could get away without getting noticed to strain over books and scrolls of parchment with confusing information that they had to look at other books and scrolls of parchment to understand. But he didn't really have much of an easier time. Instead of breaking his brain over scroll after scroll he had illness and pain as the moon recovered from it's full phase into the blissful peace of the new moon phase.

The Christmas holiday creeped up on them like a vampire hunting for the fun of the sport. With their workload like it was they couldn't wait to get out of classes and not have to add homework to said workload, while Remus would get a break from all studies, which he thought they did too, the others knew they couldn't just stop the animagus studies or they'd forget it all. So Sirius and James found themselves a mere two days before they were set to leave stuffing every book the Room of Requirement had to offer that could even possibly be useful into James' (very manly, he insisted even more so than ever before) bag. The extension charm that Remus had been working on reminded James that he even had one of these. It had taken him a good week to find it in the loose brick on the floor, they had also found a few other things there like a large jug that was stained red with something that looked horridly like blood. It freaked them all out until Peter had remembered that it was dragon blood they'd borrowed from Hagrid for their first Halloween prank. The memory of it had Sirius and James in stitches for a good long time.

"Mum sent me an owl to make sure you come home." James said holding the pink bag as Sirius tried to stuff a ridiculously sized book inside. "As if I'd ever forget."

Sirius didn't comment, trying not to let on how focused he was on the word 'home.'

"That blue one too." James pointed his wand at the book. "Accio book."

They both ducked as a swarm of books flew at them.

"Nice." Sirius smirked at him though James couldn't see it due to the mound of books on top of him.

"Shut it, Black." The words were muffled and only served to amuse their target further.

"James..." Sirius said softly, almost embarrassed, as he pulled books off from his friend.

"Eh?" James was only half paying attention, more focused on removing the scroll that was stabbing him in the bum. Sirius waited until he pulled James completely from the pile before speaking again, his arms crossed tight and refusing to look at the person he was talking to.

"Thanks." Sirius said stiffly.

James smiled and rubbed Sirius' head like he was petting a well behaving dog.

"Any time, Siri. Any time."

A/N) HAha! The map is back, y'all thought I forgot didn't you! Well you were sorta right... I realized they hadn't mentioned the map even once this year... I was going to make it a plot point, but this is what I got instead. My brain just does what it wants sometimes.

Btw: If any of you actually are British and see any glaringly obvious problems with the writing, misused slang, American words that they would never actually use, things that just wouldn't actually happen or be said in Britain in the seventies (please remember that this is in fact set in the seventies) please, please, PLEASE let me know. I'll never be able to make my writing non-american but I can make it as believable as possible with some help. As much as I love getting reviews of people telling me their favorite parts (which I must emphasize I really, really enjoy seeing those reviews) I don't get many reviews that are actually reviews.

I've gone through two beta's already and since my upload schedule isn't even remotely regular I'm not really going to be able to bother with trying another until it's entirely finished. Then I'll try to go back and get it a real good beta who actually knows British phrases and words. I do, however, check for errors my own ways (involving google translate who consistently pronounces Remus' name wrong and now I'm getting the pronunciation stuck in my head _)

Till then please bare with my un-beta'd product.