Chapter 110

Breakthrough

The Marauders spent their first break of the day in the library. James and Sirius weren't terribly excited by this, but they were eager to choose their project for Defence Against the Dark Arts.

While they were bouncing ideas around in the main library, James (who would just do whatever Sirius picked with him) was planning on sneaking into the restricted section. They had to resolve this animagi problem soon, or the enchantments they had placed on themselves would wear off, and he didn't really want to know what would happen when they did.

Invisibility cloak on (James kept it in the bottom of his school bag at all times) he crept into the darkened library while Sirius distracted the librarian by his mere presence in the library.

James could not believe he'd gotten himself banned again, every single year.

He ran a hand along the bindings as he read the titles looking for one in particular. He didn't dare use a summoning charm since he didn't want any record of him being here and magic could usually be traced. If anyone found him with this book, it wouldn't take any spectacular leaps of logic to guess the truth.

"T through Z, L through S..." James mumbled as he skipped those two aisles altogether. "B- here we go."

That morning they'd received an owl from Sirius' uncle. Not being a student, Alphard was able to get information for them much easier than they could themselves and he'd been searching for them. He'd found that his great uncle had written a book on animagi that was specifically geared towards doing it without the aid of the ministry. Naturally, due to the illegal nature of the book itself it was no longer being printed and Alphard couldn't manage to find an old copy anywhere. He suspected Orion had one somewhere, but the likelihood of even Sirius getting to see it was minimal at best.

So they were hoping it was in the restricted section. Hogwarts had a copy of just about every book about magic ever made, if it wasn't here than maybe the Room of Requirement was hiding it from them for some reason.

"B-L..." James continued to whisper to himself his finger smearing the dust on the books as he examined their spines before he realized that touching every book he looked at wasn't conducive to the not-leaving-evidence plan and the books with his sleeve to remove any fingerprints. It was still noticeable but thankfully on the wrong books.

Then he found it.

The True Animagi Guide by: Arcturus Black

He grabbed it barely able to hold in his excitement and flipped through a few pages.

"Mandrake leaves." He whispered, not registering that they didn't actually have any mandrake leaves since he was too excited to finally have found the answer. Sirius was going to be upset that the answer came through not just one, but two of his family members, but there were advantages to coming from the darkest old wizarding family in England.

He climbed back into the bathroom he'd used as his excuse to Remus, and shrunk both the book and his invisibility cloak the moment he was alone. Both resting securely in his pocket he finally made his way to the table that housed only Remus and Peter.

"Sirius lost, I presume?" James asked announcing his presence and chuckling when Peter jumped.

"Does Sirius ever win when it comes to Madam Pince?" Remus asked, only peeking up for a second. Peter giggled.

"Does anyone ever win when it comes to Madam Pince?" Peter joked and James sat next to him. James wrote a short vague note of his success folded the note into the pristine paper aeroplane his father taught him to make and sent it flying out the door.

The rest of the day was torture for James. He was anxious to study the book, but couldn't right in front of Moony and he couldn't just transfigure the cover because he'd never remember what the original cover looked like to change it back. Even if he could there was no way the contents of this book could be mistaken for charm or potion studies, he could tell that with just the short glance he'd seen.

Though it was convenient that they had Potions that day, it was a simple task for Sirius to steal a handful of mandrake leaves (James hadn't seen exactly what they had to do with them so the more the merrier) while Slughorn was, once again, admiring Evans' potion making talent.

When the Marauders went their separate ways for individual classes James ran to the seventh floor in his excitement, leaving Peter happy to walk to the Room of Requirement on his own.

A/N) Short one today, sorry.

I used Grammarly to check for mistakes this time, let me know if it's any better. It's a computer so it's not likely to get everything, but it found some more mistakes on this chapter than either of my beta's really ever did so...