Chapter Six: Some Magical Artifact

Jen's curiosity was piqued, and she examined the piece of parchment as she absentmindedly found the potion and tossed it to Seamus, who'd been requesting it most of the way up. Unfolding the parchment, she found it was actually rather large, but blank.

"Some magical artifact," muttered Ryan as he took his Potions book out of his bag. They were lucky that the next day was a weekend, because the detentions had also gotten them a bit tight on time for homework, and Jen didn't blame Ryan a bit for trying to get some done now.

"Hey," said Jen optimistically. "At least I have parchment to do that Transfiguration essay on."

Ryan rolled his eyes expressively but grinned despite himself. His eyes roamed to Seamus, who was working on cleaning the ink spots off his Charms homework. "Nice work," he commented dryly.

"I'm thinking of telling Flitwick it's abstract art, because I couldn't express myself fully in words," replied Seamus, looking unhappily at the page. "Think he'd buy it?"

"Bloody hell!" exclaimed Jen. The ink she'd just written her heading with was spreading out to form spidery writing, and Jen read,

Messers Moony, Wormtail, Padfoot and Prongs wish to tell the writer to keep their abnormally tiny writing off this parchment.

"Definitely more than it seems," she remarked thoughtfully.

"Yes," said Ryan dryly. "Not only is it a useless piece of parchment, it can also throw insults at you."

Jen ignored him as she scribbled, What if I don't want to? As she finished the last word, the first was rapidly disappearing. She was rewarded, though, when instead of coming up with an instant retort, the parchment stayed blank for a moment, as if thinking, then asked,

Do you solemnly swear you are up to no good?

"If my mum is to be believed, I can always say that," Jen muttered, then continued more seriously, "I solemnly swear I am up to no good."

Ink spidered across the whole page, forming rooms and halls, tunnels and corridors. A heading at the top formed the words, "The Marauder's Map" in fancy script. Jen gasped as she looked down at the Gryffindor common room and saw a dot with a tiny label right where she sat. Looking closer, she saw that the label was indeed her own name, and that there were similar notations for Ryan and Seamus.

"Useless piece of parchment," she remarked softly to Ryan, who stared over her shoulder. Looking back at the map, she saw a dot labeled "Timothy Arget"- a particularly prudish prefect- coming up behind Ryan. "How do I turn you off?" she asked the map frantically. A space in the middle cleared and a simple question formed there.

Mischief managed?

"Yes, yes, mischief managed," she replied hastily, looking over her shoulder at the approaching prefect. When she looked back, she was relieved to find a blank piece of parchment.

"What's that?" the prefect queried suspiciously. The three of them were gaining something of a reputation, even though they'd only been caught a handful of times and had only a few detentions.

"Parchment," said Jen innocently. Looking slightly annoyed, she continued, "I was being a good little girl and working on my Transfiguration essay until you came along. Have you always been this disruptive?"

Tim the Prefect opened his mouth to reply, but Seamus cut him off. "We try and try to get our homework done, but here you are, causing problems as always. You're single-handedly causing me to fail Charms, you know that?"

"Perhaps we should report this... shortcoming... to the proper authorities. I'm sure Professor McGonagall would want to know that one of her prefects has such horrid personality defects and is doing such things to poor, innocent first years such as us," said Ryan, the look on his face suggesting that he thought just staying here, and not reporting such a thing immediately, was against his better judgement.

Most Hogwarts prefects are used to being taunted, annoyed, physically and magically threatened, and/or hated because they catch students in the midst of wrongdoing more often than teachers. They can dole out punishment like teachers, but this doesn't gain them any of the prowess and respect of actually being a teacher. They are unused, however, to being blackmailed and threatened with the rules themselves, and this one was no exception.

Looking positively dumbfounded, Tim muttered a quick, "Sorry," and hurried away, leaving Jen, Seamus, and Ryan doubled over with laughter.