"Gagh! If I never see the inside of another toad it'll be too soon." James swashed his way into the common room and flopped dramatically onto the nearest couch. McKinnon glanced up at Remus and rolled her eyes, pointedly dotting an 'i' on her herbology paper.
"Well. Potions is on Wednesday, so you'd best prepare yourself." Remus said mildly, flipping through his arithmancy notes without really reading any of them. James and Sirius were back after all, and it was nearly impossible to concentrate on anything but them when they decided that they deserved your complete and total attention. Which they did, regularly.
"Don't remind me." Sirius stomped over with a scowl. "I haven't even done the reading Slughorn assigned for last week."
"Me neither." James said cheerfully.
McKinnon smiled prettily at both of them. How did she make her curls bounce like that? "Well maybe if you spent less time in detention you might actually get some studying done. Hmm?"
Sirius grinned. "Yeah? Looking for a study partner?"
McKinnon rolled her eyes again, and indicated Remus himself (and Peter's books) with a graceful wave of her hand. And really, what kind of fourteen year old girl was graceful? Except Evans, who obviously didn't count. And maybe Niamrach, but she was a fourth year, wasn't she?
"Aw, you don't want him, McKinnon, he's boring." Sirius tried for a winsome smile.
"He also actually studies, which is crucial in a study partner." McKinnon said pertly, gathering up her books with a sweep of the arm and a flick of her blonde hair. "So goodnight. I'll finish actually studying upstairs while you distract Remus. Tell Peter goodnight for me, will you?" McKinnon turned towards Remus and he bobbed his head in response.
James took out a little mirror and started to fiddle with it. "She's right though. All these detentions are starting to take up a lot of time. And, you know, we do eventually need to study. OWLs are just around the corner, as Evans keeps reminding us."
A minute and a half, this time, before James found a way to fit Evans into the conversation. Remus didn't reply, and Sirius just made a humming noise. All three of them had decided on a policy of pretending that Evans didn't exist, and while it didn't exactly work well, none of them had yet come up with anything better.
"Yeah, if we hadn't had detention on Saturday we could have watched Hufflepuff crush Slytherin. How many times in a century do you think that happens?" Sirius said, with a dreamy expression on his face.
"Never. It didn't actually happen, but if we did miss the mass hallucination. We've got to do something about it." James said, with a tone that was more than a little worrying. Because he couldn't mean what any reasonable person would mean when they talked about not getting into any more detentions. No. This was going to become some sort of project, that he would manage to drag everyone else into, and when it all went up in flames then they all would get detention, or worse.
Remus cleared his throat. "Have you considered maybe… um... not doing things that would get you detention?"
This actually stopped James' momentum for a moment; he visibly paused and looked at Sirius, as if for guidance. Then they both burst out laughing.
So. That had gone well. Remus grimaced.
"Hogwarts would be terribly dreary without someone to put itching powder in Parkinson's pants, don't you think? No, I was thinking more of a way to avoid getting caught." James said.
Sirius shrugged. "Those tracking charms do work pretty well."
"Yeah, when you remember to, you know, actually use them." James smacked the back of Sirius' head. So, apparently, it was Sirius' fault they'd gotten caught. This time.
"How many charms do you think I can cast at once? I can do mayhem or recon, but not both. I've only got one wand." Sirius whined.
Once again Remus felt the terrible pull of a bad idea. He knew it was a bad idea. Unfortunately, the fact that he knew it was a bad idea had no effect on him whatsoever. Because all they ever had to do was make their ridiculous schemes into something that sounded like a problem to be solved, a puzzle to crack, and he was sucked into the madness like any other idiot.
"Embedded charms. Or runes." he heard himself say.
Sirius perked up. "That's an idea. Like a talisman, or something, that heats up when somebody gets close."
"Yeah, but it should be more precise, right? It's not like, say, Perks or his girlfriend would have turned us in, right?" James pointed out, smirking.
Sirius nodded. "Hmm. So something to detect prefects, teachers and Filch?"
James seemed to consider this. "We can track the prefects with the badges I guess, but teachers? Maybe we should keep it simple. Whenever there's a person…"
"McGonagall's an animagus though." Remus pointed out, ignoring the odd, complex sensation that resulted from realizing that 'the prefects' obviously did not include him, despite his actually being a prefect. "And then there's Filch's monster…"*
"So, people and... cats?" James amended.
"How do you plan to track the professors though?" Sirius asked curiously.
"Why are we tracking professors?" Peter's head popped out from the stairway, quickly followed by the rest of him.
"Fewer detentions." Sirius and James replied.
And Peter, damn him, nodded his head, as if that made complete and perfect sense. Then he frowned. "Well, you could track prefects with the badges… professors you might have to do individually, get a bit of hair or something and some thaumaturgy… will it work on Filch?"
"Why wouldn't it?" James asked.
Sirius rolled his eyes. "He's a squib, idiot."
"No, no, I was wrong, thaumaturgy should still work, it uses the magic of the caster and inherent magic." Peter said, in an alarmingly reasonable tone of voice. "What were you guys thinking, amulets, talismans? Like a compass, that points toward them, or sommat?"
They both bobbed their heads. "Yeah."
"What if there's more than one person around though?" Peter asked. "That'd confuse the compasses. Most of those charms are real simple. Easy to break."
"Runes?" Sirius suggested.
Peter rolled his eyes. "Says the bloke who picked divination over Arithmancy. Runes don't fix everything Sirius. You'll have the same problem with runes, or anything else you come up with. It's the magic itself that's the problem, not the tools you're shaping it with."
Everyone was silent for a minute.
"What about a map?" Remus said finally.
"A map?" James raised his eyebrows.
Peter perked up. "Yeah. A map. That could work. Then we wouldn't lose the work we did to keep track of individual signatures either."
"You want to embed locator spells into a map?" James frowned.
Peter shook his head rapidly. "No, no, not locator spells, too much power, too many things to go wrong. You'd have it based on location, the map'd know where it is, and it'd sense someone near you based on a signature you gave it, and so on."
James frowned again "...I'd wondered about that, but none of us know how to do that kind of magic, and if we did use thaumaturgy, that could get really dangerous… like, we're not talking detention here... we could accidentally kill someone."
Sirius leapt to his feet, and Remus almost reared back at the suddenness of the movement. "No. No! We're thinking about this all wrong. We don't have to do the magic." his eyes were bright and Remus wondered for a brief, horrible moment, whether the insanity truly was catching. "The magic is already done."
They stared at him blankly.
"The letters." Sirius said, exasperated, jabbing a finger towards... nothing "Don't you see? When we got our letters…"
Remus frowned "But that was just where we lived…"
"No, no…" James interrupted, a massive grin taking over his face. "It was really specific, remember? Our rooms, not just our house, and that's all we need. We don't need to know which table someone's sitting at, just that they're in the Great Hall. That's brill, Padfoot."
Now that Remus thought about it, there had been a brief section in Hogwarts: A History that mentioned the quill that dealt with admissions. Which meant that it was permanent charm work, not wandwork. Which meant that it might be possible. But… Remus wrinkled his nose, spotting an issue almost immediately. "Yes, but it was where we slept, so it must use some sort of magical residue and track that. Will it even work if someone's moving too quickly?"
He was also of the private opinion that even Professor Flitwick's early morning shuffle would be too fast, but it never paid to shoot down too many of their ideas too quickly. Just the really, really dangerous ones. Like thaumaturgy. Merlin's pants, just when you thought Peter was the reasonable one...
Sirius raised a hand. "And, another question, how're we supposed to get ahold of The Quill?"
Remus turned to look at him, startled. A moment later, so did James and Peter.
Sirius looked faintly offended, then gave up with a huff. "Why does everyone assume I can't read? Not all your books are boring, Moony."
Peter started pacing and Remus stifled a sigh. They were really going to do it, weren't they? The whole mad process... once either James or Peter started pacing it was a lost cause.
James ran a hand through his hair. "You're right though, if it works on magical residues, it probably won't even be able to track someone walking across the room. Not permanent enough."
There was something they were missing, something just out of reach, and Remus could almost, almost, touch it with his mind. Here they were, attempting the impossible, tracking hundreds of people… even the Ministry's tracking charms had complications, and they had adult, (presumably) fully-qualified, employees whose job it was to do that sort of thing. Even the trace was low-grade, conditional magic. It only responded if the magic of the person being tracked did something. Otherwise you'd have to constantly monitor everything, with no way to filter things out or keep track.
Maybe… and then it hit him. They didn't really care about identifying people, though that would be nice. Peter had already said it. Location.
He clapped his hands together. "That's it! Thaumaturgy."
James looked tempted, but grimaced. "Nope. Still too dangerous."
Remus grinned. He couldn't have stopped if he'd tried. "No, not people. Hogwarts. Hogwarts."
Sirius looked as if he'd taken a bludger to the face for half a moment, then his face spit into an enormous grin and he slapped Remus on the back. "Yes! Parfait! Like a mirror. We don't need to know. Hogwarts knows."
Peter's eyes lit up. "A little piece of Hogwarts. To reflect the whole."
Remus nodded. "Right. We don't need to actually track people, we'll see their "reflections" on our map, and, you know, I bet we could plug in people's names and match them to their signatures."
"That's…" James stopped. Then he grinned. "That could work."
Peter opened his mouth, probably to start listing all the complications of this particular plan, the difficulties of reverse-engineering the Quill's charms, and then how the arithmancy necessary to unite the two magics was probably 7th year material. Easily. All of which was probably true, and it made Remus dizzy just thinking about it. But none of that meant that it was impossible. It just meant that they'd probably fail.
His grin widened. Peter shut his mouth and grinned back.
Remus felt as if he should be worried about this plan for a brief moment, and then, in a rare moment of unconcern, decided to let the feeling float by him. Really, their chances of accidentally blowing up Hogwarts were next to nothing.
"So we're going to do this." he said, probably unnecessarily.
" 'Course we are." Sirius made a sort of… wiggling motion, puppyish in his enthusiasm. Really, all that was missing was the tail wagging. "I'll even read if I have to. We're definitely doing this."
On the one hand, if any of the professors found out about it they would probably be in detention until they graduated. On the other hand, while that was certainly true, all four of them could probably get any Charms apprenticeship that they wanted. If it worked.
If.
Remus couldn't stop grinning. It was definitely going to work. He knew it.
"We're brilliant." Sirius leaned back in his chair, as if that settled everything. In his mind it probably did.
Remus' heart was still racing. He looked over at Peter and James, their eyes bright, and, for once, the scheming looks they were giving each other didn't send a shiver down his spine.
Well, actually it did. But it was a different kind of shiver.
This was going to work.
He looked down and realized suddenly that he was now standing up too.
Right. Okay. Okay. But they still had to make it work. Which meant, basically, a lot of extra homework for no credit for the next, oh, forty years or so. It was going to take up a lot more time than the detentions they were supposed to be avoiding. And he didn't even get detention as often as they did. But somehow that didn't matter anymore.
He took a deep breath. Someone had to have a plan at least. And it was better that it not be one of Sirius'.
"There's another issue, of course. It'll only track people who are in, or who've gone to Hogwarts." Remus said, more calmly. And, he thought, we'll still need to get hold of the bloody Quill.
"So? All the professors went here, didn't they? I doubt that it'll be an issue unless we have a horde of Beauxbatons students descend on the school." James pointed out.
Sirius got a glazed look in his eye. "Which, by the way, would be totally worth it. I mean, have you seen French girls?"
Remus rolled his eyes. "Yeah. And we could probably add in one or two people with sympathetic tracking if we got a new professor, I guess. That wouldn't overload the map." Probably.
"Or…" James chewed his lip thoughtfully. "Hogwarts has got to keep a list somewhere of whoever goes in and out. We should try to get hold of that too."
Remus winced. All he was seeing in the future was detentions and more detentions, but... there was The Map. Great. Now it had capital letters. He'd named it, and it was going to follow him home. He could never let Sirius or Peter find out.
Peter started pacing again. "Right. Well, I'll talk to Professor Abaci tomorrow..."
Remus' eyes widened in horror. "You're not going to…"
Peter rolled his eyes. "Of course I'm not going to tell him, idiot. But I can say I'm doing a research project, which will be suspiciously similar to this, and find out what books we need."
Sirius raised his eyebrows. "He won't think there's something fishy?"
"Of course he will. I'm friends with you lot, after all. But he won't say anything; I'm his favorite." Peter grinned.
"Yeah. Right." Sirius replied. "Thought Remus was everyone's favorite."
"Not in Arithmancy, I'm not. Blasted numbers." Remus grumbled, then sent Peter a fake glare: "Toady."
Peter laughed. "You're teacher's pet in all the other electives. I can't have Arithmancy?"
"Oh, alright then." Remus gave a dramatic huff and started cleaning up his papers.
James dragged himself off the couch and started to head towards the dorms. "So if you were both studying with McKinnon, what were you doing upstairs Pete?"
Peter glanced at Remus. "Looking for my History of Magic notes."
"But they're right here." Sirius pointed out. Unhelpfully.
"Why, so they are." Peter agreed, as he took them from Sirius with the gingerly air of someone removing an infant from the arms of a madman. His tone of surprise was almost perfect.
Almost.
James grinned and turned on Remus. "Oh. I see. Are you mad at us for interrupting your alone time with McKinnon, Moony?"
Remus decided to go for 'quiet dignity.' As much as anyone could have any dignity with Potter or Black in the room. "I don't know what you're talking about."
Sirius barked out a laugh. "Ha! Your mouth says 'no,' but your ickle, red ears say 'yes, yes!' "
"Oh shut up, both of you." Remus felt the rest of his face flush and shoved the rest of his papers into his bag. Of course, they slept in the same dormitory, so there really was no escaping them, was there?
James and Sirius looked at each other, then turned back to him with matching grins: "Ah… no."
"Oh, don't make fun, you guys. Despite Remus' nose I'm sure they'll have adorable babies." Peter said, and ducked when Remus threw a quill at him.
"Traitor." Remus mouthed.
