A/N:: Ever wonder why the Marauders Map only spoke once...
Disclaimer: Some bits not mine... Yadda yadda. Her disgusting views on trans issues and LGBTQ+ rights are certainly not mine.
Here's the thing about Magic. It doesn't care. People like to think it does, that it protects you or helps you or makes you special. It doesn't. Gravity is the only thing saving us from flying off into the endless abyss of space yet we do not think of gravity as this mystical protector. Just a force. An intangible power that we cannot control nor harness.
"But we can control magic!" I hear you cry. But can you? You cast spells and charms and think it control? Do I control magnetism because I hold a magnet? Or control electricity when I plug in my kettle? We can attempt to manipulate it, guide it, twist a small amount of it to do our bidding but that is not control.
Magic is bigger than your wands and your tricks. It is something that is, that was, that will be. It is a force that was there in the beginning and will be there in the end. Magic does not care for lines or logic or the things that man invented to define the universe it helped create. It is fundamental. Independent of earth, independent of gravity and magnetism, independent of all that came after it.
Independent of Time.
Magic didn't care that it was a map. It didn't care for the meticulous work that four boys who were too clever for their own good had put into it. Magic was just there, seeped into the parchment. A lot of it, poured and drenched onto the paper till it became heavy with the weight of it. It didn't care that the young boys were curled around the 'map' on their dorm floor one evening, staring wide eyed at the words that had sprung onto the page.
"Reveal your secret – Professor Severus Snape"
See the thing was, Magic didn't care for time. The Magic that was in this parchment had always existed. Would always exist. The 'when' was irrelevant. How do you quantify something that always is? A person was talking to the map, so the map showed it. It did not care who to. Or when to. It just did.
People, however, do care for time. They notice when the year is 1974 or 1993 and what side of it they are on. Their lives are so short that counting the time they have is important, a futile compulsion. However, despite their counting and desperate attempts to keep such an idea linear and immovable, they fail to account for Magics' indifference for mans laws.
"Show yourself! - Professor Severus Snape"
"What on Earth is happening?" Peter muttered, staring at the words as they faded back into the parchment. "Why are there words, there's never been words before?"
"I've no idea..." Remus replied, touching his hands to the parchment where the scratched ink had just disappeared. "It feels like someone is trying to get into the map."
"But the map is right here, no one is trying to get into it Moony." James lifted the parchment up to look underneath. The words had gone.
"Maybe from somewhere else in the castle?"
"How would Snivellous even know we have this map, let alone know how to remotely get into it when he's nowhere close!?" Sirius grabbed the parchment from James and turned it over in his hands. "More to the point, why is it saying Professor Severus Snape?"
"Maybe he's trying to trick us into thinking he's a teacher, so we'd let him in?" said Peter
"Well, that's a stupid plan. He didn't even change his name. Did he think we wouldn't notice!?" Sirius snarled and he through the paper back down on the floor.
As though on cue, more words snaked across the frayed parchment and the four boys scrambled forward to read them.
"Professor Severus Snape, master of this school, commands you to yield the information you conceal! - Professor Severus Snape."
"Merlin he's persistent isn't he..." Sirius muttered
"Should we answer?" The three boys turned to look at Peter. "What!?" He said, "He keeps writing to us on the parchment, maybe we should write back... Scare him off?"
"Would that work?" James asked, mostly to Remus who was unofficial map expert based on nothing but his ability to read slightly more books with a marginally better memory retention of the unimportant bits than the other three.
"It wouldn't do anything bad? I don't understand how he's writing directly onto the map though? Not without having direct access to it... He must have gotten a hold of the Map at some point? Maybe put some type of listening spell on it." Remus heard Sirius snarl at this but continued on. "It's clever though, I don't know what charms he could have used... Since he's getting through this way, then logically we should be able to get back that way? Communication charms work both ways."
"Give it!" barked Sirius, "I'll tell him where he can stick that slimy nose of his!"
James snatched the map out of Sirius's grasp before he could lay claim to it.
"Maybe a more diplomatic approach is best if we want to actually keep this map a secret Padfoot?" James said. "If we start getting defensive, he'll know it's important and we can't risk getting this map confiscated."
The two boys glared at each other for a second before Sirius slumped back onto the floor. "You're no fun when you're right..." he muttered.
James smirked. "I must be awful boring so." He declared and handed the map to Remus. "You go first then, so we know what to do."
Remus smirked at Sirius before tapping his wand to the parchment. As he spoke, his words traced themselves onto the parchment as though his own hand was writing them.
"Mr Moony presents his compliments to Professor Snape, and begs him to keep is abnormally long nose out of other people's business."
"Compliments!?" asked Peter, snorting at the scathingly polite remark Remus had wrote into the page.
"I don't know what spell he's using to do this!" Remus replied defensively. "We're going to have to redo our security charms on the map just to make sure this doesn't happen again. I have to compliment him on that."
"You really don't. Give it here!" James pulled the parchment towards him and set his wand on it as Remus had done.
"Mr Prongs agrees with Mr Moony and would like to add that Professor Snape is an ugly git."
"Subtle, James..." sighed Remus, watching as the words sunk into the page.
"Really? That's disappointing I wasn't aiming for subtle." James grinned
"Here, I'll give it a go!" Sirius had his wand on the parchment before Remus could stop him.
"Mr Padfoot would like to register his astonishment that an idiot like that ever became a Professor."
"Oh for the love of-"
But Peter had tapped his wand to the map before James and Sirius had even caught a breath for laughing.
"Mr Wormtail bids Professor Snape a good day and advises him to wash his hair, the slimeball."
Peter, James and Sirius rolled back on the floor, howling with laughter.
"You're all very mature." muttered Remus, picking up the parchment. When there was no response, he folded it back up, took out his wand and began scanning the parchment for unrecognised charms.
"Did he respond?" Sirius asked after a few minutes when the three boys had caught their breath for laughing.
"Nope." Remus replied, his brow furrowed over the parchment. "Must have scared him off."
Peter gave Remus a searching look. "Can't find the listening charm?"
"No..." He said quietly. "Can't see any magic on this thing that we didn't put there."
"Maybe it was a one time spell?", said James, "The kind that wears off after use?"
"Hmm..." Remus nodded absentmindedly. "We'll have go down to the library and look properly. It's not good that the map was so easily infiltrated, we need to have a barrier against that."
"Fine," said Sirius, pulling himself off the floor. "But only if we go down to the Kitchens first, I'm starved."
"Do you just want to go to the Kitchens because they are conveniently located on the way to the dungeons where the Slytherin Common Room is?" Remus said, folding up the map and storing it in the bottom if his trunk.
"Remus!" Sirius gasped, clutching his heart with an air of drama that one would expect to see in an Edwardian novel. "I am shocked at what you are insinuating! James can you believe he would think so little of me?"
"Yes. I do. Although I would also appreciate a trip to the conveniently located kitchens for equally innocent reasons." James said. "And there is absolutely no correlation between that and me bringing my invisibility cloak."
"No, don't-!" Remus started, but James had already flung the cloak over a grinning Sirius and a second later, Peter was tugged arm first into nothingness.
"Eugh fine!" Remus said to the air. "We'll bypass it but we are not breaking into their common room, we can deal with him tomorrow when we've figured out what the spell was."
Sirius's head appeared an inch away from Remus's, floating in thin air. "Knew you'd come around mate!"
There was a swoosh of fabric. And the room was empty.
"Hello?"
James heard his wand clatter to the floor as he watched the words hover on the parchment for a second before once again, disappearing into the parchment.
It had been two years since the last words had appeared on the parchment. They had never found any spells and after updating the password and adding more security charms, the had concluded that the map was now safe for use again.
"Hello?"
The words sprung up again, in a scrawly handwriting James didn't recognise. It was like a mash of all their writings. As scratchy as his own but with Sirius's slant, Remus's large font, Peters joined letters, even Lilys curl on the e and o he only ever saw in her work... It looked like all their words and none of them.
"Is anyone there?"
James knew better than to answer disembodied voice. "Never trust anything if you don't know where it keeps it's brain." That was the old saying his father was always repeating to him after his cousin got into a nasty accident with an irritable lawnmower. James had heard the story too many time with varying levels of colourful descriptions not to abide by it.
But still... He couldn't help being intrigued by the handwriting.
"Hello?"
James debated on waking Peter. It was late, too late. James shouldn't even be awake. Lately, with the castle being abuzz with ministry officials and rumours of war stirring outside the castle, he had become addicted to watching the boundaries of the map... Making sure people were safe, watching the little dots patrol in and out of the gates and searching for any sign of danger.
The words didn't feel dangerous. This didn't feel like Snivellous trying to break in again. It felt desperate... James knew he should tell Remus but he was still in the hospital wing, Sirius's small dot floating beside him on the map. He could wake Peter but what would that achieve?
He couldn't stop looking at the little curly e's...
"I guess not..."
James could almost feel the deflation in the statement. There was an urge in him to reply but he refrained. No good could come of answering the parchment. No good ever came of messing with Magic you didn't understand. James simply stared at the words as they faded into nothing.
"It's Harry... I just wanted to say hi..."
"Harry." James murmured to himself, putting his hands on the strangely familiar scratched handwriting. "Hi Harry..."
The words faded to nothing. James kept watching the parchment but nothing else appeared. Just the rhythmic pattern of dots marching across the page.
Another A/N: Thank you for reading. I want to do another part with this idea with Remus but I need to mull it over a little first. I don't know if its something you'd like to see?