Hi everyone. Sorry I've got a bit lax with the updating again, I've got super caught up with school work and uni applications and EPQ deadlines... #stuggles. Anyone from Exeter or Southampton University here? Haha. Anyways, here's another chapter.

~Phantombookworm

Hermione was late down to dinner that evening. She'd been caught up after Defence, and needed to clarify something with Professor Lupin. Exhausted, with dark rings around her eyes and books tucked safely into her schoolbag, and quietly elated at the fact that she had managed to catch up with her essays, she stumbled through the doors of the Great Hall with her head down. As a result, her eyes focussed slowly onto the deep trails of glitter leading to the Slytherin and Ravenclaw tables.

"What-?"

"Hermione!" Harry was waving frantically to her over the heads of the Hufflepuffs. Threading her way through the shining tell-tale trails, Hermione slotted herself in between Harry and Fred. The bespectacled boy turned to her. "Have you seen the Slytherins? This is hilarious!"

"Okay, what has happened?" Hermione slid her bag under the desk and reached for a serving of minestrone soup, and a slice of thick, white crusty bread.

"Apparently someone pranked the Ravenclaws and Slytherins in Divination, and-"

Hermione tuned out the rest of what Ron was saying, and turned to the fifth year next to her. "This wasn't your doing, by any chance, was it, Fred?" She whispered.

The boy turned to her with his best innocent face. "Who, us?" She stared at him, taking in the wide blue eyes, and the straight mouth. And then the corner of his lip twitched. And his mouth crookedly screwed itself into a smile, and then stretched itself into Fred's trademark, lopsided grin. "Okay, yes, it was us! But have you seen Trelawney yet?"

"Oh, Fred you didn't-" and then Hermione glanced over his shoulder at the head table, and could not control her giggles. "Her hair-" She convulsed again, gasping for breath as she kept laughing. She could feel Harry next to her also turn towards the staff table and then double up laughing. "Is that a beard, Fred?"

"Yep."

Hermione laughed harder, now silently, with tears streaming down her face. She could not stop laughing. Breathless, she reached for a glass of water and took a mouthful, before dragging the cuff of her rode across her cheeks.

"We figured it was time that she got humiliated for once, instead of her doing it to other people." George, opposite, shrugged as he winked at her, before grabbing another hunk of bread off the golden platter in front of him.

Taking a deep breath, Hermione pulled her bowl of soup towards her but then-

"Hic."

"Hermione, have you got hiccups?" Ron asked, trying desperately- and failing miserably- to keep a straight face.

"No, of cour- hic." Hermione rolled her eyes at the boys, who all started to laugh. "Stop, it's not-hic- funny." Pulling her wand from her sleeve, she suddenly saw that all the boys suddenly froze, staring warily at her. "What? I'm just- hic- oh, for the love of- hic- Merlin! Singulta!"

Her hiccups suddenly stopped, and Hermione was suddenly very glad that she'd borrowed the book Magical Minor Remedies from Molly over the summer. A sigh went up from Ron, who seemed rather put out that his entertainment had ceased. Murmuring "singulto," and gesturing at Ron under the table, he was suddenly infected with seemingly seriously contagious hiccups.

"Have you got hiccups, Ronald?" Hermione asked sweetly.

Fred winked at her, grinning as she blushed, whilst the others roared with laughter. Turning back to her meal, Hermione concentrated on the Potions book in front of her, occasionally hearing a dejected hiccup from across the table.

"Oh shut up, Ron," Harry sighed as another dismal hic could be heard. "Hermione, could you-?"

"Singulta."

"Thanks, Hermione." Harry glared at Ron.

"Yeah, cheers, 'Mione." Ron slurped down another mouthful of oxtail soup, seemingly unrepentant.

"So who are the Marauders?" Hermione nudged Fred as he got up to leave the table.

Fred glanced at his twin, who shrugged and turned towards the doorway that lead towards the Gryffindor Common Room, accompanied by Lee, Seamus and Dean. The shrug from his twin seemed to make up Fred's mind, and he turned towards the Library. "C'mon," he said, tugging Hermione along up from the bench and towards the door.

Five breathless minutes later, Hermione set down her heavy satchel in the hidden room by the Library. "Fred, why-"

"Shush," the boy said, already pulling a piece of parchment out of his pocket. Sitting down on the floor, with a lantern next to him, he gestured for Hermione to join him.

Obedient, Hermione sat next to the red-head, the lantern between them.

"The Marauders went to Hogwarts around 20 years ago. They were the ultimate pranksters, and half of the items you see in The Stash used to belong to them. There's a logbook in there, detailing each of those pranks and tricks." Fred smiled. "They're something else."

"But who were they?" Hermione asked, desperate to know.

Fred lifted the piece of parchment, and, drawing his wand, tapped the parchment and muttered "I solemnly swear that I am up to no good."

And before her very eyes, ink began to bloom across the surface of the once-blank parchment, a dark, rich red. And it read-

"Messer's Moony, Wormtail, Padfoot and Prongs are proud to present the Marauders Map." Fred looked proudly at the map. "It's pure gold, and that's how we know all the secret passage ways."

"Can I-?"

"Sure." Fred handed the map over to an eager Hermione, who opened it and gasped.

"It shows everything."

"And everyone."

"Everyone?"

Fred nodded. "And what they're doing every minute of every day."

Hermione bit her lip. How closely did the Weasley twins watch the map? Were they able to see that there were two- or sometimes three- Hermione Grangers running around the castle? This could be the moment where my time-turner licence gets revoked, Hermione thought, panicked. "Do you- do you use it often?" She asked, nonchalantly, examining the magnified part that showed Gryffindor tower Gryffindor Common Room, where she could see Harry and Ron in the armchairs by the fire.

"We know a lot of it now by heart, so we don't use it too often. But if we do we have to be careful not to let Filch see us with it- we nicked it from him back in first year."

"But how would you hide it if he asked you to turn out your pockets?" Hermione asked, turning the parchment over in her hands, examining the oddly familiar handwriting that labelled each dot, each corridor and each room, down to the very one they were sitting in right now.

Fred touched his wand to the parchment again, and said "mischief managed."

The ink looked like it was being dissolved, absorbed by the parchment until nothing was left. You could have stared at it for any length of time and not noticed that it was in fact a magical map. "That's incredible," Hermione said softly, folding the parchment, and handed it back to the red head, who looked at her curiously before tucking it safely back in the pocket of his robes.