The rest of January flew by in a blur of essays and snog sessions with Sirius behind the curtains of our four posters. We never tried to do anything more than snogging.

On the full moon, the marauders and I left the Shrieking Shack again, and to be honest, it was once again a massive relief to not be constricted to one small shack and be able to run free with the three greatest friends I'd ever had.

And in the last week of the month, there was a sign on the noticeboard of the Gryffindor common room for all the sixth years, which sparked all of our attention. It read:

If you are seventeen years of age or will turn seventeen on or before the 31st of August next, you are eligible for a twelve-week course of Apparition Lessons from a Ministry of Magic Apparition instructor. Please sign below if you would like to participate. Cost 12 Galleons.

Sirius, James, and Sirius all signed the sign straight away on Monday morning without hesitation, but one thought crossed my head before signing: Twelve galleons!?

I only had five sickles on me at school for Hogsmeade visits. But twelve galleons? Never heard of it.

At breakfast, I decided to write an owl to my parents about it. This was an extremely important thing

Hi Mum and Dad,

The course for apparition starts next week, and apparently, it's twelve galleons? Am I going to be able to do it? It's OK if I can't, I'm sure there's another way to get my license.

Love Remus

I sent the letter off with one of the school owls and listened to everyone else talk excitedly about the apparition course, and stirred my cereal around in the bowl. Just as we were all about to get up to get our things for class, the school owl returned a letter for me, which I opened eagerly straight away.

Remus,

Don't worry about the price. Sign up for the apparition course. If you don't, you'd have to take the test with no proper practice. I promise you it will be OK. The payment isn't due until the end of the summer break.

Love Mum and Dad

I still felt nervous, but at lunch, I hesitantly signed the poster for the apparition course. Maybe I'd have to get a job again in July.

Calm down, I thought to myself, it's only January, you've got plenty of time.

On the first Saturday of February, almost all the sixth years and two seventh years gathered in the Great Hall for our first apparition lesson. I knew it was the Great Hall because I'd walked to the Great Hall and I knew the castle well enough to know the positioning of the hall, but despite all that, it didn't look like the Great Hall at all.

The four long tables that usually took up the whole room were all gone, probably by the simple tap of Dumbledore's wand, and replaced by dozens of hoops lying on the floor.

"Good morning, everyone!" came a bright voice suddenly, causing us all to jump, as a middle-aged, small man with white wispy hair came bursting into the Great Hall. The other marauders and I all looked at each other. It was Wilkie Twycross, who we'd tried to convince to teach us to apparate when we were fourteen. Surely, he wouldn't recognise us now.

Wilkie Twycross spent the next half an hour lecturing us about something called the three D's: Destination, Determination, and Deliberation. Apparently, if we were determined on our destination, then moved with deliberation, we could easily apparate. We were all assigned to hoops that were right next to each other, then had to try to apparate from one to the other.

Destination: that hoop, I thought to myself, I am determined to get to that hoop...

I closed my eyes, still picturing the hoop that was in front of me, spun on the spot, then opened my eyes again. I was still in the first hoop. I looked around at the others, but none of them had moved either, which reassured me that I wasn't just incompetent, or too fatigued from the full moon the previous night to apparate.

I tried again, focusing so hard on the second hoop that I thought my brain would blast out of my head. I closed my eyes and spun on the spot once again, but I still couldn't do it. How did everyone else make it look so easy?

"You need to move with more deliberation, young man." Wilkie Twycross's voice right next to me caused me to jump and completely ruined my determination.

"Um, OK, thanks," I said to him, then waited for him to walk to another student before trying to apparate again, still with no luck.

"To be honest, I feel like he's not teaching us anything. Like, yeah, the three D's... we get it, but like, what else do we need to do?"

"Wormtail, the three D's is literally it," said James. "It's all we need to focus on, we're all just lacking in at least one of them."

"Why?" Peter complained.

"Uh, maybe because we've never apparated before?" said James. "It will come over time and practice. That's why we're doing these lessons. You won't get everything straight away. Anyway, I have this amazing idea that I need to tell you all."

"What is it?" I asked, and James led us upstairs from the common room to our dormitory so no one else could listen in to our conversation.

"So, you know, every full moon since December, so the last three full moons, we've been leaving the shack, right?" said James, and we all nodded. "Well, I don't know about you guys, but I've been seeing things around the school grounds that I have never seen before. And... maybe there are whole parts of the school we have never seen. Like, things that no one else knows about. For example, that passageway to the Honeydukes cellar..."

"Yeah," said Sirius. "Cut to the chase. What's your idea?"

"What if we made a map of the whole school?" said James. "Including all the little things that only we know about?"

"But... then if someone else found the map, they'd find out about the things only we know about," I said.

"We'll enchant the map, make it have a password," said Sirius.

"Yes!" James cried, then pulled his wand from his pocket and pointed it at the parchment cupboard in our dormitory. "Accio parchment... OK, let's do this, guys."

"Now?" said Peter, taken aback, looking at the parchment that had just flown to the table.

"No time like the present," said Sirius.

"OK, let's just draw out what everyone knows first," said James. "We'll go floor by floor..."

We spent the rest of our Saturday drawing up the entire floorplan of the castle, and by the time we were doing the last thing, the Astronomy tower, it was close to eleven o'clock at night, and we were all exhausted, especially since it had been a full moon just the night before.

"I think that's a... good day of work," said James, stumbling into his four-poster and collapsing into it without another word.

We spent that Sunday exploring the castle together, looking for any other secret rooms or passageways. We only found one: a tapestry in the trophy room that gave way to a passageway, which led to another part of the castle, near the Charms classroom.

As soon as we got to our dormitory we excitedly added that passageway to the map, as well as the passageway behind the statue of the one-eyed witch, and the path from the Whomping Willow to the Shrieking Shack.

"How can we lock it and make a password?" Peter asked.

"Well, we could put a vanishing spell on the ink," I said. "And jinx a certain word or phrase onto the reappearing spell... we'd probably need another word or phrase for the vanishing spell for it to work better..."

"OK, well, the phrase should be 'Lily Evans is the most beautiful woman to ever grace this earth'," said James.

"No, it should be 'Sirius Black is legendary'," said Sirius.

"Why don't we make it something about all of us," I said, "Instead of focusing on one person? Like... welcome to the map created by the marauders."

"Maybe instead of calling it 'the map created by the marauders', it should just be 'the marauder's map'?" Peter suggested, and we all nodded in agreement.

"So... welcome to the marauder's map?" I suggested.

"Maybe that should be a greeting message when the map is actually opened," said James. "The password should be promising that we're going to use the map for its intended purpose: to break the rules and sneak around the school."

"I promise that I will break the school rules," said Peter.

"No, not the word 'promise'," said Sirius, "that's too bland. We need it to be like... I cross my heart and hope to die that I'll break the school rules with this amazing map that the amazing marauders have created."

"Maybe it shouldn't be so long, so we can actually remember it," I said. "I swear to break the rules. Short and sweet. And then the closing phrase could be something like... I've broken the rules. Like, telling the map that you've managed to do what you intended to do."

"Managed..." said James. "What about, to close the map: Mischief managed."

"Yes, that's perfect!" said Sirius. Everyone seemed to agree on that, so I tapped my wand on the map and said, with a lot of force in my voice and magic, "Mischief managed."

The entire map faded away, and there was just a blank piece of parchment. I tapped my wand at it again and cast a reappearing spell, causing the map to appear again. "So, now if we try to vanish it..." I cast a vanishing spell, and nothing happened. "Or say something else to it... go away..." The map stayed still on the parchment. "But if we say... mischief managed..." Once again, the ink faded away, leaving just a blank piece of parchment.

"It's genius!" James cried, excitement gleaming in his eyes.

Over the next week, we managed to create a phrase to open the map, 'I solemnly swear that I am up to no good', and we'd created a greeting that would appear in writing whenever we opened the map.

We'd intended it to be:

'Messers Moony, Wormtail, Padfoot, and Prongs

Purveyors of Aids to Magical Mischief-Makers are proud to present

THE MARAUDERS MAP'

But Peter had accidentally written the word 'Messers' without the second E, so it had turned out as 'Messrs', and we didn't know how to change it. However I found out later that Messrs was actually a way to refer to more than one man, so it kind of fit anyway, even if it had been a mistake.

And even though we'd only just started to develop the map, all four of us were already obsessed over it like it was our newborn child.