Disclaimer: I don't own Harry Potter.

Chapter 6: Animagi

The Marauders were walking down the hall under the Invisibility Cloak. It was 1:00 AM and they would get in big trouble if they were caught. They were trying to find secret passageways.

At the moment, they were on the seventh floor. There was nothing on this floor, just some tapestries and empty broom closets.

The boys all felt the walls and made up passwords and tried to find stones that were actually a door, but they didn't discover anything.

"We should go back; there's nothing up here," whispered Remus. The other boys nodded and started walking back down the hall they had come from. Remus suddenly stopped them across from a tapestry. He put his finger to his lips and peered around the corner.

"Anyone up here?" said a raspy voice. It was Mr. Dintrum, the caretaker. He had taken over Mr. Filch, who was said to have a son who was a squib. Mr. Dintrum was a white-haired, old man, with pleasant brown eyes. He was a good wizard, and many of the students liked him. He was one of the only caretakers who anybody didn't hate.

The Marauders held their breath. Maybe he was a good person, but he would still hand out detentions and dock points. They turned around but found that they were at a dead end. Apparently they went down the wrong hallway. They walked to the end of the hall and looked around the corner. Mr. Dintrum was getting closer. They walked back to the dead end, as if hoping a door would appear. Nothing happened, of course, and they ran frantically back and forth a couple of times. Each of them was thinking 'Where can we hide, where can we hide?'

Suddenly, a door appeared. It was shiny gold. The boy looked at it cautiously, but Mr. Dintrum would see them any minute (they had forgotten about the Invisibility Cloak in their panic). James reached forward and turned the smooth handle. The door swung open without a sound and they scrambled inside. There was nothing there. It was just an empty room. The walls were grey and the floor was stone. Sirius pressed his ear against the door and sighed once Mr. Dintrum had passed.

"What is this place?' wondered James, intrigued.

"Dunno," said Peter, leaving the room. As soon as they were all out, the door melted into the wall. Remus went up and felt the wall. There was no indentation or bump of any kind; no sign of the wall had been left.

"It was some sort of secret room," said Remus. "But how did we get in?" Sirius started pacing.

I wanna know how we found this room he was thinking. After a couple of times of going back and forth, a door appeared again. The boys excitedly opened it but there was just a wall. Once it was closed, it melted into the wall, like the last time.

"Sirius, you were pacing! Do whatever you were just doing again!" said James. So Sirius paced around once. Nothing happened. He paced around once more. They looked at the wall, but no door appeared. One more time, he paced, but still the wall remained blank.

"James, I couldn't have paced around twenty times!" Sirius said annoyed, after a while. James looked thoughtful.

"What else were you doing?" asked Remus. "Were you, like, thinking or something?"

"Yeah," said Sirius.

"What were you thinking?"

"That I wanted to know how we found the room."

"Do it again!" Sirius obliged, and a door appeared after three paces. There was just a wall behind the door again, though.

"I think I understand!" said Remus happily. I want lots of chocolate he thought while walking past the wall three times. A silver door appeared. Remus opened it and suddenly they were surrounded by chocolate falling out of the room. "You walk past the door three times thinking about what you want or need…and a room will appear!"

"That's brilliant!" exclaimed James. He pulled out a roll of parchment and scribbled down what to do to find the room.

"I just had a thought," said Remus. The others looked at him expectantly. "We should make something that will help us move around Hogwarts. That will tell us how to get into secret rooms and passageways and where everything is."

"You mean something like a map?" asked James.

"Yeah, I guess. It'd be really useful," said Remus.

"We could also make it tell us where everyone in the castle was," said Sirius.

"Yeah. But that would be really hard, wouldn't it?" said Peter.

"I suppose it would, but we could do it."

"Yeah, we should," said Sirius.

"We'll start on the holidays," said Remus, taking control.

"But that's a week away!" whined Sirius.

"The thing is, we have a lot of work right now, and the full moon," whispered Remus. Even though there was nobody around, he wasn't taking any chances.

"Oh yeah," said Sirius. "In three days." Remus nodded.

"We should get to bed. Classes start in seven hours," he said. The others agreed and James put the directions to finding the room in his pocket. Then they set off to bed.

The next day Remus was very irritable. He would snap at everyone and growl in impatience at the littlest thing. This was, of course, because of the approaching full moon. It didn't used to affect him like this, but that was when he was younger. He didn't really see the need to fight the wolf inside of him when he was younger, but now as he grew older, he had to struggle with it. This caused him to be frustrated and short tempered.

Everyone would walk on eggshells when they were near him. They would whisper instead of talk normally and no one wanted to sit next to the Marauders at meals.

James, Sirius, and Peter were irritable that day too. They had gotten almost no sleep, and were having to try and keep themselves awake in classes. They had each gotten a full week of detentions for falling asleep in McGonagall's class (a couple of times) and lost fifty points (altogether), but Lily and some others earned them back.

Only the Marauders knew where Remus was the day he mysteriously disappeared, again. The rest of the school was led to believe that he just didn't feel well, but the Marauders knew he was in the hospital wing anxiously awaiting sundown when Madam Pomfrey would take him to the Whomping Willow.

As soon as dinner was over, James, Sirius, and Peter rushed off to the library. They had hoped there would be nobody there, but unfortunately for them, Lily was sitting at one of the middle tables, doing her homework. When they entered she looked up.

"What are you doing here?" she asked.

"We're allowed to come to the library aren't we?" snapped James. "What are you even doing here, Evans? The common room is for doing homework and stuff." Lily's face contorted with anger.

"I'm allowed to be here too! And I need some extra information for this essay, Potter." Madam Pince came hurrying over.

"Shh! This is a library! Have some respect!" James smirked at Lily and the Marauders moved over to a shelf. As soon as they saw that Madam Pince was gone, they worked their way over to the restricted section. Lily's eyes were following them, and widened when she saw James picking the lock.

"What are you doing?" she hissed.

"Shut up, Evans!" whispered Sirius. He was on the look out for the librarian.

"You're breaking the rules! What are you doing in the restricted section?"

"If Pince hears, you'll wish you'd never spoken a word," said James, coming out with an armful of books. His eyes trailed to his wand and then back to Lily. "Get it?" Lily nodded, not able to believe they were threatening her.

James set the books down on a back table and they began to work.

After two hours James started gasping.

"I-I think I've got it!" he shouted. Lily – who still hadn't finished her homework – looked up, and so did Sirius and Peter. They immediately crowded around him while Lily tried to see without getting up. Finally she just pushed back her chair and walked over. As soon as he saw her coming, Sirius covered up the book. She frowned.

"Fine, I'll leave," she said.

"No, that's ok, we're done," said Peter. James was scribbling down what he had found and as soon as he was done, they ran out. Lily scowled again, but sat down and continued working.

"All right, Boomslang skin, dragon claw….I think we've got everything," whispered James. They were in the Potions room, going through the private stores. It was dark and the moonlight was casting shadows inside. It was very creepy, in Peter's words.

They silently crept out of the dungeons with the needed ingredients. Deciding to use the room they had found earlier, they went up to the seventh floor.

They soon reached the magical room, which they had dubbed the Room of Requirements.

We need somewhere to become Animagi thought Peter. A blue door appeared and they walked inside. James set down the ingredients and looked at his instructions he copied from the book.

"Mix powdered mint leaves with dragon claw in cauldron…stir three times clockwise, five counterclockwise…" James was muttering. Peter was keeping watch and Sirius was passing James the ingredients needed. James was actually making the potion.

At the stages where they had to wait a couple of minutes, it seemed like hours. None of the boys could wait to get this done.

Finally, after a couple of hours, the potion was ready. James took out the parchment again and looked under the directions for the potion.

"'Each person becoming an Animagus drinks a sip of the potion, less than an hour after it is made. After an hour it's useless.' Right. Well, who wants to go first?" said James. Sirius and Peter immediately pointed at him. "Thanks, guys," said James. "All right. Well, here goes." He dipped a little vile into the cauldron and drank a sip out of it. He stood still for a moment before his eyes clouded over. They rolled back in his head and he fell to the ground, limp and unmoving.

Sirius and Peter looked at each other in horror.

"Oh my God," said Sirius, "he's dead!"

"No, he's not! Look!" said Peter, pointing at James. He had started twitching on the ground like he was having a fit. Suddenly his eyes opened wide and he let out a scream. He grabbed his head, just as something started growing out of it.

James' POV

I lifted the vile to my lips. The liquid felt cool and pleasant in my mouth. After I swallowed, I couldn't feel anything changing. I tried to look at Sirius and Peter to see if something had changed, but I found I couldn't move. Then suddenly, there was a bright light in my eyes and I felt myself fall to the floor. Then everything was black.

It might have been only a couple of minutes, maybe even seconds, but it felt like eternity until there was light again. But it wasn't good light. It was too bright, and suddenly there was a searing pain in my head. I opened my eyes and grabbed my head. It felt like it was splitting in two. Then I felt my hands being pushed away from my head by something hard. I tried to crawl to the mirror to see, but found that I couldn't use my hands. I looked down. Where were my hands? They were gone! Instead there were…hooves. I looked at my legs and the same thing had happened. I felt little prickles on my skin and saw that I was now covered in snow white hair, all over. I suddenly had better hearing, too.

I tried to stand up, but fell unsteadily. My legs were thin and uncomfortable. From my place on the floor, I looked around. Sirius and Peter were staring at me.

"James?" Sirius asked uncertainly. I tried to say yes, but no sound escaped my throat, so I just nodded. "How long -" but he stopped in mid-sentence. I felt my feet and hands spread out. I had fingers again! The things were gone from my head, and I was normal skin color again. I stood up quickly. My legs were normal and comfortable to stand on.

"What happened?" My voice worked.

"You-you-you are a-a stag," stammered Peter.

"Huh?" Oh yeah! The Animagus Potion! "Oh! Cool! Sirius, go!" Sirius looked hesitant.

"I dunno, it looked like it hurt a lot," he said.

"It's just the first couple of times. Are you going to do it or not?"

"I guess." Sirius sighed and drank a sip of the potion. First he went stock still, and then he fainted. Soon he opened his eyes and screamed and pain and grabbed his…butt. I bit back my laughter as I watched him grabbing his butt and screaming in pain. It was even harder to control my laughter when something black and hairy started growing out of it. Let me tell you, it looked very strange. Sirius' ears grew pointy and his face formed into a muzzle. His hands and feet turned into paws. Before we knew what happened, Peter and I were looking at a big black dog where Sirius had just been. But then, his ears grew normal, his incisors grew back into normal teeth, his paws turned back, and his tail disappeared. I couldn't control myself anymore. I burst out into laughter. Sirius glared at me after Peter told him what happened. "Shut up….Prongs," he said, looking very proud of himself and thinking it was a great insult. But it made me think.

"Prongs…I like that. Since you're a dog, you can be…Padfoot. And Remus can be…I know! Moony! They'll be our nicknames," I said. "Peter, it's your turn." He gulped but moved forward, and went through what Sirius and I had just experienced. He ended up a rat.

Peter's POV

I couldn't believe it! I was a rat. A rat. I was so embarrassed. James was an elegant stag and Sirius was a cool dog. I was an ugly rat. It cheered me up somewhat that James and Sirius didn't seem to find this funny. James nicknamed me Wormtail, though. I could get used to being a rat, I guess. Maybe it wouldn't be that bad. Oh, who am I kidding? I was a friggin rat!

James walked over to the directions and read the next line.

"Ok, so we have to concentrate really hard on a picture of our animal and eventually we'll be able to transform completely without any trouble or pain. Let's start."

All night we practiced. What amazed me most was that I had gotten farther than the other two. I had managed to change my teeth, tail, and size. Sirius had just managed to change his teeth and James had gotten hooves.

By the time we crawled out of the Room of Requirements, completely exhausted, I was more at peace with the idea of being a rat. I couldn't wait to tell Remus about it.

Sirius' POV

A day after the full moon, Remus reappeared. He was back to his old self, nice and generous. Of course, he was overjoyed when he learned that we had successfully made ourselves Animagi.

"But didn't McGonagall say that it took years to become one?" I asked thoughtfully at breakfast. That had been bugging me for a while.

"Yeah. But that book was from the really restricted part of the library. Maybe it's a faster way," said James in a whisper as Lily, Miranda, Tina, and Megan walked by. I stared after Miranda. She was wearing a tight shirt and she had shrunk her skirt. Her tie was loose and her hair was in a messy bun. She looked really hot.

Where did that come from? I did not just think that.

Yeah, you did.

Shut up.

Lily was wearing the same type of clothes and hair style as Miranda. I could see James eyeing her.

Once they were gone, we finished our breakfast and headed off to class.

Nobody's POV

It took the Marauders six months to successfully transform into their Animagus forms. In that time, they developed the map they had been talking about. They called it the Marauders Map and it showed all of Hogwarts castle, including its occupants. It showed where everyone was and what the passwords to the secret passageways were. Of course, there was a secret way to access the map.

"I solemnly swear I am up to no good," whispered Remus as they walked down to the kitchens. Once they reached the pear he said, "Mischief Managed." And the map was instantly blank. The Marauders entered the kitchens and the house elves came bustling up to give them food.

"We'll be able to come with you next week, Moony," said James excitedly. Most of the Hogwarts population wondered at the sudden appearance of the nicknames, but they got used to it quickly.

"Yeah," said Remus. He was a little worried. Obviously, no one besides the Marauders knew about them being Animagi. Not even Dumbledore. They could get in so much trouble if they were caught. But it gave him a thrill to be doing something so dangerous and unlawful.

"I can't wait," said Sirius as they all ate their chocolate donuts. Soon they got up and left the kitchens to go to bed. Each of them went to bed that night with visions of the full moon and the animals' adventures filling up their minds.