"Oh, come off it, Moony; we appreciate that you're all Hard-Working and Intellectual these days, but remove your head from that book right now and come with me!"

Remus started. For once, he had been absorbed in a text book. He found revision for Defence Against the Dark Arts to be quite fascinating, to tell the truth – especially the study of Dark Creatures.

He shifted in his seat, twisting his shoulders around to peer at an impatient-looking Sirius, who was inexplicably covered in mud.

"What's this? You've never had a problem with my studying before," Remus remarked sarcastically, sighing quietly and flinging the book down on a nearby library bench. "And how did you even find me here? I wasn't aware you knew that the library existed."

"You kidding?" Sirius said, his eyes alight in melodramatic disbelief. "Madam Pince and I, we're like this." He gesticulated with his hands. "Why, it was only yesterday that-"

"Sirius Black?" an outraged voice suddenly interrupted, causing the two boys to guiltily whip their heads around. The librarian herself, hands occupied by a towering stack of mouldy tomes, was glaring directly at their table, and, more exclusively, at the mud-covered apparel sported by Sirius.

"Me?" Sirius asked innocently, pointing a finger at himself in apparent confusion.

"Mud!" screeched Madam Pince, becoming increasingly unsteady with rage under her pile of books. "Mud! Again! I told you only yesterday, now out! You will not befoul my books!"

Widening his eyes at Sirius, who seemed to be making every effort not to burst out into an explosion of giggling, Remus stuffed his books inside his bag and slung it over his shoulder. As he followed Sirius out of the library (at a notably hurried pace), he rolled his eyes and reminded himself to study in a darker and less obvious corner next time.

"I swear, Sirius, you'll get me permanently kicked out of the library along with you, and then where will I study for the OWLs without having to put up with you?"

"You better be careful not to mention the OWLs once we're out there with the others," Sirius warned, his eyes glinting with humour. "You might give Wormtail another panic attack."

Remus flung his hands out in exasperation, hitting Sirius in what could have been an accident. "It wasn't my fault he fainted in the middle of breakfast last week – all I did was remove my study schedule from my bag!"

Sirius laughed, swatting Remus' hand away. "Yeah, and mentioned the fact that you'd scheduled yourself four hours a day of study for each subject. I think he may have forgotten to breathe when you started babbling on about all the practical exams we're going to have to take. You know Pete can't stand the idea of demonstrating skills to examiners by himself."

Remus shuddered. "I'm not overly fond of the prospect myself. Hence why you should have let me keep cramming random facts into my mind."

Sirius scoffed. "Who needs study anyway? Prongs and I-"

"Yeah, yeah, I know. Don't rub it in. Some of us actually need to study to ace our exams," Remus said darkly. "And what's with the nicknames, anyway? Wormtail? Does this mean I'm really going to have to start calling you 'Padfoot'? How did James come up with that, anyway?"

"Well, let's see," Sirius began wryly, "the other option appeared to be 'Mr Snuffles', and there was no way I was going to take that. I think he reconsidered when I started calling him 'Bambi'…"

"Moony, Wormtail, Padfoot and Prongs," Remus sighed. "Marauding away mischievously under the moonlight. Squandering hours of study at the same time, mind you."

"Oh, shush," Sirius said breezily, turning his head in mock disdain and catching Remus' glance with a wide grin. "Just enjoy it, yeah? Animals like us don't bother with the whole studying thing, you know. Live on the wild side, Moony."

Remus looked away, a smile curling across his face. Animals like us. He was no longer the only Fifth Year Gryffindor with a penchant for transforming into a hairy beast every once in a while. Of course, he wasn't so sure that either Sirius or James needed to transform to become destructive animals, and certainly not in order to swamp themselves in the elements…

"Do I even want to ask about the mud, Padfoot?" Remus sighed dryly, emphasising the new nickname with a slightly mocking tone. "Where exactly are we going, anyway?"

"Down by the lake," Sirius said easily, neglecting to comment further. "And what's so bad about a bit of mud, eh?" He grinned beguilingly at Remus, one eyebrow raised into his sweeping fringe, waving his mud-slickened robes towards his friend, who cringed away instinctively.

"Ask Madam Pince!" Remus yelped, skipping to the far side of the corridor, dodging slightly as Sirius made to corner him and undoubtedly share his filth around. "Yuck, Sirius! I just got these cleaned!"

Sirius rolled his eyes and, laughing, attempted to grab Remus into a very muddy, unwelcome embrace, but was pushed away. As Remus flung his arms around in expectation of a second attack, he suddenly noticed that Sirius' laughter had stopped. Sheepishly, he lowered his arms, pulling at his robes where they had gathered about his face, and stared down the corridor at his friend's retreating back.

"Sirius?" he called, bewildered. "Were you going to wait for me, or what?"

The lack of response that greeted his question made Remus slightly worried, a tinge of anger in his thoughts. What had just happened? He jogged to catch up to Sirius, who said nothing even as Remus strode into step beside him.

"What's up?" Remus asked, hoping to keep his tone neutral while he figured out what had upset his friend this time. There was no questioning it; something had undeniably rubbed Sirius the wrong way, just like every other time. The wild swings of moodiness had not ceased. Remus had hoped that once they had all been marauding under the moonlight a few times, and Sirius had seen how much their efforts were appreciated, things might return to normal.

But no. Things between them remained obscurely skewed. Remus often felt that Sirius resembled that muggle toy, the one that spun up and down, oscillating between moods, spinning from smiles to smirks to scowls and all things in between.

The heavy cloud undoubtedly roiling in the space directly between Sirius' head and the ceiling of the corridor began to filter into Remus' headspace, as feelings of injustice and a growing frustration filled his thoughts.

But then, glorious distraction! On the staircase ahead, Remus spied a glint of fiery hair, and then an emerald eye, and a spontaneous smile evaded his gloomy mood and appeared on his face. Lily. A friend apart from the crazy, moody bunch that his general happiness seemed to revolve around.

He lifted a hand in greeting, and was rewarded with a brilliant smile, which wilted slightly at the sight of the mud adorning Remus' robes, and failed entirely at the sight of Sirius' stormy countenance thundering along beside the lycanthrope. Remus' bad mood returned in its entirety as Lily lowered her hand after a half-hearted wave and turned away without a word.

The day was clearly leaping from high point to high point. Stupid James. Stupid Sirius. For the millionth time, he wished that they would just grow some maturity and wash off the mud.

"Waddiwasi!"

Four friends, absolutely drenched in what appeared to be sticky, lumpy brown mud, looked at each other, and burst into gasps of hilarity. Remus noted distractedly that Sirius' arm was slung about his shoulders, a muddy hand probably preparing itself to rub an extra clod of loose dirt into Remus' face, and he decided to take this with a grin.

Yes; as Peter and James began to absolutely howl with laughter, a new squelchy addition having recently arrived at the side of Remus' head, a rather drippy smile was undeniably the way to go. Undoubtedly, Sirius thought so too, but before any further comment could be made, there was still Filch to be dealt with.

Eventually, the four muddy boys quietened, unnerved by the silence of the caretaker standing rigidly before them in the hallway. Usually, Filch would have been oiling up his Iron Maiden by this point.

Daring, Sirius tugged on Remus' soggy sleeve and caught his attention. "Pity he isn't chewing gum, eh?" he stage whispered, winking at the crimson caretaker, and prompting James to smack him upside the head.

Remus rolled his eyes. Just like Sirius. Goad the apoplectic janitor into a detention-spouting fire hydrant. What harm could possibly come from that?

Filch appeared to be trying to speak. Mrs Norris wound sleekly around his feet as the boys waited.

"M-mud," he stammered in a raspy voice. "Mud, all over my corridor." The Marauders peered at each other in considerable surprise. Filch's words lacked a certain familiar bite. Indeed, the caretaker looked vaguely queasy. Remus wondered if they should call Madam Pomphrey, but gave up the notion as Filch continued.

"But you showed Peeves what's what," he stated slowly, shaking his grimy head. "Gum up the nose… well, that might teach him a thing or two about sticking chewing gum beneath the school desks, won't it?"

Remus exchanged an incredulous glance with James, who, under the guise of pushing his spectacles up his muddy nose, was covertly gesturing to the other two. Following the urgent gesticulation, Remus' gaze landed upon a statue of a one-eyed witch at the side of the passageway, and he immediately understood.

As Filch continued his inner vacillation, evidently sweating over the question of which he despised more – Peeves or the Marauders or perhaps even mud – the four boys began shifting slowly backwards. There was a breathless moment as Peter seemed to slip on his mud-soaked robes, yet just as he grabbed wildly at the old witch's hump, Sirius whispered "dissendium", and the boys tumbled through the entrance.

As soon as they were safe from Filch's dithering grasps, they all collapsed against the cold stone walls and cackled with laughter.

Finally, wiping tears of mirth, and, admittedly, relief, from his eyes, Remus turned sharply to Sirius, who was attempting to shove his wand back into his pocket while doubled over with laughter.

"How did you figure it out? Dissendium? This is the passage to Honeydukes, isn't it? That's bloody brilliant!"

"You've been in here before?" James demanded, peering curiously at his two friends, and interrupting Sirius as he was about to reply. "You didn't tell me about a secret passageway leading to chocolate and sweets and illicit opportunities!"

"Yeah, we stumbled down to the cellar beneath Honeydukes one time, and managed to creep our way back to Hogwarts undetected," Sirius boasted casually, winking obviously at Remus. "But it's not secret. Well, not entirely. Well, I'm pretty sure we're the only ones who know about it at this point, anyway."

"What are you talking about?" Peter said with an air of exasperation. Remus wondered if the sweet-lover was just impatient to make the most of this newfound opportunity to visit a lolly shop outside of Hogwarts weekends.

Sirius began walking down the corridor, brushing a hand nonchalantly along the side of the narrow passage. "I worked out how to get back down here using a map. There was a list of spells and passageways. It was simple."

"A map?" Remus asked, immediately suspicious. "Where did you find this map? If it's got all this information, surely all the professors know about the 'secret' passageways as well."

"I swiped it from Hagrid's cabin in second year," Sirius said, smirking at James, who was looking positively thrilled by this new development. "There's a good, dusty bookshelf in there that's simply overflowing with groundkeeper information that has probably never been touched. I found the map stuck in an old Charms book when I was looking for those Lily Love Letters that Prongs likes to write."

Here there was a pause, as Remus, Sirius and Peter snickered, while James scowled.

Thing is," Sirius continued, looking at the others smugly, "it's not really a map in the traditional sense. It's more of a list of entrances accompanied by opening spells."

"So there are more?" James whispered with excitement, looking almost overcome with the magnitude of this discovery. "And some of them lead out of the school?"

"Well, it makes sense," Remus said uncomfortably as the others turned to look at him. "I mean, we all know that there's a passage beneath the Whomping Willow that leads to the Shrieking Shack in Hogsmeade. It makes sense that there are more."

Sirius made a soft sound of exhilaration and pointed a finger directly at Remus. "You're right. And you know what? That entrance isn't included on the list."

"And that means?" Peter asked, puzzled.

"That means that there are probably hundreds more secret passages not on the list, and that we're going to have to scour the castle for the rest of our years in a most noble and marauding quest!" James breathed, a look of pure joy alighting his hazel eyes.

"Imagine all the pranking we could do with unlimited access through Hogwarts!" Sirius beamed, and Remus was almost caught up with their elation, though his own pleasure was tempered by a lingering sensation of the familiar guilt. "Moony, Wormtail, Padfoot and Prongs, riding free and easy through a whole new realm of mischief-making!"

"Oh, to be a werewolf prefect, with nutters for friends, and no restrictions," Remus moaned aloud. As the others resumed their previous laughter, he allowed himself to be dragged along down the corridor by Sirius, heading towards Hogsmeade and, undoubtedly, a tummy ache.

"So you're getting your study after all," Sirius muttered, dark eyes flashing as he grinned back along his arm at Remus. "Admit it; this is even better than chapters three through five of Hogwarts; A History."

"Breaking all the school rules and potentially the law is not what I'd personally call 'studying'," Remus complained, but he knew that Sirius was well-aware of the half-smile that pulled across his lips.

"Live on the wild side, Moony," Sirius said quietly, tightening his cold and muddy grasp on Remus' hand. To the perceptive werewolf, there seemed to be an oddly wistful note in these words, as if Sirius was phrasing some unvoiced sentiment in a legend that couldn't be decoded without a missing key.

But Sirius said nothing more, and Remus focussed instead on the tugging grasp of the warm hand around his, pulling him steadily through the darkness.

A/N: Origins of Marauders Map hopefully not incomprehensible. I thought it was time to establish necessary framework. Do not despair – we're drawing ever-closer to some uncomfortable conclusions, bittersweet moments, the inevitable and gorgeous fluff that we all want. Silly teenage boys just need to learn to be perceptive and get over insecurities…

Anyone else doing nanowrimo this year? It's the first time I'm attempting it and I'm kinda excited, kinda nervous. I have a fantasy novel wreathed in mythological references that's bursting out of my head, so I figure trying to get down 50 000 words in November could be useful.

Oh, and anyone with a livejournal, feel free to add me! I've just opened a new account under the username of huntingsnarks. Extra puppy love to those who get the reference.

I'd love to get to know you guys outside of reviews.

cough REVIEW.

xx Froody