Hello Readers! Short but momentous chapter, please review!

I do not own Harry Potter

When we came back from our holidays the atmosphere in the castle was nothing short of tense, in fact, you could cut it with a knife. Not a day went past without another death or mysterious disappearance. Several students went running from the hall upon reading the news that their owl brought. It was horrible, but there wasn't anything that we could do to stop it…yet.

Work on the Marauder's Map had officially commenced! Remus was the best at sketching and he drew the outline of Hogwarts with magic ink. The ink helped to keep the drawing as accurate as possible and erased any mistakes by itself.

We included the Hogwart's grounds and the passage between the Whomping Willow and the Shrieking Shack. We also added all of the secret passageways and rooms that we had found. Sirius gleefully added the route to the kitchens, somehow charming the parchment to give instructions to tickle the pear.

We spent hours in the library researching tracking charms of all kinds. Lily thought that we had finally gone insane and were studying! If only she knew…

In addition to our mapmaking, we also practiced the Patronus charm every second night. The mists were gradually getting stronger, but none of us had achieved the corpeal Patronus yet and we were all getting impatient.

James and I also had Quidditch practice to deal with. We were in first place in the inter-house league. We had a promising team full of talent. The three chasers were fantastic, with James' skill rivalling that of the captain's! Gideon and Fabian Pretwett were twins with flaming red hair and freckles. Together with a pair of Beater bats and Bludgers, they were a force to reckon with. Tessa Helt was an faultless Keeper, saving the best of shots with ease. And me, what can I say? I'm awesome!

One evening in January, we spent three hours researching in the library and were just about to give up when suddenly, Remus exclaimed, "I've got it!".

We leaped to our feet and galloped over to the boy. "It's here, second paragraph down, 'seguimiento máximo".

"Brilliant!" James enthused, "Let's get started immediately!"

"But it's getting late", Peter pointed out. "We won't be able to get up in the morning."

"Pete, it's Friday." Sirius said sensibly (for once in his life), "We don't have to get up early!"

"Oh yeah", Peter replied lamely.

"Right let's go to the room behind the statue", I decided.

With the use of shortcuts, we were there within five minutes. Remus whipped out the magical parchment.

"Seguimiento Máximo Albus Dumbledore", Remus chanted, his wand aimed at the map. To our surprise, small footprints appeared on the map, in his office and began to move along as he paced. A small label with Albus Dumbledore written on it manifested beside the footprints.

"Go Moony!" Sirius cheered, "Let me have a go!"

"Seguimiento Máximo Minnie, I mean Minerva McGonagall", he ordered. We obtained the same result but this time, the footprints appeared in the Transfiguration department.

We grinned in triumph and quickly pulled out our wands. Within minutes, the staff of Hogwarts were tracked. I scanned through the book and found that the charm allowed a fantastic shortcut.

"Seguimiento Máximo Gryffindor Students", I chanted. It worked and much to our delight the entire population of Gryffindor students popped up on the map with appropriate labels. The others quickly joined in and we soon had everyone on the map. Now all we needed was a spell strong enough to track anyone on the grounds.

As if reading my thoughts, James said, "We still need to track visitors."

"Right, let's try this." Remus said, "Seguimiento Totalus!"

A shimmering golden mist engulfed the parchment. It vanished and the parchment glowed for five seconds before returning to normal. When we looked we saw new footprints and a label: Nicholas Flamel in Dumbledore's office.

"Who's he?" James asked.

"A famous alchemist, creator of the only Philosopher's Stone." Remus answered, sounding as though he had swallowed a textbook. "It produces an elixir which gives the drinker immortality and can turn any metal into solid gold."

"Woah!" Sirius gasped, "What in the name of Merlin is he doing in old Dumble's office?" I hid a smirk behind a hand at Sirius' lingo.

"I don't know", Remus answered, "But anyway, we'll continue this tomorrow, we should go to bed."

This instruction was met by moans and groans and complaints, but we all knew that Moony was right and we went to bed.