They spent the next hour sorting through the bottomless mass of things they had collected that year, the contents of their trunks seeming to have tripled since September.
Old editions of Daily Prophet's and long-forgotten rolls of parchment flew in all directions as a rogue fanged frisbee was uncovered by an unsuspecting Sirius, who's hand had daringly tunneled under a heap of sweaters and robes and been nipped by the nasty device.
"Ah!" he exclaimed, clutching his hand away. "Huh, I was wondering where that went," he laughed, grinning at James, only to have a book tossed at his head from the the corner of the room.
It landed with a heavy thud several feet from where Sirius sat on the floor. A thick, overwritten copy of Muggles Who Notice.
"Blenheim Stalk," Sirius began, reading from the cover. "Thank you, Sir, for concocting this extremely interesting piece of literature." He folded over the cover and smoothed out the front pages, having been crumpled in their cramped quarters in the trunk, and read, "'Dodgy Dirk' holds forth in bars along the south coast on the subject of a 'dirty great flying lizard'…" Sirius slammed the book closed again and tossed it aside.
"Well wasn't that extraordinary?" James piped up from the opposite side of the bed, not bothering to look up from his own trunk.
"Oh shut it, Potter. I know you loved that class," Sirius said sarcastically.
"Muggle Studies? Oh yeah. Just thrilling."
"No? But Quirrell loved you," Sirius pointed out. "Me - not so much."
"Oh, come on; you can't tell me he didn't adore those pranks you played."
"Ha - yeah, some of my best work, if I do say so myself!"
"Pixies, anyone?"
"That was the best exam I've ever taken," Sirius sighed, nostalgically. "The little blue guys everywhere - in his turban, in the books, paper flying..."
"Alright, alright; calm down before you get yourself over-excited."
Sirius smiled and continued to rustle through the old pieces of paper that had made their way into his belongings. The rough scratching of parchment against parchment was heard from James' position on the opposite side of the bed, then the frantic digging through the mess as Sirius spotted something buried beneath old essays and Dream charts.
"Hey! Look at this!" he exclaimed, pulling some pages gingerly from the bottom of the heap.
"Hm?"
"'Messrs Moony, Wormtail, Padfoot, and Prongs, are proud to present - '"
"The Marauder's Map," James said, his excitement growing as he recognized his and his friends' carefully chosen names.
He pulled himself up and moved closer to see it, the faded parchment from years past, torn at the edges and creased in the center.
"I thought Filch took it from you?" he said with disbelief as he took the packet from Sirius.
"He did," Padfoot confirmed. "This is the prototype."
It was true. Upon closer inspection James could make out little flaws here and there on the map that had taken them so long to perfect - misspellings of locations, misplaced and missing classrooms, marks that notched the bottom to mark where everything in Hogwarts was located…
"So you've been using this?" James inquired.
"Well, every now and again, but the thing is so unreliable - it has the nasty little habit of telling me you're Snivelus!"
"Haha, very funny." He handed the parchment back and it was hidden away again in the trunk.
"I think we're done," Sirius said conclusively as he re-buckled the locks on his case.
James nodded in agreement and sighed, flopping back on the bed.
"How is it that I'm more tired than when we started?" he exclaimed. Sirius just laughed and kicked his trunk into the corner away from him. A yellow, mildewed tennis ball caught his eye as it rolled dangerously close to a break in one of the floorboards, and he took it up, tossing it swiftly up in the air.
"Quidditch, anyone?"