James was at Quidditch practice, Sirius was doing his Assistant Headmaster duties, Peter was watching James practice, and Remus was alone in the dormitory, writing an essay for Potions. Just as he dipped his quill in the ink to start a new paragraph, however, he noticed a very familiar scent.

Max was by the door.

Remus groaned. "Not right now, Max," he called, for he was trying his very hardest to focus on the essay.

Max was still there, but Remus figured it was okay. Max couldn't open doorknobs. He may have been a very clever dog, but he did not have opposable thumbs. Remus went back to his essay, trying his best to ignore the dog at the door.

But Max didn't go away.

Thirty minutes later, Remus was getting rather sick of hearing Max's snuffling noises, and he got up and opened the door. "Max," he said sternly, "I'm not sure why you're following me around, but I must ask that you stop this instant. I'm getting extremely sick of it, and—"

But, just as he was getting ready to close the door, Max rushed into the dormitory and began rooting around under the table.

"Max!" cried Remus. "You can't just… argh! Get out of my dormitory! Don't you need a warrant for this?!"

Max didn't respond; he merely moved to Remus' trunk and began nosing around the contents.

"Don't make me hex you," said Remus, even though there was no way he'd hex a teacher's pet dog. He'd get kicked out of Hogwarts for that, and he'd only be fulfilling the "dangerous werewolf" stereotype.

Max moved to the table, jumped on top of the chair, and started staring at Remus' half-finished Potions essay. His eyes moved back and forth across the page.

"Are you reading?" mused Remus. "Can you read? Well, I s'pose you can, can't you? You're a very clever dog. That's what they all say, anyway."

Then, before Remus' eyes, Max took a quill in his teeth, clumsily dipped it into his ink, and draw a line on Remus' essay. Then he set the quill down on the book, somehow being careful to keep the inky nub off the paper.

"Did you just draw on my essay?" asked Remus, horrified. "Max! I worked hard on that essay, you know!"

Max didn't respond; instead, he jumped down from the chair and poked around in James' trunk.

Remus wandered over to his essay to inspect the damage… but it appeared as if Max had successfully underlined a specific sentence. Remus read the sentence underlined and quickly discovered… that he'd written the wrong ingredient. He glanced at the quill, which was placed on the book directly on top of the passage that outlined his mistake.

"Oh," he said softly. "Er. Thanks, Max."

Max paused his searching to glance at Remus briefly. Then he nodded—curt and quick—before resuming the search as if nothing had happened at all.

A few moments passed. Remus, now knowing that he could not stop Max, watched intently. As Max made his way to the container with the Mandrakes (which was now protected with some very strong hexes), Remus got an idea.

"Max?" he said, and Max turned to look at him.

Remus suddenly doubted himself.

"Max," he said, "my friends and I are… playing this… game. They keep putting Mandrake leaves in that container, and I keep trying to get rid of the leaves without their noticing. Currently, there's a camera that's set up to take pictures every so often to catch the culprit. If I try to remove the hexes on that container and steal the leaves, they'll catch me… and I don't want them seeing me moving the camera, either. Can I ask you a really big favor?"

Max paused, and then… he nodded.

Talking to a dog would never not creep Remus out. "Good. Yeah. Er… could you just take the camera in your teeth and hide it somewhere where it won't see me? I'll go back to my essay. Just take the camera when I'm not looking, and then my friends won't know I had any part in it, even if it manages to get a picture of you."

Max nodded once more. Heart hammering, Remus turned back to his essay and spent the next hour finishing it up—Max searched the dormitory for about forty-five minutes, and then he was gone.

Remus waited fifteen minutes before glancing at where the camera had once been hidden—underneath James' bed. It was still there, but it was facing toward the other wall. It wouldn't be able to see Remus now.

Remus breathed a sigh of relief and began the grueling process of removing every single hex that his friends had placed upon the container. Then he carefully removed the leaves, put on his coat and the ugly Gryffindor scarf that his father had given him in first year, nicked James' Invisibility Cloak, and returned the leaves to the greenhouse.

He managed to put the Cloak and his winter things back in the dormitory once the deed was done, and then he did the rest of his homework in the library, pretending that he had been there all along.

When Remus returned to the dormitory, a livid James was storming around the place. "Stupid Snape!" he was yelling. It was loud, and Remus covered his ears.

Immediately, James cornered on Remus. "I can't believe you didn't notice that Max moved our camera!" he shouted. "Where did you go? Did you see anyone?"

"Oh, er…." Remus was a bit taken aback, even though he knew that James had every right to be suspicious—after all, Remus had definitely noticed Max moving the camera. He'd asked him to do it. "I didn't notice anything. Max was here in the dormitory, but you know how he follows me around… I started to ignore him, and he must have moved it. Perhaps he took the leaves, too."

James rolled his eyes. "Don't be ridiculous. Snape took the leaves—I'm sure of it. Ugh, what are we going to do? It seems as if Snape can get through every one of our defenses!"

"Why are you hiding the Mandrake leaves in here in the first place?" asked Remus. "You're not using them or anything."

He'd meant for it to perhaps push them in the right direction—remind them that they weren't really getting anything done—hint at the fact that they should just give up already—but no such luck.

"Hey, you're right," said James, eyes lighting up. "We should just get the Mandrake leaves when we're ready to use them. Whose dumb idea was it to store them in the dormitory, anyway?"

"Yours," muttered Sirius.

"Oh, right. Well. Snape won't possibly steal all of them from the greenhouse, will he? That would be ridiculous. We'll just get them when we need them, and then we don't have to store them anywhere."

Peter turned to Remus, smiling gently. "That means we'll have to sneak out on the full moon," he said. "That's when we need them. Please don't panic; I know you don't like us sneaking out on the moon."

Remus groaned and flopped backwards onto his bed. "I really don't like it when you do that," he said plaintively, hoping that his grief would convince them not to do it after all.

"Don't worry, we won't go anywhere near the Shrieking Shack," said James.

"Don't be such a girl," said Sirius.

"It's all gonna be okay," said Peter.

By definition, it would not be. But Remus didn't say this; instead, he scowled at his friends, jammed his face into a pillow, and said, "I'm going to visit the Founders this evening."

"Ooh!" said Sirius. "I want to come! Godric was the coolest. Can we come?"

Remus had been planning on talking to Rowena about the new Mandrake plan, but some extra time larking about with his friends and the Founders sounded like fun. "Sure," he said.

So, together, they snuck into the Divination classroom under cover of night, slipped into the painting, and played a three-on-three game of Quidditch with Rowena, Helga, and Godric.

And it was loads of fun, actually, even though Remus wasn't particularly wonderful at flying. James helped him out, and he got a little bit better. Rowena and Helga were surprisingly talented flyers, and they beat the Marauders by a landslide (a fact for which James blamed the other Marauders, but he was laughing all the same).

"Big news!" said James the next day, exploding into the dormitory like a puppy who had guzzled six gallons of coffee. "I was talking to Louis!"

"You were talking to Professor Leek? Voluntarily?" asked Remus, nose wrinkled. He was working on a particularly difficult transfiguration (he had failed his last test, so it was important that he caught up), and he didn't really have the time for James' Professor Leek accusations.

"Yes! He was horribly suspicious, and I still think he poisoned you, and I don't like him one bit... but he gave me a pretty good idea."

"Idea for what?" Remus tried the transfiguration again with no avail. He groaned, frustrated. "How on earth are you so good at Transfiguration, Prongs?" he asked. "A little help here, maybe?"

"You don't need my help," said James dismissively. "You're halfway there. Anyway. I was talking about the upcoming Arithmancy project—because now we all have to do one, not just self-pitying swots like you—and I had no idea what to do, but the idea is due next class."

"Hm."

"And so he asked me about stuff I want to predict. Stuff I was interested in."

"Hm."

"And I wanted to predict the path of a Snitch! I could win every game ever if I did that!"

"Hm."

"And he said that wouldn't work. Said each Snitch is programmed by hand, so they're all different. Said I could predict the path of a single Snitch, but it wouldn't be very helpful for Quidditch purposes, because a new Snitch is made for each match. It has to have flesh memory and all that."

"Hm."

"And then I said… Moony, are you listening?"

Remus looked up. "No, I wasn't. I was working on Transfiguration homework. Maybe I'd listen more carefully if you helped me out a bit."

"This is more important."

"What could be more important than homework?" asked Sirius in a high-pitched, annoying voice. "Oh, I'm Remus Lupin and I'm a total swot and a teacher's pet." Then he laughed. "Not that a wolf would make a very good pet. Be kinda hard to make it wear a collar, wouldn't it? Hey, Moony, could we get you to wear a collar on full moons?"

Remus wasn't sure he liked that joke, but he played along anyway. "You'll never find out, because attempting to put a collar on a werewolf will be the last thing you ever do," he said primly. "And my voice doesn't sound like that."

"It does," said Sirius in the same high-pitched, annoying voice.

James cut in. "You're both missing the point," he said. "I have a Very Important Development, and I need you both to listen very carefully."

"Fine, I'm listening," said Sirius with an eyeroll.

"I'm not," said Remus.

James bounded over to Remus and took his wand, ignoring Remus' cry of protest. "You'll have plenty of time to do homework later," he said, "but this is more important. My point is… I left Louis' room and was walking around in the corridors, trying to figure something out. I tried to take the left staircase to our dormitory—you know, the one with the creak on the third step? But then it started moving out of nowhere and I had to wait six minutes to get back up to the dormitory!"

"Oh no," said Remus flatly. "Six minutes. I'm amazed you're still alive."

"Shut up. I'm incredibly clever, so I get bored more easily than you do because I need mental stimulation."

"Yeah, you're mental for sure. Now, I need mental stimulation, too, so you should give me my wand back so that I can continue my Transfiguration homework…."

"Nope. Anyway, I decided I'd figure out the patterns of the Hogwarts staircases! It's genius!"

"All right, cool." Remus reached for his wand, but James continued to hold it out of reach. "Give me my wand, Potter! You've finished with your story!"

"Nope, I'm not. Because then I decided that we could make this project into something big. Something fun. Something…."

"Something else for you to obsess over," mumbled Sirius. "Come on. You already spend enough time ignoring me and obsessing over those Mandrake leaves."

"No, it'll be a Marauder activity!" insisted James. "All four of us. We're going to make a map of the entire school!"

There was a moment of silence, interrupted only the sounds of shuffling robes as Remus continued to try to grab his wand. And then Remus said, "Right. So let me get this straight. You're trying to get us to do your homework for you?"

"No!" said James. "Well, yes. A little. But I think it'll be fun! And it could help with sneaking and such. But here's the real attraction. Are you ready?"

"Define ready."

"Basically, it means that you should shut up and listen if you value your life."

"Oh," said Remus. "In that case, yes. Go ahead."

"Good. I was looking in the library for mapmaking techniques—"

"The library?" interrupted Peter. "Wow, you're really serious about this."

"I was wearing my Library Disguise, so no one knew it was me. Anyway. I was looking in the library, and I found this. So I nicked it." James pulled out a heavy book and flipped through it, grinning all the while. "This book is about magical cartography! My ultimate dream is to use some sort of tracking spell and be able to track every single person that enters the castle! We'll know where they are at all times! We can make sure Snape never enters our dormitory uninvited ever again! It'll be brilliant! It'll be fantastic! It'll be…"

"A massive invasion of privacy," said Remus.

"Yes! That, too! Isn't it exciting?"

"No," Remus said. "Now give me back my wand. Stealing from a werewolf is never a good idea."

"Yeah, Remus doesn't need a wand to hurt you, Prongs," said Sirius. "Werewolves don't need wands; they have other weapons at their disposal. Like claws, teeth, and…"

"And a thorough knowledge of what you say in the shower," added Remus. He loved Sirius, but he didn't much like his jokes sometimes. "Enhanced senses, mate. They're a blessing and a curse. Mostly a curse, but a blessing in this case. I could quote you word-for-word."

James went white. "But I don't talk loudly or anything," he said. "I'm only mumbling. You know what? You're bluffing. You can't make it out."

"I wish I couldn't. I really don't want to hear you commentate another fantasy Quidditch match starring the extraordinary James Potter."

"Oh, that," said James. A relieved smile spread across his face. "Yep. Guilty as charged. I definitely do that, and nothing else."

Remus let a smile spread across his own, and he winked. "Sure, Prongs. Absolutely nothing about the afterparty…"

Slowly but surely, the smile was leaving James' face.

"During which the entire Gryffindor House begged you to sing a song…"

The smile was gone.

"And you broke into a wonderful rendition of…"

Then Remus was on the ground, because James had tackled him. He laughed. "I won't tell anyone if you give me back my wand!" he said, even though his voice was horribly muffled as James pressed both hands over Remus' mouth with all his might.

"I have leverage against you, too," said James. "Remus Lupin, werewolf—wouldn't everyone just love to know that?"

Remus managed to wrest James' hand off his mouth, and then he said, "You won't tell anyone. Then I'll have to leave Hogwarts, and you'll have to come up with a new Secret Marauder Handshake, since our current one is for four people."

"We'll live."

"You might get a new person in the dormitory, depending on how crowded the others are. Perhaps the new bloke will be horrible."

"Pish-posh."

"You'll have no one to discuss Muggle things with for Muggle Studies assignments."

"I don't care."

"And I'll tell everyone what you were singing in the shower yesterday evening…"

The hand was over Remus' mouth once again, and Remus tried very hard not to laugh. "My point is," said James loudly, "We're gonna make a map, and it's going to be fantastic. Everyone in?"

"Sure," said Peter.

"I suppose," Sirius huffed.

"Good. Moony?"

James removed his hand from Remus' mouth, and Remus said, "If you give me back my wand… and help me with my Transfiguration homework."

James tossed it to Remus with a scowl, and Remus immediately turned it on James and cast a Wind Charm; James nearly blew into the wall, his clothes and cheeks rippling violently. "Yeah, yeah. Show-off," he grumbled. "Now let's see that Transfiguration assignment."

As it turned out, mapmaking was much more difficult than any of them had anticipated.

The first problem was that everyone was terribly busy. The only time they all had together (besides Quidditch, duelling, Assistant Headmaster, Arithmancy, homework, Drew's Crew, etc.) was nighttime. That meant that the Marauders had plans to sneak out nearly every night—after long, stressful, activity-filled days.

But Remus didn't mind. The more occupied he was, the less emotions he felt.

The second problem, however, was that none of them had any idea how to make a map.

"So this room is sort of a rectangle shape," said Peter, referring to the Divination classroom. "Is one of us going to draw the rectangle on the map, then?"

"Idiot," said James scornfully. "No. We've got to take measurements, like James said. Make it precise and all that."

"Does anyone have a tape measure?" Remus asked.

Sirius and James looked at him incredulously. "A tape measure?" James said. "What's a tape measure?"

"You know… like a meterstick, but long and thin. Coils up in a ball when you're not using it. It's what my mum uses to measure things…."

"Oh, that explains it," said Sirius. "Your mum's a Muggle, Remus. There are better ways to do things than snake measures."

"Tape measure."

"Snape measure."

"Tape measure."

"Flake measure. Whatever. My point is that wizards have better ways of measuring things."

"Not better, just different," corrected James. "We've been learning more 'accommodating' ways of saying things like that in Muggle Studies. Muggles don't have less; they just have different. Muggles aren't stupid; they're simply resourceful. Muggles are…"

"They're just people, Prongs," said Remus tiredly. "They don't need condescending euphemisms to feel good about themselves. I think any of them would agree that the wizard way is often better. So tell me: what's the wizard way of doing this? I don't think I've ever seen Dad try to measure anything."

There was a long moment of silence as Sirius and James looked at each other. "There's a spell," James finally said.

"Yeah? Go on and show me, then."

"Well, I don't know it. Padfoot, do you know it?"

"Nope."

Remus shot James a look, and James shrugged. "It's not my fault, Moony. My parents have always done it nonverbally."

"Wow," said Remus sarcastically. "Looks like a tape measure really is the way to go in this particular situation."

"Shut up, stupid."

"You're the one being stupid. Oh, no, I'm sorry: you're not stupid; you're just different."

"I hate you."

"I know. So what are we going to do now?"

"Come back when we have the spell, I s'pose," James said. "For now, let's go to the library and research! It's after curfew, so I don't even need my disguise. We'll just go under the Invisibility Cloak…."

Remus groaned. "Please no, Prongs. Please. Just let us sleep. We can talk about this another time."

"The day Remus Lupin begs James Potter to not go to the library is a sad day indeed," said Sirius. "Come on, lads. Back to the dormitory. Calligraphy is not my thing."

"Cartography."

"Markography."

"Cartography."

"Fartography."

"Cartography."

"Cartofraggy."

"Now you're just doing it on purpose."

Yes, Remus was very busy. He was surrounded by chaos. He was constantly doing something—working on something—worried about something. But Remus liked being busy, because busying himself kept away the other emotions that he didn't want to dwell on… emotions like fear and grief and terror and sadness.

Wasn't being busy and overwhelmed so much better?