They get easily distracted with new topics, don't they?
It was Tuesday night, almost Wednesday.
Exams were a few weeks away, so Hermione and Ron wanted to do extra studying in their weaker subjects, specifically History of Magic, Potions and Divination. Additionally Arithmancy, for Ron.
"How are we expected to remember all this?" Ron groaned, tossing his quill onto the coffee table, uncaring if it rolled off.
Harrison was working on creating their map, both the old and new next to each other as he compared the Charm work. It was honestly incredible. The spells itself were beautiful to watch, let alone watching the actual magic set into the paper and weave into the material. He was working on adding the names and footsteps on where everyone within the castle was displayed. They were still stuck on names, password, ect. But they had a few ideas written down.
"Not all of it, just the test materials."
"But that's all of it Hermione!"
"Ron, you have a great memory, you'll pass."
"Is this you being a helpful friend, or are you using your inner eye?" Harrison spoke up, not taking his eyes off the maps.
"I can't tell you that if I was, now, can I?"
"Harry, I swear I'm gonna learn how to speak snake to break into your trunk, borrow the time turner and revise longer."
He snorted, turning and looking up at Ron, "Mate, you'll be fine. You're in the top five of all our classes, you're even above Hermione in potions."
"And besides," Harrison continued, looking back down at the Charms book for the maps, "That would be giving you an unfair advantage against everyone else."
Ron sighed, leaning over the coffee table to get the quill he tossed. "Damn you for being moral. Fine, but if I fail Arithmancy-"
"-You can blame me." He finished off for him.
"Harry, can you drink this so I can read your tea leaves?" Hermione asked, pouring a cup of tea.
"'Course." He said, furrowing his eyebrows at the spells in the text.
There were more enchantments in the charms book the Marauders never used for their own map. Currently, you could only see footsteps and names of people and animals, but there was an enchantment to add the ghosts on as well. There was another you could add to add personalised information or even nicknames on people too. There were others, like advanced 'Notice-Me-Nots' and one that deceives anyone who tries to read the map with anything other than the password. He hadn't tried the last one on the original, but he assumed they did, it was very useful after all.
There were others as well, like different ink to show personalised status', red ink for enemies, pink for lovers, ect. There was one for portraits, but as he sipped the just made tea, practically scorching hot, but after all the practice, he'd gotten used to it, he deemed there were too many within Hogwarts to make the map fully functional.
It wasn't like the spells were necessarily too difficult either. Well, to Harrison that is. He still hadn't realised how powerful it was to be able to cast about ninety-three percent of all spells he knew wordlessly, and about forty percent of those ones wandlessly. He got bored when learning spells for class, alright?
It was just coming on about half one in the morning, when he saw a familiar yet... 'should-definitely-not-be-possible' name pop up on the original map.
"Am I hallucinating from the lack of sleep, or am I seeing Peter Pettigrew on the map?" He blurted, picking it up.
He watched as the footsteps wandered around the forth floor, around the Arithmancy classrooms, as Hermione and Ron scrambled over to take a look.
"Not unless I am too." Ron muttered, absolutely shocked.
"That's who Sirius Black-"
"Uh-Huh."
"But he isn't-"
"Uh-Huh."
"Which means Sirius Black is at least-"
"Uh-Huh."
"Can you two speak normal sentences?" Ron said, snapping out of the trance of watching Pettigrew.
"Sirius Black killed Pettigrew. Pettigrew is on the map. Pettigrew can't be a ghost because Ghosts don't show up on their map. Pettigrew is alive."
"But how is that possible?" Hermione asked, taking the map from Harrisons hands and standing up, inspecting it.
"The report stated he blew up. That only his finger was left." Harrison mumbled, trying to make sense of it.
Sirius Black, he knew, couldn't of betrayed his parents due to the Oath. He knew that ages ago. But he was found at the crime scene, laughing after killing a dozen muggles and Peter Pettigrew. It was concluded Peter Pettigrew went after Sirius to confront him, and that there were statements of nearby muggles stating there could be yelling heard, Pettigrew screaming at Sirius Black for betraying the Potters. All that was left of him was a finger.
"Wait." Harrison mumbled, rubbing his temple. "Pettigrew and Sirius, at least from what the report says, were arguing, meaning they must of been close together, right?"
"Well, yeah." Ron huffed.
"When an explosion hits, everything just... turns into nothing. The closer you are to an explosion, the tinier the pieces will be." He mumbled, standing up and pacing.
"Is he going crazy?" Ron whispered to Hermione.
"Shush, he's going somewhere with this."
"Pettigrew would of been at the very centre of the explosion." He said, standing still and turning towards them.
"So?"
"So, nothing of Pettigrew should of survived. Nothing of the muggles did, and there weren't too far away from the explosion. Even the buildings exploded, barely anything within range was salvageable. How did Pettigrew, who was standing in the centre of it, leave behind a finger?"
"Unless, he wasn't in the explosion."
"Unless, he wasn't the target." Ron and Hermione spoke at the same time.
Harrison sat back down in an armchair, rubbing his forehead.
"So, Pettigrew lived, but decided to just... what, run? Disappear for bloody twelve years?"
"But, why? How is this-? What?"
The questions of the bloody hour, apparently.
Map in his bag, Harrison walked to Remus' office after classes the next day.
"Oh, Harry! I wasn't expecting you." Remus greeted, standing up from his desk. Harrison had long stopped knocking now, after the constant insistence from the werewolf.
"Remus." He greeted with a convincingly neutral smile.
"Hot chocolate?"
"Please." Harrison sighed, sitting down on the sofa. It was a ritual at this point.
"So, what brings?"
This was going to be a very uncomfortable conversation.
"I saw something on the map."
Remus froze momentarily, before continuing with making their hot chocolates, "Sirius Black?" His voice had an edge to it.
Clearing his throat, Harrison opened his bag, "Not quite. Something much... weirder."
Tension eased from the man's shoulders as he brought the drinks over, clearly relieved. "How weird?"
"Well, on a scale from one to shouldn't be alive?." He said bluntly, taking the drink when it was offered.
With a frown, Remus sat on the other end of the sofa, placing his mug on the coffee table. "What?"
Harrison muttered the password to the map, opening it as the ink spread across the parchment and started looking. "One moment."
It took a minute, before Harrison sighed in relief, despite the situation. Not hallucinating then.
He turned the map towards Remus, pointing the the name, which was running through the empty seventh floor, "Peter Pettigrew."
The mans face turned pale unnaturally fast, as he picked the map up with a shaking hand, staring at it in disbelief. "That's... not possible."
"It shouldn't be, no. But..."
The man didn't take his eyes off of the map. "But?"
"The report doesn't make sense. Of... that night."
That made Remus' head turn up. They never really spoke about that night, only when they used to practice the Patronus charm, and they had long since stopped as Harrison had the spell perfected quickly.
"What do you mean?"
"Well..."
They couldn't do anything. By the time Harrison and Remus finished going over the events of that night, Pettigrew had disappeared off of the map, likely going through a secret passageway to escape the dementors. Not like they could hand in their knowledge either, having to tell the aurors their suspicions on the night, true as they may be, meant that they'd have to hand the map in. And then the school could get in trouble for not handing a powerful object like the map to the Ministry when it was first found all those years ago, instead being used by the staff, ethics. And there was the added fact that Harrison was a little selfish and didn't want to hand something that belonged to his parents' to the ministry and most likely never see it again.
So, after finishing his hot chocolate and talking for a few hours with a Remus as it was so easy to lose track of time with the man, he returned back to Gryffindor Tower two hours before curfew, a little annoyed he was unable to study.
And so now, Harrison found himself, in the boys dorm, at almost midnight, laughing as Dean complained about the dementors.
"Fuck the dementors, man. I just want to go out for some fresh air, and, you know, not be stopped by soul sucking demons."
Dean was laid on Seamus' bed as the boy sat on the floor, at the foot of his own bed. Neville was sat up against his headboard, hiding his silent laughter behind his Herbology book. Ron was sat on Harrison's bed with him, and the two snickered. Seamus, the poor guy, had heard this rant for the hundredth time at this point.
"Fuck Sirius Black. If it wasn't for him, we wouldn't even have the dementors." Seamus chimed in.
"You think it would be wrong to like... Go back in time to when Black was a baby and, you know..." Dean trailed off, miming a 'snapping-a-neck' motion to his own.
The laughter that filled the dorm would of woken up the entire tower if it wasn't for the silencing charm Ron put up, haven gone over multiple Charms books over the last few months.
"First of all, that would be so wrong. That's a baby, Dean!" Neville said, the first to stop laughing, a wide smile still on his face.
"Second of all, it's impossible to go back that far." Harrison continued, also smiling.
Dean groaned, rolling over in Seamus' bed- and falling onto the floor, making the boy groan again.
"Stop laughing, it's not funny! I really hurt my nose!"
"Oh no, your nose!"
"Shut it, Harry Potter, my nose is my best feature."
"It is not." Seamus blurted, looking honestly offended he would say it.
"Oh Merlin, not this again." Harrison muttered under his breath, causing Ron to let out a silent laugh.
"Oh yeah? What's my best feature then?"
"Uhm, hello? It's the eyes, definitely."
"My eyes are brown, Sea, you can barely even see them!"
"Ok, that may be true, but when the light hits them just right-" Seamus then went on for a whole five minutes, talking about Dean's eyes. Five minutes, and forty one seconds. Neville used his watch to time it.
"Ok, fine, you win. But my nose is my second best then."
"I'd say it's more like your fifth, but sure."
Harrison and Ron looked at each other and Neville multiple times as the two boys argued for the next... they lost count of how many minutes passed.
"Both of you-" Neville interrupted, "Put a sickle in the jar."
The Idiot-Jar. They've had it since first year, and it was Seamus' suggestion. Ironically, it was also Seamus who put the most in the jar.
"For what?!" They exclaimed in unison.
"That entire argument and not realising." Harrison said.
"Its always us." Seamus mumbled, standing up to go find a sickle in his trunk.
"Not realising what?" Dean muttered to himself, furrowing his brows.
"I had a dream last night." Was Hermione's welcome when she sat down opposite them at breakfast.
"Me too. What was yours about?" Harrison asked, spreading butter on his toast. Trelawny had given them dream journals to fill out for the next two years- for OWLs prep- and the homework task to interpret every one of them.
"Scabbers, actually, being chased by a black dog. Then a random man, Sirius Black, Professors Lupin and Snape, all in the Shrieking Shack. Us three were there too, but I don't remember the conversation that took place." She spoke as she piled food onto her plate, shrugging at the end of her sentence. Ron snapped his fingers, keeping one pointed at Hermione as his eyes grew wide a moment after she finished talking.
"That's what I forgot about! I haven't seen Scabbers in... Merlin, I have no idea." He furrowed his brows, taking a bite of bacon, swallowing before turning to Harrison. "Think you could add an animals charm to the parchment? Could be useful, with Mrs Norris and all."
"Don't see why not." He shrugged, taking a bite of the toast.
"So, what was your dream about, Harry?"
He swallowed his food, recounting the dream. "It was weird. It started off with us, but we were all Slytherins and also best-friends with Parkinson and..."
"The maps almost done." Harrison stated, dropping his bag onto the bathroom floor. They were once again in Myrtle's bathroom. With exams coming up, and NEWT/OWL students having theirs first, as they're more important, the library was busy, and noisy and blegh. It was hard to focus, so as much as they loved Price, they'd shifted to the bathroom for the time being.
Ron was already there with Hermione, helping her practice her animagus form. She still hadn't become it. There were times she came close, randomly gasping and snapping out of her meditation, but immediately her excitement died when she saw she still had skin instead of fur.
"Really?"
"Mhm, just need nicknames, and a map name. Oh, and to add the Ghost charm."
"Well, the Marauders chose names based off of their forms, didn't they? Par Lupin, being a werewolf and all."
"Mhm." Harrison leant against one of the sinks, folding his arms. "Meaning we have to use creativity to come up with them." He added with feigned enthusiasm.
"Well, not too much. They named Ghost-Not-Ghost, Pettigrew, bloody Wormtail."
Harrison snickered. "Yeah, that's unfortunate."
The two boys broke out of their talk when they heard a meow coming from the door. It was Crookshanks, strolling in, already making a beeline for Harrison.
The two boys talked as they went over transfiguration homework, Harrison at some point sitting down with the cat in his lap. Their talks phased from the homework, to summer, to homework, to almost anything else.
"I think Malfoy wants to be friends." He blurted.
Ron slowly turned his head up to face him.
"I mean," He continued, "I see him a lot. In the library, and Care. And Potions, actually. And we are... civil, mostly. But the 'civil' is turning to 'friendly'."
"And... this is a problem, why?"
"Because, despite me not hating all Slytherins now, he's still all 'muggleborns-die-or-bow-down-filthy-peasants.'"
"That was a shit impression."
"Thanks, Ron."
"Is he though? I mean, I haven't seen him be all, rude to anyone lately. Much less because of blood."
Harrison shrugged, continuing to write his Charms essay. "Until he apologises, or plainly states he isn't, I don't think I want to be friends with him. I mean, he was horrible to 'Mione last year."
"Yeah." Ron said, clenching his jaw as he remembers the things said, before sighing. "Having death-eaters for parents must suck. Being raised with those kinds of beliefs must have as well."
Harrison was stopped from responding when there was a bark of sorts, which didn't come from Crookshanks, the only animal in the room, obviously.
Instead, it came from a lynx, who had replaced where Hermione had been previously sat.
"Oh Merlin, 'Mione, your adorable!"
The next hiss was far more aggressive.
In Ron's defence, Hermione really was adorable.