THE MARAUDERS

Fine lines

Remus peered into the ordinary-looking parchment. 'Did it work?' He asked, bewildered.
'Dunno mate,' Peter said miserably, squashing his face against Sirius' to get a closer look at the blank piece of parchment.

The soft cackle of the flickering flames protested weakly against the otherwise dominating silence of the midnight as the Marauders occupied a corner of the deserted common room, discussing their latest spell-work.
'Wonderful,' Sirius grunted, 'Can't see why Peter wasted weeks working on the spell. I'm also very good at performing spells that do nothing,'
'Yes, you are,' Peter snapped, 'Remember last Charms class?'

Peter had been working with professor Flitwick on the Homolocus charm for three weeks now while the other Marauders had been busy unravelling the many secrets of Hogwarts. So far they had discovered three secret passageways that could lead them out of the well-guarded fortifications of the castle. After Peter had practiced the charm well enough to perform it for their cause, the Marauders decided that the time was ripe to test their theory.

Peter had just performed the Homolocus charm on a blank piece of parchment, as instructed by Flitwick but no recognizable trace of the magic was observed, a fact that greatly disgruntled Sirius.

'We have our finals in a moth and we’re wasting our time on this,' Sirius gritted his teeth.

'It's okay,' James said, clearly flustered, 'Flitwick said the spell is very hard to detect, right? Meant for spies, so let’s test it out, anyway. What do we have to do next?'

'We have to take this parchment with us to four separate points and perform another spell on it. The four points will define the area that would appear within the parchment,' Peter recited, frowning down at his notes, 'and then we need to identify the highest and the lowest point that the map needs to take into account. This bit is only optional, though – for rough terrains with a highly uneven landscape,'

'The four corners thing seems doable enough,' Remus pondered, 'but what about the highest and the lowest point?'

'The highest should be the astronomy tower, shouldn’t it?' Sirius inquired, his eyes closed in concentration.

'No, we just need to cover the ground floor for now. Flitwick mentioned that most often the charm is used separately when multiple floors are involved,'
'This day just keeps getting better,' Sirius groaned.

'It would take a lot of time to perform four spells at four different spots on the Hogwarts grounds,' James admitted, looking at Sirius, who merely rolled his eyes and snorted.

Remus snatched the parchment irritably and despite the heated protests, tore it in four equal parts, handing one to all three of them and keeping one for himself.

Not if we all performed the spell together, at different places,’ Remus said, rubbing his eyes, ‘But, can we do this tomorrow?'
'No, the spell must be completed today,' James declared, standing up.
'Because you had a four hour long nap in the afternoon today?' Sirius teased.
'No,' James grinned, 'but it sure is a bonus. Now get up,'
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