The Marauders: Year One | #Wattys2016

An Exclusive Dinner Party

It wasn't much of a challenge for James to get Peter Pettigrew to accept an apology for his insults. It took all of a minute for the four Gryffindor first year boys to be back to normal the day after the mysterious incident with the snitch, though James continued to insist there was something funny about the way the snitch had behaved while the others maintained that there wasn't anything wrong with the snitch, only with James's ego.

Their bigger concern was beginning to work on the map, which James and Sirius presented in a much more serious tone once the boys were back on speaking terms again. Sirius suggested that they work together during free periods in walking about the castle one level at a time and marking down all the different turns and corridors that they encountered. What they hadn't counted on was the abundance of time that walking the entire floor plan of the castle would take. They spent hours the first day and hadn't even covered the full of the first floor before having to give it up to go to supper in the Great Hall.

"Blimey," James had muttered as they'd settled onto the benches along the Gryffindor table, "At this rate we'll be finished our seventh year before we complete the map."

"Too bad we couldn't go out at night," Sirius commented, "Would make it a lot easier to get things done without constantly being interrupted by everybody." It was true that they'd been stopped several times as they passed by elder Gryffindor students that wanted to say hi to James, who was still a bit of a celebrity thanks to his gumball catching stunts on the pitch.

"We'd be caught and thrown into detention by Filch," Remus said. "I don't know about you lot but I don't want to serve a detention with Filch. Merlin knows what he'd be having us do for it!"

"Neither do I," Peter piped up.

"Scrubbing the toilets, most likely," Sirius murmured darkly, ignoring Peter altogether.

James frowned, "Too bad there wasn't a way to go at it without being seen."

"You'd have to be invisible," Sirius said.

Remus laughed, "Good luck casting the charm for that mate, you're still working on getting the hang of wingardium leviosa, aren't you?"

"Wingardium leviosa!" Sirius said, flicking his wand at Remus's pork chop, which twitched slightly but didn't levitate.

"Good try, at least," Peter said.

The next day was much of the same – classes, classes, mapping the castle, eating, homework, eating... And the day after was, too. It was lunch on Thursday, just before the Gryffindor-Slytherin flying lesson that anything even remotely exciting happened.

The boys were sitting at the table, eating sandwiches and crisps and laughing about the look on Professor McGonagall's face when she had realized that Peter had successfully transfigured a match stick into a pencil, only to discover that the pencil's erasers were more flammable than they should have been when they lit up on fire, unprovoked. She'd nearly gone cross-eyed with shock, an expression that James was animatedly enacting for the others with a certain theatrical flair that none of them particularly recalled McGonagall herself having had. Suddenly there was a grunting sort of cough behind them and all four turned to look at the oversized potions master, Horace Slughorn, staring down at them.

Well, specifically at Remus.

"Good afternoon, good afternoon!" Slughorn said, smiling brightly. He touched a palm to Remus's shoulder. "Mr. Lupin, am I correct in assuming that you are Lyall Lupin's son?" he asked.

"Um... very, sir," Remus answered blankly. "Why?"

"My stars, boy," Professor Slughorn replied. "Your father is famous isn't he? For having signed the Werewolf Restriction Act."