Nine Lives and Bad Luck

17

Things went a lot quicker once he had gotten the book, after looking through it once by himself he had sworn his friends to secrecy and then shared it with them; an original book from near the founders' time. An old apprentice of Ravenclaw herself had been determined to map out every single passageway and room the castle had to offer when they began running the school, and the book, the book was his journal on his efforts.

It wasn't perfect though, mainly because the names of the places and their purposes had changed as well as some landmarks. Furthermore the language used was hard for even Neville- the one most used to deciphering ancient texts- to read so the going was slowed further by that. The Ravenclaw hadn't succeeded in discovering everything either, but they now had a head start on some of the lesser known ones.

The map they had begun construction on was already marked with the known layout of the castle in black ink, secret passageways that were general knowledge were marked down in yellow, the ones mostly used by pranksters in red, the ones whose existence the teachers knew of were recorded in blue and the ones found in the book were added, or in the case it was already on the map lined, in green. It was then that Parvati worried that they would lose the map or it would get destroyed so with Parvati theorizing possibilities Hermione would come up with practical solutions. Most they wouldn't be able to cast for several years, so until then they each got a copy of the map  and hid it in their belongings.

At Silk's suggestion to use his animagus forms he, Neville, and Lavender formed up a group to investigate further while the duo worked. Neville and Lavender casting detection spells and Harry scouting around with various animagus forms. Thankfully, his fears had been unfounded and all of them had quickly grown used to it after the initial shock, and some of the girls had even taken to petting his head when he was in some of his animal forms. He was always mindful to be a cat when someone was coming- the other twos' cue to act normal.

    They made an excellent team and even more passages were marked down proudly in purple or orange- orange for those that left castle. Harry was beyond pleased to note a few let out in the forbidden forest and he finally got the chance to explore it some. The other two were considerably less nervous than they would have been as he made sure to stick with larger, more dangerous forms. Hermione had balked slightly at the breaking of rules, but had quickly caved at their arguments of knowledge and discovery. Against Hermione those never failed. 

     Harry switched quickly from the mostly bat form he taken to get a better grip on the ceiling to gain a good look at a strange marking to a cat form. Twisting midair so he didn't land on his back as he had been clinging on the ceiling he fell into Lavender's waiting arms just in time. 

     Two red headed Gryffindors bounded their way, "Hello there!"

     "We heard from-"

     "A little birdy that you and-"

    "Some friends were peaking around for secret-"

     "Ways through the school so-"

     "We came to scope-"

     "Out-"

      "The possible-"

     "Competition-"

     "I'm Gred by the way-"

      "And this is Forge-" Neville blinked as the second re-introduced the one who had just introduced themselves.

    "What do you mean? I'm supposed to be Gred today."

    "What no? You're Forge!"