Mr Filch started somewhere between c 1968-1973, meaning he did not know the castle the way he does in Harry's time. What if his increasing knowledge of the castle as the years go by is what prompts the Marauders to make their map. Filch never had a head start on them, but they realise that if they don't find a way to pass on their knowledge of the castle, he will have a head start on all future generations of mischief makers. And so...
Messrs Moony, Wormtail, Padfoot, and Prongs, Purveyors of Aids to Magical Mischief-Makers, are proud to present THE MARAUDER'S MAP
How do you think Filch reacted when he found out Remus - Professor Lupin - had been looking in his filing cabinet?
Imagine the staff meeting:
Dumbledore: Now, that concludes official business. Does anyone else have anything to raise before we go back to the delights of the young minds?
Filch: Someone's been through my things, Headmaster. [He eyes his colleagues one by one] Stay alert. Report any suspicious-
Remus: [Clears throat] Ah, Mister Filch. There's no cause for alarm. That was me. I was looking for - and indeed, I found - a Boggart.
Filch: [Enraged] You? I know you. Yes... I remember you. You and Black. Black and Potter. You. Never caught, always with them... Always something... Yes, I remember you. Thought you'd been forgotten... But no. I've got my eye on you.
McGonagall: Well really. That's hardly necessary, is it?
Snape: Boggarts. Such a convenient excuse.
Remus: Naturally, Severus. Well, perhaps I ought to forewarn you all that I'll be on the lookout for another towards the end of the year - for the exams, I'm sure you'll understand.
As a child who grew up reading and watching the Harry Potter series/novels, my role models were Molly Weasley and Professor McGonagall. I wanted to be as fucking badass as them when I got older.
But now, I’m 24 years old
And instead of becoming the strong, independent woman I had hoped to be
Pairings: Fred Weasley x Slytherin!Reader [Platonic], George Weasley x Slytherin!Reader [Semi-slowburn]
Summary: Detention with Umbridge and a nasty caretaker cause you to run headfirst into a rocky new friendship, literally.
Word Count: 2.8 k
Warnings: Umbridge (she probably won’t be going away any time soon), light swearing, Harry being slightly prejudiced against Slytherins
<<Previous
A/N: Honestly I was not expecting all of that positive feedback on the first chapter thank you so much! As usual, I apologize for any ooc sequences with the twins, I’m slowly but surely learning how to write for them. [This chapter has not been beta-read. Any mistakes are mine and mine alone]
You stood outside the door to Umbridge’s office, taking deep breath after deep breath and willing yourself to raise your hand to knock on the door. It was fine. You were fine. She would probably just have you write lines or clean something, nothing to be this worked up over.
“Are you going to knock, or should I?” a slightly annoyed voice to your right asked. You whipped your head towards it and found yourself staring blankly at whom you had recently found out actually was Harry Potter, and not an extremely good look alike.
“Oh, um. I was just about to,” you replied in an entirely unconvincing way.
He raised an eyebrow and looked at you in disbelief, making you feel as though he had witnessed at least part of the last ten minutes that you had spent debating whether or not to knock.
“Yeah. Sure you were,” he said, moving to knock on the door himself. Before he could, however, the door swung open on its own accord and Umbridge’s voice rang as sickly sweet as ever from inside the office.
“Come in Mr. Potter, Ms. Jones.” The two of you entered the room and you had to do a double take as soon as you crossed the threshold. The entire room was painted pink.
From the brick walls to the ceiling, all you could see was pink. For heaven’s sake even the stone floor had a large pink shag rug on it. Not only that, but the walls were covered from top to bottom with cat pictures. They moved around and played with yarn within the photographs, and when you peered closer at a particular Maine Coon to your left, the damned thing had the audacity to hiss at you.
You quickly turned your attention back to Umbridge, watching as she carefully added three spoonfuls of sugar to her (shocker) pink tea and stirred it slowly. “You two will be doing some lines for me today,” Umbridge said carefully, adjusting a fountain pen on her desk so that it lined up perfectly with the others.
You visibly sagged with relief, mentally berating yourself over working yourself up about the punishment as you followed Harry’s lead and sat in the second desk in front of Umbridge’s. The two of you reached into your bags to pull out your quills when Umbridge interrupted you.
“Oh no, you’ll both be using one of my quills today,” she replied, a smile that was almost a smirk painted on her face. You and Harry traded a look as she gave you both quills, but you shrugged it off. You could tell that she was incredibly organized, maybe she just preferred her quills. She looked between the two of you as you grabbed your quills, seeming to choose her words carefully. “I want you both to write ‘I must not tell lies’.” She stated.
You took a breath, holding your tongue before looking back at her over your shoulder. “How many times do you want us to write it?” you asked, making sure that you kept eye contact with her and didn’t back down from her gaze.
“Let’s say, as many times as it takes for the lesson to sink in, hm?” she replied, taking a sip of her tea and turning to look out of the window behind her.
You glanced over at Harry and shrugged before returning to your parchment and beginning to write. After the first line your hand began to itch. You ignored it. After the second line the itch turned to a mild burn. You chalked it up to an allergic reaction and casually rubbed at it before continuing. On the third line the burn worsened and you glanced down at your left hand, your eyebrows furrowed. That wasn’t an allergic reaction. You looked over at Harry again and saw him giving you the same confused look that you had on your face.
Suddenly the burning turned into a stabbing pain and you watched in mute horror as the words ‘I must not tell lies’ were carved into your hand in a perfect imitation of your handwriting. You looked down at the quill in your right hand and realized that it must have been enchanted.
You looked over at Harry as he hissed in pain and watched as the same words were carved into his hand. He lifted his head to meet yours before turning slightly to see Umbridge standing over his shoulder. She smiled at him, her tea cup resting on its plate in her hand. “Something wrong?” she asked with false concern. She looked almost hopefully between the two of you, and you realized suddenly that she wanted one of you to speak up. She wanted you to complain to her or tell her that this was unfair.
So, you grit your teeth and forced a polite smile onto your face as you replied in a tone that matched her sickly sweet one to a T, “No professor, not at all.” You saw Harry slightly nod at you out of the corner of your eye in approval before silently turning back to his parchment and continuing with his lines. You followed his lead and did the same, gripping the edge of your desk tightly as you forced a look of complacency onto your face for the time being.
Two hours later Harry walked out of the office with you following close behind him. Both of your left hands burned and itched with the words that had found purchase within your skin.
“Is..,” you swallowed and licked your lips, eyes trained consciously on your new wounds. “Is this usually how detention goes here?” You asked hesitantly, incredibly scared that Harry would say yes and you would be subjected to similar punishments while you were at Hogwarts.
He shook his head, looking up from his own hand and finally meeting your eyes. “No. This is....,” he paused, seeming to search for the right words. It hardly mattered, you had nearly all but slumped in relief when he said no. “She’s testing us. Well, me specifically. It’s a little hard to explain.”
You nodded your head, hoping that it looked like you knew exactly what he was talking about. Truth be told, you were incredibly clueless, however you had caught whispers and rumors of the new teacher being a way for the Ministry of Magic to interfere at Hogwarts. You wouldn’t lie and say that you knew exactly what that meant, but you could tell it was highly unusual by the student’s and faculty’s behavior.
“Listen, it’s incredibly important that you don’t go to any teachers about this,” Harry said quietly, grabbing your arm and pulling you away from the door to Umbridge’s office and into a nearby hallway.
You looked at him, drawing your eyebrows together. “I’m sorry? You just told me that no detentions here are like hers, so wouldn’t this count as child abuse? I mean, in some sort of way?” You asked, raising your scarred hand for emphasis.
“Probably, yes. But what she’s doing. . it’s bigger than that. She, she wants us to speak up so that she can claim we’re speaking against the Minister.” He replied.
You paled slightly. To speak against the Minister plainly would not go over well. You had done your research on the Ministry and the Minister himself, and you knew that he was not the most agreeable person. He was scared of anyone who held more power over him, and when people in power were scared they lashed out quite harshly.
Harry saw the understanding dawn on your face and he nodded, knowing that his point had effectively gone through. His hand dropped from your arm and looked around the corner, keeping an eye out for the caretaker who roamed the grounds at night for students out past curfew.
“I won’t tell anyone,” you promised, hands nervously twisting the strap to your bag that hung off of your shoulder.
His shoulders sagged in relief and he nodded his head. “Good, good.” Footsteps echoed down a nearby corridor and the both of you froze. It was time to leave.
You turned on your heel, preparing to make a break for your common room as quietly as possible when you felt Harry gently grab your elbow. You turned your head back, looking at him with a raised eyebrow.
“You’re not that bad for a Slytherin,” he said, a small smile on his face. The smile dropped as suddenly as it had appeared. “It probably won’t last long.”
You faltered, quite frankly unsure of how to react to his statement. Before you had the chance to even debate a response, however, Harry looked around the corner, adjusted his bag, and then left.
You stood there for a moment of two. Whether you were trying to absorb the compliment turned insult you had just received, or the torture you had recently endured, you were unsure. However, you were quite sure at the sight of the caretaker’s cat (Mrs. Norris if you remembered correctly) that it was well past time for you to make your grand exit.
That is, until she began to meow obnoxiously loud.
“Shit,” you swore, abandoning all hopes of being discreet as you heard the rapidly approaching footsteps accompanied with the now yelling of the caretaker. You turned on your heel and barreled down the corridors, rapidly turning this way and that in hopes of throwing the caretaker off. His name was Filch, if you remembered correctly. However it seemed like the entirely wrong thing to be thinking about at the moment.
After turning a particularly sharp corner, you cursed under your breath as you pulled out the thick parchment that the red headed twins had dropped yesterday. You frantically unfolded it, knowing that a map was somewhere on the mass of parchment. Finding that the parchment yielded nothing, you groaned in frustration and raised your wand to it. “Revelio,” you whispered, keeping your ears peeled for the rapidly approaching footsteps of Mr. Filch.
As writing appeared on the parchment, you grinned, your smile falling as you read what the scrawl said. “Messrs Moony, Wormtail, Padfoot, and Prongs advise that Ms. Y/N continue running and stop waving her wand about like a fool.”
You growled, sticking your wand back against the parchment. “I would castrate the four of you if I could,” you replied, hurriedly running down another corridor and taking the first left as you heard footsteps grow closer. You looked down at the map again, watching as new writing appeared before you. “Messrs Moony, Wormtail, Padfoot, and Prongs like your style and are frankly quite scared of you at the moment. As such, we would advise that you take the next left and then your first two rights.”
You breathed a sigh of relief before looking back down at the parchment. “If you’re leading me into a trap, I will personally make sure that every bit of you is burned to a crisp in the woods,” you threatened, taking a moment to catch your breath before taking off running once more.
You had only taken your first of the two rights when you slammed right into a familiar duo. The three of you lay sprawled out on the floor, though you had somehow landed on top of one of the twins.
“Is this payback for earlier?” One of them asked with a loud groan whilst rubbing his head.
You bolted upright and looked behind you, nearly crying when you heard Filch’s voice still following you. “Shut up and follow me,” you said, grabbing both of their wrists and dragging them behind you as you made your last right into a long corridor.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The twins were hardly about to complain as you dragged them down the long winding corridor, they had heard the rapidly approaching meows of Mrs. Norris almost as soon as you had. However, as soon as they saw the dead end that the corridor provided, they nearly groaned in defeat.
They knew this corridor. In fact, they had often run down it in a panic on more than one occasion in a desperate attempt to ditch Filch or whatever prefects that happened to be after them on that particular night.
They traded looks behind your back as you stopped right in front of the portrait, swearing that they heard you curse under your breath as you flipped out a stack of parchment.
“If there isn’t a passageway behind this damned portrait, I will personally see that you go straight through a paper shredder,” you hissed at the paper, fingers deftly skimming the edges of the portrait, much to the painting’s displeasure.
After a brief, stretched out moment, your fingers caught the latch that both brothers knew were there, and the portrait swung open to reveal a passage. They watched as a look of pure glee crossed your face, and George swore that he nearly melted as he watched you hoist yourself into the opening, the expression still on your face.
You turned to look behind you, apparently realizing that both boys were still behind you. “Are you guys coming or not?” You asked, holding out your hand to them.
With a smirk, Fred took your hand, easily pulling himself into the passage beside you before helping George inside as well. The portrait swung closed behind him, used to the schemes that the twins came up with, and left them in eternal darkness.
At least, until Fred whispered the Lumos charm. You shied away from the sudden light, blinking multiple times in an attempt to adjust your eyes to the light.
“Do you know where you’re going, or do we have to lead you out of here?” George asked, looking over at you with expectant eyes.
Meanwhile, Fred, who had been scanning your form, gasped and dramatically placed a hand on George’s knee. “Georgie, doth thou see what thine eyes see?” he asked, blinking his eyes multiple times as he pointed with a flourish as the map you held in your hands.
George, quickly picking up on his brother’s antics, gasped as well. “Thief!” he exclaimed, placing a hand on his heart.
They watched as you looked down at the map in confusion, and then rolled your eyes in an annoyed manner as realization struck.
“I didn’t steal it, you dropped it when you, quite literally, ran into me today,” you replied. “Not my fault that you can’t hold on to a damned piece of paper.” You huffed after a moment’s hesitation and shoved the map out in front of the twins. “Here, take it.”
They blinked, pausing and looking between you and the paper. People hardly gave up the Marauders Map easily, especially if they had just found it. George hesitantly poked the parchment with his wand, looking at it skeptically. “You didn’t curse it, did you?” he asked.
You sighed, obviously growing impatient with the conversation. “Why in God’s name would I do that?”
Fred, obviously lacking a healthy fear of death in George’s opinion, shrugged and took the map without a second thought. “Good enough for me!” he said happily, placing the map back in his pocket and looking between the two of them expectantly. “So, we were making our grand escape?” He supplied casually, gesturing with one hands towards the rest of the passageway.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
You spent the next half hour getting lost in the twisting and winding tunnels with the twins until one of them got frustrated enough to grab the map and open it up. They had given you a small look before they’d opened it, and then, seeming to decide that they trusted you enough, dropped the enchantment on the map. You made sure to remember the phrases that they used when doing so.
To be quite honest, you hadn’t entirely hated spending that half hour in the tunnels with the twins. You had gotten to know both of them a bit better whilst crawling around in the dust and had learned that their names were Fred and George, and that they had four other brother’s as well as a younger sister.
You, in turn, had shared your name and that you had an older no-maj brother. They had made fun of you lightly then, insisting that the proper term was muggle and that you needed to brush the American off because “blimey it’s getting a little tiring carrying this entire conversation!”
When the three of you had finally exited the tunnels near the entrance to the Slytherin common room, you realized that you couldn’t remember the last time that you had laughed that much in one night. You smiled to yourself as you waved goodbye to the twins and entered your common room, making your way quietly to your room in case anyone was still up late and lingering in the hallways.
Cautiously, you closed the door to your room behind you, making your way over to your bed as quietly as you could and slipping off your shoes before pulling your covers up and around your shoulders. When you drifted off to sleep, dreams of hidden passageways, old castles, and bloodied quills filled your mind’s eye.
"Why don't wizards and witches just reveal themselves to Muggles? They could work together, just like the Prime Minister helped the Minister of Magic in PoA."
Okay, but imagine the mess that would cause. I mean, yeah, sure there would be nice Muggles who would help the Wizarding World just like the Prime Minister did or like Mrs. Figg or Mr. Filch (even though they were Squibs) did, but the Muggles would be scared, just like the Dursley were. Remember how the Dursleys never told Harry about him being a wizard, but then after he goes to Hogwarts they give him his own room, because they were scared. They start completely ignoring him, because they are scared to be rude to him, but they still don't love him, so they just won't talk to him at all, right? (Petunia wasn't just scared, she was also jelaous and angry with Lily because she was a witch and left her to go to Hogwarts, but that's another story.) And a lot of other people would be scared, which would result in chaos. The fact that people used to burn anyone who they thought was a witch proves my point. The Muggles would be scared because if they do or say something wrong, witches and wizards could attack them, so the Muggles would attack witches and wizards. It would start a war, just like we saw in Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them.
Now to go into this a bit more, think about what would happen if the Muggles knew about Voldemort and everything he did. They would go absolutely crazy, and if Voldemort wants to kill Muggle-born wizards and witches, he could kill Muggles too, so they would want to defend themselves. Now keep in mind that Muggles wouldn't be able to tell the difference between Death Eaters and good people, so they would just kill anybody, witch or wizard or Muggle, bad or good or neutral, it doesn't matter. It wouldn't be a Wizarding War, it would be everyone against everyone, no one would be safe.
And that is why the Wizarding World never revealed itself to the Muggle World, and if they did, it was on accident and they had to use Memory Charms.
HPHM April prompts 2021 - Day 1 by @stupendousbookworm
Since Talia Hayes never met anyone from the gang apart from Talbott for a brief moment during her limited stay at Hogwarts, I had to stop for a hot minute to think. But she did meet the twins in chaper 17 of Late Night Enchantments, titled Mischief Managed, so I used this as a sort of continuation.
Peering over Talbott’s shoulder, Talia’s eyes turned to slits as she set her gaze on the Weasley twins enjoys breakfast at the Gryffindor table “Still mad they used Boggarts as a prank?”
Looking over at Talbott, she shook her head “What is up with them? Bill appears to be the exact opposite of those mischievous kids.”
Shrugging his shoulders, he just tilted his head, mind digging up numerous pranks he himself witnessed during his last year at Hogwarts “Truth be told, maybe we have a thing or two to learn from them. You know in case we need to prank Jasper and his hoard of brainless monkeys.” he smirked.
Throwing her head back, Talia actually let out a loud laugh, the very idea tickling her funny bone. Jasper would deserver each and everyone one of those pranks for what he put them through “You’re right.” Getting up, Talbott cocked a brow, suspicious of her intentions “And after cracking my belt against their butts yesterday, perhaps this can be a way to make peace.”
With a confident strut, her feet led her near the two boys, who stopped giggling, their eyes widening to indescribable proportions as she sat down, requesting to partake in the pranks they had planned for the last day of the school year.
“Does this mean you will teach us your animation spell?” Fred beamed at her, a large smile lighting up his eyes.
“Looks like you two still haven’t learned your lesson.” Talia grinned back at them “So what were you planning for Filch?”
True to her word, she did accompany the twins, them mumbling something amongst themselves if to trust her or not. After all, they didn’t know her, they barely knew Talbott and now the woman he came with suddenly wanted to help them with their final prank with Filch? What if she ratted them out? But what if she helped them since she was more versed in spells than them? What if she was just curious?
Opening the door to Filch’s office, George and Fred took off the backpacks they had “Come on, we need to place these all over the office.” Working quickly, they carefully placed small bags of colorful powder inside file cabinets, under the desk and every corner they could possibly find.
Turning around on his heels, Fred clapped his hands together “So we enlarge them and then BOOM!”
“BOOM!” George beamed.
“BOOM!” all three froze, stealing glances at the door as Filch quickly opened them, Ms. Norris hissing showing off her teeth “I have you now you filthy kids."
“Well now, this is interesting.” Talia chuckled, Filch quickly realizing he did not have a name to address her by as he did not know who the girl in front of them was “Obliviate.” Her wand came out, spell leaving him in a daze as they slipped by, shoving him inside, Ms. Norris trying to scratch George.
“That bloody cat is a menace.” Only to receive a slap upside the head from Talia.
“Language. Now, please.”
The twins pointed their wands towards the ajar office door, powder bags exploding causing Filch to scream as they ran behind a corner to assess their handy word, snickering along the way. As him and Ms. Norris came out covered in bright colors, they almost gave away their locations as Filch took to the corridors yelling out curses and chanting torture methods one by one.
By the time she found Talbott, she was laughing, holding on to her stomach. Detailing the events, he listened carefully "But water would make a bigger mess. Oh and glitter, you can never get rid of that stuff. Creative right?"
