A/N: Hi everyone! Yeah, so when I promised to aim for a quicker update last chapter? May have been a slight exaggeration. Sorry! If you need something Marauderish to fill the gaps between updates in the future I highly recommend The Mischief Managers on Youtube. They're very funny and have actually recoded a scene from Casting Moonshadows that you can go and watch. Anyway, I wish you all happy reading and a (rather belated) happy Halloween! M X

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Color is the keyboard, the eyes are the harmonies, the soul is the piano with many strings. The artist is the hand that plays, touching one key or another, to cause vibrations in the soul.

(Wassily Kandinsky)

SIRIUS:

The light in the kitchen was dim as always, although shafts of bright May sunshine trickled through the small windows set high in the walls. The house-elves were bustling around preparing lunch for the day while three of the four Marauders huddled around the table.

"I'm going to be thrown into Azkaban!" Peter scratched at his armpit in a rather rat-like manner. "I can't get thrown into Azkaban. I'm not cut out for prison life!"

Sirius rolled his eyes. "You won't get thrown into Azkaban for something like this, Wormtail. Being an illegal Animagus, maybe, but not for keeping your mouth shut about a bit of Splinched armpit hair."

"How do you know? I might!"

"How would they know?" James pointed out. "It's not like you flash your armpit to all and sundry on a regular basis. Or if you do it's not anything I want to know about."

"It's not funny! You're not taking this seriously!" Peter was actually starting to look a bit tearful and Sirius was unspeakably relieved when the door opened and Remus and Lily entered looking pale, but pleased.

"How'd it go?" James asked.

"Fine. We passed." Remus dropped onto the bench beside Sirius and nodded gratefully when a house-elf hurried up to offer him a hot chocolate. "They gave Lily a commendation."

Lily smiled as she slipped into the seat beside James. "It wasn't too bad, was it?"

"Speak for yourself," Peter muttered.

"What's up, Pete?" Remus asked, brow crinkling in concern. "Didn't you pass?"

"Oh, he did," said Sirius, unable to keep a touch of glee out of his voice. "By cheating."

"I didn't mean to!"

"How can you accidentally cheat?" Lily's lips pursed in understandable suspicion.

"Well, you know how Apparition makes you feel all…buzzy afterwards?" A weird sort of shivering squirm in his seat was clearly an attempt to convey the sensation in mime.

"Er…no?" James said, glancing at the others for confirmation. Sirius had no idea what Peter was talking about either. Apparition wasn't comfortable – sort of suffocating and squeezing – but he'd never have described it as 'buzzy'.

"Well, it feels buzzy to me," Peter said, "and I thought it was just buzziness when I finished the test and they said I'd passed, but then the buzziness started to fade except from my…you know…" he gestured vaguely to his own armpit. "…so I went to the toilets and looked and all my armpit hair was gone."

"They didn't notice?" Lily said. "I thought they had spells for that."

"They do." Remus sipped at his hot chocolate, tawny brows furrowed as he studied Peter over the top of his mug. "You took to Apparition surprisingly quickly, Wormtail."

"He clearly didn't improve much after that," said James with a snort.

"It was almost as if you knew what to do…" Remus's brow furrowed as he stared at Peter.

His words triggered something in Sirius's brain and he turned to stare at Peter incredulously. "You knew what to do! It's a spell that can be described as full-body transference…or transformation."

"You drew on experience," Remus added, realisation dawning on his face as well. "At least to start with, you pushed the new magic along a few well-worn channels."

"Wormtail, you old dog!" said James. "You altered the spell a bit – that's why you feel buzzy rather than…compressed like the rest of us."

"I feel compressed and buzzy," Peter said, looking a bit alarmed. "I thought that was normal. You really think I changed the spell?"

"Not enough to become dangerous, I shouldn't think," Remus assured him, "But enough that the Splinch-detection charm didn't work."

"What on earth are you taking about?" Lily demanded, and Sirius jumped as he suddenly realised what they had nearly revealed.

"Colour changing," Remus said, without batting an eyelid. "Wormtail has been practicing changing his whole body different colours."

The scary thing was that it was true. Peter, along with the rest of them, had been practicing colour-changing. It had seemed like an easy way of camouflaging themselves without having to wear the Invisibility Cloak or master the Invisibility Charm. However, it never would have occurred to Sirius to fob Lily off with this as an explanation. It sometimes scared him how convincingly Remus could lie. It was a talent born of necessity in order to hide his lycanthropy, but sometimes he wondered just how much Remus could hide from him without his even knowing about it.

Lily, of course, bought it completely. "Why on earth would you want to change your body different colours?"

"Why on earth wouldn't you?" James asked, with a meaningful wriggle of his eyebrows. "Use your imagination, Lily."

There was a pause as her forehead furrowed, then her face screwed up in disgust. "Oh, yuck. You wouldn't!"

Sirius frankly had no idea what could possibly be going through her head. He and the other Marauders had wracked their brains for possible uses for the charm and they had come up with nothing more nefarious than disguising themselves as stone statues and leaping out at passing Slytherins. He marvelled a little at Lily's brain.

"We probably would," James said, although he raised his eyebrows and shrugged in bemusement when Lily looked away for a second.

Sirius grinned and focussed on shovelling banoffee pie into his mouth before Peter emerged from his depressed stupor enough to start stress-eating.

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"It's weird to think," James said one evening a couple of weeks later, "that this time next year we'll be sitting our NEWTS and preparing to graduate for good. No more lessons, no more feasts in the Great Hall, no more pranking Slytherins, no more Hogwarts. Knight to D eight." The tiny chess knight moved to the allotted square and proceeded to beat one of Peter's bishops into submission with a rather disturbing level of ferocity.

"You're going to break my pieces permanently, Prongs!" Peter complained. "I still can't get the scratches out of my queen after yours beat her over the head with her throne. Her throne. No one else's chess pieces do that."

"I taught her," James said smugly, lying back against the pillows of his bed and buffing his nails. "Saw those Muggle wrestlers doing it on the telly-vision at your house over summer."

"What'll we do without Hogwarts?" Sirius said, his mind on James's earlier statement. He was sprawled out beside Remus on Peter's bed, as it was closest to the window, and the last of the early summer sunlight was filtering through onto the thick parchment of the Marauder's Map which Remus had spread out in front of him. "How much will have changed in a year? Will we be properly at war with Voldemort by then?"

"Merlin, I hope not." Peter was trying to rub the shine back into his beaten bishop with the cuff of his sleeve. "I hope the Aurors catch him before then and this whole thing will've blown over. Pawn to C six."

"Queen to C six," James said promptly. "You're in check, Wormy. Hey, look at her go! I think she's actually trying to hack his head off with the pointy bit of her crown."

"That's it! I'm not playing anymore."

"You can't give up. That's being a sore loser."

"No, that's being someone who is sensibly protecting their one and only chess set from utter destruction."

"See, this is your problem – you always run away from a good battle. Don't you want a chance to fight?"

"No!" In a rare moment of temper, Peter swept his arm and sent all the pieces of the chess board flying across James's bed and onto the floor. "I don't want to fight. People get hurt when they fight. People die. It's not heroic or glamorous, it's horrible. You think it's going to be all wand duels and defeating Death Eaters and saying 'up yours' to You Know Who, but really it's…it's… like a little girl crying amongst the bins in an alley clutching on to her mother's corpse. I don't know how you lot have forgotten that."

"We haven't forgotten that, Wormtail," Sirius said, a flare of anger rising in his chest. "That's the whole reason we want to fight! We want to protect those people who can't protect themselves."

"Those people who can't protect themselves?" Peter flung himself off James's bed and stalked over to Sirius and Remus. "That's us. Don't you get it? That's us. Even Aurors can't beat these people. What makes you think we can? We'll die. All of us will die. Moony could die, Sirius. Surely you care about that? You're with me, right, Moony? Moony?"

Remus stirred a little and blinked up at Peter's plump, angry figure. "Pardon?"

"You see! He can't even focus enough to concentrate on this conversation. What's he going to do if he comes across a Death Eater? Say, 'I'm sorry, but can you hang on a moment while I finish checking my map'?"

Sirius couldn't really say anything to that. It was something he was worried about as well. Ever since Remus had heard about the new game, Touch Bark - where students dared one another to try and touch the trunk of the Whomping Willow - he had been glued to the Marauders' Map. He'd spend hours and hours with his eyes fixed on the little inked representation of the tree, waiting for the moment when one of the students would sneak out from under the professors' watchful gazes and embark on the stupid dare again. The tree had been planted for him and nothing the others could say would stop him from feeling responsible.

"Moony, have you even done your homework today?" Sirius asked, distracted from Peter's rant for the moment.

"Yeah, yeah. I'll get to it." Remus eyes trailed back to the map.

Even Peter drew to a halt at that. His chest, which had been puffed up with righteous anger, slowly de-puffed. "You haven't done your homework? Not even that Potions essay? Moony, it takes ages! You're never going to finish it in time. And all the good books have been taken from the library by everyone else. You've never not done your homework."

"He's right, mate," James said, rolling off his bed and coming to stand near Peter. "You can't keep on like this. You'll end up flunking your NEWTs."

"I can't afford not to," said Remus, his voice tight. "This is more important than stupid homework."

The other three shared worried looks. There were dark rings under Remus's eyes because he had set an alarm spell to go off every fifteen minutes at night so he could check the map, and spent most of the fifteen minutes in between worried about the fact that he wasn't checking it. Sirius had seriously been considering spiking his pumpkin juice with Sleeping Potion, except he knew Remus would never forgive him.

"Let us help, then," Sirius said, placing a hand between Remus's tense shoulders. "We'll take turns."

"You might get distracted. Or miss something."

"So might you. You're dead on your feet, Moony."

"No." Remus shook his head, eyes still fixed on the map. "No, no. This is my…you know…responsibility…" his voice trailed off and his shoulders tightened as a little ink figure labelled 'Wulfrick Bornsnottle' meandered vaguely in the direction of the Whomping Willow before bypassing it to enter Greenhouse Five. Classes held in Greenhouse Five were not good for Remus's nerves.

"You can't keep on like this, mate," James said. "The others are right. It's not sustainable."

Remus didn't appear to hear, his eyes skittering back and forth, back and forth across the map.

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Weeks had passed and Remus looked more and more dreadful. He was thinner, snappy and irritable, and the circles under his eyes were now puffy and coloured a deep shade of plum. His werewolf side was just as bad and James and Sirius didn't dare let Wormtail scuttle about on his own at full moon anymore just in case Moony took an irritated, if unintentionally lethal, snap at him. The little rat now took to clinging to the heavy black fur of Padfoot's scruff, or the sturdy branches of Prongs's antlers, when Moony was transformed.

Post-moon Remus lingered longer than he had for years and could only be calmed when he had the map clutched to his chest – though in this state, he could not really remember why it was important.

Spring sidled off in summer's onset. Daffodils and crocuses were swallowed up by eagerly sprouting grass, which in turn splattered the landscape yellow-white with buttercups and daisies. The trees of the Forbidden Forest exploded into leaf and the bizarre plants of the school greenhouses vied for room in sometimes alarmingly bloody battles which left disgraced students scrubbing bits of sap off the windows in detention.

The sun seemed to rise higher and brighter every day in an attempt to jolly everyone into the new season, but it was with little success. Everyone in the Wizarding world was weighed down by the continual battle against Voldemort and his Death Eaters. In Hogwarts, beneath the safety blanket of the castle and lessons and feasts in the Great Hall, students did their best to look beyond those in their midst who were pulled quietly from lessons only to return later in the evening – grey faced, puffy-eyed, lost and grieving.

Exams approached quickly, although it was hard to take them as seriously as the war. Remus's obsession with the map vied with his obsession for studying and the only time Sirius won through was at night when exhaustion rendered him limp and heavy-eyed in Sirius's arms. Sirius held on to him, quiet and hardly daring to breathe for fear of waking him into another frantic frenzy of studying and map checking. He was fully aware that it was physically impossible for Remus to keep up the pace, and that it was only a matter of time before he cracked.

One night at the beginning June, Sirius slipped quietly from bed leaving an unconscious Remus drooling over the map, his lit wand flickering on and off in his hand in time with his soft snores. Sirius drew the bed curtains behind himself and crawled up onto the wide window-ledge to slump against the cool glass. The moon was three-quarters full and washed the Hogwarts grounds with silver as they sprawled out across the landscape below.

Pressing his forehead to the window, Sirius blinked as his view was obscured by his breath condensing on the glass. He raised his head and slowly, reverently, pressed his right hand over the misty patch, leaving a clear handprint through which moonlight streamed.

Sirius thought of first-year-Remus's small bloody handprint on the wall of the Shrieking Shack. He thought of that same hand hovering over the grass on an October night, dripping blood onto shadow and filling the air with frantic wishes. He thought of Serena Lupin, who taught Remus to love the moon, and the wolf who taught Remus to hate it; of John Lupin and burning silver and the price of forgiveness. Of consequences and warnings and the magic of moon shadows.

Hardly daring to breathe, Sirius pulled out his wand and muttered a quiet spell to pierce his fingertip. He touched it to the palm of the rapidly fading handprint and whispered, "I wish for this all to be over. I wish that no one would ever play the stupid game again and that Moony would forget all about the blasted map. I wish…I wish that it would all just be over."

His blood looked black in the dim light. It trickled down the window in a slow zigzag – a dark crack in a silver dragon's egg.

He went back to bed.

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"Padfoot!"

Sirius groaned, pulled the covers over his head and shoved Remus sleepily away from him.

"Padfoot! Wake up, damn it! Sirius!"

"In the name of Godric's green underpants, what, Moony?"

The covers were unceremoniously yanked from his body and a lit wand and piece of parchment were jammed under his nose. Sirius shied away from the light and batted at the parchment.

"It's the middle of the bloody night!"

"They're all going to die."

"What? Who? Merlin, Moony, this had better be serious." Sitting up, Sirius blinked rapidly as his eyes adjusted, then squinted down at the Marauder's Map where Remus's finger was jabbing at three small dots heading out of the castle in a rather worryingly Whomping-Willow-ward direction.

"Wilf Alden, Davey Gudgeon, Amanda Corke…" Sirius frowned. "Fourth year Ravenclaws, right?"

"Does it matter? Come on! Wake Prongs. I'll get Wormtail."

Sirius sat up blearily. He patted around until his hand landed on a shoe that had been tossed on the lid of his trunk and launched it at James's head through the small gap in his curtains. Years of Beating for Quidditch meant that it found its target easily and James woke with an undignified shriek.

"Up an' at 'em, Prongsie. Rescue mission."

"Y'what? Lea' me along. S'night."

"Some kids are about to be offed by the Whomping Willow. You and Pete need to go get McGonagall or Dumbledore or something. Moony and I will run down and try to stop them before they do something stupid."

"Do we have to?" Peter whined, reluctantly allowing himself to be pushed out of bed. "Rescuing people is so tiring. And messy. And usually gets you into trouble. Ow!" This last was a Remus who was using his werewolf strength to forcibly shove Peter's feet into his shoes.

"Get moving," Remus commanded and pushed him, stumbling, at James, who had a horrible tendency to be good at mornings and, as it turned out, middle-of-the-nights. He was already bright-eyed, robed, shod, and flipping Sirius the finger as he hustled Peter to the door.

"Why do we always have to rescue people at night," Peter mourned, allowing himself to be hustled.

"Well, sorry," James hissed, as Sirius and Remus followed them downstairs to the common room. "We'll remember to put together a leaflet for next time, yeah? 'For the attention of all trouble-makers and ne'er-do-wells: Kindly plan all nefarious deeds to take places during the day, outside of mealtimes and, if at all possible, during Transfiguration so Wormtail has an excuse to skive.'"

They climbed out the portrait hole and hesitated. "Good luck, yeah?" James face twisted in worry as he looked at Sirius and Remus. "Don't risk your lives for the idiots, okay?"

"Would we?" Sirius said over his shoulder as Remus's patience ran out and he started dragging him downstairs in the direction of the external door near the Hospital Wing.

In retrospect, the extra time it would have taken to grab the Invisibility Cloak would probably have saved them time in the long run. Hindsight is twenty-twenty, however, and Sirius consoled himself with the fact that it was impossible for anyone to have predicted the sheer levels of frustrating idiocy that Filch was capable of sinking to.

They ran into him just around the corner of the Arithmancy corridor. Almost literally. Neither of them had been keeping their eye on the map: more focussed on getting to the Whomping Willow as quickly as possible, than tracking where the students were. Unfortunately, Remus still had it clasped in his hand, and when an unexpected Filch loomed out of the darkness, they both skidded to an abrupt halt mere inches away from the man. This close he smelled strongly of moth balls, cleaning potion and bananas.

"Well, well, well," he sneered, like a villain out of a Marvin the Muggle comic. "What have we here?"

"Seriously?" Sirius couldn't help injecting. "All these nights roaming the corridors just waiting to catch a student sneaking about out of hours, and the best you can come up with is, 'Well, well, well, what have we here?'"

Filch's face twisted with loathing. "You think you're better than me, do you? Think that just because your blood is Black you'll get out of…" his voice trailed off as he caught sight of the map. "Give that to me."

Remus clutched it instinctively to his chest. "No! You've got to help us. There are some students trying to –" He broke off as Filch took another step towards him.

"Give it to me, or I swear to Merlin you'll be out of this school before you can say 'pureblood'."

He made a grab for it and Remus muttered a frantic "Mischief Managed!" as it was yanked from his hand.

Sirius had never actually seem someone swell with fury before, but as Filch watched the ink disappear before his eyes, he actually seemed to double in size. His mind raced as he tried to decide what to do, but Remus made the decision for him. He grabbed Sirius's wrist and yanked him forward, dodging Filch's swinging arms and hauling Sirius so fast down the corridor he was sure he would either lose his footing or find his shoulder yanked out its socket.

"Moony! The map!"

"People are going to die, Sirius!"

And really – what could he say to that? To be honest, he wasn't even that broken up to see the map go. If it meant Remus would give up on his obsession…

They nearly hit the door leading outside, Remus grabbing for the handle and bursting out with hardly a break in his stride. They hurtled down the grassy slope leading down from the castle, fumbling wands out of their pockets and mumbling "Lumos" without slowing down. Sirius wasn't entirely sure that the light helped, to be honest. It was bobbing and jerking across the landscape as they sprinted in a way that just messed with his eyes and left him stumbling in Remus's wake. Remus, of course, was feral and light-footed and when Sirius stopped being able to keep up, he dropped his arm with a muttered, "Sorry, Pads," and took off in a tawny-haired blur towards the Willow where Sirius could just make out two dark figures and wildly waving branches.

It wasn't long before he heard the screaming as well.

As he staggered towards the tree, he could see a small figure trussed up in whip-like branches being violently shaken, then slammed to the ground with great force. The screaming was coming from the two other students who stood helplessly before the tree, unable to help.

Remus didn't even break his stride, heading straight into the mass of whipping branches, lithely leaping and ducking to avoid them and diving towards the trunk. His wand went flying, the Lumos charm stuttering and dying, but he either had to have seen enough to know where to aim, or used his werewolf senses to find the knot, because there was a sudden breathless hush as the branches abruptly stopped moving.

It all happened so fast that Sirius hadn't even had time to register what Remus had done, let alone try to stop him.

"Sirius! Get him out!" And that brought him back to his senses, because over the years the Marauders had figured out exactly how many seconds the Whomping Willow stayed frozen for post-knot-pressing and they only had a few of those seconds left.

As Remus scrabbled round in the dirt for his wand, Sirius aimed his own up at the twisted figure trussed up in the frozen branches and, hoping that his aim was accurate in the stuttering light of the other two Ravenclaws' wands, he muttered the Severing Charm. He had to repeat it a couple of times before the kid suddenly came tumbling towards the ground, at which point Remus scrambled to capture him and roll them out of the way before the branches stated moving again.

There was a noise coming from the boy. Sirius, in the dim light and panic, couldn't have said which one it was – Wilf Alden or Davey Gudgeon (he never paid that much attention to fourth year Ravenclaws anyway) – but he could have gone his whole life without wanting to hear that noise. It was like a long, strangled, elongated scream of agony, and as Remus laid the kid back on the floor the other two Ravenclaws started screaming again as well.

Sirius had seen some pretty rough things in his time. He'd seen Remus beaten to the point of being irreparably broken by his father and his wolf. He'd seen a child clinging onto her mother's corpse in a dark alley. He'd seen Peter screaming and twisting under Crucio as he hovered above the heads of a group of Death Eaters in Hogsmeade. Post-moon, he was used to bleeding gashes and twisted limbs and the whiteness of broken bones peeking through Remus's pale skin. The kid had all of these and Sirius could have coped with that, but what he couldn't look away from was an eyeball popped from its socket and hanging down against a bloody cheek.

"Stop screaming," he distantly heard Remus saying to the Ravenclaws. "Stop it. This minute."

He sounded so calm and sure that even Sirius felt himself relax a little. The Ravenclaws stopped screaming.

"I need you to go and get Madame Pomfrey. Quickly as you can."

"But what about…?"

"Now, Alden, I don't need a commentary."

The two of them turned and started sprinting back up towards the castle. 'Alden', Sirius thought. So this was Davey Gudgeon. Trust Remus to know straight away.

"Padfoot? Focus and help me."

Sirius blinked back into the present and looked down at the broken body in front of them, which was still making that horrible keening noise.

"Okay, Davey," Remus said as he leant over the boy. "Don't move. We're here to help. Sirius and I are very good with healing spells, so we're going to make a start until Madame Pomfrey gets here."

The keening noise changed a bit, blurring into words until Sirius could just make out "Cn't seeee!"

"I know, lad," Remus said, sounding so, so much older than seventeen. "Just the one eye, though, right? The other one is fine and we all know Madame Pomfrey is a whizz with healing magic, so there's a chance you could get through this whole thing unscathed."

Sirius couldn't bring himself to say anything. His stomach rolled with nausea and his mouth filled with saliva. He forced himself to look away from the dangling eyeball and raise his wand to the closest gash. He used wordless healing charms until he was sure he could open his mouth without vomiting over the kid and making things worse. Luckily, he'd had a lot of practice, as had Remus, and they were making quick work of the more obvious and superficial wounds. There was no telling what was going on internally.

Sirius could not have even hazarded a guess about how long it was before Professor Dumbledore, Professor Flitwick and Madame Pomfrey suddenly appeared. The relief of being able to stand back and let the adults take over was astronomical.

Madame Pomfrey cast some sort of stasis charm over Davey and he rose to hover in front of her so she could direct him back up towards the school. Professor Flitwick trotted after her.

"Gentlemen?"

The two of them turned to look at Dumbledore, who was regarding them solemnly over his half-moon spectacles.

"I shall see the two of you, along with Mr Potter and Mr Pettigrew, tomorrow morning in my office. Straight after breakfast, please."

Sirius wanted to protest that they had genuinely done nothing wrong this night. In fact they had actually saved lives. Before he could open his mouth, however, Remus grabbed his sleeve and tugged him back up to the school, leaving the old headmaster standing quietly before the restless tree, expression unreadable.

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Dumbledore's office never changed. It was always fairly dimly lit, dozens of portraits patch-working the stone walls and every available surface groaning under the headmaster's eclectic collection of…well…everything. Clocks ticked, jars glowed mysteriously, a miniature model of the solar system wheezed asthmatically for some reason and the Sorting Hat snored on the shelf. A bowl on the desk seemed to contain a mix of Fizzing Whizbees and round yellow sweets which Sirius could never remember seeing in Honeydukes.

"Take a seat, gentlemen," Dumbledore said. He was seated behind his desk, his large, fiery-looking phoenix on a perch behind his left shoulder.

The four Marauders glanced to the single chair on the opposite side of the desk. It stretched and grew under their gazes into a bench seat. They shuffled over to perch on it.

"Please, Professor," Remus tried, when it looked like Dumbledore was just going to be content regarding the four of them over his glasses for an indeterminate amount of time. "How's Davey?"

Dumbledore sighed, his eyes closing briefly. "Mr Gudgeon is under Madame Pomfrey's care right now. He suffered some fairly severe injuries, although he should make a good recovery."

"His eye…?" Sirius couldn't help asking. The sight of it had haunted him all night.

"It's amazing what magical healing can accomplish when performed skilfully," said Dumbledore, although his tone was quiet and pensive. "Eyes, however…eyes are difficult. No one really knows why they are so resistant to healing magic. It's one of the reasons why Mr Potter," he nodded to James, "and I remain reliant on our spectacles. Some say it is because eyes are meant to be windows to the soul and no soul can be healed with magic. Madame Pomfrey has done what she can, but much of the healing will have to occur naturally. He will probably never regain full sight back in that eye."

Sirius felt a sick rolling in his stomach and resisted the urge to reach out and grip Remus's hand.

"What I would like to do," Dumbledore continued, "is to discuss what you four were doing involved in this whole escapade."

"We weren't involved," James said quickly. "We just got, you know…"

"Involved," Sirius supplied.

"Yeah. But only once Moony had seen…" James trailed off, apparently realising that if his hole got any deeper he would require a step ladder to climb out.

"I suspect," Dumbledore said, with the ghost of a twinkle in his eye, "That it had something to do with this."

The four of them watched, mute with horror, as Dumbledore pulled a very familiar piece of parchment from one of his desk drawers. He unfolded it, tapped it with his wand, and clearly said, "I solemnly swear that I am up to no good." Lines of ink snaked across the page.

"But…h-how…?" Remus looked like he'd been hit over the head with a Beater's bat.

"How do I know the password?" Dumbledore smiled. "Mr Potter told me."

"No I didn't!" James said, throwing his hands up in defence when the others rounded on him.

"And the rest of you backed him up."

Sirius turned to look back at Dumbledore, who had his elbows resting on his desk, fingers steepled.

"How old were you when you made this map?" he asked. When none of them answered, he sighed and traced his fingers over the rounded ink of the Gryffindor Tower. "By the state of the parchment – which I noticed you've saturated rather effectively with protection charms – I'd say it's at least a couple of years old. You were children, dabbling in spells you did not truly understand. You actually took imprints of your own personalities to protect the map. That means it is only protected against people you yourselves don't trust. As soon as your imprints ascertained it was I, they readily revealed the map's secrets."

"I…" James started, then looked unable to continue. "That is, I mean, we…"

"There are reasons that no one has made a map like this before," Dumbledore said, and his tone took on a very professorial edge. "Can anyone tell me what they are?"

"Privacy?" Peter wavered, piping up for the first time since they stepped foot in the office. "I mean, we can see where people are. What they're doing."

"Well, I'm certainly glad to see you gave the matter some consideration," Dumbledore said, looking vaguely amused, "even if you then proceeded to completely disregard it, but I didn't ask why it might be banned. I asked why no one has made one before. I'm sure you are all aware that many things a great deal less moral than this map have been manufactured at some point or another throughout history."

"Well," Remus tried, "the cartography book was out of print. James found an old second hand copy in an old book shop."

"Why was it out of print?"

"Because the Ministry didn't approve of it?" Sirius suggested. That's what they had always assumed.

"Well, they definitely did not approve of the theory behind the spells," Dumbledore said, voice wry, "but the main reason was because the spells didn't work."

There was a blank silence for a few long moments.

"What?" Remus said faintly.

"The author was considered an eccentric. The spells didn't work. Everyone told him it couldn't be done and the poor man ended up losing everything. It is only since I laid eyes on your map that I realised that perhaps he really did have a working theory. But his spells did not work."

"Well," Sirius said, and then he didn't know to say because clearly the spells did work. "Well, I mean, we had to make a few changes. We had to tweak the spells a bit to get them to fit what we wanted, but we didn't know they were duds. Otherwise we wouldn't have bothered."

For some reason, that only made Dumbledore look more incredulous. "Extraordinary," he murmured. "The four of you. The things you could do."

"Does this mean we can have our map back?" James asked hopefully.

"Certainly not, Mr Potter."

"Why?"

"Firstly because Mr Filch confiscated it fair and square while the four of you were illegally out of bed. He has a right to hold onto it until such time as he sees fit to return it to you."

"He'll never see fit!"

"I'm rather counting on that, Mr Black." Dumbledore eyed Sirius sternly. "You see, reason number two is that having this map fall into the wrong hands could have unimaginably terrible consequences. Can you imagine, for example, what would happen if Voldemort got hold of it? If he picked apart the spells and created one of his own that encompassed all of Britain? If he knew where every Muggleborn, hidden Auror, spy for the Light could be found at any given moment?"

Merlin, Sirius suddenly could imagine it. It filled him with a sick sort of horror. He could see it reflected on the faces of the others.

"One day," Dumbledore said, "in the not-too-distant future, the four of you are going to have to choose where you stand in this war. I can only hope with all my heart that you come down on the side of the Light."

"Of course we will!" the four of them chorused at once.

Dumbledore looked pensive as he regarded the four of them. "I would that we all had your determination and surety. But with age comes doubt. Think about it over the next year. Think hard."

"Professor?" Remus said, breaking the almost unbearable silence that followed Dumbledore's statement.

"Yes, Mr Lupin?"

"I – I need the map. I need to keep a watch for any other kids who might go to the Willow."

Dumbledore's whole face seemed to soften. "Do you really think that, after what happened to Mr Gudgeon, anyone would be foolish enough to play the game anymore?"

Remus didn't look convinced.

"It's not your job to protect the students from this," Dumbledore continued gently. "It's ours and we failed. I can assure you, Mr Lupin, that we will not fail again. You may set your mind at rest and perhaps focus on those grades you have allowed to slip over the past couple of months."

Remus flushed and ducked his head.

"You may head to your first lesson now," the headmaster added, and the four of them trudged towards the Charms classroom feeling rather unsure whether they had just been punished or rewarded.

""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""

That night, the moon was even brighter than it had been the night before, edging its way to full. Sirius's bedcurtains were half open and moonlight streamed through the window to wash over Remus's back where he was passed out, starfish-style, across the bed, an arm and a leg tossed carelessly over Sirius. Remus usually slept tense and curled up, but weeks of exhaustion had rendered him loose-limbed. He was shirtless and the dips between his ribs and the small of his back created little pools of moonshadows on his pale skin.

Remus had warned Sirius about the consequences of wishing on moonshadows. Sirius had scoffed and now there was a young boy with a failing eye newly popped back into its socket who was paying the price, if one believed in such things.

Coincidence, Sirius assured himself. And even if it wasn't…well, it had worked. Remus could forget all about the Marauders' Map and the game of Touch Bark and everything could go back to normal. Deep down in his heart Sirius was Black enough to admit that, even knowing the consequences, he would probably do it again.

Because Remus was everything. He was everything. And if Sirius ever lost him, it wouldn't be long before he lost himself, too. It terrified him. He was Gryffindor enough to admit that, too.