Sunday, 3 November 1991
Harry was peacefully walking back to the tower from the Great Hall after breakfast, where he'd had a lovely morning watching Marcus Flint's hair turn every colour of the rainbow for several minutes before someone figured out the counter, when a hand darted out from behind a tapestry and yanked him into the alcove.
"Hello," he said evenly, recognizing the magic of his 'attackers.' He looked up at the grinning faces of Fred and George and spared a moment to fear for the well-being of the general Hogwarts' population. "What can I do for you boys?"
"What do you know about this?" Fred asked, holding out a piece of worn parchment.
Harry thought back to their wide eyes at the name 'Prongs' and immediately knew what he was looking at. With a soft smile he waved his hand, erecting a silencing ward around their hiding spot, and then tapped his wand to the parchment, "I solemnly swear I am up to no good." He watched as ink spread across the page announcing that Moony, Wormtail, Padfoot, and Prongs Purveyors of Aids to magical Mischief-Makers were proud to present The Marauder's Map. He left his wand resting against the parchment and followed his instinct, "Bambi, Heir of Prongs, son of Moony and Padfoot, declares Wormtail Oathbreaker."
He watched in no small amount of glee as Wormtail's name faded out, only to be replaced by his own. He decided Moony, Bambi, Padfoot, and Prongs sounded better. What sort of nickname was Wormtail anyways? There had to have been a better name for a rat.
To his surprise, that wasn't the only shift in ink. He watched as familiar handwriting, handwriting he recognized from the margins of the textbooks he had stashed in his trunk, spilled across the page, "hello, Bambi. Glad this 'ol thing was found by my darling son. Be sure to get up to some mischief. I love you dearly."
"Woah," Fred whispered, breaking the silence they'd fallen into.
"It's yours," George said. "We found it in Filch's office but we want to give it to you. Your dad was Prongs, it should be yours."
"We'll share it," Harry corrected. "I can't get up to mischief all on my own."
"Deal," the twins said.
"So, wait, Remus and Archer are Moony and Padfoot?" George asked.
"Can you keep a secret?" Harry said in lieu of answering outright.
"We'd swear an oath," Fred said, eyes hard and voice more serious than Harry had ever heard it.
"No need, I trust you," Harry paused, before cocking his head slightly, "though if you take an oath to keep a secret it can't be forcibly plucked from your mind. It doesn't even have to be an oath on life or magic…" he trailed off, thinking harder. A moment later, a grin spread across his face as he thought of something Sirius had mentioned offhandedly a couple years prior, a system they'd developed that truly made Pettigrew an oath breaker, "Marauders Oath. Say you solemnly swear to keep a fellow Marauder's secret. If you break the oath it'll revoke your access to the Map."
"That's an incredible safety feature," George pointed out. "Something makes me think this Wormtail did something awful and that he's still out there and if he broke the oath he couldn't use the Map to find you even if he came across it."
"Huh," Harry hummed, "hadn't thought about it like that."
Once both twins had sworn on the sanctity of the Marauders, Harry took another breath and explained, "his name's not Archer. That was Sirius Black. Thus the whole declaring Wormtail 'Oathbreaker.' He was my parent's secret keeper, he killed those muggles, then he framed Sirius and escaped in his animagus form. We have no clue where he is now and no good way to find him. I staged an Azkaban break out at the ripe age of five and I've been living with Sirius since then."
"You staged an Azkaban breakout at five?" George asked, apparently stuck on that bit of the story.
"Yeah," Harry said, waving it off as if it'd been nothing but a random Sunday. "I'm Heir Peverell, Azkaban is Peverell property and I can talk to dementors, it wasn't difficult."
"It wasn't difficult, he says," Fred muttered, shaking his head in disbelief. "You're something else, you know that right?"
"I've been told," Harry nodded. "Anyways, yes, Sirius is Padfoot, Remus is Moony. They're a grim and a wolf," he said, deciding against adding the were in favour of pretending Moony was simply an animagus form. Which it sort of was, with the wolfsbane, it was simply a form only available every 28 days and he couldn't exactly choose whether or not he wanted to transform. "We need to come up with nicknames for you two and, at some point, probably when I'm no longer eleven, we're going need to figure out how to become animagi."
With that, Harry tapped his wand to the map, said "mischief managed," stuffed it in his pocket with hopes of getting it to 'talk' more, and left a set of bewildered twins behind as he stepped back into the hallway.
He made it about ten more meters before another arm darted out from the wall and yanked him into an alcove.
"Dear god," he yelped, also recognizing this person's magic but he really hadn't expected to see them, "Em, what are you still doing here?"
"I'm trying to sort out the wards," he explained after waving a hand to erect a silencing ward, "but I haven't actually touched them in about a thousand years so I'm at a loss. Can you come bleed on the stone and see if anything happens?"
"That's an insane way to phrase that, you know."
"I'm aware, but please?"
"Have you slept since you left Camelot yesterday?"
"Not a wink," Merlin said, confirming Harry's suspicion.
"Lovely. Alright, it's a good thing I carry a ritual dagger, huh?"
"I'm not the one who told you it was excessive," Merlin said, raising his hands in surrender before he grabbed Harry's arm and stepped directly through the wall. Harry didn't even have time to feel bewildered about the turn of events before he found himself standing in front of the most complex ward system he'd ever seen. The scheme felt alive. Everyone said that Hogwarts was so old and so steeped in magic that it'd become sentient, he absolutely believed that now.
The magic wove between the stone to the walls in intricate patterns and went even further, creating a dome around the castle and imbuing the very stones with protection. It looked almost like a nervous system with the stone as the brain.
"Just bleed on it?" Harry asked, bending over to grab his Peverell dagger.
"Yeah, see if the castle will speak to you."
"Is anyone going to notice if I've taken the wards?" he asked, deciding to ignore the idea of a building talking for the time being. He wasn't an expert on wards but he knew enough to understand that putting his blood on the stone meant he'd technically be laying a claim and, if the wards accepted him, he'd truly be taking them over. At least to some extent. He had to assume that several people held the wards in a system this complex, but he was rather certain he'd become one of them if he followed through with Merlin's plan.
"No," Merlin answered. "I still hold the wards, technically. Anyone else is just extra. The castle is just currently mad at me because I up and left for several centuries. Also, it hasn't gotten any new blood since Dumbledore became Headmaster in the 50s."
"Alright," Harry said, resigned to whatever chaos was about to erupt as he sliced open his palm and then formed a fist, holding his hand out and watching his blood sink into the stone, twining with the threads of magic. He wasn't quite sure how long he stood there, bleeding, but eventually there was a burst of light and he felt a presence in the back of his mind. It felt like the magic that often hummed him to sleep and he immediately knew it was Hogwarts.
He waded through his consciousness, trying to find a hole that would've allowed a troll into the building. He was assuming it had something to do with why Fluffy was currently hanging out on the third floor, but the more he searched the more confused he got. There was no hole. It only took him a minute longer to realize that the lack of a hole meant the troll had been purposefully let into the castle. Either it was meant to be another defense to whatever Fluffy was guarding, or someone with control over the wards had allowed it in and then patched the hole.
The only people he knew to have control over the wards (up until five minutes ago) were Merlin and Dumbledore. He knew Merlin hadn't let it in and he was rather certain that if Dumbledore had let it in he would've put additional wards around wherever it was meant to be placed. He knew there were additional wards around Fluffy with a magical signature that felt like Dumbledore's. And a trained Cerberus was far less dangerous than a fully grown troll, there was simply no way he would've warded Fluffy and not a troll.
That left the question of who else had control of the wards. Or, who had known when Dumbledore was going to make adjustments and had taken advantage.
Hogwarts provided the answer; no one else had control.
Someone had taken advantage.
Harry had no clue who had done it, but at least he now knew how.
He pulled out of his mind and realized he was laying, sprawled out like a starfish, on the floor of the ward room while Merlin sat against the wall simply watching.
"Did you sort it out?"
"There's no hole," he started before explaining everything he'd learned and everything he'd guessed happened.
"Who was cursing your broom yesterday?"
"I'm nearly certain it was Quirrell," Harry said. "But Grandfather said it'd be difficult to get him removed because the school has such a strange history with Defense professors and, also, we have no proof. I'm sure he's cleared his wand by now and everyone else was too distracted watching to see if I'd fall to have seen anything."
"Ugh," Merlin huffed, slumping further against the wall.
"Alright, we're not going to solve this mystery today," Harry said, crawling to his feet. "Do you want to stay here in whatever quarters I'm sure you've got hidden in the castle or do you want to go home?"
"What day is it?"
"Sunday."
"Is your homework done for tomorrow?"
"My homework is done for the entire week."
"That's my boy," Merlin said with a tired smile. "Why don't we both go back to my quarters, you can dig through the books I'm sure I left lying around while I sleep, we can have dinner, and then I'll go back to Camelot?"
"Sounds good to me," Harry said, a bright smile on his face at the prospect of new books. He reached out a hand to help Merlin to his feet and then allowed himself to be pulled straight through the castle walls once again.
He was going to have to learn that trick.