Chapter 123: The Map's Secret

Remus returned to Grimmauld Place with Dumbledore and an old sheet of parchment sealed inside a document case. 

Sirius recognized it before the case touched the table. 

"You found it." 

"Mr. Filch found it years ago," Remus said. "Professor Dumbledore merely persuaded him that an object confiscated from four former students might now be relevant to a Ministry case." 

Dumbledore opened the case but did not hand the parchment to Edward. 

That detail mattered. 

The Marauder's Map had been made by Sirius, James, Remus, and Peter while they were students. Sirius could explain its phrases and its tricks. Remus could identify several marks hidden in the border. Neither fact meant Edward was entitled to carry it through Hogwarts. 

Remus touched his wand to the parchment. 

"I solemnly swear that I am up to no good." 

Ink spread across the surface in branching lines. Corridors, staircases, rooms, and small labeled figures appeared. Grimmauld Place did not appear, nor did any place outside Hogwarts. The Map was tied to the school and grounds it had been made to chart. 

Edward leaned closer without touching it. 

"Can it identify an Animagus while transformed?" 

"It did when we tested it as students," Remus said. "But we are not relying on a memory from fifteen years ago. We will test that again." 

Sirius volunteered. 

He transformed into the black dog only after Dumbledore opened a temporary school-linked test route through the case. Remus watched the parchment. A single label changed position in the small marked receiving area. 

Sirius Black. 

The name did not become Padfoot and did not disappear. 

Sirius changed back. "Satisfied?" 

"With that question," Dumbledore said. "Not with every question." 

They tested the blanking phrase next. "Mischief managed" removed the visible ink, though Dumbledore still kept the Map in its case afterward. Remus explained that the Map had weaknesses its makers never understood. It was powerful, clever, and built by schoolboys. Treating it as infallible because it had embarrassed Filch for years would be foolish. 

Edward agreed. 

What interested him more was what Dumbledore refused to do. 

He did not ask Sirius to describe how to reproduce the enchantment. He did not let Edward copy the Map. He did not authorize a smaller tracking charm for Peter. A device capable of following every named person in a school had obvious investigative value and equally obvious potential for abuse. 

"If the Map is evidence," Edward said, "who controls access?" 

"For now, I do," Dumbledore replied. "Professor Lupin may inspect it because he helped create it. Professor McGonagall will witness any observation used in the Peter investigation. You may attend when the observation concerns information you supplied. You may not borrow it." 

Edward had expected the answer and still disliked it. 

Sirius noticed. "That expression is exactly why he said it." 

"I can understand a rule and resent it simultaneously." 

"A promising political development." 

Dumbledore ignored them both. "There is another reason. Harry's father helped make this Map. If Harry learns of it later, its history will matter to him. We will not turn it into a private surveillance tool and then present it as a family keepsake." 

Edward had not considered that. 

The first scheduled observation would take place after term began, when Ron and Scabbers were back inside Hogwarts. Until then, they had only Sirius's description of the rat, the missing toe, and the Weasley family's account of its age. 

That was enough to prepare. 

It was not enough to convict. 

After Dumbledore resealed the Map, Sirius returned to a separate project on the other end of the table. Edward had been experimenting with a small defensive charm for the Alliance, but the first designs were too ambitious. One version attempted to answer an incoming spell on its own. Flitwick had rejected the idea through correspondence immediately. 

A defensive object should not choose whom to attack. 

Edward discarded that design. 

The version left on the table was simpler: a silver disc carrying one stored barrier. The user had to grip it and speak a release phrase. The barrier lasted only a few seconds and collapsed after taking a modest impact. It could not identify attackers, pursue them, resist an Unforgivable Curse, or replace a trained Shield Charm. 

Sirius picked up one of the failed discs. A black mark crossed its face where the silver had warped. 

"How many?" 

"Eleven failures." 

"And the successful one?" 

"One partial success. It held against a classroom jinx and cracked." 

"Good." 

Edward looked at him. "Good?" 

"You know what it can do because you also know what broke it." 

That had become the governing rule of the summer. Rare magic was not a license to assume hidden strength. A failed test narrowed a claim. A successful test narrowed it too. 

The next trial took place in a warded room with Sirius behind a marked line and Kreacher holding a bucket of sand for reasons he refused to explain. Edward activated the disc. A low orange barrier opened in front of him, wide enough to cover his torso and the person directly beside him. 

Sirius cast a weak Stinging Jinx. 

The barrier flashed and held. 

A second jinx struck the same spot. The silver disc warmed sharply and the barrier collapsed. 

Edward released it at once. 

"Two ordinary impacts at that strength," he said. 

"One," Sirius corrected. "The second broke it. If you tell someone two, they will stand there waiting for the second to save them." 

Edward amended the note. 

The disc could buy a moment to move after one ordinary spell. Nothing more had been established. 

He also removed the House of Black crest from the front. The device was not a declaration of family authority, and students carrying it did not need to advertise who had made it. A small maker's mark on the back was enough for identification if a professor confiscated one. 

"You are taking all the romance out of this," Sirius said. 

"The romance was making it dangerous." 

Kreacher placed the sand bucket down with great satisfaction. 

Dumbledore returned from the adjoining room before leaving and inspected the cracked disc. He did not praise Edward's craftsmanship. He asked who had approved the materials, who would receive a device, and what instructions would accompany it. 

Edward had answers for the first two and not the third. 

So the devices did not leave the table. 

He spent the evening writing a card in plain language: emergency escape aid, one ordinary impact, move immediately, do not test against dangerous curses, report every activation to a professor. Flitwick would review both the object and the wording at Hogwarts before any student received one. 

Sirius read the card. 

"That sounds boring enough to save somebody." 

Edward set it beside the Map case. 

Two objects had occupied the study that day. One was an extraordinary piece of magic made by four reckless students and now held by adults because its power exceeded any one student's right to use it. The other was a modest barrier Edward had deliberately made less clever so it would be safer in frightened hands. 

A year earlier, he would have admired the first and tried to make the second more impressive. 

Now he understood why restraint belonged in the design.