Marauder's Map
The Marauder's Map was a magical map of Hogwarts castle that Moony, Wormtail, Padfoot, and Prongs (the nicknames for Remus Lupin, Peter Pettigrew, Sirius Black, and James Potter) created during their years at Hogwarts. It looked like a large, empty piece of old parchment until activated with a tap of a wand and the spell "I solemnly swear that I am up to no good." Then a wondrous map appeared, which detailed the floor plan and grounds of Hogwarts castle, including the secret passages, and showed people as miniscule figures labeled with their names (even people under Invisibility Cloaks or in their Animagus states). To clear the map, a wand tap and the spell "Mischief managed" were needed [POA10]. It is very important that the map never lies. At some point Argus Filch confiscated the map. He didn't know how to activate it - and he couldn't anyway because he wasn't a wizard - but he accurately guessed that it was a powerful magical item.
During their first year at Hogwarts, Fred and George Weasley snatched the map from Filch's filing cabinet and discovered how to use it. In an interview, JKR explained how Fred and George figured it out: "Don't you think it would be quite a Fred and Georgeish thing to say in jest, and then see this thing transform? … And the map flickering into life here and there when they got closer and closer, and finally they hit upon the exact right word combination and it just erupts" (MuggleNet and The Leaky Cauldron interview, 16 July 2005). Fred and George enjoyed the map for three years until they bequeathed it to Harry, who first used it to find the secret passage to Hogsmeade [POA10]. Later, Snape caught Harry, who had been sneaking around with the Marauder's Map late at night in the school corridors. When Snape used various magical spells to induce the map to reveal its secrets, it insulted him. Professor Lupin, one of the map's creators, confiscated the map but then returned it to Harry at the end of the school year [POA14, 17, 22].
Harry used the map until Mad-Eye/Barty Jr. "borrowed" it during Harry's fourth year [GOF25]. When Barty Crouch Sr. appeared at Hogwarts, Mad-Eye/Barty Jr. killed him and then watched the Marauder's Map until everybody was gone; he then transfigured his father's body into a bone and buried it [GOF35].
Somehow Harry retrieved the Marauder's Map and used it again during in his fifth year to travel safely to the Room of Requirement and also visit Hagrid after he returned from his mission to the giants [OOTP18, 20].
In Harry's sixth year, he used the map to see where Draco Malfoy was going. Harry eventually came to realize that the Room of Requirement and anyone inside it didn't appear on the Marauder's Map, because the room was Unplottable. Ron tried to use the map during the battle at Hogwarts [HBP18, 19, 21, 24, 25].
When Harry had his own children, he passed the Marauder's Map onto his eldest son, James Potter Jr [JKR Interview].
|
