By Clara Minutes
Disclaimer: I don’t own them. Suing me would be pointless.
“Yes, My Lord. I can give you the Potters.”
Oh, what have I done? I think those words are going to have bad consequences. I have just handed my friends to the Dark Lord. I guess I should probably tell you how things got this bad.
I swear it wasn’t my fault. Severus, and later, Lucius were to blame. They tricked me into it, but I’m getting ahead of myself again.
My family has always been followers. Why should I be the one to change that?
When I first got to Hogwarts, I was so scared. I knew no one. Some people on the train had been kind, like Lily. Dear, sweet, condemned Lily. There was also Remus; he was the first to speak to me. I still hold him in high regard.
I was shocked when the Sorting Hat yelled out, “Gryffindor.” I’m not a leader, you see, and I’m a coward. Hufflepuff would surely have been a better house for me.
That night I met everyone else in the dormitory. You know, James and Sirius. Well, they hated each other at first, something about Sirius being a rotten Dark wizard. James kept going on about it, but I didn’t understand why. James seemed nice enough, when he wasn’t trying to fight with Sirius. Remus was in the dormitory as well. He was rather quiet. I was too, but I just didn’t want to get involved in James’s and Sirius’s fights.
This is how things started out. You would never have guessed that we would become the best of friends. The Marauders. Again, that’s not yet.
I only spoke to Remus for months. Lily was nice enough, but she was a girl and they are difficult to talk to.
One day, while we were in a Potions lesson with Professor Slughorn, everything changed. It was Halloween and James was planning something. Remus had let slip that something was going to happen. Halfway through Potions, I started to hear people sniggering. James’s prank ended up being that everything Severus Snape touched turned orange. So far, Snape’s nose, half of his hair, and all of his potions equipment were orange. James’s plan worked perfectly except that Snape was blaming Lily for his malady. She was working at the same table. I’m guessing Sirius must have had a crush on her because he immediately started yelling at Snape. James took his opportunity and grabbed Lily to get her out of harm’s way.
For all his trouble James earned a punch in the nose, for Lily knew James was the cause of Snape’s discolouration.
Seeing James be punched caused Sirius to break his concentration, letting Snape get in a punch to his jaw.
This, of course, made James laugh. Lily was now loudly giving James an earful for playing tricks. Snape heard and decided hexing James was more productive than fighting Sirius.
To make this long story short, Snape attempted to hex James but hit Lily, causing both James and Sirius to respond. Before things got worse, Professor Slughorn had immobilised everyone.
Somehow, in the next month’s worth of detentions, Sirius and James came to an understanding. By the Christmas holidays, James and Sirius were inseparable.
I so desperately wanted to be a part of their group. Part of it was for friendship’s sake, but mostly I didn’t want them playing tricks on me.
Remus acted as the hinge between all of us. He was still primarily the only one I could speak to.
Our first year came and went. The second year was when we all really became friends. We had been acquaintances until then.
I think I became part of the group simply because I was always around. The older students were even more frightening than James and Sirius, so that definitely wasn’t an option. Lily was still nice as ever, but I couldn’t manage to speak coherently around her.
By Halloween of our second year, the four of us were always together. Pranks were our specialty. Particularly, playing them on the Slytherins. Severus Snape was the easiest to catch unawares.
Lily thought it was terribly unfair for us to pick on “Snivellus” as we’d named him.
It was also during this year that things started to change again. We had all noticed that Remus was sick rather often. However, after his illness he always looked like he’d literally lost a fight. The three of us started to get curious because we knew there was more to it, but we couldn’t figure out what.
For Christmas that year, James got this totally amazing cloak. It was an Invisibility Cloak. Anyone who wore it became invisible. The three of us could fit under it, so one night we decided to follow Remus to wherever he went. We could only go out to the grounds because the Whomping Willow was very vicious.
We followed him on two more occasions before we, well, James and Sirius, confronted him about his illness. At first, he tried to deny anything was wrong. We started taking turns asking what was really going on. Three weeks later, he finally gave in and told us he’s a werewolf. A werewolf, I tell you! He even being near everyone is dangerous. What was Dumbledore thinking? Though, he’s always done things his own way.
My relationship with Remus was rather stilted for a while after this revelation. I was honestly scared of what could happen because of his lycanthropy.
James and Sirius reacted as if it was the best thing they’d ever heard. Now that we knew, they wanted to find a way to make Remus’s “illness” more bearable. It scared me to think about what harebrained ideas they would cook up.
The end of the second year melted into the beginning of the third without much ceremony. James and Sirius had come up with the idea that we should all become Animagi. Werewolves were only dangerous to humans, so being an animal was safe.
Once again, I was scared to death of one of their ideas. I had heard from some of the older students that becoming an Animagus was horribly difficult and could go very wrong. I wanted to help Remus, I really did, but I didn’t want to risk my neck.
The third and fourth years were predominantly spent learning how to become illegal Animagi, and cementing our legacy as pranksters extraordinaire. By the end of the fourth year, James and Sirius had already mastered their animal changes. I was having a much harder time. They were both enormous animals when they changed. James became a stag and Sirius a huge black dog. With my luck, when I finally managed it I would probably turn into a worm. How humiliating that would have been.
The three of us met during the summer between fourth and fifth years to help me with my transformation. Remus knew we were up to something but had no idea what it was. I can only imagine what terrible pranks he thought we were going to play on him. Poor Remus. However, I was happy because for once I wasn’t the one left in the dark. I think that was when I realised that I really did resent the bond the other three had. Even though I was part of the group, I was an outsider.
Anyway, all summer we worked. The first of September came round and we all met back on the train. Remus was in a terrible mood because he thought we’d been up to mischief without him. For the first month and a half, we all worked tirelessly trying to find ways to help me change. I finally managed it the day before Halloween of that year.
This worked out perfectly because Halloween happened to be a full moon that year. On Halloween, we followed Remus, once again, to the Whomping Willow. We waited for Madam Pomfrey to come back out and I rushed toward the knot on the tree that made it stop moving. I ended up being better than a worm but I was still small. Being a rat had its advantages. I’ll get to more on that later.
Once I touched the knot the others changed, and we all went down the tunnel to what we knew would be the Shrieking Shack.
It was late evening, so the moon hadn’t come out yet. Remus was in one of the upstairs rooms reading when we all came bursting through the door. The look on his face was priceless. He looked as if he would faint any second. Remus sat for a long time and just stared at us. Remus finally snapped to his senses when Sirius, in dog form, shoved his nose in Remus’s crotch. This had the interesting response of Remus reaching down and grabbing Sirius in a huge hug. He guessed right away which human correlated with what animal.
That night we all stayed in the Shack and explored it. We wanted to gauge Remus’s reaction in wolf form and just get used to all of us being together for his transformation.
As soon as dawn broke, the three of us made our way back to the grounds of Hogwarts. We got back under the cloak just as Madam Pomfrey was coming out the front doors.
When we became more comfortable with our situations, we started to branch out and explore more of the Hogwarts’ grounds. We had such fun. We could go anywhere we liked. James and Sirius were big enough to keep Remus in check whenever the need arose. I was small enough to get into most places and open doors. We learned every secret passage and classroom in this way. The knowledge that we were the only ones to know all of this was intoxicating. This was my first taste of power and I fell in love with it.
Our fifth year ended with O.W.L. exams. By now, Sirius had got over his infatuation with Lily Evans. The rest of us had not. Remus and I kept our feelings to ourselves, but James was annoyingly loud about his. He was always showing off to entertain us and impress her.
Lily didn’t appreciate his blatant advances. Remus actually seemed to have the highest chance out of all of us. Lily just saw me as someone to help and not pay any extra thoughts to.
That summer the four of us made as much effort as possible to meet. I lived furthest away, so I was often left out of the fun.
Our sixth year started much as any other. We decided that we should do something with all the knowledge we gathered about Hogwarts. Remus suggested making a map. No one else could think of anything better to do, so a map was made. At first, it would only show the building and grounds. This wasn’t terribly helpful and Sirius suggested making it show the people as well. That way when we were sneaking around we could avoid being caught. James and Sirius were already in enough trouble without continually getting caught out after curfew.
Finally, the Marauder’s Map was made. And, what a handy tool it became. We charmed it to look like blank parchment until you said a password. They allowed me to name the password.
The sixth year was going along swimmingly until Sirius did something completely insane. He sent Severus Snape to the Willow on a full moon. I don’t know what started that situation except the normal hatred of everything Snape related. I still harboured a few doubts about Remus even though I considered him a friend. This incident showed me that any doubts I had about justifying my fears were unnecessary.
I started to keep my distance from the group after that. I didn’t want to be associated with that situation. Snape’s loathing for us increased exponentially.
Snape seemed to notice my reluctance to be seen with the rest of the Marauders because he started paying more attention to me.
At first, it was simply harassment. Then he started asking questions about all of us. By now, it was the end of the sixth year. How was I to know how drastically my life would change in the next few years?
Again, I’m getting ahead of myself. Sometime during our seventh year, rumours of a Dark Lord started to become frequent within Hogwarts. They said he went to Hogwarts and was a powerful wizard. I was still keeping my distance from Remus; he scared me so. He was nice enough, but I didn’t want to end up like him.
Snape, by now, was pressing me for any information I had about my fellow Gryffindors. I would tell him bits of information because I had to. He would threaten to tell everyone that I was telling secrets. I couldn’t let that happen. I tried to make him happy with what little I knew.
Things were really hard for me. I had to act as if everything was okay around my friends because they didn’t know how much of a coward I was. After all, they don’t let cowards into Gryffindor. I must have kept up pretences pretty well because they never asked about it.
By the end of our seventh year, the new Dark Lord was causing quite a stir. Most of Slytherin was prepared to join him directly after graduation. I found out that Lucius Malfoy was already working for him. This scared me too, knowing that such powerful people were siding with the Dark. Headmaster Dumbledore had set up a resistance group.
The Marauders and Lily were all very excited to be helping this group when they left school. I should probably tell you that James had been made Head Boy to Lily’s Head Girl in our seventh year. During the duties required of them, they had somehow fallen in love.
This development was hard for me to accept. She always hated him. I missed the help she used to offer me. Now she only had time for James.
Our school days ended and James proposed. Moreover, to everyone’s surprise, Lily accepted. During the next few months, we were all adjusting to life outside of Hogwarts. We had all joined Dumbledore’s resistance group, the Order of the Phoenix, as soon as we were able. Our main purpose at that time was trying to figure out who was supporting what side.
Once again I was being pressured, but from the good side. I knew most of the people who had gone to the Dark Lord’s side from our year, but when Dumbledore asked for information, I stayed silent.
Snape still kept in touch as well. Now that we were out of school, he enlisted Lucius Malfoy’s help in getting information from me. They wanted to know who was in Dumbledore’s Order and what we were doing to hinder the Dark Lord’s progress. At first, I would only tell them what we were doing in general terms.
Quite soon, this was not enough. I started going to “gatherings” hosted by the Dark Lord’s supporters under threat from Lucius especially. I kept justifying myself by saying I could use all my knowledge to help Dumbledore. I was just gathering information.
James’s and Lily’s wedding was a grand affair. It seemed like everyone who supported Dumbledore was there. I was disappointed because James chose to have only a best man. Of course, this was Sirius. I thought I should have been included since I was one of his best friends. Remus must have felt the same way.
I had heard from Severus and Lucius that the Dark Lord was trying to recruit Remus by appealing to his werewolf side. I haven’t dared ask him about it. I don’t want to have to answer all the questions that would go with that situation.
The Dark Lord was rapidly gaining followers. I was starting to feel that despite all of Dumbledore’s good intentions he might not beat this foe.
I was now under suspicion from the Dark Lord’s supporters. They didn’t think I was telling them all that I knew. This was, of course, true. I finally was taken to an initiation ceremony with both Severus and Lucius having threatened me beforehand. I was terrified. I knew that if I became a member of the Dark Lord’s camp I would have to tell him everything. I also knew that if I didn’t join I would end up dead. Perhaps unfortunately, I valued my life more than the little information I had. This is how I became an official follower of the Dark Lord.
Dumbledore had hit a brick wall in his plans because he had no reliable sources of information. No one could tell him who was working for the Dark Lord.
A few months went by and I finally got an opportunity to make My Lord happy. The Potters were going to have a baby. I didn’t know at first how crucial that information would be.
The Dark Lord intensified his attacks on both the wizarding and Muggle worlds alike as his forces grew. He was primarily attacking predominant families that opposed him. The Potters were one such family.
He would launch a new attack on them every four months or so. Just before the baby was born, the Dark Lord got information that stated he needed to destroy the Potters in order for him to achieve his ultimate goal. Amid all of these attacks baby Harry was born. He was a perfectly healthy child.
Dumbledore had also got wind of this information and, therefore, decided to hide the Potters. I was made their Secret Keeper with help from Sirius. He urged them to use me as a decoy. Sirius suspected that the Dark Lord had got to, and converted, Remus making me the perfect person for the task. Little did they all know that I was the one betraying them. Though, you have to understand, all I was doing was trying to stay alive.