Chapter Five

Penny for some reason was awake one night, being unable to sleep she decided to use her time constructively in an exploratory mood. Hogwarts has many secrets, most students only become aware of a small amount of its mysteries. Penny exits the dormitory, usually sneaking around at night is dangerous but Penny quickly cast the Disillusionment charm upon herself. A white light engulfs Penny and once it settles she finds that she begins acting like a chameleon. Her body and clothing quickly change colour to match her surroundings. Penny not being too practiced in this spell before has resulted in a slight lag in colour adaptation. Because of this lag Penny has to take extreme care of the speed she is traveling. The first place she goes to is the restricted section of the library. There are several spells and curses she wants to look up. Within the dark eerie night the castle has an almost horror like atmosphere. At one point Penny hears a noise coming from behind her. She stands completely still against the shadowy recess of one of the walls. Her body blending into its surroundings, she watches as Filtche’s cat Mrs Norris runs past her. The dust coloured cat was looking all around, its well-practiced movements have obviously caught many students in the past. Penny’s breaths as slowly as possible hoping the cat wouldn’t hear her. The cats ears began twitching, Penny was terrified covers her mouth with her hand. Suddenly a bang was heard around the corner, Mrs Norris shot off like a rocket. Within seconds Penny could hear Mrs Norris meowing loudly as it had caught a couple of students. Filtch arrived within moments of hearing Mrs Norris’s call, he quickly collard the two Slyverin students. They were both third years and seemed to be up to no good but Penny didn’t give it too much of her time as she used the chance to get away. Penny finally made it to the library and sneaked into the restricted section. Penny immediately took out a copy of Magick Moste Evile by Godelot. This book is a collection of dangerous spells that is meant to have advanced the study of Dark Magic greatly. The reason Penny is reading such a book is so that she can become familiar with the possible spells the death eaters may use. To her knowing her enemies will greatly increase her chances of survival. This book covers a wide range of topics but it would seem any information on Horcruxes is barely mentioned. Penny didn’t really need information about Horcruxes as she doesn’t intent on hunting them down. She will more than likely leave this to the main characters later on in the story. Penny sat quietly absorbing the text on every single page. She has discovered as of late that her ability to memorize pages of texts has greatly increased since being at Hogwarts. The more she exercises this book dweller power the faster it seems to become. It is so fast in fact that she only really needs to see the page for a moment and she can read back its text in its entirety at a later date. Within her mind she is building up quite a collection.

As Penny was leaving the restricted section she could hear the chuckle of two people. Luckily her Disillusionment charm was still active. The two people laughing were Fred and George, The Weasley twins. She sneaked around the corner and saw the two sat in the library with a table full of sweets and food that they had stolen from the kitchen. She doesn’t know for what reason they were in the library as they don’t appear to be big readers if you were to ask her opinion. Penny recognized the books they were reading and immediately understood that they were reading for the sole purpose of improving their pranks. What Penny was most interested in though was the old-looking piece of parchment folded up on the table next to them. This was obviously the Marauder’s Map. This is an enchanted map of the school created by James Potter, Remus Lupin, Sirius Black, and Peter Pettigrew during their time at Hogwarts. It was originally just a normal map that the four friends plotted themselves before they enchanted it with the Homunculous Charm. This charm when cast on a map allows one to track every-single person in the mapped area. Obviously the four friends put some fail-safes and some rather mischievous spells on the parchment too. Penny crept over slowly, Fred and George were discussing an improved recipe for Dungbombs which they intend to throw into the Slyverin common room the first chance they get. While they were distracted Penny got her hands on the map and crept back into the restricted section. Making sure nobody was around placed her wand on the map and said in a breathy whisper, “I solemnly swear that I am up to no good”. The Map springs to life, ink begins drawing a complex but well designed map of the entire Hogwarts school. There are a few areas not visible on the map such as the Chamber of Secrets and the Room of Requirement but there is a chance the four never found these rooms during their time in Hogwarts, either that or those rooms are unplottable. Penny quickly fumbled through her bag until she found a suitable piece of parchment. She hastily used her wand to make a complete copy of the map. As it is just a normal map that Penny had made it has none of the functions of the Marauder’s Map but Penny intended to enchant it at a later time. She quickly pointed her wand back at the original and whispered “Mischief managed” Slowly she crept back towards the twins who were giggling to each other. Penny overheard George say something about Malfoy possibly being inflated into a giant purple ball and the two howled in laughter. Penny placed the map back where she took it and headed off back.

Back in the Ravenclaw common room, Penny began casting the Homunculous Charm on her copy of the map. This charm is a complicated multistep procedure, The Marauders obviously helped each other complete this charm but for a sole Penny it is a different preposition. It took Penny almost an entire hour of intense concentration and three attempts to just cast a passable Homunculous charm. Unlike the Marauders map Penny gave her map a feature that would put a minor curse on anyone who gets the Password wrong. Incidentally no one in the wizarding world should be able to guess her password as she set it as Richard Harris. By saying this the map springs to life in much the same way as the Marauders map. To close it down one has to say “Michael Gambon”, there is also a charm that will display any text from within Penny’s mind upon the parchment. To use this mode one has to say “Jude Law” Penny was pretty proud of her handiwork. She could also read peacefully upon this parchment the numerous collections that she was storing in her own mind. While she could read them immediately from memory she thought actually seeing the written word held far greater appeal to her.