The afternoon's "quidditch" game brought an opportunity to ask the twins why they wanted to join the Marauders. It wasn't really quidditch, since there were only four players and they had to use apples off of the trees rather than a quaffle just in case someone threw too hard and it landed in a muggle's yard. Mostly it was an opportunity for the Weasley boys to each have a turn on Harry's Nimbus 2000 broom while the other three tried to throw apples into a bucket past them.
But it counted a couple of XP toward Harry's flying skill, so it wasn't nothing.
During a lull in the game, Harry brought up, "So… what do you two know about the Marauders?"
Fred and George shared a look and then Fred asked, "What do you know about the Marauders?"
Harry shrugged and explained, "That they were a group of four guys. That you two want to be members. Oh, and that one of them was my dad, James Potter."
Simultaneous gasps from the twins preceded George saying, "Merlin! Really? That's awesome!"
Fred agreed, "We have to show you the map!"
George smirked, "Let's see what it has to say."
Fred rushed off back to their room while George moved them all a little farther away from the house and any chance of a parent or sibling overhearing. A few minutes later Fred returned with a piece of old parchment and folded it open. He announced, "Marauders. We would like to introduce you to Harry Potter, son of James Potter."
Handwriting appeared on the parchment, saying, "Mr. Prongs is excited to meet young Harry, and asks: who is his mother?"
"Mr. Moony thinks Mr. Prongs knows the answer he wants."
"Lily… um, Evans," Harry remembered his mother's maiden name.
"Mr. Prongs needs a moment."
"Mr. Padfoot knew it was inevitable."
"Mr. Wormtail wasn't so sure."
"Mr. Moony suggests that Mssrs. Weasley show the heir of the Marauders the other functions of the map while Mr. Prongs is unresponsive in glee."
"Well that pretty much proves it!" Fred said, astonished.
"Prongs must be Harry's dad. Who are the other ones?" George asked.
Harry opened the guild panel and listed off, "Sirius Black, Remus Lupin, and Peter Pettigrew."
"Mr. Moony suggests Mssrs. Weasley stop digging for more information and ask the real Marauders if they want more information, now that they have those names."
"Fine," Fred grumbled.
George tapped the parchment with his wand and said, "I solemnly swear that I am up to no good."
"You say 'mischief managed' to turn it back off," Fred explained, quietly.
The writing on the page evaporated, and was replaced by an announcement that the various code names presented the Marauder's Map, which then gave way to a line-art drawing that Harry quickly realized was Hogwarts. As they further folded out the parchment, they could see what seemed to be every floor of the school, with all rooms and corridors fully mapped.
And there were a few dots on the maps, labeled with the names of the professors that stayed in the castle over the summer. Albus Dumbledore was in his office, Minerva McGonagall and Filius Flitwick were in their classrooms, Argus Filch was roaming the halls, and Rubeus Hagrid was wandering the grounds just outside.
"It also shows secret passages, and their password once you get close enough," Fred explained.
"It gets a little busy when everyone's in the castle," George added. "But dead useful for making sure a professor or prefect won't catch us when we're out after curfew."
Harry grinned and inspected the map.
[THE MARAUDER'S MAP
This map, when unlocked, displays Hogwarts
and its secrets. If equipped, it grants you the
Marauder perk.]
"I knew it!" Harry said. "Can I hold this? I want to check something." Fred and George nodded, watching in curiosity as Harry folded the map up and put it in his pocket, confirming on his inventory screen that it appeared as equipped in one of his miscellaneous body slots. He brought up his floating map and sighed, "Brilliant!"
"What?" Ron checked.
"I can see where everyone is here, too," Harry explained. "Your mum's in the kitchen, Percy and Ginny are in their bedrooms, and your dad's in the shed."
"That's an easy enough guess," Fred said, unsure if they were being tricked.
George continued, "If you're somehow using the map for our house and not just Hogwarts… tell us something you couldn't guess."
"Okay," Harry looked around and noticed a strange X marked on the far side of the garden. "I think there's something interesting over on that side of the garden," he pointed.
"That's just the old toolshed," Ron shrugged. "But we can check it out?"
The four boys wandered over to the place Harry had indicated. Sure enough, it was a truly decrepit wooden shed probably built over a century earlier. There were a few rusty gardening tools in there, but it was clear the Weasleys barely used it for storage due to the gaps in the boards and how it could fall over at any moment. As they got closer, a note appeared next to the X that said, "Hidden Trapdoor to the Gnome King's Lair."
"There's a trapdoor around here, I think," Harry said. "Says it's for the Gnome King's Lair."
"We have wondered where the gnomes keep coming from," Fred admitted.
George explained, "We have to degnome the garden a few times every summer."
"Okay, Harry, say we believe you…" Fred started.
George finished, "...what is going on?"
Harry and Ron shared a look, and Ron nodded so Harry stood back and said, "First off, I accept your request to join the Marauders."
[FRED WEASLEY HAS JOINED THE MARAUDERS]
[GEORGE WEASLEY HAS JOINED THE MARAUDERS]
"Um, thanks?" Fred said, not having detected anything different.
"Do you want to join, Ron?" Harry asked.
"Sure," Ron agreed.
[RON WEASLEY HAS JOINED THE MARAUDERS]
Sure enough, all three names now appeared on the active tab of the Marauder's guild, and there were no more names on the request list. "Okay, so… on my birthday, something weird happened. Well, weirder than normal…" Harry began.
After explaining it to Ron, he basically had it down, and it only took about ten minutes to sum everything up. He had to prove he could tell Fred and George apart and demonstrate taking items in and out of his inventory before they completely believed him.
But when they did… "The opportunities are…" Fred boggled.
George nodded in amazement, "...practically limitless, right?"
"How do we get access to this?" Fred checked.
Harry shrugged, "We haven't figured it out yet. Hermione and Ron want it too."
Ron nodded, he'd been thinking about it for the whole explanation and said, "We should check out this Gnome King's Lair."
[GNOME KING'S LAIR
Dungeon Quest
Defeat the gnome king and steal his treasure.]
"Quest log agrees," Harry nodded, as that appeared with Ron's suggestion. "It says it's a dungeon." He realized they didn't really have any context for that other than the Hogwarts dungeons and explained, "In video games, a dungeon is what they call underground places where you fight a lot of monsters. I guess I should add you two to the party, if we're going."
[YOUR CHARISMA IS NOT HIGH ENOUGH
PARTY LIMIT 3]
"Oh," Harry said, narrating, "It says my Charisma is too low to have more than three people in my party, and we still have Hermione." Harry worried it suddenly made a lot more sense why he didn't have any close friends at school other than Ron and Hermione.
"I just raised my Charisma," Ron said. "Can you make me the leader?"
"Make Ron party leader?" Harry said.
[RON WEASLEY IS NOW PARTY LEADER]
A little crown icon appeared next to his name to the left of Harry's vision, and it moved above Hermione's. "That did it," he explained.
"Fred and George, want to join the party?" Ron asked.
"Sure," they said, simultaneously, mystified at this whole situation where nothing much seemed to be happening other than their brother and his friend speaking very specifically about having a party.
Fred and George appeared at the bottom of the party list. They overlapped a lot more closely than Ron and Hermione, and seemed to basically share their meters. "I think they only count as one party member," Harry explained. "But we're good."
"Then let's find the trapdoor. Everyone got your wands?" Ron checked.
"But… we're underage," Fred reminded them.
"Oh, we didn't explain instances," Harry remembered. "Enter instance!" The world more than a few feet away from the shed went blurry, and Fred and George really started to believe. "We can use magic in here without anyone noticing."
George just said, "Harry… if Ginny doesn't marry you, one of us might."
Harry blushed and asked, "Ginny… what?"
"Wants to marry you," Ron grumbled. "I thought I mentioned that. That's why she was so weird at lunch. Anyway, I think I found the trap door. Wingardium Leviosa!" He managed to levitate an old, soil-covered door open, revealing a short ladder down into the dirt and darkness.
The four boys gingerly descended, Harry lighting his wand so they could see into the underground warren. Despite the gnomes only being a foot tall, the ceiling was six feet high and the walls a similar distance apart. It was a little close for comfort, especially after Ron's sudden growth and with the twins being two years older, but could have been far smaller. The walls were old stone, and Ron suggested, "Maybe this used to be an old cellar that everyone forgot?"
Everyone else shrugged, that seemed a better explanation than Harry's new magic power placing a whole dungeon on their land that they'd never noticed before.
They'd only gone down a short corridor to a turn when the gnomes started to pop out from the loose soil of the ground. Little and brown, to Harry they looked like giant potatoes with legs and a mouth full of sharp teeth. Each of them displayed:
[WORKER
Gnome, Level 1]
"Agagagag!" they yodeled, charging toward the boys.
"Glacius!" Fred and George incanted, binding two of the gnomes in ice and making the floor slippery for the others.
"Flipendo!" Ron tried, knocking one that had escaped the ice backwards. "This is a lot easier with our wands!"
"Petrificus Totalus!" Harry tried, having better luck paralyzing a gnome than he had with Dudley's gang.
"Careful of the rest," Fred warned.
"They usually keep coming once we degnome a few," George explained.
Sure enough, their passage through the gnome lair became a running battle for territory, as more gnomes were attracted by the sound of their fellows being attacked. Harry felt like it was a lot like kicking over an anthill. "Conserve your spells," Harry warned, when he noticed everyone's magical stamina bars starting to decrease. "Don't want to tire out."
"Ow! One bit me!" Ron complained, having switched to trying to kick them. Harry noticed that his hit point bar had, indeed, dropped a small fraction.
By the time they'd traveled maybe a dozen yards and dealt with at least twenty gnomes, the hallway was widening and expanding, roots punching through the brick walls. "I think we're under the orchard," Harry said, quickly checking the map. The wireframe mostly showed the dungeon they were in (filling in the area ahead as they entered it), but he could see a vague, translucent impression of the area above it.
"Myminemymine!" a slightly-deeper gnome voice announced as they entered what was probably the old cellar proper, or perhaps the basement of a house that had long-before existed where the orchard currently stood. Some dirt shook out of the ceiling as a two-foot-tall gnome, far broader than any of the others, struggled out from behind a root and landed with a thump on the floor. He had a much bigger mouth than the others, and wore a crown made from an old golden bracelet.
[KING RUGGEDO
Gnome, Level 4]
Five more worker gnomes popped out as the gnome king charged. Harry punted one and landed a knockback jinx on the king, which barely slowed him. Ron yelled in pain as a worker managed to leap and bite his wand wrist, and then in outrage as his wand snapped when he tried to smash the gnome into the wall. Fred and George were too winded for any more real battle spells, but tied up a few gnomes with the dancing feet and tickling jinxes.
"We have to do something about the king!" Harry insisted, as the sprightly yet heavyset potato ran about, biting at their ankles and yet moving along before anyone could kick him in the melee. "Ron, tackle him!"
"Right!" Ron agreed. "Fred, be a beater!"
Fred, who was struggling with a gnome in his hand at the moment nodded and managed to fling the gnome like a stone at the king, knocking him into the wall where Ron pounced.
"You. Owe. Me. A. Wand!" Ron yelled, smacking the king's head against the wall until he stopped struggling.
Everyone had a number of gnome bites and bruises, and Harry could see that all of them were down to around half hit points and nearly out of magical stamina, but there was no more movement among the gnomes. "Good job, team," Harry panted.
Also breathing hard, the twins used their feet to shove the gnomes into a pile near the door and then started searching. "I wonder if there's a nest," George wondered.
"I wonder if there's old wine!" Fred countered.
Harry was inspecting the "crown" on the head of the gnome king.
[BRACELET OF RESISTANCE
This bracelet (or crown, if you're small enough)
provides some resistance to magical attacks.]
"Found out why spells barely worked on him," Harry explained. "This makes you resist magic."
"Nice," Ron said, but then looked down at the remnants of his wand, which he'd recovered from where it had fallen. It was snapped neatly in half, the unicorn hair barely holding it together. "What am I gonna do?" he moaned.
"Get a replacement when we go to the Alley?" Harry suggested.
"With what money?" Ron checked, already winding up his argument about not letting Harry pay for one.
"With this money!" George announced, having finally dumped the contents of the king's nest out from behind the root in the ceiling. The floor glittered with many sickles and knuts, and perhaps a galleon or two.
"No wine, but I found what's left of a brewing kit," Fred said, pulling a decaying box out from a corner. "Some of the cauldrons and rods are probably still good."
Harry considered for a moment and suggested, "Loot split. You two keep the potions stuff, Ron keeps the money, I keep the bracelet except I'll trade you the bracelet for the Marauder's Map?"
Fred and George had a moment of silent conference and then nodded, Fred allowing, "Seems more than fair. As long as we can borrow it from time to time?"
"And you can borrow the bracelet if you need it," George concluded.
Ron was beaming at the pile of dirt-encrusted money, which seemed like it would be more than enough to buy a new wand, plus maybe a bit extra. "Deal," Harry agreed, tossing them the bracelet.
"Now," Fred ordered, "let's get these boys loaded into sacks and thrown over the garden wall."
George agreed, "If mum asks, we were degnoming the garden. Not even a lie."
"Should we tell her about this cellar?" Ron checked.
"Definitely not," Fred shook his head.
"You're looking at the new Marauders' clubhouse!" George beamed.
Harry checked to make sure that none of the rest of the Weasleys were nearby before they popped out into the shed, sacks full of unconscious gnomes shoved up behind them. As soon as Harry was out, the quest to defeat the gnome king finished.
[QUEST COMPLETE
100 XP Earned
Quest Reward: Old Cellar
125 Combat XP Earned
Martial Arts XP Earned
OWL Combat Magic XP Earned
OWL Charms XP Earned]
"Woah, that was a lot of XP," Harry grinned. He was still nowhere near level 3, but it was notable progress on his XP bar.
"And it was fun!" Fred corrected. "That's also important."
George ordered, "Now help us get these gnomes over the wall before mum asks questions."
That was accomplished without too much further hardship, and the boys trooped in to be ministered to by Molly Weasley, the bruises and bites from their adventure successfully laundered through dint of having done a hard chore unordered. That did, however, take the rest of the time before dinner, so they didn't make it back up to Ron's room until after they ate.
"I better feed… oh no!" Ron exclaimed as they walked into his room. "Scabbers isn't in his cage!"