Pettigrew, the Twins, and the Map(new thought)

[jodel at aol.com]

No: HPFGUIDX 45110

Risti writes;

>>Maybe there's a code word that brings up a page of 'instructions', and late 
one night while everyone in the dorm room was asleep, he transfigured 
himself, muttered the words, then quietly transfigured himself again.  Maybe 
he even set an old charm in place that allows only fellow marauders to see 
each other on the map, figuring that was a very unlikely event, and knowing 
he needed to hide his identity from the twins. <<

Sorry. There is absolutely NO evidence that Peter, or anyone else even knew 
that the twins HAD the map. They do not even seem to have shared that piece 
of information with their friend Lee. About the only person who might 
reasonably suspect its existence is Filch. 

Upon the whole I'm with bboy_mn in the view that the map only charts the 
hallways and a few public areas. After all it was designed by a pack of 
schoolboys (and we don't know what year they made it, do we?) and would 
hardly have been expected to have thought of everything, nor to know exactly 
how to implement it if they did.

As to how Fred and George stumbled across the keywords in the first place? 
It's hard to say. It IS the sort of statement that a kid with the twins's 
style of irreverance might have declaimed with a wave of the wand while 
larking about. Or there may actually be some sort of an underground legend in 
Gryffandor tower regarding it. Just because Muggle-raised Harry never heard 
of it is no reason to conclude that the Weasleys might not have.  After all, 
even given the general lack of interaction between students of different 
years, younger students can be a good deal more aware of their elders' 
activities than the elders realize. There are only about 15-16  years between 
the Marauder's leaving Hogwarts and the trio starting there, and there is a 
good chance of the older two Weasley brothers's first couple of years there 
may have overlapped with the Marauders'.

(Note: Of course once Harry had the map, Pettigrew would have had another 
reason to disapear out to Hagrid's hut, where he knew he'd be out of range of 
it. He would certainly not have cast any spell limiting his appearance on it 
to other Marauders' eyes since by then he would have known that Lupin was at 
Hogwarts as well.)

-JOdel