Marauder's Map



The Marauder's Map is a map that shows all of Hogwarts. Not only does it show every classroom, every hallway, every corner of the castle, but it also shows every inch of the grounds, as well as all the secret passages that are hidden within its walls.

More importantly than that, the Map shows every single person who is within the boundaries of Hogwarts grounds as small black, labeled dots showing, "where they are, what they are doing, every second of every day."

The map is normally disguised as a blank piece of paper. To view the map, one would tap it with one's wand and say, "I solemnly swear that I am up to no good." Then to hide the map, one would tap it and say, "Mischief managed."

The Marauder's Map was created by James Potter (Sr), Remus Lupin, Sirius Black, and Peter Pettigrew while they were attending Hogwarts. This artifact proved quite useful to the foursome (commonly termed Marauders) through the years, though at some point, Argus Filch confiscated it. Fred and George Weasley recovered it from his office in their first year at Hogwarts and later gave it to Harry Potter.

The Marauders made their map very quick indeed however, for if someone tries to view the map, without saying the important 10 words, the map merely insults them and tells them to mind their own business. This was witnessed in Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban when Professor Snape tried to view the map by force.

An added bonus of this map is that if you approach the entrance to a secret passage that has a spell that you must perform to open it, the version of yourself on the map will be seen doing what it has to do to open the passage. We see this happening to Harry in Prisoner of Azkaban.

Harry uses the Map prominently in Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince to see what Draco Malfoy is doing during their sixth year at Hogwarts.

Plot Hole: The magical defenses on Hogwarts have been mentioned several times, including Hogwarts being unplottable. That is it should be impossible to map Hogwarts, which is exactly what the Marauder's Map is. There are some possible loop holes for this, for example making a place unplottable might simply make it impossbile for it to be mapped with reference to somewhere else, while the Marauder's Map is simply a map of Hogwarts not of it's position with refernce to london.