After two weeks of erasing, rewriting, and tinkering, the map was finally finished. The day after completing it, Gloria spent her class breaks sneaking around with the Marauders to find Filch. She cast a tracking charm on him and applied the revealing spell to the parchment. After a short wait, a trail of footprints materialized across the map, with Argus Filch's name neatly lettered beside them.
Seeing it work on the first try, everyone was ecstatic. Gloria recorded an eternal charm translated from runes in her notebook. With a bit of modification, she could make the magic on the parchment last indefinitely. She promptly duplicated the notes and handed them to James to study.
James held the notebook as if he had just won the Quidditch Cup—though, admittedly, Quidditch still thrilled him a bit more.
Chapter 39