What drives fanfiction authors to write about James, Sirius, Remus and Peter during their school years? How have they crafted four flesh-and-blood boys out of the scraps tossed to us in the books? What were each of the Marauders like, and what were their relationships to each other? How did they meet, become friends, make trouble, grow up, suspect each other of betrayal, and fall to where they are in Book 5-two dead, one the villain's right-hand man, one shunned by wizarding society and barely scraping by?
We will look at a selection of fanfiction depicting the Marauders as a group (aged 11 through their early 20s, or from their first year at Hogwarts until James' death), and consider various fans' and writers' insights on the friends, to answer these questions. Along the way we will learn how fanfiction writers have taken inspiration from the boys' animal forms; the Marauder's Map, our introduction to MWPP and a heavy influence before OotP; and the Pensieve scene in OotP, the only direct window into the boys' lives so far. We will see how they have helped the boys grow up and then grow apart. We will also consider various outside sources that have influenced portrayals of the four friends. And finally we will examine the challenges of writing fanfiction in an ongoing series.