(A/N: This story was inspired by a dream I had. It was a pretty odd one, as dreams go. As obsessed as I am with HP, I don't usually have dreams about it. But I got on the computer the next day, and it evolved into this. I have a vauge idea of where I'm going with this, but don't have too high of expectations, kay? I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it.(1) we let go of everything we feared to lose- adaptation from Yoda's 'Star Wars' quote(2) The wise man quote that's actually something my father said to me over dinner one day. The little quotes above each 'section' do not belong to me. Harry Potter does not belong to me.)

Experiences can make a person bitter or better

That last week of school we'll never forget. The things we saw, the things we learned, and the things we did are experiences that we will carry with us for the rest of our lives. What we mainly realized, though, is how important time was. We have all had an inkling of that feeling before, even for those of us in the magical world. We get by, doing our day-to-day activities, and one day look up, realizing that a whole month or year had passed by, leaving behind nothing but the faintest trace of what was.

But when you have lived your life thinking that you have ages to go, and then suddenly are told that even the chance of you surviving until next week is slim… well, time passes pretty fast.

We'd lived our life according to what we thought we should be. We were concerned with our own world, and the people in it. Our life unfolded like something of a television show: repeated plotlines, occasional twists, and many people making short guest appearances, and then leaving just as quickly.

Is it wrong, then, to be putting our own lives at a higher priority than others?

Is it wrong to not have every face we've met, every name we've heard etched into our mind? Certainly not, how many of us can boast that feat?

We do no wrong, for life is ours to live the way we want it. But we make mistakes. And it is because of these mistakes that we are rewarded. Contrary to what most people tell you, you do not learn from a mistake, and then be done with it. No, we make a mistake over and over again, until a little bit of knowledge slowly makes its way into our brain. And even then, it is up to us to decide whether to do something with that knowledge or not.

Now imagine that knowledge carving out a place in your head, moving, shaping, and forming its own little niche. It's a slightly uncomfortable feeling, isn't it? Like a piece of vegetable caught between your teeth, or jeans that have become just a little too small. We've felt it before. We've felt it, except this felt a hundred times worse. We should have had a lifetime to learn the things we learned in a week. But we didn't.

We learned that people are not good or bad, merely human. We've learned that there is a consequence for every single thing we do. We've learned that the only thing that is ever constant in this life is change. We've learned that people try too hard to measure the success of their life by things that aren't important. We've learned that our lives are so closely intertwined with one another that one day… we won't be able to tell where the line is drawn. But most of all, we've learned that everyone has their stories.

Remember that little kid you accidentally knocked down while trying to get to your transfiguration class on time? Yeah, him. Did you know that both his parents died that week, within hours of each other? I know, it's terrible, isn't it?

His friends have all been taken out of school already. He's a first year, and almost no one under fourth year stayed after Voldermort had started attacking again, but he's got nowhere to go now.

I bet you didn't see the letter he had in his hand. There are too many orphans, and the Ministry can't find foster homes for all of them. That was an official notice from the Prime Minster saying that he'll be an apprenticed off somewhere with other orphaned children. He's hoping it's not going to be anything too dangerous.

Did you know what his favorite color was? No? It's green. Yeah, odd, for a boy who's in Gryffindor.

What most saw as a sickly, dark, colour, he saw as a warm, inviting one that reminded him of his garden at his grandparent's house. Well, no use shaking your head and feeling sorry for him now. He was shipped off to France in a train with a bunch of other kids last Tuesday. It was derailed and everyone who didn't drown died of pneumonia. I think there was an article about it in the Daily Prophet, right behind the Quidditch section.

Do you happen to remember that girl that was watching you during the Sorting? I didn't think so. She was watching you.

You were something of a hero to her. She'd read about you in the newspapers, and she'd heard about you on the radio. But she knew nothing of you as a person; she only saw the painted, polished, and sometimes cracked portrait that the media painted for her.

She was had heard you were on the train and was trying to get a glimpse of you, but she couldn't. Understandable, of course, that train always seems to be packed.

Anyway, it was her first year at Hogwarts, and she was really excited. She had an older brother that went there, and told her loads of cool stories about the place. He was in Gryffindor, but he was a couple of years older than you, I don't think you really knew him.

Actually, I lied a while back. You did see her. You won't remember it now, but while you were waiting for the hat to stop singing its song, you seemed to recognize her, and spent a moment trying to connect her face to the one in the depths of your memory. No doubt you'd seen her brother's face in the common room dozens of times before.

Suddenly, her name was called up. As you watched, (amused, because you knew how nervous she must have been feeling) she walked up the steps, trembling, and put the tattered hat on her head. The hat thought for a few seconds before calling out "Slytherin!"

You might not think that you had any particular feeling about it, and in a way, you were right. But at that moment, as she walked in the opposite direction down the same steps you did… you stopped recognizing her.

Oh, stop looking so guilty. She left Hogwarts months ago, to attend her brother's funeral. That doesn't make you feel any better, you say? Didn't think so.

It's the same lessons we learned. Too much hit us in too little time, and we had to stretch ourselves to the maximum to allow it in, to even have a chance of absorbing it. But we wanted it. We thirsted for it, we craved the knowledge, and when you'd think that we were finally full, we asked for more. The dangerous realization of having too little time was pressing upon us. We're all from different walks of this world. Not all of us have met, and even us who have, still don't know each other as much as we'd like to think. We were afraid that the relaxed web that had woven each other into our own lives would suddenly be pulled on, and the strings would break. We hardened ourselves. We let go of everything we feared to lose. And in the process, we almost lost ourselves.

A wise man once said, "You come into this world with nothing, and that's how you're going to leave it."

We might not leave with anything, but we were determined, each one of us, to leave one hell of a story behind. So, if you're ready, come read our journey of how we learned what it was… to live.

You may not always get what you want, but if you try, you might just get what you need

A curious little potion, Polyjuice. Incredibly tricky to make, and doesn't last very long. Not a lot of people learn about it until fifth year or so, but a surprising number of people I know had been introduced to it before third year.

It's not usually in the way of teachers to leave their supply cabinets so loosely guarded, that a sufficiently determined, second-year, bushy-haired, witch can sneak in and get the proper materials for it. It's not in their nature to go about shouting that there is a great vat of Polyjuice lying about in the castle as well. It's not in their nature to do many things, but yet, they do it still.

At the time, each of us thought we were being ridiculously clever, and came up with a great plan to save the world by ourselves. You know, just typical, teenage, rescue missions. As we looked back on it, we began realizing that all the staff and administration probably knew what we were doing.

At least, they knew that in less than a month's time, they would go from assigning us essays on the uses of Dragon's blood to either killing us, or helping us kill people.

They would go from telling us not to run in hallways to yelling at us to run for our lives.

They would go from assigning us detentions for lying and cheating, to teaching us that those things may end up saving our lives.

But, like us, they didn't want to know.

And they had turned a blind eye to our antics, giving us one more day to be children in a world where innocence could not survive.

So maybe we should have been suspicious as to the amount of strange things going on. Maybe we should have spent less time feeling just fascinated by it all and stopped to question. We never did. In our own minds, it was just the result of our own brilliance, our own luck, and we thought we deserved every bit of it. But now, as each and every one of us grow older, we begin to think that maybe, just maybe, they exposed us for a reason.

Enter:

Hermione Granger

It was like I had been transported to third year again. The same impending feeling of loneliness when McGonagall told me I couldn't share my ownership of a time turner with anyone, except that this time, I was doing it without a reason, acting solely on selfish impulse.

I can't really remember many times when I did things without Harry or Ron. There was third year with the time turner of course, and again when Ron and I got into that row. Oh, and my studies, of course. They never seemed to understand that.

I was quite relieved when we finally became friends again, I was beginning to realize just how lost I felt without them.

So you might ask where I got this idea to do something without my two best friends. True to character, I was reading a book. A muggle book, by Marianne Williamson. I was up in my dormitory, and it was quite late, so I wasn't really paying attention to what was in the book. Contrary to popular belief, I tend to go off into space a lot. It's just that …when I start thinking about things like the war, and how I might never see my parents again…, well I snap myself out of it pretty quickly. And needless to say, those topics were on my mind quite frequently these days.

The small print on the pages were starting to look like blurry scribbles to me, when I came across this line in the book:

"Our greatest fear is not that we are inadequate, but that we are powerful beyond measure…"

I had one of those light bulb moments then, and right then and there, I made a decision. I didn't know it at the time, but that quote scared me into action. When I look back on it now, what I did seems random and out of order, and I suppose I just needed to feel I was doing something, anything, to help. To help the war effort, to help Harry, to help myself… just to help.

It's actually quite scary how those individual events fell into place.

After all, my life was getting random and out of order as well.

I guess I should have been used to it by then.

The sound of her shoes softly echoed down the hallway. Her knees were threatening to buckle, and she had to hold her breath so she didn't let out a grunt that wanted to escape from her parched throat very badly. Hermione dragged the body along the Hogwarts corridor, forehead sweating with the sheer effort.

She licked her lips nervously as she went, swallowing nearly twice as much as usual. Her small body was not used to this much physical exertion, and she made a silent effort to work out more when she got the chance. If she was knowingly breaking about fifty school rules in one school night alone, who knew what kind of things she'd be doing in years to come?

The soft blue moonlight penetrated the dusty glass windows, casting an eerie glow in the castle, illuminating only a few steps in front of her in the otherwise pitch-black castle.

The thought of being caught out of bed this late at night, dragging an unconscious Gregory Goyle, scared her out of her mind, and she wondered for the millionth time if all this effort was really worth it.

It seemed incredible that no one had heard her yet; the sound of Goyle's feet scraping the floor was only a little softer than the pounding of her heart. Every shadow seemed like a teacher, every crawling insect seemed like an omen of doom, and every step she took was a thousand times louder in her own ears.

'This isn't good for my nerves,' Hermione thought nervously, re-gripping Goyle's meaty wrists with her own sweaty palms. For the millionth time, she wondered if she should levitate him instead. Her aching muscles cried out in encouragement, but dozens of voices popped up in her head, trashing the idea. She could barely see her own two feet, as it was. Wouldn't it be great if a levitating, unconscious, Goyle crashed into one of the many statues lined along the Hogwarts corridor? Sighing as loudly as she dared, she trudged along.

She had slung Gregory's arms around her neck, and was half-carrying, half-yanking him along, wondering exactly how much this boy ate. Tiredly, she wondered how much longer she had to go.

Even when she had set out to find Goyle alone, and stun him unconscious, she had known of her high exposure of getting caught. Not because of the heightened security, or the fact that she was 'infiltrating a nest of poisonous snakes,' so to speak, but because of tiredness. She, like many others, had grown accustomed to sleepless nights and worrisome days, and her ears were filled with a constant, soft, buzzing noise these days, much like a watered down version of the muffilato spell.

Being tired and not able to go to sleep was an impossible thing to deal with. Just how much she needed sleep was made aware this night. The more unfocused her brain was, the more likely she was to slip up and blow her cover. Of course, being unfocused and confused was probably how Goyle acted all the time, but still…

She started as a clock rung midnight, heart pounding wildly out of control. Looking around to make sure she was unseen, she continued on her way to the Room of Requirement.

Suddenly, walking to the seventh floor seemed like an impossible task.

Hermione patted her now short and dark hair nervously and checked the time on a nearby clock in the Room of Requirement.

Twelve thirty.

Quickly, she took another sip from a flask hanging from a strap of leather inside her robes. She had filled it up to the brim with Polyjuice potion, but modified Polyjuice. She knew how to make the normal one, and she had studied theories, experiments, and articles in wizarding science and medical magazines, and had started inventing the potion about a week before.

Thanks to the excess use of boomslang skin, and the neutralizing effect of parsnip juice, the time of brewing took only a fourth as long as usual, and with other ingredients, lasted longer.

As she clumsily walked over to the door, she gave herself a once-over in a window, making sure she looked exactly like Goyle. She walked back to Goyle's body, and then back to the door, doing this multiple times until she felt she could walk without wanting to trip over every three seconds.

It was then that she realized she wasn't tired anymore. Her head and ears were miraculously clear and her muscles felt energized and ready to go. Hermione's eyes widened as she realized that his physical energy must have been transferred to her as well! Reassured that there were no more surprises to her untested variation of Polyjuice Potion, she set out towards the dungeons, thanks to a very accurate description from Harry and Ron in second year.

There was a lone torch perched next to the portrait of Salazar Slytherin, illuminating it in an eerie way. As she gazed up at him, Hermione had the feeling that he could see right through her, although the only thing the painting did was curl its lip into a mocking sneer. Gulping, Hermione raised her now massive fists and knocked on the frame of the painting.

A few moments later, the picture swung open, and Millicent Bulstrode, a girl whom Hermione had only seen fleetingly in past years, was standing in front of her, wand drawn, and illuminated. For a moment, Hermione thought something had gone wrong with the potion, but Millicent's next words calmed her.

"Golye," Millicent hissed, looking thoroughly flustered and angry. "Where were you? Pansy wants to talk to you right now!" She ushered Hermione through the portrait, who still had not said a word. "What's up with him?" Millicent nodded towards the painting of Salazar. "He's usually always spewing out stuff about Slytherin values… ah well. I can't believe you forgot the password again." She looked around cautiously. "I thought it might be someone else."

Hermione opened her mouth. "Sorry," she told Millicent, the Polyjuice transforming her voice into the deep, sorrowful, and slightly thick, tone of Gregory Goyle, but by the time they had both crawled out of the hole and into the dormitory, Millicent had already left and was nowhere to be found.

Hermione looked around in amazement at the Slytherin common room. It was nothing like the Gryffindor common room, which was usually only occupied by a few people; the rest would be in their rooms. Here, however, the desks and chairs had been pushed into an office like setting, and comfy sofas had been transformed altogether into extra pieces of needed furniture.

The room boasted all practicality and no comfort. People were milling all around, and everyone seemed to be going somewhere. Hermione thought they must have used an enlargement charm on the room, because she felt lost just standing by the doorway.

"Pansy! By the window!" Millicent hissed, as she scurried across the room, carrying a suspicious looking parcel. Hermione directed her gaze to the window, and with some difficulty, located Pansy.

Pansy Parkinson was scribbling furiously as owls flew in and out of an open window, her short dark hair covering her face. Next to her, two younger girls were wrapping and tying boxes, fingers flying, barely pausing to grab a stamp or quill. Hermione pushed her way to the opposite side of the room (being Goyle, this was considerably easier than she thought) and approached the dark haired Slytherin girl.

It took a few minutes for Pansy to even notice that someone was there, and so Hermione studied her. As she watched the bits of ink fly off the quill and onto Pansy's fingers, Hermione felt a feeling of hate wash over her.

This surprised her; she had never felt that way before. Sure, she was disgusted by Pansy, she was sick of the narrow-minded prejudice, but she never hated Pansy. Not to the point where Hermione would kill her with her own hands. It scared her too. Looking down at Goyle's hands, voices in her head began to speak. 'You could kill her. You could kill her right now, with Goyle's wand, in his body, and they'd never suspect you.' She imagined her hands around someone's neck and watching them die.

She felt sick.

She blinked rapidly, inhaling slowly. These sudden thoughts were probably just side-effects of tampering with the Polyjuice potion. She concentrated on the dim moon outside felt her racing heart slow down.

She didn't know how she felt about standing next to this person that worked actively against the values she held, the morals she had; a person who wanted her entire race wiped off the face of the earth. The feeling began to surface in her again. Before she could coax herself that the best thing to do was to curse her right then and there, Pansy turned around.

"Goyle!" she exclaimed, rolling up a letter. "Where have you been?" She turned to fasten it to the leg of a brownish-yellow owl that looked like it had traveled across three continents. Before Hermione could say anything, Pansy started speaking again. "Draco wants to talk to you." She yanked a letter from an incoming owl's leg and started unwrapping it, still not looking in Hermione's direction.

"But Millicent said-" Hermione started.

"Never mind what Millicent said," Pansy snapped. She paused for a second, and then resumed the hectic scribbling with a sigh. Suddenly she thrust a box into Hermione's hands. "When Draco comes down, I want you to go talk to him straight away." Pansy told her, dipping her quill in the ink. "Until then, make yourself useful and wrap that up, and write this address down on all those packages." She pointed to a stack of wrapped parcels, all various sizes, and then slid over a piece of parchment.

Children's Home

4560 Holloway Drive

Bristol, England

Something about this address triggered a memory in Hermione's brain, taking her back to when she and her parents had taken a vacation to Bristol, eight years ago. That's it! It was the name of the local orphanage, for muggle children. She remembered volunteering there during her Christmas break.

Hermione's mouth fell open as she realized what must be in these packages that Pansy was sending to a Muggle orphanage. Those were innocent children, they'd never done anything to warrant Pansy sending them cursed packages. Oh wait. They were muggleborns. Hermione was about to tell that girl exactly where she could shove her quill, until she looked down and saw what she was holding.

It was a blank sheet of paper. She recognized the glossy waves coming off from it immediately as a illusion charm. Her eyes furrowed. She knew as soon as someone opened and read this, they would be magiked into believing whatever it was that Pansy wanted them to believe. But why was this paper sending off waves of distress and alarm?

Hermione fingered the paper lightly as she looked around. There were boxes of things like flashlights, and water bottles, stacked all around the room. Muggle items? These things didn't have one iota of magic coming from them. Why were they sending things to this orphanage? Maybe Pansy would curse them right before giving them to the girls to wrap up? But no, Hermione watched the girl, and didn't see Pansy pull out her wand.

As she watched the girls who were helping Pansy wrap and unwrap things, Hermione realized that the packages coming in through the window were addressed to students. But from whom? Peering a little closer, she saw that Slytherin parents, many of whom Harry had named as Death Eaters last year, were the senders.

Hermione shook her head, and started wrapping up the sheet in cardboard paper.

'Stick to the plan,' she told herself.

'Wait a minute. Do I even have a plan?'

No, she didn't. She had stormed in here, fully aware that she did not have any sort of plan at all. But if she did have a plan, it did not involve wrapping up sweets and sending them to Muggle orphanages. Her brain buzzed as she thought of why Pansy was doing this. Maybe the parents were in on this? Maybe their parents had cursed them at home and then sent them to the students, so that dark magic would not be detected?

'That has to be it,' Hermione thought. Her stomach churned as she thought of all the horrible things happening to the poor children at the orphanage. Once again, her train of thoughts was cut of as Pansy snorted in disapproval.

"Not even one package done! Those clumsy fingers of yours… Well, Draco's back." She waved her hand towards the dormitories, and indeed, a head of platinum blonde hair could be seen descending a flight of stairs, and heading over to a table with many people crowded around it.

Letting out a breath of frustration, she made her way across the room to meet with Draco Malfoy.