Hermione was in the middle of a very good book when she heard the owl tapping its beak against her windowpane. She wasn't exactly sure how long the bird had been there-when she opened the window to let it in, it fussed and nipped at her arm as though she'd done something to personally piss it off.

"What's your problem?" she asked, trying to shake the thing off of her arm. The beast had decided to perch there, taking little nips at her shoulder and glaring at her with its huge yellow eyes. "I'll have you know I was in the middle of a very good book."

Hermione couldn't read the thoughts of animals, obviously, but if she had to take her best guess at what this owl was thinking, it would have been: do you think I give a shit?

"What's this?" she asked, cupping her hand around the glass bottle tied to the bird's leg. The owl merely glared at her.

Of course, she didn't need the bird to answer that question for her. She knew what the bottle contained immediately. Only memories looked like that-memories that you could draw from your brain like a strand of spun silk.

Her first thought was Ron, but this wasn't Ron's bird. Ever since their separation, her old friend and confidante had been trying any number of ways to win her back. Poetry, gifts...he'd even written her a song. It'd only been a few weeks ago. She'd opened up the folded piece of parchment (pink, reeking of bad perfume), and just like a Howler the letter formed its own mouth and began singing the love song that Ronald Weasley had penned for her.

Hermione almost would've preferred a Howler, though. The man had never been able to carry a tune. Still, she wasn't heartless...it was sweet, undeniably sweet, and for a moment she'd actually considered reconciling with him. But, in the end-when she devoted her mind fully to the problem and thought it out logically-she realized what a mistake that would be.

"Merlin, did you hurt yourself?" Hermione asked the owl, noticing the blood smeared across the surface of the bottle. As if in response, it ducked its head and showed her the shiny blood on its feathers. Hermione tentatively touched her fingers to the bird's head, expecting it to wince, but the owl only looked up at her with that same glassy glare. "Okay. Guess not."

This was all very weird, she reasoned, but Hermione remained calm. For all she knew, this bird was half-crazy (which was easy to believe considering how mean it was), and the bottle wasn't meant for her at all.

Still...might as well see what kind of memories were swirling around in there?

Hermione would've poured the contents of the bottle into her Pensieve regardless-her curiosity had never been something easily overcome-but her own boredom was yet another motivation to investigate. She loved this cottage, and the reading nook by the window, and the way that the sunlight glittered off of the lake in her backyard so beautifully, but Merlin was it hard to fill her days with activities. Back in her prime, Hermione Granger could've kept her nose buried in a book from sunrise to sunset, only stopping to eat a hurried snack or run to the loo, but 39-year-old Hermione Granger could only read so long before her eyes started giving her trouble.

Besides, she had so many distractions...so many other things to stare off into space and think about. The divorce, for one. Her children. The way Hugo and Rose glared at her, assuming that her decision to break up their family had been an easy one. But leaving Ron hadn't been easy. Not at all. Mostly because she still loved him. But not in that way. Never in that way, when she actually sat down to think about it.

And when she started on down that path, it was almost impossible to stop. She would certainly come to the end of it depressed, wondering what the hell was wrong with her-why she couldn't fall in love with anyone the way she was clearly supposed to. Maybe I'm just broken, she would think, and then there would be nothing to keep the sadness at bay but lots of wine and smutty books. It was her life's great shame, this sudden interest of hers, but leafing through these stories of sexy Scotsmen and British lords calmed her. Most of these books were absurd and painfully vapid, but she couldn't stop reading them. They made life seem so easy...they made falling in love look about as simple as fixing a bologna sandwich.

So these were the two options that faced her: get tipsy and finish her trashy book or pour this bottle of memories into her Pensieve. If it turned out to be something highly secretive and not meant for her, oh well...it wasn't her fault the bird came to the wrong house!

She untied the silk ribbon from the owl's foot and stared at the bottle's beautiful contents, eager now to find out what sort of memories were swirling around in there. For all she knew, these could be highly secretive memories-something stolen from a top Ministry official's office! Or, wait, she thought, eyes drifting to the book she'd left on the windowsill. On the cover was a shirtless Italian man, wind blowing his dark hair away away from his temples. Maybe this is something secret and naughty...some hot love story with attractive people and easily-solved problems.

That would be nice, Hermione thought with a smirk. She noticed the owl's eyes still on her, staring as though it were waiting for something. "Anything I can do for you?" she asked.

It just kept on staring, the blood on its feathers glowing in the sunlight.

"Well, alright then. You just stay as long as you want."

She kept the Pensieve in her bedroom, which was no larger than the closet she had in the house she'd shared with Ron. Her room was tiny but cozy, and the fact that it was windowless and dark usually meant that she could sleep like a stone until the late afternoon sometimes. A candle glowed on her bedside table, bewitched to make the room smell like her favorite scent-old parchment. The stray cat she'd found lapping up water from the lake in her backyard was curled up at the foot of four-poster bed. Bootstraps, she called him, although Crookshanks II might've been more fitting. Bootstraps was like her old beloved cat in nearly every way, save for the patch of red fur missing on its hindquarters. A bad fight with a raccoon or something, she'd guessed.

It was a simple stone basin. Her own memories swirled around inside, blue and beautiful like the memories that swirled inside this bottle. Truthfully, though, she didn't spend much time reliving the past. There had been good times of course...receiving her first letter from Hogwarts, meeting Harry and Ron on the train, the birth of her two children. But there were bad memories, too-ones she didn't see the point of drawing out of her brain for posterity's sake. Why relive Bellatrix LeStrange torturing her at Malfoy Manor? Or the sight of Lupin and Tonks lying dead in a pile of rubble?

She opened the bottle and poured its contents into the stone basin. They glowed brightly, illuminating her face and her nest of bushy hair in blue light. She heard a flutter of wings and a hiss behind her-the bird had taken a spot on her bedpost, hovering over Bootstraps like an eager predator.

"Now, you two," she said, rolling her eyes. This was a line she'd said more often in her old life, running around the house and making sure her two redheaded children didn't kill each other. Thinking about this made her heart hurt with longing. Suddenly, she couldn't wait to be immersed in someone else's life. It seemed so very appealing. For this evening, she would drown herself in a stranger's memories-a stranger's problems-and forget her own.

Hermione leaned forward until her nose broke through the surface of the swirling substance. Then, she was falling.

Draco Malfoy? she thought, flabbergasted, watching the blond boy study his reflection in the mirror. What?

She was back at Hogwarts. Either fifth or sixth year, it must have been, because he was adjusting his shiny Prefect's badge with what looked like an abnormal amount of attention. He looked like a wreck. His blond hair was not in its usual slicked-back state, instead sticking up in all directions like he'd slept on it badly.

Harry hair, she thought.

There were dark circles under his eyes, almost an opaque shade of purple, and he was muttering to himself like a crazy person.

"This is any normal day," he said quietly, gray eyes bright and intense. "You are any normal student. You are going to Potions class. While there, you will learn...you'll do what you always do. Make fun of Weasley, suck up to Snape. Yeah, you know the drill."

Hermione was watching all this from the center of Malfoy's dorm room. She looked down and could only see a faint shimmer of her own body. Having looked through a Pensieve before, she was very familiar with the procedure. Fairly soon, as this world became more comfortable to her, the feeling of her own body would fade away. So would her thoughts. Eventually, as she observed these memories through the Pensieve, her own presence here would be forgotten, and she would simply observe these events as though they were nothing more than an interesting movie.

Only when the memories were over would she be able to think about them as Hermione Granger, 39-year-old singleton. Which is why she took advantage now of the opportunity to think what the hell is this? Why in Merlin's beard am I looking at Draco Malfoy's memories?

She looked around his dormitory (there was enough green and silver to make her nauseous), making sure there was no one else there. It was empty. No one here but a muttering Draco Malfoy and the shimmer of her own fleeting consciousness. This early in the memory, she still had the chance to exit the show. A part of her was very tempted. How interesting could this really be?

If this was his sixth-year-and she guessed it was, based on his disheveled state-then Hermione already knew how this story ended. She'd probably watch him sneak off to the Room of Requirement and tamper with that awful Vanishing Cabinet from Borgin and Burkes. That, or run to Moaning Myrtle's bathroom for a brief therapy session. What was the point of watching it all through Malfoy's perspective? Although she'd despised the prat for most of her life, she figured it would all just be very depressing. Especially if the epilogue to this particular tale was Dumbledore's death.

"Anyway, yeah, everything is fine," Draco assured himself, fidgeting with his Prefect's badge. For a moment, he stopped moving and just stared at his own reflection intently...squinting as though trying to intimidate himself. "You are going to do this." He took a deep breath. "Mum and Dad are not going to die because of you."

And then, lastly: "The Mudblood is not onto you, so stop thinking she is."

Before the shimmer of her own body flitted out of existence, Hermione's last thought was what?

A/N: Bwaaaaahhht? Anyway, hope you guys are liking this one. I put in the little detail about losing your own consciousness in the Pensieve so that I can just write the rest of Draco's memory like a straight third-person narrated story.

Thanks to the following people for reviewing my last chapter: Ara Goddess of the Broken, fiddlesticks, ravenclawgirl, and the mysterious Guest! I appreciate it!

I'm excited to get to this next chunk of the story, so yahoo for me. It's going to be fun to write. I only wish there were some way to work in Abraxis the Owl into the past. He's such an asshole, I love him!

R & R! I plan to have the next chapter out sometime next week.