A small drabble-thing for Dramione Fanfiction Writer's #TropingThursday. The trope was : Dramione AU...in SPACE! Or sci-fi. This is the best I could come up with.
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.oOo.
It was a cliché, but as she stared at the earth from the moon, Hermione felt, all at once, insignificant and awed and overwhelmed. The blue-with-swirls-of-white orb, half steeped in shadows, was where all the multitudinous dramas of life took place...
Then she turned around and saw Theodore Nott and Luna Lovegood leaping round and around an excavation site, giggling like a pair of half-wit maniacs. Apparently, if you decrease gravity by 83.3%, it turns even a silent, stoic type like Nott into a child.
And they were supposed to be working. After six years of endless paper pushing and string pulling, Luna had finally secured this expedition to prove the existence of Lunar Fossorial Chizpurfles. They had the Ministry's approval and the Scamander Rare Creature Fund backing them. They had scholars, researchers, and media from all around the world awaiting their return. They... had been digging for two hours and found nothing.
"Whoopeeee!" Luna sang as she soared for about eight feet.
This... THIS... was what Hermione had spent months developing a compact, feather-light spacesuit and an infallible and permeable bubble-head charm for. She'd had to work with Draco bloody Malfoy to design a system to harness enough magic to propel them across outer space. Would it be bad if she just left them here and went back home?
"Why so grumpy, Granger?" Nott called, as he and Luna bounded over to her, "HA! Grumpy Granger!"
Hermione glowered, "Aren't you the least bit annoyed by the fact that we've found nothing?!"
"Hermione's always been a bit of a pessimist," Luna told Nott.
He nodded. "But you're happy, aren't you?" he asked her with a grin.
"Oh YES," she sighed, "Over the moon!"
Hermione left them then.
At the next site, she found Malfoy sitting on a very plush, green armchair. His hair was ruffled; it could have been made of the moon dust around them.
"Granger," he greeted, and conjured a similarly ridiculous seat for her, "What's going on at Dig 1?"
"Nothing," she gritted out, "Nott and Luna are... frolicking and... and... making... moony-eyes at each other."
"'Moony-eyes'?!" Malfoy repeated with an incredulous smirk, "You really aren't enjoying any of this, are you?"
"I am not."
"Well," he drawled, "How about some..." he pulled a small silver flask out of the pocket of his spacesuit, "Moonshine?"
She groaned.
"Oh come on, Granger. Live a little." He lifted the flask to his lips (it passed easily through his protective bubble) and took a swig.
"We cannot drink on the job, Malfoy!"
"Oh, is this work?" he asked flippantly, "Doesn't feel like it. Look, we'll be heading back in an hour. Sit back... enjoy the view. Here."
He held the flask out to her and she took it. She didn't think Ogden's finest could be considered moonshine... but then, it was Malfoy.
"Besides," he continued, languorously clasping his hands behind his head, "When we return, you can tell everyone that I loved you to the moon and back."
Hermione wanted to roll her eyes – she really did. But somehow she ended up grinning instead. After all, Malfoy was the only man who'd promised her the moon, and then actually delivered.
.oOo.