A/N: I'm trying my hand at the QLFC bootcamp. Every story must have a known Quidditch player as the main character. There are 50 prompts at three levels.

I'm in for: Hard: You must use the same character for all 50 prompts.

Character: Draco Malfoy

Prompt: 41. Wallpaper

Word count (before A/N): 1,199 words

Starry Night

"No, no, no, no, no! What was I even thinking?"

Draco stopped in his tracks. He was simply minding his own business, grabbing a quill from the study down the hall, when Astoria's exasperated grumblings graced his ears. He closed his eyes, hoping beyond hope she wouldn't catch him standing there.

"Draco!"

Damn.

"Yes, Story?" He pivoted his steps to meet his wife. She stood in the middle of an empty room, her whole body swiveling around, her eyes assessing the four walls as she spun like a wobbly ballerina in a music box.

"What do you think of this one?" she asked, coming to a stop just in time to look at him.

He stepped into the room. "It's nice." His eyes flickered to the walls, each clad in gold-and-green striped wallpaper.

"Nice?" she asked incredulously. "It's garish! I don't know what I was thinking."

Draco grimaced. He'd lost track of how many styles of wallpaper had gone up and then immediately come down in this room. It had to be at least thirty by now.

Astoria sighed, her hands coming to rest on her hips. Beneath the yellow fabric of her dress bulged a quaffle-sized bump filled with so much love and adoration. She gently rubbed her growing belly.

"I want it to be perfect for him." She looked at Draco through darkened lashes, tears already forming in the corners of her eyes. Instead of arguing that the gold-and-green stripes were perfectly fine as is, he closed the distance between them and pulled Astoria into a tight hug.

"What were you thinking then?" he asked. She'd been at this for weeks, trying to get the nursery just so, and as much as Draco hated the constant back and forth to the store for this paint color and that rug style, he wanted her to be happy. He wanted perfection for their son, too.

He still couldn't believe this was happening.

"What if we went back to the ducks?" Astoria sniffled against his chest. "I also liked the ponies, though I swear the one was watching my every move."

Draco smiled, rubbing Astoria's back with the heel of his hand. He knew she couldn't resist a backrub, and if anything, she needed something to take her mind off nursery decor.

"I say we forget the ponies then," he said. Astoria leaned into his impromptu massage. "The ducks were okay. Not my favorite, honestly. Maybe we can pop over to Diagon Alley again and see what we've missed."

"Mmm." Astoria's eyes closed as she shifted again, giving Draco better access to her back. He shook his head, smiling at his pregnant yet easily distracted wife. "Whatever you say," she murmured, eliciting a chuckle from his lips.

They returned home just after lunchtime, and before Draco could even suggest an afternoon mushroom and tomato frittata, Astoria was already back in the room, her wand stripping down the striped wallpaper.

"You could take a break you know." Draco leaned against the doorframe, watching her wordlessly peel back the patches of paper glued to the four walls. "Eat lunch. Take a nap. We have four more months to decide. Besides, you've been at this for days, love."

"You could help," she said matter-of-factly.

Draco rolled his eyes. But he pulled his wand from his pocket anyways and aimed it at the opposite wall Astoria was working on. Together, they rid themselves of the wallpaper, piles of gold-and-green littering the floor in shredded heaps.

"Which one should we try first?" Astoria pulled several shrunken rolls of wallpaper from her bag. They'd ended up with multiple styles at Draco's insistence. Astoria, for whatever reason, had only wanted to buy them one at a time. But even the shop clerk knew that was a bad idea. He insisted on giving her a sample of each remaining wallpaper design he had left. Astoria had refused.

They eventually settled on nine designs to try in one go.

"I liked these two best," Draco said, pulling two vial-sized rolls from the pile in her hands. It was amazing how little they weighed like this, shrunken down to a fraction of their actual size. Draco knew though, once they were unrolled, the nursery would become chaos incarnate.

Astoria placed the remaining rolls back in her bag. She took back the vials from Draco and held them up one at a time to the blank walls.

"This one."

Draco quickly magicked the old paper into a pile outside in the hall to make room for the new design. Astoria set it on the floor and tapped it with her wand. Within seconds, streams of wallpaper burst out of the vial, unfurling across the hardwood floor. Draco jumped closer to Astoria to get out of its way, his hands lightly falling on her waist to steady himself.

As the paper loosened itself around them, Draco wrapped his hands around Astoria's middle. She leaned into him, the curve of her back fitting perfectly against his torso. Resting his chin on her shoulder, he placed a gentle kiss to her exposed neck.

Astoria wrapped her hand over his.

"He's kicking again," she said, moving Draco's hand ever so slightly to feel the tiny little pats coming from inside. No words could describe how happy that made him, how something so little and so quick could fill him with a joy he'd never felt before.

But it did. Every damn time.

Draco pressed another kiss to Astoria's neck, his mind wandering wantonly away from their task at hand. But then, he felt her shaking against him.

"Story?" he asked. Alarmed, he stood straight.

"Sorry!" she squeaked. She buried her face in her hands. "It's, it's—"

Then she was crying in earnest. "It's perfect!" she sobbed. Turning, she threw her arms around Draco's middle and cried into his shirt, warm tears seeping through the thin fabric.

Learning how to manage pregnancy hormones as a bystander had perplexed him since day one. Astoria, never one to openly weep, had been all over the place with emotions, and as much as he loved being there for her, Draco felt extremely ill-equipped for the job.

"The wallpaper?" he eventually asked, still unsure how to help.

"Yes!" she shouted. "It's perfect!"

He looked around the room at the unfurled wallpaper. Rows of tiny, twinkling stars lined up against a sapphire blue backdrop, interspersed with comets with fiery tails and a full moon. Yellow splashes highlighted shooting stars. One strip even had a rocket ship blasting off into the night sky.

Laughing, he hugged Astoria close. "I love it," he said gently. Although—and he'd never admit it out loud—he was more relieved to finally have this bit of nursery work done. They could finally move the shaggy grey rug into the room once the starry wallpaper was up.

Then it was just a matter of furnishing the place.

Draco cringed internally. He already knew that would be a task for the ages, but it could wait...

Astoria was humming Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata and swaying gently to the tune, and Draco very much wanted to dance with her, here, in their son's nursery, surrounded by too much wallpaper.