AUTHOR'S NOTES:

This was my second of two 2017 Dramione-Duet Fic Exchange Fest (dramione-duet . livejournal . com) entries. The fest is long over and reveals are out, so now I can post this for you here. This fanfic is finished. It is a one-shot.

My Duet partner was: Floorcoaster

My prompts for the fest were: space-time adventure, Jupiter, tea, career-minded, cure

Thank you to my beta, gjeangirl, for coming to the rescue at the last minute and helping out – love you to Jupiter and back, dahling!

Thank you to Ningloreth, as always, for being a fantastic Mod and letting me write this gift!

DISCLAIMER: "Harry Potter" is the property of J.K. Rowling and Warner Bros. This fanfiction was written entirely for fun, not for profit, and no copyright infringement is intended.

TIMELINE: A/U Second Wizarding War (1998-2002).

MAIN CHARACTERS FEATURED (alphabetical order, last name): Draco Malfoy, Hermione Granger-Malfoy

SECONDARY CHARACTERS FEATURED (alphabetical order, last name): Neville Longbottom, Luna Lovegood, Blaise Zabini

SUMMARY: Unspeakables Granger and Malfoy have recently broken-up due to their careers. One wrong turn and a couple of dimension-hopping brains are about to right that mistake, though.

RATING: PG-13 (T)

WARNINGS: Breaking-up, unintended pregnancy, some giggle moments, some sad moments

EXTRA NOTES: There are blatant references to the 'Star Trek' universe in this fic. See end notes, final chapter for more.

THE ALTERNATIVE FACTOR

By: RZZMG

One wrong turn can make things right. At least, that's what my mother had always told me.

Unfortunately, her wisdom hadn't held up in practice on the day I'd taken a turn through the wrong blue door and crashed into the person coming out at that exact moment.

That one wrong turn had turned into a nightmare for two.

Or so I'd thought at the time…

*.*.*

The two new brains had been mating when I'd come to work this morning and checked in on them.

Apparently, one had squidged out of its container and cozied up to another, and now their tentacles were entwined and they were vibrating as their grey matter pulsed a variety of colours like some sort of Muggle disco lighting set.

Flabbergasted, I'd turned to my friend and co-worker, Luna, who was still caught up in the first blush of the newlywed, having married only four months prior. She'd gone red-faced, too.

She worked in the Time Chamber across the hall from me, and had been the one to bring me these two particular brains a few days ago. She said they'd come from a pair of explorers who had been caught in something called a 'temporal rift'. Apparently, the bodies they'd inhabited couldn't take the strain of crossing over from a parallel dimension. The two people had died within minutes of entering our world. With the help of my department head here in the Brain Chamber, however, their brains had been salvaged for our study.

My supervisor had appointed them to me as my first actual lead assignment with the Department of Mysteries, with the caveat that I was to share any and all information equally with our friends over in Time…hence the reason Luna was here with me today.

"That's interesting," she confessed in that dreamy quality that was her signature tone as she watched the brains touching tentacles like long-lost lovers comforting one another. "Do you suppose we should interrupt them?"

Turning back to the tank with the copulating brains, I sighed. "No, we should break out the cameras and start the data recording. This is one for posterity."

Luna giggled. "It's terribly romantic, isn't it?" She looked up at me with those big, owlish eyes of her and smiled with a lamb's innocence. "It reminds me a little of my honeymoon."

I shuddered. The last thing I needed was images of Luna and Neville having hot, freaky brain sex.

*.*.*

Much later, the brains came up for air, figuratively speaking.

I wasn't there when it happened, but once I arrived, I was able to easily pull their canister away from the main tank and completely isolate them from the others. Our department head had said he didn't want whatever they were doing to catch on with the rest of the brains.

Personally, I thought it too late for that. The way the others had swarmed to that one side of the tank, as if they could mentally peek at the aberrant action happening next door told me they were more aware of the situation than any of us was comfortable admitting. I just hoped I wouldn't come in tomorrow morning to find them all in copycat mode, engaged in a not-so-discreet tête-a-tentacle marathon.

Taking the isolated tank out of the Brain Room, I'd intended to cross the hallway to the Love Room, to test a theory about compatibility being driven more by mental compatibility than physical. Unfortunately, I let the door to the Brain Room accidentally close behind me and as a result, the round Entrance Chamber began to spin.

The rotation was necessary for secrecy's sake, to prevent visitors from remembering which room they'd exited, but it never failed to make me dizzy and nauseated. I had to close my eyes to avoid projectile vomiting all over the tank in my hands—something that would definitely put a crimp the post-coital lethargy that the two well-satiated brains were currently enjoying.

When I felt the room stop whirling, I opened my eyes, turned around, and picked the nearest door to orient myself, moving through it quickly…

…and collided hard with someone stepping out at that exact moment.

We both tumbled to the floor in a tangle of limbs, the canister in my hands crashing with us and popping open.

I looked up, mortified at my lack of coordination, apologizing profusely.

"Your knee is in my nads," a man growled, and it was only then that I recognised that I'd fallen atop my ex-boyfriend, Draco Malfoy, as he was leaving the Space Chamber, where he worked. "Kindly get off, Granger. Gently!"

I moved my knee. "Sorry," I said again for the tenth time, positively horrified that I was touching him again. We'd hardly spoken a word to each other since our break-up six months ago, just a week after I'd begun working here at his recommendation, and now here I was, sprawled atop him in a way that made me startling aware of him again all at once.

As quickly as I could, I climbed to my feet and stepped back. "I'm a little dizzy right now."

With a grunt, Draco sat up and rubbed the back of his head where he'd obviously bumped it. "I think that's my line," he admitted with a wince.

"It was the spinning room," I said in way of explanation. "It always makes me sick."

"You'd do terrible in Space, then," he joked, looking up at me from the floor. "Everything's always moving in here."

I was quiet for a moment in the face of that reminder that we worked in different Chambers and for a very good reason. "Yes, well, it's not as if our interests lie in the same direction anyway," I groused. "It's better this way."

I looked for the canister I'd been carrying. It was on the floor across the room, and the lid was open.

The brains were missing.

"Oh, Merlin!" I swore and hurried over to it. "They're gone!"

"Who?"

Malfoy got to his feet and came over to me. He stood unnaturally close, so much so that I was uncomfortable with how little space there was between us.

"The interdimensional brains," I wailed, panic starting to take hold of me. "They were inside the canister. They're my first big assignment, Draco! I'll lose my job if…" I turned to him, desperate. "They'll perish without their nutrient fluid! I can't let them die!"
I whipped out my wand and prepared to do an Accio to retrieve them, but Draco's hand seized mine before I could complete the spell.

"You can't use magic in the Space Chamber," he warned. "You'll disrupt the model."

He pointed all around us to the model of the solar system which was, even then, magically turning in its precisely calculated arc to mimic the real thing far, far above our heads in the vacuum of space. Planets and their moons rotated around a solar model with a replica sun at its centre. It was mesmerizing, I had to admit.

"We have to find them quickly then. They'll expire quickly without their magical solution to hydrate them. We'll lose so much information about parallel universes if they die," I told him, already putting my wand up and beginning to move deeper into the room. "And I'll be fired for sure," I added again.

Draco was at my side in an instant. "Stick close to me then," he instructed and took my hand. "Step where I step, move how I move." He looked down at me and stressed, "Whatever you do, don't cross the glowing magical lines that show the planet paths." He pointed to the illuminated gold ellipses. "They're all that's holding this whole model up and keeping it moving. It could bring the whole thing down on us if we disrupt them."

I let him lead us around the model, which stretched from one end of the room to the other. Fortunately, traversing under the golden threads of the planets proved to be relatively easy, as they were, more or less, in a planar orbit around the sun. It was the smaller, non-planetary bodies that held us up: the asteroids, comets, and various moons that encircled the planets. If nudged by accident, they could spin off in a different direction entirely and threaten the model, too. Having to dodge them was unnerving. Meanwhile, every half a step we took forward, every pause only heightened my anxiety, as I keenly felt time ticking away, and knew the brains wouldn't have long before they dried out.

The urgency of their plight caused me to fret terribly. It made my hands sweaty.

Draco stopped and turned to me. He leant much too close for my sanity as he whispered, "Calm down, Granger. We'll find them. This room's the biggest one in Mysteries, but it's only so big."

We moved on at a slow, careful pace. The minutes passed by too quickly for my taste.

Suddenly, to my left, something made a squicky, wet sound as it slapped across the floor. From my peripheral vision, I saw movement. "There!" I shouted in excitement at having found at least one of my lost charges, and in desperation to get the brain back into a tank to save its life, I broke the cardinal rule: I didn't obey the established rules.

Letting Draco's hand go, I stood up from my crouch and dove in the direction of the brain, managing to catch it.

"Got it!"

Next to it was the second brain. They were holding tentacles.

"The other's here, too!" I said, sitting up and cradling the brains to my chest. "Quick, get their tank!"

The entire room shook like an earthquake of magnitude five or better.

"Granger, look out!"

I looked up…only to find Jupiter falling straight towards me.

Hunching over into a ball, my last thought was to protect the brains.

TO BE CONTINUED...