Title: vast and contained infinities
Characters: Draco Malfoy, Hermione Granger
Summary: "Maybe I am up there, but you occupy more important spaces."
Notes: Showers are magical, I just wish they'd work for NaNo. Post!DH AU.

The crown of her head rested on his chest. She turns her head to look at his face, a little disappointed to find his gray eyes peering into the sky. "Do you still remember anything from Astronomy, Draco?"

"Yeah, how dull it was."

She wrinkled her nose when he pulled a pin out of her hair. "Hey, those are expensive!"

Draco tucked the pin into his pocket before returning to freeing her hair. "So are funerals. And imagine how much pain Mother will put me through before my funeral if she finds out that I put a hole through the dragon leather jacket she bought for my birthday."

Her sarcasm was thick. "Because I couldn't fix it? Because you couldn't afford to buy another one to replace it?"

He studied her as he removed the last pin and she wondered what he was looking for. "I would like to see you try to Reparo it - the whole point of dragon leather is its imperviousness to magic."

Hermione raised an eyebrow. "I would like to point out that there are perks to working at the Ministry's Department of Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures."

"Touché." He gazed into the sky. "So Astronomy."

"You're named after a constellation - Draco - "

" - the Dragon, a constellation in the northern hemispherethat never sets."

She raised an eyebrow, even though he couldn't see it.

"I feel that," he mumbled. "Everyone wonders where their name comes from, Shakespeare Girl. Even if it is horrendously and unacceptably academia-related."

"You love that you're named after a terrible fire-breathing lizard."

"Fuck yeah."

They were silent for a few minutes. She traced the line of Draco across the sky and moved on to the host of mythological creatures and objects from millennia of cultures - wheels and birds and people - but she always returned to the Dragon.

"I always wanted to be up there." She said it so quietly even she wasn't sure she'd spoken. Draco was looking at her, fingers ringing through her ha "I love books and so people think that's where I want to be, but…"

"Pigments on a page aren't enough."

She rotated onto her side and nodded, staring past the straight nose to the eyes that Hermione, as a girl, had thought could never understand anything soft like hearts and wistfulness. She'd never be more thankful to be wrong, she thought. "I want to be written in stars," she said. "I want to be known across time and space, not on flammable paper."

Draco held her hand for a moment, thumb rubbing her knuckles, until it went limp. "I can't offer you forever," he said. "Playing with time is a bad idea and all competent time witches know this."

Her smile hitched at the thought of golden hourglass necklaces and third year. "Are you calling me incompetent?"

"Hermione Granger? Incompetent? Stop all the presses!"

She muffled her laughter and rolled onto her other side. "Jerk."

He stroked her hair and she stared down the roof onto the driveway in front of Malfoy Manor. The world was here, she decided, her entire world. Harry and Ron were chatting downstairs, probably debating on whether she would curse them into next week for asking a House-Elf for another brandy. Her parents were probably talking with Narcissa about the logistics of running such a large estate…

"Hey," Draco said. He tapped her shoulder and she returned to her other side so that their faces were close again. Grasping one of her hands in his, he rested it just under her chin as his arm came around her shoulder. She could feel the rise and fall of his breath and the tinier but just as (her heart screamsmore) important tick of his heart. "Maybe I am up there, but you occupy more important spaces."

He tasted of spiced eggnog. She smiled against his lips, said, "Well, I suppose if I had to choose any infinity, I suppose you will do."

.

.

.

"You just can't say, "I love you," like a normal person, can you?"

"I thought proposals were supposed to be poetic."