*.*.*

I stood at the window in my office and watched as Saturn came into sight, its magnificent rings hailing to all space-farers of Earth origin that home was but a step away.

The message from Admiral Zabini had just come through my comm a few minutes ago: I was being transferred to the Reliant, who would be taking me on to Regula One where I'd join the team as Chief Microbiologist.

"I suppose congratulations are in order," Draco said from behind me. "Regula One is, as I understand it, to be one of the foremost research stations in the quadrant."

Taking a deep breath and fortifying my courage, I turned and smiled at him. "Yes, thank you. I appreciate you fulfilling your end of the bargain."

He shrugged, as casual as could be, but I could sense his underlying nervousness, especially as he came forward and fiddled with the large Spican flame gem that served as the only decoration on my desk. "I'm happy if I can help you fulfill your dreams, Hermione."

I considered those words carefully before asking, "And what if my dream could change? What if…I really could have it all?"

Draco stared at me for a long while, but whatever he was thinking, it was fathomless to me. We'd changed over the last two months, and I couldn't read his expressions anymore. He'd grown too good at hiding from me since we'd last laughed freely together.

"You'd always wonder what you'd missed by altering course," he told me.

God help me, he was right.

Luna's way wouldn't work for Draco and me. We were pioneers, not dreamers, and there was too much perfectionism in our spines to settle for anything less than every single one of Heaven's secrets.

I wouldn't be telling him about the pregnancy…at least, not yet. He'd insist our baby enlist in the Academy while still wearing booties, and I never wanted that kind of life for my child. I wanted our son—because he was a boy, according to the medi-comp—to live in my world, not gallivanting off into the cosmos chasing stars and fighting wars, like his father.

I smiled at Draco and held out a hand for him to take.

He came easily to me, and our palms met and mated in what would be, I knew, the last time.

"Watch Jupiter rise with me?" I asked, knowing we had at least enough time for that goodbye.

We turned to the window and for a few minutes, ignored the rest of the universe and its cares. He held me in his arms from behind, and together we watched my favourite planet as it rose like a great thundering god from the sea of darkness, eclipsing all others in its might.

*.*.*

I woke up crying.

"Hermione?"

I recognised the voice as belonging to Neville.

"Neville, go get the Healer," Luna instructed him with some urgency.

A nearby door opened and closed just as quickly, and footsteps hurried away down the hall.

"Hermione, are you alright?" my friend asked, coming into view above me. She looked down on me with the most concern I'd ever seen reflected in her dreamy gaze. "Your brain is dying, I'm sorry to say." She turned to the side and sighed. "They both are."

I turned my head, feeling something heavy sitting upon it, weighing it down.

"Wha-?"

I reached for it.

Someone took my hand and stopped me.

"Don't move, Granger."

Draco's voice was raw, as if he'd been crying, too. When I glimpsed sideways at him, I could see the tracks of his tears down his cheeks.

There was a brain sitting on his head.

"You've got the other on top of yours," he said in way of explanation with a sad, crooked smile. In a sly move, his fingers entwined with mine. "It's squashing down your feral hair. You look silly."

"You do, too," I said without any bark to my bite. I was simply too disoriented by the situation to know how to react. Perhaps I'd gone into shock. "You look as if you have a giant blueberry on your head." I frowned. "A blueberry with squid-y tentacles."

His eyes widened. "Blue?"

"Yes," Luna confirmed, coming to sit by our side on the bed. Apparently, Draco and I were lying side by side on a queen-sized mattress in a room that was far too white and smelled terribly of bleach. "I'm afraid they're dying now," she said, sounding quite melancholy.

"Dying?" I reached up with my free hand to pluck the brain off my skull. I brought it to my chest. "Where's their nutrient solution? We could-"

My friend could only shake her head. "They didn't want it. They wanted to be free. It's their time."

Next to me, Draco captured the brain on his head and held it as I did, cradling it carefully. "Is that why they legged it? Er, tentacled it…whatever you call it."

"Yes, I believe they were hoping to expire together, under the stars."

I looked up at Luna. "Under the… You mean in the Space Chamber?"

"You saw their memories, Hermione. You know where they came from," she explained. "It would make sense, wouldn't it? Their last memory together as a couple was them looking out into space."

"Jupiter," both Draco and I said at the same time.

I looked at him. "So, you saw it, too?"

Slowly, he nodded.

"Wait, how had it been their memories we were seeing, as I was me in the dream," I pointed out to Luna, finding a flaw in the theory. "And Draco was just as he looks now, as were you and Neville."

My friend and fellow Unspeakable seemed to have a silent moment of communication with the brains in the room, and I didn't mean me and or my ex. She nodded, as if someone was speaking to her, but I heard no one else aside from the voices in the hallway beyond.

From his expression as he watched her talking to herself, apparently neither did Draco.

"I don't quite understand it all," Luna admitted to them at last, coming to some sort of consensus with our disembodied friends in the room, "but it seems that the brains worked together to keep you alive and from going insane. And they shared a piece of their personal history with you both, so their story wouldn't be forgotten."

At my confused look, she tried again.

"When you disrupted the model of the solar system in the Space Chamber, Hermione, it came crashing down upon you. The brains were in your arms at that moment. You hunched over to shield them with your body."

"I did?"

I didn't recall doing that, but then that entire event was still a bit too hazy in my mind.

"Yes, and then Draco threw himself on top of you to shield you from the worst of the falling debris. However, the weight of the Jupiter replica crushed both your skulls. The damage was extensive."

I gasped as Draco broke out in an extensive string of rather creative profanity.

We'd both nearly died!

Luna waited patiently for my ex-boyfriend to finish his tirade, and then she continued. "When the St. Mungo's staff arrived to move you both to the hospital, they found the brains were latched onto you both and onto each other. The four of you were linked, and no one knew how to pull you apart without killing any of you. Also, according to the Healers, whatever the brains were doing to you was keeping your brains active and sending out all the right signals to keep you alive. That allowed the Healers to work on repairing your bodies."

I was almost afraid to ask. "How long were we out?"

"You were both unconscious for a month."

There was that combination again: two and four. Two people, four weeks…

It had been the exact amount of time between the break-up of the lovers in the memory, and their sorrowful adieu before the window in the science lab's office, as they'd watched her favourite planet send them off.

Jupiter…

I groaned aloud as my head started to clear and the obvious metaphor came together: Jupiter's astronomical symbol looked like a two and a four combined.

The planet that had witnessed the end of one couple, and nearly the definitive end of another had been a clear harbinger of doom.

Ironic.

"And the memories they shared with us?" Draco asked, indicating the brain in his arms. "Those were really their memories of each other?"

"Mmm," Luna concurred. "As for why we all appeared as we are in those memories, I believe the brains anchored your subconscious to the familiar so they could trick them into believing that what you experienced was a dream."

"And Draco and I acted out their story in it together," I concluded. "One last chance to say goodbye."

"Or maybe it was more than that," he said, looking thoughtful as he considered the creature that was slowly dying in his hands. "Maybe…it was a warning."

A warning? What could they possibly be cautioning us against? "About what, an attack of parasites from another universe?" I asked.

Draco shook his head. "I got the impression that they both regretted choosing their careers over each other," he said, very frankly. It was a first, as I knew my ex was Slytherin to his core, and as such, he never gave away too much information, including his thoughts—at least, not without a price. I had a feeling I would be paying it in a few moments when he finished his speculation, though. "They were both so prideful, so discontent with their lives, and yet they threw away the one thing that had made them both feel grounded and whole for a while, all for their careers."

"He threw her away," I bitterly pointed out. "She was pregnant and wanted to stay with him."

Draco's gaze cut to mine at that, and I could see his shock and dismay at the revelation.

That upset me. "You mean you…I mean, he never knew?"

"I…he…didn't know you…she…was carrying our…their child."

For some reason, that made me sad.

"I wonder if she ever told him."

He turned his head back to me. "I know he didn't give you…her up easily. He did it for love, Hermione. He knew she was destined for great things, and he knew that where he was headed, into the great unknown, he'd be going into combat, most likely. He didn't want her to die, so he sent her away."

"But he didn't," I argued. "He sabotaged her chance for a transfer!"

Draco frowned. "He…he found after he'd said the words that he wasn't ready to let her go, even though he knew he had to. He was hoping for just a few more months. Just to be near her for a little longer until he was forced to leave the quadrant and head into deep space. He'd planned to have her transferred before then." He glanced up at me through wet lashes. "He'd loved her. She was his soul."

The room got hot, my vision went wavy.

"She'd loved him the same, but was so hurt by his rejection."

We both, I think, understood that our relationship had been much the same, our reasons too similar to excuse as mere coincidence any longer.

To my surprise, the brain in my hands weakly reached across to the other brain situated on Draco's chest. His brain was similarly stretching out one tired tentacle to the female in my arms. I helped them to touch one last time.

As one, they shuddered, turned a shade of dull grey, and died, still holding on to each other.

I burst into tears, and next to me, so did Draco.

We turned on our sides towards each other, huddled close, holding the dead brains between us, and when he reached out to take my hand in his, I held onto him for dear life.

*.*.*

One wrong turn can make a right, my mother had always said.

Had it not been for the wrong turn into the Space Chamber that afternoon eight weeks earlier, I'd have missed my chance for a do-over with Draco…and so it seemed my mum had been proven right once more.

The brains had taught Draco and me a valuable lesson through the sorrow of their lives: if the love is true, there was always room for compromise. We learned from the mistakes of our mystery friends from another universe and had decided that we would find a way to continue to be together, despite Ministry regulations.

Funny enough, the answer had been staring me in the face the whole time I'd been dreaming: Luna and Neville had been married and working in the same lab, able to move around assignments together.

So, Draco and I were married in a quiet ceremony a week after we got out of hospital, and the Ministry could not deny us a place as Unspeakables who worked and lived together. And due to our unique inter-spacial relationship with the two dimension jumpers, we were even allowed to work on inter-department projects with each other and Luna. Time, Brains, Love, and Space all came together for the first time to solve some of the most complex questions the wizarding world had been asking for centuries.

As for the brains… Draco and I had agreed that the Ministry wouldn't be allowed to dissect them for further research. The two had deserved a proper burial, and we'd given it to them on the grounds of Malfoy Manor, with Luna and Neville standing as witnesses.

"It's a shame we don't have names for the headstones," I said, conjuring a ring of roses for both graves.

"Oh, but we do," Luna said, wide-eyed and sincere. "They told us when they first crossed over through the time-rift, before their bodies died."

I looked at Draco. He gave my hand an excited, small squeeze. He wanted to put some names to the brains, too.

"Well, who were they?" I prompted.

"Carol and James." My friend gave me a happy smile and pointed to my belly. "I think one of those would be a nice name for your baby, don't you?"

I blanched. "How did you-? I mean, I just found out this morning!"

Luna gave me her famous enigmatic smile, the one that tended to put me on guard immediately. "Somethings aren't mere coincidence, Hermione," she told me. "Time has a habit of repeating itself until eventually someone gets it right, you know." She checked her wind-up wrist watch, a relic from some other era. "Speaking of… Oh, look, it's 2:24. Time for tea!" She took her husband's arm. "Can we try that new café that sells finger sandwiches that glow only in that special purple light again? I really liked that place."

As Draco and I watched the two walk off to the edge of his property, he turned to me.

"So…James or Carol?"

I blinked up at him. "For some reason, I don't know why…I was thinking…David, actually."

He smiled. "David James Malfoy it is."

We agreed, and hurried to catch up with our friends.

.

~FIN~

.

Author's Final Notes:

The dream-memory sequence in this fic takes place entirely in the "Star Trek" universe. The female brain is Doctor Carol Marcus and the male brain is Captain James T. Kirk. In ST canon, Carol and James had a brief, but passionate romance that had resulted in her getting pregnant and giving birth to a son named David. She and Kirk had split before the son's birth because their careers pulled them in two different directions. It was amicable, but it is also clear that they'd regretted the split and their feelings for one another never really faded over time, despite the fact they both moved on with their lives. Carol raised David as a single mother, and he followed in her footsteps and became a scientist, while James went on to become legendary for his space travels.

"The Alternative Factor" (the name of this fic) is borrowed from the name of an episode in the ST original series. 'Command' is in reference to Starfleet Command, 'Academy' is in reference to Starfleet Academy, the spaceship they fly around in is the ISS Enterprise (NCC-1701), Spacedock and Regula One are both canon lore space stations mentioned in 'Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan", a Horta is a creature in ST canon, Deneva Prime is a planet in the "Star Trek" (original series) TV canon—and, yes, the planet did suffer a neural parasitic infection that was devastating to their population and ultraviolet radiation was the only thing that worked to kill the parasites in that story. I capitalized on all of that ST universe lore to create this fic.

Disclaimer: 'Star Trek' is trademarked by Gene Roddenberry, CBS, and Paramount Pictures. This fic was written entirely for fun, not for profit, and no copyright infringement is intended.

The 'special purple light' Luna refers to there at the end is an ultraviolet lamp, FYI.

The symbol for Jupiter looks like a stylized number '2' and '4' put together.