Making It

"The Weasel's jealous, you know," Draco murmured against the curve of one tanned shoulder.

"What?" The reply sounded as rumpled and sleepy as its bearer looked.

"Well, Harry, you're the hero. Granger's got all the brains of the outfit. He, on the other hand, is just your sidekick and otherwise has nothing to define himself by." He spoke as though he were lecturing a small child, one finger tracing the side of Harry's throat. Harry grunted in response. "Don't deny it. You're the Quidditch star, you're the Boy Who Lived, the Supreme Defender Against Evil. You're the boy everybody stares at when he walks into a room; if anybody notices Weasley, it's because he's next to you... or maybe because people think his head's on fire."

Harry harrumphed. "Don't talk about Ron like tha--"

"And you're regularly getting fucked by the sexiest thing in this school," he interrupted coolly, just before he pressed a kiss to the flesh nearest his mouth.

There was a soft snort. "I've told you time and again that Seamus and I are just friends." Then Harry gave a little yelp when Draco's teeth closed where he'd been kissing a moment earlier.

Draco hoisted himself up from Harry's shoulder to hover over him, staring him in the eye. "You know what I'm saying is true..." And he found himself on his back, staring up rather than down into intensely pretty green eyes.

"Why should Ron be jealous? He's happy with his fiancee, we're about to graduate, and he's going off to Auror training."

"But he's not the one who just signed a contract with the Cannons. Not the one who's going to be rolling in galleons the moment he graduates. He'll never be famous the way you are, especially now that Voldemort's gone. Who needs Aurors when there's no evil to fight?"

"He doesn't think like you do, though. Those things are nice, but they're not what's important to him." There was a long pause. "Besides, the same could be said for you."

"What are you talking about now?"

"Well," and here Harry ducked his head with a short laugh, "where would you be now if you'd never had me to antagonize for so long?"

It was Draco's turn to snort. "I'd still be the cunning, handsome devil that I am now." He smiled broadly, a flash of teeth, then moved to kiss Harry.

Who pulled away. "You know that's not what I meant. Be serious?"

"You can't ask a question like that. Do you mean if we'd never met on the train? If Voldemort had managed to kill you? If Voldemort had never existed in the first place?"

"Any of it."

He sighed and, tangling pale fingers in ever-mussed black hair, said solemnly, "I don't know. Maybe I'd be sniveling and groveling at the feet of Voldemort, or maybe I'd be dead. Maybe we'd be oblivious to what could have happened, and we'd be best-friends-turned-boyfriends who see the world as nothing but sunshine and daisies." Steady gray eyes tried to fix Harry with a look. "What does it matter? Whether we've been shaped by our surroundings or they by us, we are who we are."

Harry simply stared at him a moment, eyes boring through to the back of his skull. Then he was smiling, leaning down to Draco, and when their lips touched, it didn't matter any more what kinds of sacrifices it had taken to get where they were; all that mattered was that they had made it.