Disclaimer: Everything belongs to JKR, I'm just borrowing for a while.

AN: This was written in January 2006 for the LJ community hd_flashfic. The prompt: Handshake. The idea of a flashfic is to be written in one sitting, and around or under 1000 words. This one took me 20 minutes and is just over 500 words.

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It's amazing how a person's life can be summed up. When one looks back, they see their life played out as a series of events. Some independent, others interconnected, but they all worked to create the big picture of life.

Draco gazed down at the sleeping form beside him and couldn't help smile as he reached out to run his fingers through his partner's messy hair. He liked moments like this, when only he was awake and had time to let his thoughts run free. Laying there in bed, he could clearly see the events that brought him to this specific time and place, and he wouldn't change any of them.

Two such events stood out clearer than any others: one, when he had offered his hand in friendship and been refused, and the other when he in turn was offered a hand in friendship and accepted…

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Years had passed. School was finished, a war had been fought and won – or lost, depending on which side you found yourself – and everyone was settling down with families and jobs. Draco's life had been in upheaval for many years, and was only now just starting to settle down again. He certainly didn't expect that calm to be disrupted by the appearance of a certain messy, black haired man at the pub where he was eating lunch.

He knew Harry had noticed him, saw it in the slight hesitation before he walked fully through the doorway. What he didn't know was what Harry would do. They didn't exactly hate each other anymore, but they weren't friends either. As it turned out, Harry did nothing. He sat down, ordered lunch and ate. Draco himself was finished before Harry, and so he paid his bill and left. What he had been nervous about occurred when he was outside the pub. He had been about to walk off down the street in the direction of his flat, when Harry came outside.

"Malfoy, wait."

Draco paused, and turned around. "Yes, Potter?"

Harry shifted nervously and his hand strayed to push his glasses up his nose, a habit – which Draco would discover in later years – that showed itself when he was nervous.

"I just wanted to say…no hard feelings, for all those years at Hogwarts? I mean, I know we're not really enemies anymore, and…ah, well, we seem to get along fine outside of school, and I was thinking..." he awkwardly stuck his hand out, "friends?"

Draco stared at the hand for a moment, and his mind immediately flashed back to that day all those years ago at Hogwarts when he had been denied. Was that where things had gone wrong? After pausing only a moment, he accepted.

"Friends." He said, as he shook Harry Potter's hand.

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Draco grinned as he recalled the years following that day, the friendship and the subsequent relationship. His fingers stilled in Harry's hair, and he placed a kiss on his lover's forehead before settling back down under the covers. To think that his life could be viewed in two distinct moments, both of them a handshake.