Are You Ready:

Harry looks out at the collection of faces in the crowd, knowing that these people represent only a fraction of those lost during the War. Now, standing here, only a mere five weeks after the last of the Death Eaters have been arrested and the threat of Voldemort only a memory, Harry wonders exactly how many more lives may have been lost if he hadn't played the stupidly specific part assigned to him.

He takes a deep breath before taking a deeper sip of his champagne. A throat clears in the crowd below him.

"Are you ready?" he asks the people he used to know and his newly acquired friends. "Are you sure?" Silence answers him. "Okay, just a moment, then, because I'm not."

Harry downs the rest of his champagne and grabs another from a passing waiter below him; he quickly downs this one, too.

"Okay, I'm ready," he announces. "I want to tell you a story, a story about this war that no body will know except me and one other person. Sit down Hermione, they need to know."

The bushy-haired woman he is talking to takes her seat with a worried expression.

"To start, I'm not going to tell you what you all know," Harry starts. "I'm not going to tell you the half-true stories you already read from Rita Skeeter. I'm going to start from the moment that my life became my own – or as much of my own as it will ever get.

"After Dumbledore died seven years ago, I tried to distance myself from others so maybe they wouldn't die to keep me alive. I didn't want my role to dictate the roles and lives of others merely because they knew me. One person, however, wouldn't let me ignore them.

"At first, this person was an annoying appendage, never leaving my side except when necessary. I told them to leave me alone or they'd die just like everybody else, but they were having no part of that. The months and years after Dumbledore's death, they were there for me; every time I saw another friend fall at the hands of another Death Eater, they were there to restrain me and keep my mind on track. They didn't let me do anything stupid. As the time went by, I grew to like and depend on them as a friend. We grew close and nearly inseparable – but given the circumstances, it's extremely understandable.

"I was with them when I heard about Remus – I can remember that night like it was last night. It's so vivid in my mind. The owl was nondescript and the parchment was torn. I remember the note had been written in dark blue ink – I remember because, by the firelight, it looked really pretty. It looked like it had been written in a hurry. As I read the words, I felt a wave of emotion fall over me. The maelstrom of feeling was so intense that I just broke down and they were there for me – they just held me until the tears were dammed and the hiccupping stopped. We sat there, in front of our tent by the light of the fire, with their arms around me for hours. That's the night I realized I had fallen in love with him.

"Shut up, Ron, this is important to me," Harry says without even looking at the other man, who huffs and sits back in his seat with his arms crossed. "I have known him for, what is it now? Twelve years. We've been friends for five years and lovers for almost three. We both wonder what our lives would have been like if we had been friends for those entire twelve years – would we still be friends? Or would we have been lovers for longer? Would the people we love still be alive? Would more people have been lost? Would any of this be important? We wonder about these things but we wouldn't have it any other way. We've said what needed to be said and we've played the parts that needed to be played, haven't we? So, are you ready? Are you sure?"

Again, silence answers him. The crowd waits with bated breath, wanting to know who this secret is that the hero has successfully kept that way.

"Okay, just a moment, then, because I'm not sure if he is," he says. Somewhere, a champagne flute is drained. "Stand up, Draco."

Severus Snape could be dancing in a black corset and white pearls, but nobody notices. They're all staring at Draco as he elegantly stands at the table he is sharing with his mother and Pansy Parkinson. All eyes remain on him as he makes his way to the raised dais to stand with Harry.

"Now, the question is: are you ready?" Draco asks the Man Who Lived just a moment before he kisses him.

End.