Ship of Theseus

This, realised Draco, was what he had wanted, all this time. A garden full of blowing flowers. Harry, on one knee, looking at him with all the forceful intensity of his nature. Telling him he loved him in permanent, endless ways.

“Maybe I’ll remember how to be in love with you,” said Harry.

Draco tidied some pens into an ivory pen cup.

“You weren’t ever in love with me,” he said.

“Have I been talking over you?” he asked, when people had stopped looking at them.

“No,” said Draco. Clarence kissed his nose. Clarence loved him. Draco had never felt sure of Harry, and it was wonderful, knowing, knowing that Clarence loved him.

“Hang on,” said Draco. Harry was sucking up iced tea through a straw. “The first time you tell me you love me, you also decide I love you?”

“Well, you do, don’t you?” asked Harry, with such blinding confidence that Draco wondered if maybe he had been in love with Harry since he was eleven, without fully realising it.

“This is weird,” said Draco, at the same time as Harry said, “I’m gay.”

Draco laughed.

“I knew that,” he said.

“What?”

“Well. I speculated,” said Draco. “I’m bi. I fancied you, in school.”

Harry went bright red.

“Oh,” he said.

“Relax,” said Draco. “I don’t anymore.”