It was always the same. Always the two of us engaging in taunts and shoves and non-threatening glares. Even after you had won the Quidditch Cup I knew nothing would change. Finally, what you'd always wanted--to snatch victory from me. And you did it, so well, too. Left me breathless.
It was that moment, looking up at you with sunlight streaming over your face and your features lit with this, kind of, radiance--you were red-faced, out of breath, and just, so really happy--that i knew that I didn't want things to stay the same anymore. I wanted ... well, I wasn't sure what I wanted. But I knew it had to do with Draco Malfoy.
It was always the same. You were always prancing about with that look on your face that said you were the one, the one who could make everything better, so just step aside and let you do your job so you could go back to muttering about how everything always happened to you. How could I change anything when you still needed to be the hero? I knew after I'd won the cup away from you that you'd need that even more: need to convince yourself that there was some vast overriding difference between us that had nothing to do with who was better at Quidditch.
And all I wanted to do was drag you down to my level and hold you there until you didn't want to leave.
I tried to get you to see it. But you always just pushed me aside. Couldn't you see that behind the sarcasm was the truth? I was born for this role, Potter. Born to be in your head this way, knowing just what to say to anger you, rile your blood, stir you to passion. I was born to be something you couldn't escape. Every time I saw you I knew what you were thinking. Every time I walked into a room I knew where you were standing. It was always so easy.
Yet...
...and yet it always felt like you were never really there with me.
It was always the same. I never knew what to say to get to you. You were always doing it to me, you barely had to lift a finger, and yet no matter how hard I tried I could never seem to phase you. And the more this went on the more I knew that it didn't matter to you one way or the other. I mean, who was I to you, really? Just someone you could toy with, pick apart, day after day, year after year; your little Gryffindor puppet.
I used to wonder what would happen if I picked you apart instead. But the trouble was, I don't think I would have known how to begin. I'd been playing the game for too long--I couldn't have started over. Too much time had passed. Hadn't it? Maybe someday when the weight of the world wasn't on my shoulders. Maybe after he was gone and you and I weren't strictly on opposite sides. If either of us lived that long. Maybe--maybe next year...
It was almost comical, really. I'd all but convinced myself that you were going to keel over and die or be injured in the crossfire between the Order and the Death Eaters and I was frantic with worry, and while I was tearing around trying to convince myself that I wasn't frantic with worry you were the one immobile, just waiting for me to calm down and figure out that you weren't going anywhere. You were so...so calm about it. One day while I was going on about you being on his side and figuring out where your real loyalties lay, you just stopped me, looked at me, and said to me, "Harry." That's all it took. I just, sort of...woke up in that moment. I woke up and realized that what I had feared losing had been with me all along.
And finally...
...finally, you were always here.
A note on the song: in the popular version of this song, the final words of the last verse are, "well maybe next year, " which is repeated with a change to "send in the clowns--don't bother, they're here." However, in the musical from which this song is taken, A Little Night Music, the verse is reprised one last time at the end of the show, and this time the words are, "they're finally here."