Disclaimer: I do not own the characters or setting. (Can you imagine owning London?)
Summary: AU - Harry, Ron, Hermione, and Ginny are muggle friends travelling to London. Hermione is thinking about the disintegration of her friendship with Ron. Hermione's POV. (Harry/Ginny, Ron/Hermione)
Author's Note: I also have this on FictionPress, but that's because I originally wrote it without basing it on a fanfiction.
Equilibrium
He says nothing and I say nothing. We both sit there and try not to make eye contact. When I look up, he looks away and when he looks back again I turn my head. It's a silent game. We don't speak. We don't acknowledge that we see each other or that either of is existing in the other's presence. I look out the window and see the landscape rolling by. Sky...trees...mostly white fields. The snow that looks so pretty at first is now a greyish representation of impatience. How fitting. It's as though the very ground itself has lost its novelty with the snow and is ready for spring. I know I am – in more ways than one. I glance up again. His dark eyes flit away from the mirror and I look back to the window. This game...it's tiresome and depressing. My eyes, knowledgeable in the words I'd like to say – but never would, perhaps except in an alternative universe – cannot communicate what I'd like him to know. I imagine he is the same. Then I imagine he has no idea what is going on. That's probably right. Which is why it's so frustrating and confusing. Does he feel confused? I've been told he thinks I hate him. I also know he was told that I think he hates me. That's not entirely true though. In fact, most of the time it's a lie. But sometimes when I'm angry, it might be accurate. But even with this knowledge, he does nothing to dissuade me from thinking he hates me. It has been suggested that he might be just as confused as I, but somehow the truth to that statement seems doubtful.
I look around the car this time, specifically avoiding the part of the mirror that I can see from where I'm sitting in the back seat. The music that's playing seems off to the tension I feel. My driver is singing to himself and paying attention to his driving, although I catch him glancing in the rear-view mirror every so often at my backseat companion. Sometimes she notices. Sometimes she doesn't. When she does, she sticks her tongue out or smirks...something to appease the two of them, who do not take much note of the other two occupants of the car. Do they notice the tension between us? Or is it just me...Am I the only one who can feel the invisible barrier that stops us from being comfortable around each other? Sometimes I think so. At my left, my friend switches between scrawling secrets in her journal and gazing out the window on her side. In an attempt to rid myself of the tension, I sprawl out more and lean my head against a sweater and the window. But not before I sneak another glance at the mirror. As if to prove that it's just me, he appears to have fallen asleep – his head is tilted back and his eyes are closed. Almost half-disappointed, I close my eyes and think of other things. I try not to think, to sleep or to make plans for anything. Luckily I doze while my thoughts drift to the landscape that I can barely see from here when my eyes are open.
I am content to be in a state of lethargy. I don't get enough sleep and the music mixed with my fatigue and the constant motion of the car is like a drug I can never get enough of. I glance sideways and meet the eye of the only other girl in the vehicle. She characteristically half-smiles at me – I might describe it as baring her front teeth at me in a friendly manner – and I do so in return. It's a familiar routine. A gesture of un-awkwardness and partial greeting. "Oh, hello. I am mildly content right now. Are you?" I close my eyes again and wonder how I can go from being alert and full of energy to drowsy and semi-conscious by just sitting in a vehicle for a relatively short period of time. But soon we arrive to the city and I am roused by new sights – light poles – and when we switch lanes. We slow down and speed up. It takes a little more force to close my eyes and relax, and I know that I am mentally waking up. It was as though I put myself into slow motion and I'm gradually speeding myself back up again. And then we take a familiar turn onto a street that becomes a dirt road – despite the fact that it's frequently used – on which we will stay for a while...it serves as a shortcut around many intersections. What little lights there were go away some and I can almost return to my state of semi-consciousness. We turn again and I instinctively start to sit up, when I remember that this road also goes a fair distance and I relax again.
When we slow down, I know that we are here for real and I actually sit up. A conversation starts up as we all remember we're here together and what we're doing. By the time we get to the first store, things seem back to normal, and he and I are almost tense again. It is as though we are both felines...sizing each other up and prepared to spring, while pretending not to be. The tension is both subtle and glaring. As I try to ignore it, I also look to see if he feels it too. But I can tell nothing and all the while, I partake in the conversations and jokes, just as he appears to be doing. Do I look tense? To me, he does not and I wonder, if we're not really two peas in a pod. But time goes on and I won't know the answers because I don't ask the questions. As my mind wanders, scientific comparisons drift unbidden to the forefront of my consciousness. An equilibrium. He and I are in an equilibrium...with a low equilibrium constant. If I am the reactants and he the products, or if he is the reactants and I the products, then I want to find a way to increase both by neither of us doing anything. Which means that either the pressure needs to increase or the energy must – and is the reaction exothermic or endothermic? Can it be both? But the analogy makes little sense and has no rhythm of logic... We were friends and now, through little action on my part, we are not – not really. So he is polite and I am polite, but he says nothing and I say nothing in return.