Balance: a state of equilibrium or parity characterized by cancellation of all forces by equal opposing forces.
Balance is the most important thing in the world. It can take years, even a whole life, to get it. Some people never find balance and therefore stumble forever.
A triangle is not a balanced figure by nature; in our case it takes three to tango. We've spent years trying to perfect the perfect dance; every side has learned his place and has tried to move accordingly to the others.
In our triangle Harry is the base, the side on which the other two rest. Then Ron and I find each other on the top of the triangle, after a difficult and long struggle. It could look like Harry's position is the hardest one but things aren't always what they look like, are they?
Our triangle has not been always an equilateral figure. For a long time I've been the one left aside. Harry has always been my best friend but I haven't always been his. That place has belonged to Ron for a long time. Men's things and all, things I –the girl in the triangle- couldn't understand.
I'm not going to lie, the unreturned feelings made me a bit sad for a while but I this triangle was everything I had. Harry and Ron had put an end to my loneliness so what if I hadn't the place I wanted in the triangle? I had a place. I had a triangle and it was more than anything I could hope for.
So I did what every wise person would do, I learned my place. I was there for Harry as any best friend would and I found my own dynamic with Ron. Then we grew up and things started to shift. It's not that easy to keep balance when the darkest of lords threaten to destroy the world you live in.
We became teenagers and hormones got in the way of the triangle. The thing with triangles is that every relationship between each side has to be balanced in order to balance the triangle as a whole. Ron and I have a difficult balance.
We're opposites trying to swing on our sides so we can keep the equilibrium. The lack of understanding is compensated by our love for each other. We give the other things we can't have on our own. It's not easy but it's worth it. Our balance is always tittering around the edge; together we have learned to be equilibrists.
Harry and I, we're different. Our balance is based on complicity and deep understanding. I didn't believe in telepathy until us, I didn't believe in a lot of things until us. I know I annoy him sometimes and it's totally reciprocated but the more we grow up, the closer we get. Our balance is secure, a given.
Then the war came and the triangle ended up having to find balance in a tent, in the middle of nowhere. Ron left and the triangle crumbled at our feet. Harry and I found ourselves forced to rebuild our whole relationship. People may think it's simple: you take one side out, the relationship between the other two sides stay the same.
Bullshit. It had never been the two of us until that moment. It was a whole new experience. It was hard and painful to accept Ron's departure, dangerous and tense to draw the new limits of my relationship with Harry. Mine, not ours; see the difference?
The truth we discovered then shattered everything to pieces, Ron wasn't indispensable. We could survive without him. We could become the point were two lines encounter each other and be just fine. In order for a triangle to work, you have to believe that the three sides are necessary and it wasn't the case anymore.
Then Ron came back and we tried. We tried and we failed. We weren't a triangle anymore but three individuals with three relationships in the same perimeter: Harry and Ron's relationship, my relationship with Ron and me and Harry. For the first time, those three entities had a life on their own and not as a whole.
My relationship with Ron continued its own natural development and we kissed. It had been there forever, it had to happen at some point. We were in love and close to death. It was then or never.
The problem is that my relationship with Harry had also shifted and when he was on the brink of death I offered myself to go down that path with him. I had just kissed Ron and now I wanted to die with Harry. I hadn't a chance at survival and I knew it but it didn't matter to me.
I would gladly give up my life if that meant Harry didn't have to die alone. Deep inside I may have thought that there was no point in keep on living if it wasn't by his side. In front of me was Harry and behind me was Ron. There's when it hit me with full force.
The triangle wasn't anymore. My relationships with both sides didn't neutralize each other by opposing equal forces anymore. Now they were competing and one of them had to win.
It's been two months since the battle of Hogwarts and we're sitting at the Burrow trying to act as if we're still a triangle. I don't know how much I can keep the charade up but confronting reality doesn't seem like a much better option.
When they think about a triangle people always about love triangles but it isn't that easy now, is it? There is so much more than romantic love at stake here, there is a balance practiced for years. Once we acknowledge the triangle is broken, the life we know will be gone forever.
Ironic, isn't it? We have finally the peace to enjoy that life and it's out of our grasp before we can even breathe a sigh of relief. Now there are three persons at a table looking at each other, communicating different things.
Ron looks at me and I can see it there, behind the tenderness and love. He is still waiting for the fatal blow. It's not an angry wait, it's more like the wait of the one who knows the battle had been lost years before its start. When he looks at me like that I am so angry with him, he put us in this position. He asked me to choose in that tent, he broke the balance.
I see the silent look that passes between Harry and Ron and I'm not sure I can decipher it correctly. I think there is something like acknowledgment and understanding there. There is the assurance that their relationship will survive the break of the triangle whatever the outcome may be.
Then Harry looks at me and I don't know what he wants to say but I can't feel it. We're connected now. Whatever our future, no one will ever be able to take each other's place and that's what scare us the most.
The left aside has become the crucial point of the triangle, how did that happened? I look at both of them and breath deeply. I am Hermione Jane Granger; I can't refuse knowledge for a long period of time. I bear inside the original sin, I'd bite the apple as Eve did every single time and they know. I'll be the one to acknowledge reality and to make the first move and I can tell you it's imminent.
But it won't be today. Today may be the last day of peace and balance we have left. It may be a faked balance but who cares? We deserve today. Tomorrow... Tomorrow will be a complete different story but today belong to the three of us as a whole. Today is the last day of the triangle.