Liminality
There's only so long that a girl can hold on, waiting, and waiting, hoping he'll realise what's right in front of his eyes. And only so long that she can go on pretending that she's done everything she can to get his attention. Perhaps the consistency in their friendship would be easier to accept if she had clearly tried to tell him how she felt, or to challenge him on why he hasn't dated much since the end of the year war.
Hermione Granger was sadly not one of those people who could lie to themselves, her brain was constantly analysing everything around her, including her own behaviour and she knew that the fault did not lie altogether with her gorgeous green-eyed best friend; it lay equally with herself for not taking that leap into the unknown.
It all seemed clearer than ever sitting in the departures lounge of Heathrow airport, as if things weren't quite as complicated as they had seemed in her head when she was just a few hundred feet away from her current location, back in the main airport terminal saying goodbye to her friends and family. It's not as if she was never coming back or she'd never see them again, but this was a big step. In a few days her International Floo call connection would be approved and she would be able to see their faces and talk to them whenever she had the urge, but physical contact would be limited to schedules visits back to England. International Portkeys were expensive and thought she had no shortage of money it seemed frivolous to spend that much to travel, and to complete that much paperwork for one simple trip. She wished the Ministry would hurry up and sort out International Floo Travel properly, it was just too dangerous still, they hadn't managed to sort out that issue with where everyone's fingers were going in transit. Anyway, no point blaming the Ministry - it had been her own decision to get away for a while, and her heart just couldn't let her turn down the opportunity to research rare magical creatures. It didn't hurt being such a familiar face in the global wizarding press, and being best friends with the most famous wizard in the world, when trying to access to highly protected areas of Bolivia and Peru. She smiled wryly to herself as she realised she'd almost managed a whole ten seconds without thinking of Harry Potter.
She'd expected this period of detachment and ability to see her life and her choices from an unbiased distance, to be honest it was the reason she was sitting here in a Muggle airport, and why she had always loved to travel by plane or train. There was something wonderfully open about being between places. Here she was completely anonymous, she was nothing to anyone here, she was not home, she was not here or there, it was a wonderful feeling of liminality, and it gave her time to breathe and sit back and assess who she was, where she'd been, and where she was going. To a similar extent she'd always loved long train journeys for the same reason, mixed with a cosy sense of déjà vu to those long journeys on the Hogwarts Express. However, there was that extra factor in travelling by plane, of looking out of the window of miles of cloudy blue skies, those moments of complete clarity when the whole world seems to make sense around you. She shook her head to bring herself back to the present and stood, picking up her small bag from beside her as a faceless voice announced that the boarding of flight BA167 was now boarding. Pausing briefly on the way to the gate to stock up on some Cadbury's chocolate to last her through the flight; she soon merged into the crowds of holidaymakers in the walkway to the departure gates.
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