slide away {lorenzo berkshire}

47. i miss you...

"I thought nothing could keep us apart.
And if something did, I didn't think it would be you".
- Kristina Mahr

~~~~~~

Lorenzo Berkshire

I had spent most of the summer feeling like a ghost - moving through long corridors with polished floors and too many locked doors. The kind of house where no one raised their voice, and no one said what they meant.

My father had tried, in his way, to distract me.

He'd hosted dinner parties - big, lavish things filled with business partners, old friends, and girls in pearls smiling across the table with interests their mothers had rehearsed them into. He'd gesture subtly toward them like I was supposed to pick one out.

I didn't. Couldn't. Not when my mind was somewhere else entirely. Most of the summer had been spent trying - and failing - to stop thinking about Cassie. And Draco. And Theo. But mostly Cassie.

Cassie.

Every night. Every morning. In the pauses between conversations. In the quiet after the guests had gone home and I was left alone again in the high-ceilinged silence. I wondered where she was. What she was doing. If she was safe.

My father hated the very mention of her name.

"She's not good for you," he told me, once. "I understand your loyalty - you were children together, I'm not blind. But those ties don't last forever. They shouldn't."

"She's not a tie," I'd said. "She's the most important person in my life."

"She's a liability," he snapped. "Her family has been tangled with Death Eaters for years. You want a future? Pick someone who won't drag you down."

That conversation always ended with a slammed door and an unfinished dinner.

I remembered the night I heard the news: the Ministry had fallen.

I'd overheard Dad talking to one of his guests, voices low and tight. "Death Eaters did it. Full control now. The Dark Lord himself was there."

And all I could think was were they there? Did Cassie, Draco, Theo have something to do with it?

The thought made my stomach twist.

But none of it mattered now. Because the summer was over.

I was going back.

Back to Hogwarts.

Back to... whatever was left of it.

The air on the platform at King's Cross was crisp and familiar, even if the mood wasn't. People spoke in hushed tones, glancing around like they expected shadows to come walking out of the bricks.

I hadn't seen or heard Cassie since that day on the train. Since she'd looked me in the eye and told me that nothing would ever be the same again.

I didn't even know if she'd be here.

But I hoped.

God, I hoped.

I boarded the train alone. Most of the compartments were already full. Laughter and chatter from younger years filtered through the corridor, but none of it felt real.

I found an empty compartment near the middle of the train and slid the door shut behind me. I dropped into the seat by the window.

I stared at the crowd through the glass. Looking.

Waiting.

A flash of dark hair. The back of someone's robe. None of them her.

Maybe she wouldn't come back.