slide away {lorenzo berkshire}

73. family line

TW - torture

"Or was my rage my mother's? Or her mother's? Or hers? An inherited creature?"
- Lidia Yuknavitch

~~~~~~~

Cassie Avery

No.

He couldn't.

Lorenzo stepped in front of me, like it was nothing, like it was the most natural thing in the world to put himself between me and Bellatrix Lestrange. My heart stopped, the air sucked out of my lungs. He couldn't do this for me. Not here. Not now. Not when I had already cost him too much.

His shoulders were squared, wand raised, chin lifted in that stubborn way I knew too well. The edge of his sleeve had ridden up, just enough to reveal the faint pale scar carved into the shape of a "C" on his wrist. My "C." Our secret, from when we were too young and too stupid to know better, branding ourselves into each other's skin. The sight of it knocked the breath clean out of me - like a cruel reminder that he had always been mine in ways I'd never dared to say aloud, and now he was about to throw himself to the wolves because of it.

He looked steady, unshaken, but I caught the tension in his jaw, the fire blazing in his eyes. He'd already decided - he wasn't moving.

Bellatrix's lips curled, eyes flashing with delight. "Step aside, foolish boy," she hissed, her voice sharp enough to slice skin. "It's her I want."

I wanted to shove him out of the way, to scream at him to stop, to let her get to me instead. My fingers twitched toward my wand, but it wasn't there - it was on the floor somewhere, useless, unreachable. My body jolted forward anyway, instinct overriding any thought, but Lorenzo shifted half a step with me, arm out just enough to keep me behind him without ever looking back.

"Step aside," Bellatrix snapped again, wand flicking, her teeth bared in that manic grin that made my hair stand on edge. "I said step aside!".

Lorenzo didn't even flinch. His knuckles whitened around his wand, every line of him braced like he'd let her kill him before he let her touch me.

And then -

"No."

My mother's voice cut through the air, calm, deliberate, merciless.

Everyone froze. Even Bellatrix blinked, as if surprised anyone dared contradict her.

My blood turned to stone in my veins. I hated that voice. Hated how it coiled, calculated, every word sharpened into a weapon.

Mallory's gaze swept the room slowly, deliberately, landing on me, then Lorenzo. Her eyes lingered, not with curiosity but calculation, the cold gleam of someone who had found the sharpest knife in the drawer and was already twisting it.

"This is better".

The room seemed to tilt. I swallowed hard. I didn't understand what was happening. But I knew if it had anything to do with that bitch I wouldn't like it.

"I beg your pardon?", Bellatrix spat.

My mother's eyes found mine. Cold, assessing, like I was no daughter at all, just a weakness to exploit. "If you really want to break her," she purred, "then this is the way". She nodded at Lorenzo. "She won't care what you do to her. But she will care what you do to him."

My throat closed. The world around me blurred, sounds muffled.

She'd never cared about me - not my childhood, not my life, not the years she left me behind. But this? This she remembered. The one thing that mattered to me. The one person. She saw it. She'd always seen it.