She makes you feel a way you’ve never felt before. You never expect to feel like that when she comes up to you, but you expect it at the same time.

Will she say it, or won’t she? You’ve been waiting for half of your life to hear her say those three words. But no. She’ll just continue to hurt you, and you know it, deep down. Know it, but refuse to believe it.

“Cassadee,” you say, “when are you going to be more serious about this?”

“About what, love?” she questions as she strokes a brush across the nail of her index finger, painting it black.

“Us.” You wonder why she’s acting so clueless. Or is she acting?

“Oh,” Cassadee replies. She smiles gently, and at first you think she’s going to say more. But she doesn’t. She never does. She doesn’t talk, doesn’t like to talk. She thinks talking without thought is not talking at all. She wants her words to mean something. But she never said anything, so she never meant anything.

That was how it was with Cassadee.

Don‘t want to hear your sad songs.
I don‘t want to feel your pain
When you swear it‘s all my fault
‘Cause you know we‘re not the same.

She flits from one place to another, leaving you with few memories of her. She’s never there long enough to create any. It’s a circle, a cycle, one that never ends. There, gone, and there again. Then she goes, leaving you heartbroken. You’re not sure why. But she does.

You sit in the parlor, absentmindedly reading the paper. There’s been another murder by Death Eaters, you read. Lucius Malfoy is a leading suspect. No surprise there. Rabastan Lestrange is in the papers, engaged to Julianne Mulvihill. That’s shocking. You didn’t think Death Eaters married. Well, in the middle of the war, anyway.

“Hello.” You didn’t see her come in, but there she is, standing in front of you.

“Hi,” you say, not turning your gaze from the paper.

“What’s going on?” She perches herself on the arm of your chair, leaning over your arm to read. Her black hair falls in your face, and you flinch.

“Cass.”

“Oh.” She brushes her hair behind her ear, removing it from your face for the time being. “Well?”

“Lucius Malfoy murdered someone, and Rabastan Lestrange got married.” Your response is spoken in a cold voice not even you thought you could manage.

“Oh.” She sounds dumbstruck at your hostility. “Well. I’m going out. Don’t wait up.” She stands, brushes any dirt or dust from her short skirt, grabs a jacket from the coat rack before exiting your apartment. The door shuts.

“Okay,” you say a moment too late. It doesn’t matter to her what you think. It never has. It most likely never will.

You treat me just like another stranger.
Well it's nice to meet you sir.
I guess I'll go.
I'd best be on my way out.

She’s back. Three hours past midnight. Her makeup is smudged, her hair is mussed up, and her clothes have wrinkles and creases. It looks like her shirt is on backwards. “Hello,” she says, sounding only a little drunk.

“Hello.” There’s no emotion in your voice, nor should there be.

“How are you, darling?” she asks. She sounds slightly more drunk after saying more than two syllables; her words are slurred together. But you’re used to this; you can make out the words perfectly.

“Just fine,” you answer. “Cassadee, how long is this going to keep going on?”

“Isswha?” she asks. That one you can barely make out.

“You leaving at eleven and coming back at all hours of the morning,” you say. “It’s annoying and unpredictable and…Look at you!”

Cassadee looks down and snaps her head up. “Ahhh.” She nods. “I see where wergoin’.”

“No, Cass, I don’t think you do.” Your voice is low and cold. “We’re married, Cassadee. Married. As in, remain faithful for life, not just as long as it’s convenient to.”

Cassadee blinks rapidly. “Yeah, yeah I know.”

“If you’re going to keep doing this to me, then it’s not going to work out.”

She tips her head to one side. “Char--” She breaks off her sentence and clasps a hang to her mouth, rushing to the bathroom. Minutes later, the sounds of her retching subsides and she rejoins you in the parlor.

You’re still sitting in that armchair, the Daily Prophet closed and on your lap now that your wife is home. “Cassadee, if you are going to keep going to bars, getting drunk, and then sleeping with whoever walks up to you… we can’t do this. Can’t keep going like this.”

Cassadee closes her eyes and sits down on the floor, and she looks to you like an innocent child. Her eyes brim with tears and she hides her face with her hands. You stand and walk to her and sit beside her. “Cassadee.” You put an arm around her shoulders, and she leans into you and cries. Not a delicate crying like you would expect from such a beautiful girl, but body-shaking sobs. Your heart is heavy. You can’t leave her, but you can’t keep going, letting her hurt you.

It’s not a war.
No, it’s not a rapture.
I’m just a person, but you can’t take it.

You wake up in the morning, lying on the floor, your arm around her. You fell asleep as she cried into your shoulder, whispering apologies and dampening your shirt, leaving a stain.

You sit up, trying not to wake her, but it proves unsuccessful. Her eyes show how tired she still is, having not got a good night’s sleep in who knows how long. She puts a hand to her head and cringes: hangover.

You walk to the cabinet and pull out a bottle. You hand it to her. “Take one. It’ll help the headache.”

She smiles gratefully and takes the bottle. She walks to the cupboard above the sink and gets a glass. She fills it with water and downs the pill. “Thank you.”

You nod. Your thoughts are spinning. This is the crazy party girl you met at Hogwarts. This is Cassadee Fleming. This is something that should not be a shock to you. But you’re going crazy thinking about her, what she does without you. And it’s a type of crazy you just may be okay with.

The same tricks that once fooled me.
They won’t get you anywhere.

Days later, you sit on the sofa in the apartment. The clock rings one, two, three times and you’re back where you started: three in the morning, no idea where she is.

Four, five. The door opens. Cassadee stumbles in, drunk, and you sigh. If this is how it’s going to be… No, don’t think like that. Imagine what kind of trouble she’d get into without you. You walk to the cabinet and take out the bottle of pills. A glass of water was sitting ready on the table, since you saw this coming hours ago, and you hand her two.

Cassadee smiles and repeats the same thing as the last three nights: place pill in mouth, drink water, swallow, rush to the bathroom. You sit in the parlor with your head in your hands as you hear her retching, and you rethink any previous thoughts of possible love for her. It was stupid to marry her, you know that now, but you didn’t then.

Cassadee Fleming was always the partier. She was always the one to stumble up to the dorm after a long night of drinking. She always was walked back to Hogwarts after a Hogsmeade weekend with at least three other people, only looking out for her. They didn’t trust her to make it back to the school in her state. You knew that. But you thought you could change her. You were stupid to assume that.

I’m not the same kid from your memory.
Now I can fend for myself.

This pattern has gone on for the last few weeks. Your wife staggers into the apartment between the hours of two and five each morning except for the one night when you forced her to stay in. Even then, though, after you both went to bed and she thought you were asleep, she silently got out of bed, changed into Muggle clothes and left. You didn’t try to stop her; you couldn’t have cared less.

You’ve had enough. At six o’clock, as she walks in from the office where she works, you’re waiting in the kitchen with two suitcases at your feet. Cassadee is stunned, but she’s not sure whose clothes are in the cases: yours, or hers. They’re yours, of course. She pays rent for the apartment, you can’t kick her out of what is hers by law.

“Ch-Ch-Charlie…” she stutters. “Wha-what are you doing?”

“Cassadee,” you say, shaking your head, “I have to. You’re killing me. I can’t stay up every night waiting for you to get home. I can’t be your shoulder to cry on when you’re drunk. You’re hurting me, can’t you see? You’re leaving every night, drinking and doing God knows what else! I’m sorry, Cass, but I don’t want to live like that.”

Cassadee drops her briefcase on the floor and walks over to you. “Charlie, you know I love you!”

It’s the first time she’s said that to you in your entire marriage. But it’s the first time you haven’t wanted to hear it. “Cass, don’t do that to me.”

“Charlie!” Cassadee yells. “How can you not believe me?”

“It’s not that I don’t believe you,” you say, “It’s that I can’t live like this! I know you love me, and you know I love you. But this is not working out!”

Cassadee runs a hand through her hair and looks at you. “Charlie, I thought we had something.”

“We did,” you say coldly, “before you came home drunk every night. Which was, what, the first week of our marriage?”

“Give me one more chance.”

“You blow it, and this is done.”

Don’t want to hear your sad songs.
I don’t want to feel your pain.

Cassadee stays home that night. The two of you sit in the parlor, discussing the latest traumas in the Muggle world. There really aren’t any, but it’s a great conversation nonetheless.

The next night goes much the same, except Cassadee makes dinner instead of ordering out. It’s a fried chicken that she bought at the store, and it’s very good. You think that maybe, just maybe, your possible departure worked magic.

Until the following night. Cassadee leaves when she thinks you’re sleeping. You get up as soon as you hear her close the door to the flat and go to sit in the living room. You click on the radio and turn the volume up to the maximum. You pick up the Daily Prophet and read every single word, every single article, even the classifieds. It reaches three o’clock in the morning, and you expect Cassadee home any minute.

You open your eyes to sunlight streaming in the windows through the blinds. You blink and look down. You’re still in the reclining chair in the parlor, the Daily Prophet open in your lap. The clock on the wall reads eleven fifteen in the morning. You stand up and go to the kitchen. The glass of water you had ready for Cassadee is still as full as you left it. The bottle of painkillers is still in the cupboard. The bathroom is spotless. There’s no sign to suggest she came home at all that night.

Deep inside, you know she didn’t.

Cassadee comes in the door at six that evening after work. She grins at you, then notices the suitcases on the floor. “Not this again,” she groans.

You smirk dryly; there’s nothing even remotely funny about the situation. “These aren’t mine.”

Cassadee’s jaw drops. “You’ve got to be kidding me. Charlie!”

“I’ve lived with this long enough,” you say. “You promised me it was over. You didn’t even come home last night! Where were you?”

She looks at the ground. “Alex Merrick’s.”

Wonderful, he was your rival in school. Alex was a Ravenclaw, and he was your main competition in Quidditch. “Alex Merrick?”

“Yes.” Cassadee stares defiantly at you. “Anything you have to say about that?”

“Yes,” you say simply. You hold the suitcases to her. “Good-bye.”

The friends who stuck together,
We wrote our names in blood.
But I guess you can’t accept that the change is good.

You and Cassadee are officially divorced. She signed the papers earlier this week, and it’s like a huge weight has been lifted off your chest. You walk to the parlor, picking up the newspaper on the table as you do. You sit down in the reclining chair you know all too well, and look at the front page of the paper. There’s a picture of your school days rival, Alex Merrick, and your ex-wife Cassadee Fleming. It compels you to read the article.

Earlier this morning around eight a.m., twenty-five year old Cassadee Fleming was found dead in a shared apartment in Diagon Alley by Alex Merrick, Quidditch player for the Chudley Cannons. The death were ruled as alcohol overdose. Cassadee worked at the Ministry of Magic as Assistant to the Minister. She graduated from Hogwarts, passing her N.E.W.T.s with flying colours. Cassadee is survived by her mother and father, Lora Leighton and Frederick Borland.

That’s it. That’s all it says about your ex-wife. You close the paper and throw it into the fireplace, never mind that there’s not a fire going. You grab your wand and Apparate to your brother’s house.

“Charlie?” Bill says when he opens the door. “What are you doing here?”

“Bill,” you say, “I really need to talk some things over.”

Bill smiles. “That sounds wonderful. Come in, I’ll get some Firewhiskey.”

You grimace. “How about just water? I’m not a huge fan of alcohol right now.”

Bill nods, understanding perfectly. “You have to talk about Cass?”

You close your eyes, trying to keep the tears in. You try to talk, but you can’t, so you just nod. Bill smiles sadly and steps back, allowing you to cross the threshold. You walk inside and sit at the kitchen table. You pull out a letter from the pocket of your jacket and hand it to Bill.

Bill takes the letter and reads it intently. He looks up at you and sighs. “When did you get this?”

You close your eyes again. “This morning. She wrote it just before she died.”

Bill stares right into your eyes. “Charlie,” he says, “you can’t dwell on this. It’s not healthy.”

“Did you read the postscript?” you inquire.

Your brother shakes his head and rereads the entire letter. The entire while, you sit at the table and contemplate what could have been.

7:30 a.m., July 28

Charlie,

I’m sorry. I never meant to hurt you. I was selfish and childish to go out every night with my friends, I had no regard for your feelings. I regret that. I hope we can get some coffee and talk this over one day. Until that day, I’m sharing an apartment with Alex Merrick. Wipe that expression off your face, mister. Write me with your reply.

Cassadee Fleming.

P.S. I’ll love you forever.

You guess that forever is over.

You treat me just like another stranger.
Well it's nice to meet you sir.
I guess I'll go.
I'd best be on my way out.