Kurumi hurried into the broom cupboard, glad to find it empty, with a small bag that she had knitted over the summer with the help of her mother. She had intended to use it for something else, but since her situation had changed. Hands trembling, Kurumi closed the door and cast Colloportus on it before proceeding further. She didn't need anyone coming in. This was hard enough without having someone else observing and interrupting her.

Her heart pounded in her chest, Kurumi felt as though 50 kilogram weights had been attached to each of her legs as she made her way forwards towards the center of the room. To her right lay some old brooms, perhaps the same brooms that her and Adam had used in their first year to duel with each other before discussing more personal things. Over by the window is where Kurumi had made a sort of confession while discussing snowflakes. Over in the other corner was where they had exchanged their first gifts, a picture Adam had painted her and her cookies to him. Funnily enough, this had not been the place where he had...had...had kissed her, but it had been the place where they had been able to talk and get to know each other.

For two years this room had been their personal sanctuary. A place that seemed to have been kept a secret from everyone else, almost as if their relationship had cast a Disillusionment Charm on the room and only they knew the counter spell to finding it. It pained her to see other student entering and exiting the space. It felt almost as if her sanctuary had been violated. Her Eden had been corrupted.

But, that was selfish of her, wasn't it? Calling it HER Eden. Her name wasn't written anywhere on it. Well, no where for others to be able to see with their own eyes. Kurumi gripped her chest with her right hand while she reached into her pocket with her other hand for ring Adam had given her at the end of her first term. There were no promises attached to it. Nothing that heavy or serious. It had just been Adam's gesture of showing how he felt. She had worn it around her neck on a silver chain ever since - making sure that it was always close to her heart. Even after the six months of hearing nothing from him and knowing that they may never see each other again, she hadn't been able to take it off until moments earlier after speaking with Connor in the courtyard.

She felt its silver surface and the slightly engraved areas where the cherry blossoms had been painted on and she felt the tears forming in her eyes. Bringing the ring up to her lips, she kissed it softly as hot tears began streaming down her face. Yes, Adam had written her...but his response had come six months too late. A single tear fell onto the ring as she held it in the palm of her hand.


Whispering an almost silent farewell as she plopped the ring into the pouch and then pulled out a torn piece of parchment and pulled a quill from her bag. Taking a deep breath, Kurumi set her quill to the parchment and wrote a message to her future self.


Two thoughts, both very different from one another, but both were what Kurumi felt in her heart right now - although she didn't like using the word love. She was only thirteen years old, how was she supposed to know what it meant? Reading over what she had written, she hoped that her seventh year self would remember to come back and find this bag with the piece of parchment in it. Perhaps then she would know what she had truly been feeling in this moment where the world seemed to be both closing in on her and opening up to new possibilities.

Folding the paper in half, Kurumi added it to the woven bag and found a shelf that looked at though it had been undisturbed for centuries now. Pushing a few empty polish cans aside, Kurumi set it in the corner of the shelf and then returned everything to how it once had been. Tears streaming down her face like waterfalls, Kurumi stood back and examined the shelf for a few moments before finally turning her back to it. She then took her wand out.

"Alohomora," she whimpered to undo her spell work from earlier.

This was it. This really was the end. Or perhaps it was the beginning. Only time would tell how her decision would play out.