Kurumi wasn't usually this much of a damsel in distress type, but after the traumatizing night in the Forbidden Forest with Care of Magical Creatures, one really couldn’t blame her for being a bit jumpy.

"Kurumi, it's just a spider," Salander laughed poking at the large tarantula with his wand.

Kurumi tightened her grip on Salander's robes. "No it isn't! It’s an Acromantula still in its infant stage!"

Salander ended up choking back his laugh as he tried containing it. First years, they really were cute sometimes.

"Back you foul creature!" he boomed flicking the spider away with his wand.

Kurumi looked at her reflection in the mirror and almost didn't recognize herself. She was dressed in her mother’s cream colored kimono with flowers of all colors embroidered on it. Her long black hair was held up by all sorts of gold hair pieces. She could hardly believe that today was her Coming of Age ceremony. She almost wished she had a timeturner so that she could go back to her days in Hogwarts when everything was much simpler. The world in front of her seemed so vast that it was going to swallow her up.

"I'm ready," she whispered.

“Kurumi, you know that I don’t get this stuff,” Adam half sighed half groaned as he saw Kurumi crack open her Arithmancy textbook.

“Which is why we are doing this assignment together,” she justified picking up her quill. Writing down her name, Kurumi Hollingberry, on her parchment, she set to calculating her personality number. “How are you doing?”

“This is going to take a little…” Adam moaned.

Having finished her part, Kurumi returned to her parchment with a schoolgirl curiosity. She quickly scribbled down another name, Kurumi Burn, and calculated it. “Four indicates stability and firmness,” she blushed reading aloud.

“I’d like two butterbeers please,” Kurumi said standing on her tippy toes to look over the counter at the Leaky Cauldron.

“You got it,” Ryoma said setting his fluffy white cat on the counter.

Kurumi leaned forward to take a closer look at it. It was a live, wasn’t it? It looked more like a cotton ball with eyes than it did a cat. The tiny cat let out a loud squeak and Kurumi clapped her hands. “He’s adorable! He looks like a snowball!”

“Just don’t throw him. He won’t like that,” Ryoma said handing her the two butterbeer glasses.

Kurumi stared at Walnut intensely with unblinking violet eyes. “Just sit still now,” she instructed the cat who looked at her with a bored expression and returned to cleaning himself. Kurumi was beginning to feel a bit exhausted herself seeing as she had been trying to produce cat ears for the past two hours. Who knew controlling her Metamorphagus abilities could be so challenging?!

“Walnut, sit still or else I can’t pretend to be an Animagus,” she scolded.

Concentrating once again, Kurumi felt something pop on her face. Looking in the mirror, she had managed to grow whiskers. Close enough.

The dark creature loomed before her with its thousands of facing breathing its putrid gases that enveloped Kurumi like a suffocating blanket. The voices saying all the things that had caused her so much pain as a child: Half breed, monster, freak show, and more. Its black skin melted as it took a step forward, shaking the ground as it did.

And there she stood, all alone, with her wand pointed at the creature with her hands trembling. She took a step back out of fear. No, running had never helped before.

Closing her eyes she gathered her courage, “Riddikulus!”

Ryunosuke held his sister’s shaking body trying to figure out how to best handle this situation. This had been the worst bulling of his younger sister yet and it had taken all of his strength to overcome the urge to march right down to Kurumi’s school and beat the living daylights out of every single one of her punk classmates.

“It hurts,” Kurumi sobbed holding tuffs of raven hair in her fingers; hair that her classmates had either cut off with scissors or pulled out.

“I know, Kurumi, I know,” he said hugging her tightly. “Just let the tears come.”

Kurumi looked at the spray bottle in her hand and back at Walnut who sat on her bed swishing his tail back and forth clearly agitated. Professor Saylen had suggested that because she had sprayed Walnut as if he were a regular cat that she ought to do the same to her. Kurumi looked back at Walnut who now had his ears down after seeing the spray bottle again.

“Walnut, I hope this makes you happy,” she said holding it up to her face and squeezing the trigger. Cold water hit her face and she swore she heard Walnut meoggle.

author’s note : meoggle is my made up word for a cross between a meow and a giggle

Kurumi took out her wand and twirled it in her fingers as she looked over her Charms assignment once more with Walnut sitting on her lap. She hadn’t really gotten the spell down during class only managing to halfway duplicate her textbook so that it was missing pages 67 and up. Glancing at the plate of cookies, Kurumi flicked her wand, “Geminio!”

The plate of cookies was duplicated…and it continued to do so over and over and over until cookies were falling off the desk and rolling across the floor.

“Oh dear!” she shrieked waving her wand frantically. “Stop! Stop!”

“Oh! You baked cookies again!” Eino said taking a seat next to Kurumi by the lake. Kurumi, who had had her nose stuck in her book, hardly heard her friend’s voice and turned the page to continue reading about Hippogriffs.

“Can I have one?”

Kurumi nodded, but not to Eino’s question, rather, she had found some interesting fact about the creature.

Eino grabbed a handful of cookies and stuffed them into his mouth and immediately spit them out.

“Disgusting!”

Kurumi jumped at Eino’s shouting. “Oh! Eino! Those are not for you! Those are chicken cookies for Walnut!”

The cat purred.

Kurumi nodded as Selina gave her a very detailed description of the layout of the Quidditch pitch as well as a lengthy overview of the history of the game. Kurumi remembered some of what the fiery red-head said from her very first Flying lesson, but most of it had gone in one ear and out the other after she had heard the first Snitch was actually a bird that was killed.

“…and those are the balls” Selina asked.

“I just have one question,” Kurumi said raising her hand as if they were in class. “Why do you throw a waffle?”

She was exhausted. That much was obvious to anyone who happened to pass by the frail girl who sat under the cherry tree hugging her knees tightly to her chest. The edges of the blue sky were beginning to tinge pink and the clouds were laced with gold. It was the time of day when children playing in the park would hold onto one another’s hands as they made their way home, but not for her. She sat alone, exhausted from all the tears.

Closing her eyes, she drifted off into sleep. Eventually one of her brothers would find her.

Usually, Kurumi would never hurt a fly. In this case there was no fly but a cockroach causing havoc in the girl’s dormitory.

“Quick! Somebody get it!” squealed a third year as she jumped onto her bed. “Kurumi, make your cat eat it!”

Kurumi looked at Walnut and it was clear that he didn’t want anything to do with the cockroach and ended up hiding under Kurumi’s pillow. Taking out her wand, Kurumi figured it was up to her.

“BOMBARDA!”

The spell missed and hit the floor making a rather large depression instead of ridding the room of the cockroach.

Kurumi watched nervously as her friends each grabbed a stick.

“Kurumi, you need to grab one too,” Adam laughed handing her one.

Kurumi took the stick and continued to observe as Adam and the others ran a marshmallow through with their sticks. People in England certainly had strange ideas about how to cook food. After doing so herself, Kurumi followed everyone’s lead and stuck her marshmallow into the fire.

“Oops!” Hugo laughed pulling his out and showing is flaming marshmallow.

“Aguamenti!” Kurumi chirped spraying the Ravenclaw with so much water that the fire even went out.

Dangerous business, these smores.

Kurumi sat with her daughter under the cherry trees sipping her secret blend of tea and eating egg salad sandwiches. A soft breeze rustled the branches, causing a few pink petals to become lose and flutter to the ground. The small girl giggled and began to chase after the petals as if they were butterflies.

“Don’t wander far,” Kurumi warned gently.

“You mean, don’t get lost,” the little girl laughed.

“Even if you did, I could always find you,” Kurumi smiled touching the locket around her neck and pointing to the one her daughter wore. “We are connected by magic.”

Kurumi sat by the edge of the lake with a rather large book sitting on her lap that she had borrowed from Professor Truebridge. Sitting next to her enjoying the sunlight was Walnut, who was a little preoccupied with trying to catch a bug with his paws.

A small green snake slithered by, and Kurumi smiled down at it as it continued on its way past the cat. Walnut hissed at the snake and whacked with his paw. The snake responded by biting Walnut on his paw before slithering away.

“You need to work on your communication skills,” Kurumi laughed.

Welcome to the Muggle Car Appreciation Club! You must be very excited, as you should be, for not many are as lucky as you are. You are not the proud owner of a Ford Anglia 105e! This model is the final model in the series and was introduced in 1959. You car has a special serial number located on the lower left wheel that you should take care to remember! In the future we will send you notices and opportunities to win even more fabulous goods from the Muggle Car Appreciation Club!

“Kurumi! Put my toy car down this minute!”

This drabble is dedicated to Kurumi's Slytherin "admirer", Sierra Greingothar (Anna Banana)

“Hollingberry, what’s the deal with all the bowing?” the younger SLytherin gawked watching Kurumi seemingly apologizing to the shattered bowl on the floor. “Do Muggles think bowls will forgive them for breaking?”

“N-N-No,” Kurumi stammered stopping for a moment. “I am apologizing to you for any discomfort I caused…”

Sierra raised an eyebrow at Kurumi. “Hollingberry…that makes no sense.”

Kurumi frowned. Not only did she have a gap to fill between the wizarding world and the non-magical one she grew up in, but now she had the gap between two very different cultures.

“What’s next? Bowing to dictionaries in thanks?”

Crawling across the floor, the violet eyed baby spotted a rather elaborate looking stick. Giggling in a manner that only babies can do, she picked it up in her tiny pink hands and began waving it around. One of the white walls turned orange. Next, a potted plant turned into a lobster. Another wave and the dog turned into a large grandfather clock that began to chime the time.

“What is going on,” the baby’s father said entering the room and laughing. “Takashi! The baby has your wand again!”

He could hear his wife’s livid voice now…

“Now more wands!”

Kurumi added another pinch of mint to the brown mixture in the green porcelain bowl and whisked everything together before tasting again. “Oh no,” she frowned turning to her cat. “This tastes even worse than the last one.” Sighing, she pushed the bowl aside and heard a loud clang as it ran into the other 27 attempts. Was there just no way of turning Cockroach Clusters into delicious cookies?! She couldn’t seem to quell the spicy crunch from the wings. Maybe she was just going to have to remove them..

“I think I hate cockroaches even more now,” she sighed.

Kurumi looked back and forth between the cleaning instrument in front of her and the professor. Even now, in her 6th year, she still found Flying to be her worst subject. Sure, she could memorize facts and figures…but there had been too many trips to the hospital wing over the years. She was surprised she was even allowed near a broom. As her other classmates took off, she remained on the ground sticking to her belief that flying was meant for the birds…which gave her an idea…

“Hoot!” Perhaps if she hooted long enough she could morph into an owl?

Throwing on her heavy coat and purple mittens, Kurumi ran out of the common room, through the corridors, and out into the courtyard that was now covered in a thick layer of snow. She jumped into the show that was up to her knees. Walnut sat in the entryway looking at the snow nervously. There was no way he was going any closer…until Kurumi pulled a tuna cookie from her pocket. After a giant leap, Walnut sunk into the snow and popped his head up. He was now covered from head to tail in white.

“You look like a snowkitty!”

Kurumi never EVER wanted to see a chocolate frog again. The Charms lesson a week ago had nearly put her off sugar entirely. Sitting in the Charms practice room looking over her assignment, Kurumi sighed heavily.

“What’s the matter, Ms Hollingberry?” Profesor Descoteaux asked.

“I think…I have been practicing charms too much,” she shrugged. “I feel exhausted.”

“I know just the thing,” he smiled calmly vanishing behind a desk for a few moments. When he reappeared, he was holding a large box that he set down on the desk in front of her. “There are still plently left from class.”

Kurumi pushed the crystal ball across the table closer to the Slytherin boy she had been partnered up with for the assignment. She looked longingly across the room at Selina wishing that they had been partners instead of being stuck with this boy who kept wiggling his eyebrows at her.

She bit her lower lip in attempt to hide her disdain.

“I see…you going on a date with a rather handsome looking boy in your future,” he said waving his arms around the ball. “What do you say? Next Hogsmeade trip you, me, and a glass of butterbeer?”

Kurumi groaned.

“Mama, can I get a pet next term?”

“I think that can be arranged,” Kurumi smiled.

“I want a Kneazle!” the girl chirped. “Didn’t you have one?”

“Not exactly. I had a cat, but he was smarter than any Kneazle.”

Kurumi felt a tug in her chest thinking about Walnut. They had been together for fifteen years before time caught up with them. It had been peaceful. He had fallen asleep on her lap curled in a ball only, this time, he never woke up.

“Choose wisely,” Kurumi said quietly. “Magical familiars leave a very deep imprint on your heart.”

Author's note: look at that! We are now halfway done! This drabble has actually been an idea for a long time now, but Walnut should have a signifcant number dedicated to him.