Closed Heart to Heart

[Juniper Zumwalt]

Juniper sat crosslegged on her bed. All the school books she had purchased on her recent trip to some magical alley. They were laid out individually across the floor. Her supplies were gathered on the right side of miniscule library, and she had folded the few robes she purchased on the left. She glanced up at the clock. Adorah should be home soon. The two sisters hadn't spoken about the fact they would both be attending a magical boarding school this fall. While Adorah had been there the past 9 months, Juniper had been at home, only learning about halfway through that she was destined for the same journey. She stared at the empty bed across the room.

The past 9 months had been quite tumultuous. Her parents had refused to allow Adorah to come home during any of her holidays, and if it hadn't been for the fact that Juniper was also attending the school, she wasn't sure they would have seen her again. Their parents had finally broken their silence with Adorah only a month ago, offering her a place to stay for the break. Juniper looked out the window behind her and saw a car pull up to the house. She closed her eyes and continued to face the books, taking a deep breath, trying to process it all.

 

[Professor Adorah Zumwalt]

Adorah sat silently in the car alongside her mother. Their father had refused to pick her up from the train station which required her mother to make the long trip solo. She had wondered why Juniper didn't come. After all, she would be attending Hogwarts in the fall. There should be no reason for her to mad or scared of Adorah. The two sisters hadn't spoken since Adorah had left for the now infamous "magician's school" as it was referred to as in the Zumwalt household. She wasn't quite sure why her parents, who were now so against the idea of magic, even continued to let her go... or let Juniper go for that matter. However, she wasn't questioning it. Her first year hadn't been very eventful, but she had made a few friends and learned quite a bit. One thing was for sure: she no longer felt like the odd one out. She always felt like there was something different, but pinpointing it was a different story.

As the car pulled down the dusty road to their hidden farmhouse, Adorah clutched her bag closer to her chest. The car stopped, and the dust slowly began settling. Her mother go out of the car and went to retreive her school trunk from the back of the vehicle. She watched as the woman rolled the box inside and disappeared. Adorah slowly stepped out of the car and looked around her yard. Nothing had changed, but she felt so differently about this place. It no longer felt like home, but neither did the castle she had just arrived from. Her state of comfort seemed to be in limbo.

She pulled her bag over her shoulder and entered the house, making her way up the stairs to the once shared bedroom with Juniper. She opened the door to find her sister monopolizing the floor with what Adorah noticed were her new school things. She placed the bag on her bed, rolled the trunk her mother had brought in onto the floor, and looked at Juniper. Her eyes were shut, which wasn't odd for the girl. Juniper liked to meditate. Adorah walked over towards her sister's bed, crawling onto the mattress and joining the cross-legged stance. "You know, I would have gone with you to get your school things if you had just asked," she said lightly.

 

[Juniper Zumwalt]

Juniper heard her sister enter the room but kept her eyes closed. There were a few moments of shuffling and then she felt the section of mattress beside her compress and a familiar voice fill the air. She took a breath and smiled. "I'm sure you would have loved to show me up on your superior magical knowledge." Opening her eyes, she looked at Adorah for a moment before embracing her in a full on bear hug. The two squaled and giggled, and the energy of their joyous reunion forced them off the bed onto the floor where they began laughing. Juniper sat up and looked forward at her collection of school items and then at Adorah's trunk. "So, am I going to have to get one of those ugly things?" she asked, pointing to the ugliest block of travel luggage she had seen. "You know, we could make that look a lot better if that's what you're going to be using for the next six years. Give it a coat of paint, add some pretty designs, and it would look much better." Juniper had always had an eye for fashion and design or at least cared more about it than the rest of her family who enjoyed living in oversized (or in some cases, too small) hand-me-downs.

 

[Professor Adorah Zumwalt]

Adorah looked at her own trunk. She had kept it pretty clean and free of scuffs, but Juniper had a point. It was a rather dull brown, and even the edges weren't attractive. "Sure. You could even help me with a few decorations for my room," she suggested. Having pretty things wasn't Adorah's priority, but if it made her sister happy to help, Adorah would spare the torture of putting glitter on her trunk. She got up from the floor and walked towards her trunk, opening it up to start to unpack. She took her the bag of dirty laundry she had thrown in and threw it towards Juniper's bed. There was silence in the room until she heard Juniper clear her throat. Adorah turned around and sat on her own bed. The elephant in the room had to be addressed. "So, how are mom and dad taking all this? I mean, they won't let me write home, won't let me come home, and then suddenly you turn out to be a witch, too and now we're a big, happy family again?" Adorah was mad. How could her mother just abandon her like that, her daughter, someone she had voluntarily taken into her family, and just let her go off to a school in the middle of no where that she hadn't even checked out first. Sure, Adorah was fine and was very excited to be attending the school, but it was the in principle of the thing. She crossed her arms and brought her legs up on the bed. "It's just not fair. This whole year has been so hard, and I didn't even have you to talk to. That just made it worse." She knew it wasn't Juniper's fault, but part of her felt like Juniper could have at least written to her in secret so she would have known that she had someone.

 

[Juniper Zumwalt]

Juniper watched as Adorah headed toward a breakdown. This was very typical of her sister - acting like everything was the end of the world. She stared at the girl and scoffed. "They just didn't know what to do. I mean, it's weird, right? That we have these magical powers - you and I - and we're not even related to them. How would you have reacted?" Juniper didn't give Adorah time to answer because she knew what the answer would be: "I would have supported my child because it's the right thing to do blah blah blah. "Look. We're both going to be going there together this year. Everything will be fine, and you'll have time to get over - I mean, adjust - to whatever it is you've been panicking about for the past year." She knew this wasn't the best way to calm anyone down, but she was sick of the drama queen. So what? Both of them had been abandoned to some extent already. Truly, what was the difference if the adoptive parents didn't want them now? Maybe it was because Juniper was in the system longer than Adorah, but she could care less if things went south due to this whole hocus pocus stuff. She was a fighter, and she'd continue going no matter who was around. Juniper reached over and grabbed her book from the nightstand and laid flat out on the bed with her feet up in the air. "Why don't you unpack, and then we'll start working on your ugly trunk."