Blossom looked at the tree in the distance.  On that cold dark October night, with the full moon only a few days away, the whomping willow didn't look all that intimidating.  He'd decided to hedge his bets and copy the tree's appearance as closely as he could.  It had been a serendipitous decision.  It served to camouflage his movements and perhaps it would fool the tree.  It also gave him a costume to wear to the Hallowe'en Ball.

He looked over at Rico.  They had a very narrow time window before their late appearance at in the Great Hall would be considered suspicious.  "Ready?" he asked his roommate.  "I've got the scissors and the jar all set to go.  All I'll need you to do is get the tree's attention if it starts attacking me.  You shouldn't need to get too close.  Did you want me to get a cutting for you too?  If I do it right I can get both at the same time."

"Ready?" Rico nodded silently

"I've got the scissors and the jar all set to go.  All I'll need you to do is get the tree's attention if it starts attacking me.  You shouldn't need to get too close.  Did you want me to get a cutting for you too?  If I do it right I can get both at the same time."

"I'm bueno on the killer tree clippings, thanks. Just let's get what you need and let's get out of here, I'm starving." Rico's stomach grumbled angrily, his first year and he was missing the Halloween feast and the dance. He had been thinking of a few ideas of how he could distract the tree without getting mauled or caught.

"Right then,"  Blossom said, far more confident than he had any right to be.  "Just distract it if anything goes wrong.  Don't try to rescue me.  I mean, it's a tree.  It can't exactly be a great strategist, so dividing its attention will be my best chance of getting out if anything goes wrong.  Trying to pull me out will just put us both in the same place at the same time so it can get us with just one whomp."

It was fall and chances were that the tree would be starting to go dormant for the winter.  The sun was down, which meant the tree would also be less active.  Blossom had, as far as he was aware, thought of everything.  He crept forward, stopping every few feet once he got close to the tree. 

He'd selected one of the longer branches to take his cutting from for a variety of reasons.  It was close to the limit of the trees reach and it was close to the ground.    He slowly moved closer, urged on by Rico's impatience and his own eagerness. 

He reached out with his scissors, swallowed hard and cut.

As the 15 cm length of branch hit the bottom of the glass jar, the willow jumped to life. It's branches rose from their stationary positions and the tree became active. The lower limbs started swinging and the upper branches started swaying.

Rico's eyes widened, the worst thing that could possibly happen, was happening. He wanted to run, but he was too much in awe by the huge tree. The animate limbs put him in shock, every twig was moving and whipping. The first branches came at them. One below them, and a few above their heads, Rico ducked, and jumped, hoping to the Lord that this tree wouldn't kill him.

"Run for it!" Blossom cried out, as the first branches came whipping down, far faster than he anticipated. 

The tree was supposed to be slow because it was cold.

The tree was supposed to be dormant because the sun was down.

The tree didn't seem to be aware of Blossom's logic.  It was lashing as much speed and vigor as the young boy would have expected at noon in August.  He heard a shuddering thud behind him as a branch struck the ground.  He hadn't been aware that the tree could bend its trunk like that.

Blossom felt a sharp jerk back as part of the branch caught his camouflage/disguise/Hallowe'en costume.  He lunged forward, not even bothering to worry about what sort of damage had been done.  He felt resistance that suddenly released and he heard the sound of branches shredding.  He had no idea if they were from the willow or from the ones he was wearing.  All that mattered at that point was getting out of the reach of the tree before it pounded him into fertilizer.

"Run for it!"

Rico snapped out of his plant induced trance and ran. Twigs and flailing branches hit his arms and face. The speed of the limbs cut into his cheeks and forehead. The tree was twisting and whirling so much, Rico thought it would uproot itself to follow them.

The pocket knife had little to no use in Posada's pocket as he ran like a sissy away from the tree. Rose's shirt was snagged onto a branch, it had gotten him. Rico remembered reading in the library, countless Daily Prophets of students mauled by the Whomping Willow and another Headmaster's reminder to students to stay a good distance away from the tree.

Rico wished he had listened to the words of Albus Dumbledore instead of Blossom's. Rico made a quick U-turn to grab Rose's collar and completed another 'U' as he ran from the direction he had come from.

Swish, swish, swish, swish!

Another large pumpkin about the castle marked with the 'M' for Mace.[1] The Salem student was usually the life of any party, especially Halloween, but the scarecrow he had animated for the occasion had gone off in the completely wrong direction when he was showing off its features by commanding it to fetch him a drink. Made had followed it outside while marking every pumpkin he saw with his sword.

Finally, at a fountain he found Cap'n Patches the scarecrow, dipping a glass into the water of the fountain.

"Okay, I guess my exact words were a cup of water but I was thinking more like the punch bowl." A wave of his wand made the scarecrow go still. "Back inside, why don't we...again..."

Mace was distracted to see that there were two small costumed folk underneath the whipping branches of a giant tree. Before any better thought entered his head he ran down the grounds, commanding Cap'n Patches alongside him. "Help save the kids!"

However that was interpreted[2] Mace was quick enough with his sword to cut off a twig poised to wrap around the neck of one of the boys.

1.	Mace is Zorro, specifically the Guy Williams version.
2.	you guys can have whatever happen to Cap'n Patches

The black costume hid Mace completely, so Blossom could only see the flashing steel.  He felt the tree let go and, taking his lead from Rico, sprinted as fast as he could in a randomly chosen direct, random in that he didn't care where he was headed as long as it was away from the tree.

He felt a branch whoosh over his head and heard the sickening crunch of the branch connecting with something that wasn't the ground.  "Rico!" he cried out, turning to see a dark shape sailing through the air.  It land in a tangled heap.  "No!"

He started towards the fallen figure, only to have movement in the corner of his eye catch his attention.  He saw his roommate running in the opposite direction.  "Wait.  What?  Who else is out here?"

He dropped Blossom's collar as Mace arrived, slashing his saber at the limbs of the tree. Rico ran, not looking back, he ran until he came to the lake.

"Rico!"... "No!"

Rico turned to see Blossom standing at a safe distance, but a mangled body was on the ground near the tree. Rico ran towards it. It's head was fractured open and it's brains were spread all around the ground around it. He was close to spewing chunks when he realized that the head was a bright orange and the brains were actually pumpkin guts and seeds. "Damn, that was messed up" Rico breathed before continuing his hike up the hill back to his friend.

The tree was becoming less animate, it's branches stiffened a bit, but it was still going with as much fury as a tree could possibly muster. Note to self, Rico thought. Never climb trees again, Ever.

"Wait.  What?  Who else is out here?"

Rico shook his head, "It's a pumpkin attached to something" He winced, now that that he didn't have to focus on survival, he could focus on the dozens of cuts on his face, neck, and arms. The older kid in the cape was standing apart from them.

"Hey!" Rico yelled, waving his hand towards the two of them. "Ven aqui!"

Accursedly, Mace knew little Spanish, but it almost wasn't needed for the peril still facing him and the other student hunched over the broken patches. It appeared cutting of the lashing twigs of this tree only made it more enraged.

"Get going!" Mace yelled over a loud creak from the tree. If it wasn't for the fact that the trunk was still fully intact, the tree was falling towards them as if cut for timber. Mace ran behind the boy and, as an afterthought, whisked Patches out of the way with a tethering spell.

WHUMP!

The immensity of the tree's branches hit the ground and it erected back upright. Mace stopped short of the previous boy that had escaped. "Everyone all right?"

"Yeah,"  Blossom replied, panting and puffing like a steam engine.  He wasn't the most athletic person and the sprint had taken a great deal out of him.  "Great," he said. 

He paused, trying to catch his breath.  "That tree... shouldn't have... been that fast."  He looked back at the tree that was, having been deprived of targets, settling back down.  He shook his head.

 "Thank you.  You both just saved me from being turned into a four foot fertilizer spike."  He fished under the ruins of his camouflage and held up the 6" piece of the tree.  "I got the cutting," he said, completely oblivious to the fact that there were almost a dozen sections of the the tree's tendrils still looped loosely around the back of his collar, the shortest of which was three times as long as the one he held up.  "Now I just have to see if it will sprout roots.  Think of it, Rico.  We'll have a whomping willow to guard our room."

"Now I just have to see if it will sprout roots.  Think of it, Rico.  We'll have a whomping willow to guard our room."

Rico was still trying to regulate breathing when he sputtered out. "No, nada, no way am I getting one of those." He said, gesturing broadly to the Whomping Willow, "near me, whatsoever, mail it to your father and it will guard your estate, but that thing will not be attacking me when I come from the shower and whips my towel off, no thanks."

Rico then looked to the starry sky, dropped to his knees and whispered a prayer of thanks as he crossed himself. When he rose to his feet. "Thanks... um, what did you say your name was?" He said, directing his question as Zorro.

"I didn't," Mace replied. He could now check the 'what did you say your name was?/I didn't' line off of his bucket list. That had to have been one of the best set ups for the line in the history of its use.

"I'm with your friend here," Mace added, sounding almost uncharacteristically responsible owing to the nature of his argument. "You want to grow one of these murder trees in your room after nearly being pulverized by it? Unless your headmaster is as cool as our headmaster I don't see how you could get the permission for it."

Ol' Ferry could probably take this clipping and raise it as a bonsai and it would get no bigger or aggressive. He might have even beaten the tree with one poke of his staff.

"I do indeed,"  Blossom replied.  "My family used to raise Devil's Snare, until an accident broke some of the blacked out windows one summer.  We lost almost the entire crop and the ones that survived are struggling.  If you object that much Rico, I can take it home when summer comes and plant it in the garden.  It won't get all that big by June."

He looked at the cutting.  "It will take a while to get it to remember me after I finish school for the year," he added glumly.

"Devil's Snare...comforting." Rico shrugged, the shoulders and arms of his black shirt had been sliced by the whip-like branches of the tree. He had dozens of inch or longer slices littering his skin. "Maldición ese árbol loco, sus ramas y su estúpida locura una locura!" Rico mumbled, his Irish-blooded temper peaking as he looked himself over.

Father would definitely notice the scars on his face and neck, he would have to wear sweatshirts for the rest of his life, he didn't know a good spell to heal scars yet. In addition to the searing pain gnawing at his skin, he stomach growled. "Is the dance still going on? I'm bloody starving." His Irish roots were making an appearance tonight, his accent coating his words.

He looked at the jar, Blossom held in it's hand. "You're going to like, seal that jar tightly, right? I don't want a branch strangling me in my sleep, thank you very much, he leaned so he could tap on the lid of the jar, to see if it twitched or showed any type of life.