In the past few months Zia’s personal life had taken a dramatic nosedive. Her academic standing wasn’t impressive either, like it once had been. Zia was aware that she was not acting like her usual self but somehow couldn’t go back. Irresponsibility was apparently her new thing.

Finally though, the weather was getting warmer and sunnier, and as the temperature rose, so did Zia’s spirits. The transition was slow, but it was happening. And that is how she found herself outside, dragging along a large bag full of yarn. She also carried her needles and a few other decorative whatsits.

“Zia had no formal plan for what to do wiht this yarn, but it had been a long time since she last crafted something. Over the summer she and Lua had been talking about their business venture over the summer, but the plans had fizzled out. Zia felt like it was her fault; she was the one who had lost interest, preferring to spend her time drinking and snogging.

But today was the day. Zia was pretty close to the Whomping Willow, but was still far enough away that she wouldn’t be whomped upon. From the distance she looked at the tree thoughtfully, analyzing its fashion sense, her brows furrowed in concentration.

A canvas messenger bag bobbed hearteningly against Lua’s hip, its varicolored contents dependably muffled as she jogged down the lawn. Despite her excitement, Lua didn’t want to give away the secret. She and Zia would need quite the head start to succeed, and not just where a certain magicked tree was concerned. Once their classmates— or professors— suspected a plot, word tended to spread like fiendfyre.

Luckily, Zia’s bright silhouette was a dependable thing. As Lua closed the green space between them, weeds tickling her ankles, she waved wildly and grinned as if she hadn’t seen Zia in a century; she did not appear particularly bothered by the fact that the older girl was busy inspecting the tree. The Gryffindor’s boots found easy bearing in the dirt and grass as she slowed, but she nevertheless came to a sort of twirly, tripping, bouncy stop that seemed to born from excitement rather than bad balance.

Shoulder to shoulder with Zia, the fifth year looked up at the tree whose magnificence demanded a further tilting back of herded. If the wind was happy to disarrange her already-tangled hair, Lua did not seem to mind. She grazed the tip of her wand against her lips like a finger raised to signal quiet. “Do you think it might like singing?” She asked in a hush. Her mutant feline, Lumos, loved a good song. And cats could be brilliantly moody. “I mean, if we sing to it, not whether it can sing itself.”

It was probably a needless clarification. But. “Willows do have lovely songs, though.” (She would have felt bad if the spirited tree had heard and misunderstood her. Even though she admired it, she very much hoped it wasn’t quite so sentient.)

Zia matched her the direction that Lua was looking in an attempt to see what she saw. She always admired Lua’s active imagination. This project wasn’t one that Zia had thought all the way through. Planning had never really been her forte, so she was relieved when Lua suggested singing. It sounded reasonable enough.

“Voice has lots of magical power,” Zia agreed - although the reference to willow songs went over her head (most things did). “What song?” She racked her brain for a song that she and Lua might both know - this was hard to do considering they’d never really discussed music before.

“Is the school song too obvious, you think?” Zia checked. It was one of those things that seemed too easy to actually work. She shifted her lips to the side of her face and picked out a pair of knitting needles from her bag. She began to mindlessly tap them against her chin.

Fortunately Zia already had her first color picked out. She had nearly every shade of pink yarn from magenta to rose. The tree barely had leaves - perhaps it was chilly. She kicked the bag in Lua's direction, gesturing toward the bag as an offer.