To Weave a Past Solo Closed

Backdated || June 30th

It was the day before many Hogwarts students found themselves traveling to the wizard part of London for a 20-day summer camp for the Durmstrang vs Hufflepuff Quidditch game that Willow was a part of. Willow's stuff was packed away and ready to go, her newly acquired broom taken care of and at peak condition, her stuffed animals tucked away safely within a giant backpack specifically for holding them. Luckily, she now knew the spell for packing a trunk which made organizing a giant tea collection much easier for travel. There was a lot of free time and not much for her to do before heading off of the grounds for the summer.

The young Hufflepuff found herself sitting under a tree weaving bracelets that had been a comfort and safeguard despite the many rejections they had faced through the year. Still, much less rejection than she was used to experiencing in her hometown. She was worried about returning home after the summer camp. There was a fear that she wouldn't be able to fit back into muggle life, it seemed like a distant memory after all that she had been through here. While the first part of the year had been uneventful as Willow kept her head down and tried to figure out her place within the dark walls of Hogwarts. The second half of the year had an omen of what she would face before she even knew what it meant.

The death of her grandmother on the day of Yule. It kept her out of school for an additional month, not returning back until mid-February as she struggled to move on and grapple with the loss of her best friend and first professor of magic. Whether or not the wizards of Hogwarts considered her Wiccan practices to be real magic wasn't really a concern of hers as much as it was in the beginning of the year. She had fully owned the two sides of her life and had actually started to merge the two together in a blissful harmony that would take years to master fully.

Willow could've never predicted what the end of her year would look like. A few explosive meetings including punching someone for the first time, then a second someone. Becoming a sister, a best friend. Learning how to deal with a temporary loss of that best friend. A confusing first kiss that left even more confusing feelings in its wake that battled the feelings towards another, towards a girl. Becoming family in a den of badgers that had started as a foreign enigma of a group of people to her. Then fire consumed her life, a home away from home destroyed in the middle of a peaceful night. Damage to a friend that she engulfed in flames that seemed irreparable, but with the help of careful magic his skin had no evidence of the event that laid heavy in their hearts. That same healing magic soon helping her to heal her own battle wounds from a ball that was supposed to be sweet relief. That turned into the shattering hearts and souls at the hands of mythical creatures and misjudged planning.

The end of the year was spent recovering. Healing. Learning. Crying. Happy tears, sad tears, frustrated ones, ones that didn't necessarily have feelings but escaped under the rain of spring. There was renewal happening within Willow, even if she didn't realize what exactly that would entail yet. There was a mystery brewing underneath the belly of Hogwarts that the professors seemed to have answers to, but she didn't exactly know if she could trust that they were giving them all the information that they needed. A place of safety was slowly turning into a place of fear and constant looks over her shoulder. A place where she needed to sleep in the arms of her brother or best friend to sleep through the night. She wanted to reclaim the warmth of Hogwarts that she had found soon after arriving on the Great Lake and use it to melt the cold resolve that was building itself around her heart. She was too young to turn cynical and distant like some people her age already were.

Once she found that warmth herself, it would make it easier to hold the warmth to others heart's that might need it more than she did. She wanted to be a campfire for her friends and fellow classmates, whether they wanted her to be that for them or not. A place for people to gather, tell their story, stave off the night, and laugh so hard that their cheeks would hurt until the morning. But, the young girl couldn't even provide that for herself, not for awhile. The darkness seeping into her thoughts and heart was a hard battle to fight, one that she needed help with. But this princess wanted to save herself, rather than having someone else do it. The quest would prove more difficult than she saw it to be.

This was the end of her first year. The end of her first deep adventure to many things that she had only just begun to dip her toe into. While sometimes she felt like she could be drowning, she was a strong swimmer. Arms strong enough to hold others as they began to sink, a smile bright enough to light up the darkest of waters, an ear now tuned to cries of help.

Blue eyes blinked a few times, returning her from her lost thoughts of the future to gaze upon another finished bracelet. Adeptly tying it off she started to set it off to the side in a pile among other future friends to be made, but paused. The bracelet was a Peruvian wave type pattern with pinks and oranges like a sunset. It seemed appropriate that her subconscious had her fingers working on this as her mind wandered elsewhere thinking about her last year. Instead of adding it to the pile she tied in onto her own wrist. It sat comfortably next to the friends that she had made that year, Flash, Alan, Sylvain, and so many others that she had given bracelets to throughout the year.

She wiggled her body down to lay out on the grass and gaze up at the crystal clear sky. Her eyes meeting a similar color of a few clouds drifting through the endless seas of blue. A deep breath took in the warmth of the summer air. Her hand gliding through grasses of a greener side. Birds chirping, singing a song in search of others like them. The taste of a sweeter future dancing on the tip of her tongue.

There she would lay for a while, taking in a moment of peace and serenity that seemed to escape her.

Bracelet Reference

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