Almost done with cleaning - as much as Scarlett wanted to help, she was NOT the cleaning, domestic type and was going to do the bare minimum so she could get to the fun part - the painting and PRETTY things! Alright, she'd scrubbed a wall, got rid of some trash...there was a window over there that looked pretty dingy. She could clean that!

Taking the bucket of water that she already had, she dumped it down a nearby storm drain and then refilled it with fresh soap and water. She squeezed out the sponge she'd been using and then walked back over to window. It was pretty large, starting at the base of the building and stretching just past her head, so it was going to be quite a task, but it would look so pretty and maybe she could paint some stuff on it with washable paints! You know, Christmas shapes or something. Like window clings!

Taking the sponge, she got it all soapy and then started to scrub. The grime came off the glass much easier than it had the wall, and before Scarlett knew it, she was done! That had been much easier than she thought, and now she could actually SEE inside the building. It was an abandoned warehouse of sorts, but at least the outside would look pretty...

This looked pathetic.

And Chloe was a hundred percent okay with that. Was that strange? Was that bad? Did she care? No.

She just wanted to use her wand. Meh.

The twelve year old went into her tart tent with all of her blankets. She placed them on the floor to create a pseudo carpet. The more ripped up, gross ones went on the floor. The better in tact blankets were used to make a bed-ish sleeping bag.

Done.

Or at least she wanted to be.

It wasn't beautiful. But it was helpful.

Scarlett was finally done with the BORING part of all this and had moved on to the PAINTING part! TIME TO DECORATE YAYYY! Scarlett was all in to pretty colors and paints - she'd been practicing with nail art lately, obviously - and couldn't wait to start making some pretty pictures on the walls.

RAINBOWS! That was the first thing she was going to paint. But she wanted PASTEL colors. Instead of red, she'd use PINK. And a soft orange. And soft yellow. Pastel green. Light blue. Pastel purple. AHHH IT WOULD BE SO PRETTY! Scarlett wished she had all these colors in nail polishes - she had some that were close, but not nearly as pretty as these.

She painted a bunch of pretty little rainbows (with clouds at each end for an accent detail) and then decided she needed something else. But what?? Hmm.

Tia wasn't really paying much attention to what her peers were doing as long as they weren't killing each other. Which they weren't. Which meant she could just hum and work at her own pace. Cleaning and scrubbing these tires wasn't all that difficult... and actually, the seventh year kind of liked the look of them when they had wet all over them.

No more dirt and scum on these rubbers! People can sit or do whatever they like, without having fear of catching some communicable disease.

Stepping back to admire her cleaning work, Tia considered what to do to beautify the area next. She was thinking rather than wasting good rubber, maybe she'd make some sort of artwork on the tires. Make them nice to look at when one passed by.

Okay... So no hi in return then?

Esme frowned as the Slytherin went back to potting his plant. Maybe he hadn't heard her? Ehhh. She wasn't going to fret over some boy that she didn't even know.

His loss as far as she was concerned.

Continuing to hum to herself, she soon had a sizable amount of yellow paint on the wall. This was going to be the background of her mural because it was such a bright and cheerful colour. Once it was dry, she used some black paint to draw out a big circle on top of the yellow. This was going to be the planet Earth which they were working to help clean. Even if this was really the classroom, it was nice to pretend that it was the real deal.

Since she already had the black paint on her brush, she decided to write 'EPD' below the lower left part of the circle. Now people would know who painted it.

Sam looked between Chloe and the little kid, just a tad confused. "S'okay," she replied to the Slytherin, watching her house mate go off to do something else. What, she wasn't sure. "I'll 'elp ya move dis, 'nd then I'll go see whatsup wiff 'er."

She didn't really feel any loyalties to the girl, other than being in the same house. She wasn't Dora, or any of her dorm mates. "Me name's Sam, by the way." She'd managed to met lots of people of late, but names weren't exactly her strong point. If he told her his, she'd try her best to remember it.

Ah. He wanted to plant things in it. The planting, she could totally get behind. The flowers would certainly brighten the place up up; there was always something about the new bulbs poking through in spring and the warmer weather that brought hope to her. She wasn't so sure about the taking out bit though, because who exactly was going to do the taking out? And where would they take them to? "Why don't we insulate 'em wiff something, jus' in case they don't get brou' in?" she replied, not wanting to dash his hopes too much.

But before that, the tyre needed to be moved again. "C'mon, if yeh stand over there, 'nd gimme a 'and, I fink we can get it nex' teh ovver one jus' two of us."

Rolling this tire was no small task. You think it'd be easier with them chipping in the way they were but merlin, what was this thing made off?? Wasn't rolling meant to make it easier??? The boy didn't complain outwardly but he was now thinking they should'a gotten a bulky student to do the work. You know...one of those older kids that could easily pass for an adult in the real world.

Finally where it needed to be, he turned to his friend once more.

"Okay, what next?" Davie was the mastermind behind this, he was simply here to provide the muscle--while wondering what on earth the Tenacious kid was really up to. That kid was a hard worker for sure. Just look at him hammering away at the tires right there.

Blaise reached for the rope while he waited, trying to figure if it would be enough to wrap around the tire while making a decent swing.

Mel was almost done with this cleaning business. Taking her broom she continued to push all of the debris into a pile before stopping and collecting a wheelbarrow (because it would be easier this way) and a shovel from the area where all the tools were. Using the shovel she began to sweep and push the pile onto the flat of the shovel before lifting both and dumping it into the wheelbarrow.

One…two…three the pile was shrinking and she was almost ready to roll the dirt away to well some other place. Almost ready was probably an understatement.

“Lets do this Mel,” she grinned and began to push the wheelbarrow toward the dump area? Was it a dump truck? Probably but that wasn’t bad it was going to be better soon…after a bit of maneuvering she had filled three trash bags with the contents of the wheelbarrow before putting them in the pile of trashbags and moved back to her area to begin beautifying it.

“Aaace what’ya doing?” She asked excitedly.

If she wasn't all that concerned about the way her housemate had reacted, then Jaemin was sure he didn't need to be overly concerned either. Right? Right. He nodded a bit, more to himself than to her, and moved to the other side of the tire.

Sam. Her name was Sam. Somehow, Jaemin thought as he looked at her, that was rather fitting. A scruffy name for a scruffy girl! He liked it. "My name's Jaemin. Everyone calls me Jay, though."

Most everyone. Some persons of the "not of Hogwarts" variety had called him 'Mini' when he was still in Muggle school. He frowned upon that, so nobody in Hogwarts was to know. He squatted down and tried to find a good place to grip the tire so it would be easier to pick up, looking up at Sam expectantly. She would say when, yes?

She might have been more concerned if Chloe was moping or something, but she seemed to be pretty busy with something else, so Sam didn't consider it much more in the short term. "Nice teh meet ya, Jay," Sam replied with a smile, as she pushed up her too big sleeves from where they had fallen down.

"On the coun' of free then?" she asked, as she bent down to get in position. She hand slipped on the tyres damp surface, and she felt around to get a better grip.

"One, two...free!" And PUSH!

Her accent was interesting. She was easy enough to understand, but it was... different from other peoples'. He liked it. It made her words sound neat. Jay nodded at her. On free... er, three.

And they were off. Jay moved on Sam's count, and the tire was on its way to the fence. Goooooooo!

"Are you a first year too?" he asked, a bit distracted. They had to be careful so they won't smudge up the paint the other students had put on the fence... oh. Oh paint. "Ah! Maybe we can paint on the tires to make them look nicer for the flowers!"

Pretty tire flower pots.

It was possible that Dot had scavenged every single rock in the vicinity, and she thought it made quite an impressive border for her grassy patch. Grassless, currently, actually, but Dot set about improving that next. The plants that the professor had provided for their beautifying efforts would do nicely.

Dot really wasn't eager to get her hands dirty, but at least dirt washed off more easily than paint or grease. And there were flowers on the other side of this adventure. Dot crouched in the dirt as she created concentric circles of flowers, scooting along her perimeter of stones as she worked. Tall grasses and daffodils in the back, feathered ferns among peonies, and a carpet of pansies. The colors were a little riotous, but it was PRETTY and much nicer than the garbage had been. That was something, at least.

Obviously. He could see that. What Bast wanted to know was why exactly he was painting a tire white. He didn't ask any more questions though. Instead focused on cleaning his wall, which, was actually going much better than he thought. A wand would still be much better, but scrubbing wasn't so bad either.

It took the entire time it took Dima to finish his art for him to finish cleaning off his portion of the brick wall. Standing back he tilted his head to give it a good inspection before glancing over at his older cousin's finished project.

He grinned. "'S nice!" Not at all what he was expecting when he turned to look at it. "Wanna help me with my wall?" He wasn't going to have anything like that on his own. Dima was the artistic one in the family, not him.

"Sure." He stuck his tire swan...... off to the side somewhere (no one said artists had to be good at placement), and observed Bast's wall. His cousin had been slow and thorough with his cleaning, just as Dima had, and it looked as if there had been no graffiti in the first place.

The sixth year glanced back at Bast. "What d'you want to do with it?"

He considerd his wall, tilting his head this way and that before shrugging. "I dunno. Throw paint on it?" What was he supposed to do? It looked fine on it's own. Bast didn't ever slow down enough to consider a wall anymore than to figure a way to jump over it. Did people actually stop to look at walls?

"Maybe... a background for your swan." That could work, right?

Flower planting. Dot was a proper gardener now. She should probably tell the Herbology professor, see how proud it made him that she'd done... gardening... in Muggle Studies. What was going to happen to this patch of earth, though? It was so pretty, and nearly done, and it would be a shame if it was all just some prop for class.

Dot looked for Moxley with anxious eyes, but the professor was busy at the moment. She'd just finish and worry on her plot later.

The only other thing she really wanted was a nice carpet of grass between the border and the flowers. It was possible that some people never got to see grass in their current neighborhood, and there was nothing prettier to Dot than the green carpet, beckoning bare toes and summer dancing.

Grass took a while, though, to grow properly, and all Dot could do today was scatter some grass seed and water the plot well (without drowning it). It was easy to imagine how it would look with grass someday. Someday soon, hopefully.

"That would be cool." And help with the presentation, because his tire swan was sort of... surrounded by trash and gunk and disgusting stuff right now. It would look much fresher, like a come-to-life mural of sorts. Dima thought it was a great idea.

He gestured for Bast to follow him, heading over to the paints again. The same brushes that could be used for painting tires probably weren't ideal for brick, so he planned to choose new ones. "You want to do a pond or something? You pick the colors." His wall, after all. "And then I can paint an outline for you and you can fill it in?"

He smiled a little more, glad his idea wasn't a ridiculous one. And who knew, maybe when they were done he could use his swan as a launching pad over the wall. The ideas were endless.

Following along, he considered his cousin's question and thought hard but not long on what exactly he wanted to do for the swan. "A pond with more swans. So he can have friends." For as tall and mature as Bastien acted, he still was a kid, and just like kids, swans needed friends. He nodded his head, because no way was he gonna sketch anything. "I can do that."

Ariadne got tired of painting after the third fence board. Maybe it was just her age, but her attention span had her bouncing from project to project just as soon as she'd finished with the one she was currently on. "The Minister of Magic? That's awesome! Maybe she knows my dad then!" Ariadne excitedly replied. "He used to be the Minister of Magic here in Great Britain. He retired when I was a really little kid, though." Ariadne's eyebrows wrinkled inward when Kitty mentioned something about the rules of journalism. "That's weird, but I guess it does make sense." She nodded her head when Kitty mentioned the tapestry. "I've seen it, but I don't know anything about it. What are you hoping to find out?"

She smiled when the girl took two pictures of her artwork. Hmm...class was still going on, so she guessed there was time to do a few more things. Ariadne really didn't know what to do, so she started gathering a random assortment of things. In the end, she had a tire, some grass, some honking daffodils, and some branches. She was going to just toss the branch into the same trash bag she had gathered earlier, but then she had an idea! She would make a little design to go near the fence! She used the tire as a base then positioned the daffodil in the middle of it. She broke the branch in two and laid the pieces around the tire as a border of sorts. She lined the area with grass to fill in the empty holes. Pretty soon, she'd made something similar to an old tire flower garden. It actually DID look pretty cool!

Swans did need friends, as did Bastiens and Dimas. He grinned a little at his cousin, finally choosing some brushes, and waited until the younger Toussaint found the colors he liked. Then he headed back over to their little area, set down their materials, and surveyed the wall again.

Moxley hadn't had any pencils set out, and they probably wouldn't be much use on not-quite-dried brick anyway, so Dmitriy just planned to use the smallest paintbrush he found. He did the entire outline in white, so Bast could see well against the wall and cover it with whatever hues he planned on using. Following instructions yielded brick sporting painted lines that formed a pond with two swans, lily pads, and lotus flowers. A bit of grass and reeds filled the background too, and Dima stepped back after a while to give Bast whatever room he needed.

"How's that?"

He was going to pick ALL the colors that he liked most when he was outside running or doing his tai chi. A lot of colors, but not all of them. He wasn't greedy.

The humming of his favorite sonata's had started back up again as he was actually looking forward to this last part of the activity, and he put all his paints beside Dima so that he could do whatever it was that artists did to start off a painting. He really didn't care, or know until now. The third year watched the older boy intently, and when he was finished he grabbed what he deemed the necessary brush for filling in the outlines. He dipped it in the green so that he could paint the lily pads first. "It's great. Can the swans have cabbie caps on too?" It would be his signature of sorts, since the one thing he did know about artists was that they left a signature of sorts on their works of art.

Despite the mumbling and grumbling from some of her students, the class was going really well. So well, in fact, that Moxley had allowed herself to get lost in a little project near one of the fences where she'd turned a couple of tires and large piece of wood into a makeshift table. Lucky she'd got those tools for Mr. Salander as they were proving quite helpful with her project, too.

...

A while passed and her table was now painted and drying while she stood nearby, watching the class work. The space looked so much better and her students were making connections with each other, which was an important part of the volunteering concept. Hopefully they'd carry these connections on into future class projects. Now to wrap things up. It was getting late, after all.

Moxley's whistle could be heard and then the brunette waved the students towards her. "Times up, I'm afraid. I just want everyone to take a moment to look around at what you've accomplished as a group. I know that this wasn't the most exciting lesson, but I strongly believe that things like teamwork, creativity, and kindness should be learned and practiced in muggle and wizarding communities alike." All of those things were important, no matter your age or ability. "You made what was quite a gloomy environment into one that inspires good feelings. Happy ones. So congratulations on that." She smiled, giving them a double thumbs up. "I'd just like to give a special thank you to Professor Myers for helping out with the plants. They certainly added to the beauty you've worked hard to create." Paul got a warm smile as well. "And don't worry, your hard work wasn't for nothing. You gave a place new life and you'll be able to enjoy it as the classroom will stay this way for the rest of term. Feel free to drop in, enjoy the space, and add to it, if you want."

"With that, I'd like everyone to pack up and head out. Don't want to be late for your next lesson."

OOC: Thank you love bugs for coming! Class is now over! This thread will be locked but I'll be making another so that the kiddos can enjoy the classroom they helped to fix up! That'll be up sometime tomorrow <33

Once the tire was over beside the lil' Gryff, Davie used the boy's tools to sorta-attach the rope to the tire. It was basicalllllllly a tire swing especially if you squinted at it and didn't tug on the rope too hard. As he took a step back from the completed project, Davie considered calling Moxley over and asking for her help to raise it up and test it out...

BUT then class was over. Aww, man! And he hadn't even gotten to plant a honking daffodil yet! Davie pulled a bit of a face, but he couldn't be mad for long. He had Transfiguration to get to.

"BYE," he called out to his tire-crew helpers, then to the professors. "Bye Headmistress! BYE MYERS!!!!!" He'd just have to check this place out a little later to swing on his tire swing.

Ariadne really was related to one of the Minster's of Magic? WOW! "I don't know if she knows him. What is his name?" Truthfully Kitty didn't pay very much attention to politics, so she probably wouldn't know if her mom did know him even is she had mentioned his name before. But it so awesome that her new friend was the daughter of a past Hogwarts teacher and a past Minister of Magic. Ariadne was so cool!

Then the lesson was over. Kitty turned to Ariadne and said 'Thank you for being my partner. It was really nice meeting you. Let's meet sometimes after classes, okay?" She wanted to keep being friends with Ariadne.

"Bye Professor Moxley! I really enjoyed the lesson" Kitty smiled at the Professor and waved good bye. She took a picture of the room and the turned to skip out of the room, wondering what their next lesson would be.

As the slytherin was getting done planting his tulip, he heard Professor Moxley call off the class. Woah it was closing time already? He looked up at the clock and up class was over. He brushed his hands off because of the soil. He looked down at his lovely artwork of a t-shirt and beamed. "Well Azura I guess I will see you around." he waved to her and began to go clean himself up. He put all his supplies back on the table and saw Professor Moxley was saying goodbye to her students. He beamed at her and said, "Excellent lesson professor. I was also curious would doing graffiti be part of the beautification process? I mean it is considered painting..." He could probably do it next time. He was curious to hear her answer.