As Willow gives a book report in front of her high school class, she discovers herself wearing the same mousy outfit she wore in the first episode of the show (" Welcome to the Hellmouth ") as her friends and classmates shout derisively at her, and Oz and Tara whisper intimately to each other in the audience.

The couple gives them shelter in their cottage after the Hobbits are rescued from Old Man Willow.

She gives Willow her magic wand and commissions him to find the sorceress Fin Raziel, with two of her brownies, Franjean and Rool, acting as his guides.

The Marsh Tit has a noticeably smaller and shorter head than the Willow Tit and overall the markings are crisp and neat, with the head in proportion to the rest of the bird ( Willow Tit gives the impression of being ' bull-necked ').

He coerces students into serving as chaperones for young children on Halloween, bullies Willow into tutoring Percy, gives a passing grade to a swim team member who is failing computer class, and forces everyone to sell candy for the marching band.

Overwhelmed by dozens of guests she does not know, Buffy tries to talk to a distracted Willow, but gives up.

Back in their room, Kennedy gives Willow an end-of-date kiss, with a surprising effect: Willow takes on the appearance of Warren Mears.

The withy of the title is the Willow and song gives an explanation as to why the willow tree rots from the centre out, rather than the outside in.

* Willow gives Buffy the protection spell she has been working on since " Gingerbread " in a lavender-scented pouch.

* In this episode, D ' Hoffryn gives Willow a talisman so that she can summon him if she changes her mind about becoming a vengeance demon.

First forming in the Season One episode " The Harvest " to prevent The Master from opening a portal to hell, the line-up of the group varied from year to year, but the core that remained intact throughout the series ' run was Buffy herself and her best friends, Xander Harris and Willow Rosenberg, as well as her Watcher, Rupert Giles.

Due to the show's strong themes of female empowerment, the most powerful members of the team are often female ( Buffy and Willow ), while the men play passive roles such as that of father-figure ( Giles ) and supportive best friend ( Xander ).

Also, in keeping with the show's themes of redemption and moral ambiguity, Willow, Angel, Spike, Faith, Giles, Anya, and Andrew have at some point in their lives descended into darkness.

They are mentored by the school librarian who is also Buffy's Watcher, Rupert Giles ( Anthony Stewart Head ), who often works closely with Willow in researching the various monsters the group encounters.

Scared by her own power, the seventh season starts with Willow in England, studying with a coven near Giles ' home learning to understand the depth of her power and to harness it for good, rather than destruction.

Willow is able to escape with Buffy, Xander, Giles, and Kennedy as Sunnydale is destroyed.

Willow is part of a powerful quartet: she represents the spirit, Giles intelligence, Xander heart, and Buffy strength of the Scoobies.

She becomes best friends with Xander Harris ( Nicholas Brendon ) and Willow Rosenberg ( Alyson Hannigan ), and meets her new Watcher, Rupert Giles ( Anthony Stewart Head ).

Spike's skills of analysis allowed him to realize Willow was barely holding it together after Oz's departure even though Giles and Buffy thought she was doing better, to be the first to see through Tara's abusive and controlling family, forced Buffy and Angel to admit that they were more than " just friends " and identify when and why some relationships, such as between Buffy and Riley, are not meant to last, masterfully feeding Riley's insecurities in an effort to sabotage his relationship with Buffy, so Spike can pursue her.

As the series progresses, Giles increasingly becomes a father figure to Buffy and her friends Willow ( Alyson Hannigan ) and Xander ( Nicholas Brendon ).

In the episode " Something Blue ", Giles becomes blind as a result of a faulty spell cast by Willow Rosenberg.

In order to defeat the cyber-demonoid Adam, Buffy, Willow, Xander and Giles cast a spell to combine their strength.

At the beginning of Season Five, Giles no longer sees his place in Sunnydale and decides to go back to England, telling no one except Willow, whom he needs to organize the research documents for the Scoobies.

As Dark Willow boasts of her indestructibility, Giles knocks her to the floor with a blast of magic energy, saying " I'd like to test that theory " (" Two to Go ").

Giles returns to England with Willow for her rehabilitation.

Later in " A Hole in the World ", after Fred dies, Angel phones Giles, desperate to get in contact with Willow, who cannot be located.

In the season six finale, Giles was temporarily endowed with powers of the Devon Coven in an attempt to stop Willow.

" However, Anya returns in the episode " Doppelgangland ", duping Willow into assisting in a failed magical attempt to recover the necklace which was her power center, lost when Giles destroyed it to reverse the wish granted for Cordelia.

There she meets new friends, including Willow Rosenberg, Xander Harris, and her new watcher, Rupert Giles.

In the season four climax " Primeval ", Xander becomes the " heart " in the spell, which conjoins him with Buffy, Willow and Giles to defeat Adam ( George Hertzberg ), a part-demon, part-human, cyborg monster.

This leads him to seek a surrogate family in his friendships with Buffy, Willow and Giles.

Before falling asleep, he begins to watch Apocalypse Now with Willow, Buffy and Giles, who comments, " Oh, I'm beginning to understand this now.

Although Tara is presented with a timidity enough to silence her in the fourth season, Amber Benson was given a prominent song in the episode, singing strongly and fervently to Willow, again in a duet with Giles, and backup in two other songs.

Tara later sings with Giles that she will leave Willow if she does not change.

Zombie Walsh attacks Buffy when she comes to Riley's rescue, but Buffy knocks her down and defeats her, and with some help from the Scooby-Gang of Willow, Xander, and Giles, she defeats Adam as well.

Willow and Tara meet to practice magic, and a simple magical exercise to float a rose goes awry, causing the rose to fly wildly around the room.

From there, she would travel northeast to Sandtown and Willow Grove, Delaware, and onto the Camden area where free black agents, William and Nat Brinkley and Abraham Gibbs, guided her north past Dover, Smyrna, and Blackbird, where other agents would take her across the Chesapeake and Delaware Canal to New Castle and Wilmington.

Like Willow, she is also a witch.

On her own, she is nowhere near as powerful as Willow, but together they make a formidable magical team.

Before meeting Willow, Tara had been painfully shy, in part due to a father who led her to believe that she was demonic.

* Tara Maclay, until she breaks up with Willow in " Tabula Rasa ".

Of the core characters, Willow changes the most, becoming a complex portrayal of a woman whose powers force her to seek balance between what is best for the people she loves and what she is capable of doing.

In the beginning of the series, Hannigan used her own experiences in high school — which she called " overwhelmingly depressing "— to guide her portrayal of Willow.

In the second season when the characters are in 11th grade, Willow becomes more sure of herself, standing up to the conceited Cordelia Chase ( Charisma Carpenter ), and approaching Xander, on whom she has had a crush for years, although it is unrequited as Xander is in love with Buffy.

Willow was noted to be the spirit of the Scooby Gang, and Hannigan attributed Willow's popularity with viewers ( she had by May 1998 seven websites devoted to her ) to being an underdog who develops confidence and is accepted by Buffy, a strong, popular person in school.

Willow chooses to attend college with Buffy in Sunnydale although she is accepted to prestigious schools elsewhere.

The series ' use of magic, as noted by religion professor Gregory Stevenson, neither promotes nor denigrates Wiccan ideals and Willow rejects Wiccan colleagues for not practicing the magic she favors.

Fearing that Buffy is in hell, Willow suggests at the beginning of the sixth season that she be raised from the dead.

In a dark ceremony in which she expels a snake from her mouth, Willow performs the magic necessary to bring Buffy back.

In an explosion of rage and grief, Willow soaks up all the dark magic text she can, turning her hair and eyes black.

Through the season, Willow worries that she may lose control and attack her friends.

In the final episode of the series, " Chosen ", Buffy calls upon Willow to perform the most powerful spell she has ever attempted.

With Kennedy nearby, cautioned to kill her if she becomes out of control, Willow ' activates ' every Potential Slayer in the world, causing them to become Slayers themselves.

Through the gamut of changes Willow endures in the series, Buffy studies scholar Ian Shuttleworth states that Alyson Hannigan's performances are the reason for Willow's popularity: " Hannigan can play on audience heartstrings like a concert harpist ... As an actress she is a perfect interpreter in particular of the bare emotional directness which is the specialty of writer Marti Noxon on form.

Willow enjoys power she is unable to control.

After Tara leaves Willow, Willow divulges to Buffy that she does not know who she is and doubts her worth and appeal — specifically to Tara — without magic.