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There are nights when Miss Hecate Hardbroom, Potions Mistress at Miss Cackle’s Academy of Witches, can retire for bed thirty minutes after curfew. Nights in which she can walk down the halls of the castle and hear neither a giggle nor a creak and all witches are accounted for safely inside their beds.
This is not one of those nights.
In fact, Hecate has not had one of those nights since one particular witch enrolled at Cackle’s.
“Mildred. Hubble,” she sneers to nobody in particular and gathers her skirt in her hands before heading down the hallway. Normally, she would transfer straight to the place the girl is hiding at -- a quick locator spell tells her she’s in the potion’s lab -- but tonight Hecate feels as if she’ll explode in anger if she doesn’t stomp down the hallway.
“No respect for authority! No semblance of comprehending even the most basic instructions – no staying up past curfew!”
She’s mumbling, she knows she is. There is nobody within hearing distance and she’ll have to repeat herself when she corners the girl, where she’ll surely be caught red-handed stealing one ingredient or another. But Hecate can’t help the surge of annoyance that courses through her at the thought of having to yet again scold Mildred Hubble. The girl never learns.
Hecate huffs as she feels her hair slip past her shoulder, and she flicks it behind to its rightful place just as she turns the corner to the potion’s lab entrance and stumbles upon a curious sight.
“No, no – it’s okay, Sybil. I did the same thing last year,” Mildred Hubble’s whisper reaches her ears before she spots her inside the classroom. “You just have to squeeze the juice out instead, see?”
Hecate stops in her tracks and is embarrassingly glad Mildred Hubble and Sybil Hallow’s heads are bent over the cauldron between them because her mouth flaps open in an undignified manner and no words come out. The girls, in their pajamas and loose hair no less, have three open books, upended jars, puddles of slimy and wet ingredients, knives and spoons and seeds decorating every inch of their working station as they stare intensely over a bubbling cauldron. Mildred’s hair is frizzy and some its strands are on end, a sure sign that she’s been bent over the heat of a cauldron for some time now.
“It’s no use. Miss Hardbroom already knows I can’t do it.” Sybil’s shoulders slump and she hides behind her long hair. Hecate hesitates between announcing herself and listening to the conversation now that her name has been mentioned.
Curiosity killed the cat, she hears in her mind.
She twists her fingers and suddenly, she’s become invisible.
“Well,” Mildred drawls out, and Hecate takes a step into the classroom in time to see her rock back on her heels. “Then why are you here, practicing with me?”
Ah, but knowledge brought it back to life.
Mildred’s voice is kind and soft. She poses the question with such an open face that Sybil stops twisting her fingers together and sighs dejectedly. “I just wanted to see…to see if maybe it was a fluke.”
“What? What was a fluke?”
“Today’s class,” Sybil responds, sighs again. The girl had added too much mandrake root to the antidote they were supposed to be brewing, and the potion had turned a sickly red and melted the cauldron straight from the bottom.
Mildred nods like she understands, as if she was in Sybil’s first-year class and saw the way the girl’s lower lip had trembled when Hecate had appeared at the end of the table to admonish her.
But the girl needed to hear what Hecate had to say. What if the potion had spilled on her shoes? On her skin? Although she had been harsh on Sybil, she’s sure the girl won’t make the same dangerous mistake twice.
“I-I added the wrong amount of mandrake root and the cauldron melted but I knew the right amount, Mildred. I really, really did. I’m a Hallow, of course I know it.”
“I’m a Hubble and I didn’t know it my first year.”
“No offense, Millie, but you’re the first witch in your family in like, a hundred years. Nobody expects you to be perfect.” Sybil looks at her shoes.
“Your sister isn’t perfect, either,” Mildred shrugs, undeterred by Sybil’s remark. She wraps an arm around the younger girl’s shoulders and Hecate has to blink back her surprise at seeing how tall Mildred’s gotten. She’s nearly in her third year now, and with her hair down and her pajama bottoms riding high on her ankles, Hecate can hardly believe this is the same young girl who landed in the pond.
“Ethel? Or Esmeralda?”
“Both,” Mildred chuckles and smiles a tight-lipped smile when Sybil turns to look at her incredulously. “Really.”
“That’s impossible,” Sybil squeaks. Mildred squeezes her shoulder one more time before rounding the table and picking up a stirrer. She walks like she’s got something hiding behind her back, steps with her heels first and rocks her whole body playfully. Sybil looks at her like she’s gone mad, and Hecate can’t blame her.
“I bet I know something you don’t,” Mildred says and stops in front of Sybil across the table. “And I bet you’re dying to find out.”
Sybil rolls her eyes. The Hallow’s have always been a bit too mature for their own age, and the Hubble’s, well- Hecate has only met two of them but she cannot say the same for them.
“Come on, then. Ask me!”
“What do you know, Mildred,” Sybil deadpans, rolls her eyes again.
“Oh, alright, since you asked so nicely,” Mildred laughs at her own little joke. This time, when Sybil rolls her eyes, Hecate follows. “Ethel mixed pondweed with algae three weeks ago, only nobody found out because she switched the contents of my cauldron with hers.”
Hecate blinks, straightens out immediately and begins counting backward – three weeks ago?
Three weeks ago. When Hecate’s hair had turned purple, then gold, before settling into a startling white after one sip from Mildred’s cauldron. It had been embarrassing for all parties involved. Except for Ethel, Hecate thinks, suddenly remembering the smirk that had twisted her features.
“Did-did she really?”
“Oh, yeah,” Mildred nods fervently. “Maud had even helped me measure out the ingredients, so we knew somebody switched our cauldrons.”
And Ethel has a history of making things go her way, Hecate finishes in her mind.
“B-but, that’s a silly mistake,” Sybil frowns. “Algae looks nothing like pondweed, you know. It’s the same color but the texture is different. If she were paying attention to the texture, she’d have known.”
Hecate’s lips twitch up without her consent. Of course Sybil Hallow would be the only first year in her class to know the difference between algae and pondweed. Not even Clarice Twigg had remembered that tidbit of information.
She can’t help but notice that the conviction the girl shows here –with Mildred, in the middle of the night, no less – is severely missing inside the classroom with Hecate, in the plain light of day, where her mistakes are easier to see.
“Yeah, everybody knows the difference,” Mildred chuckles awkwardly, looks to the left. “Anyways, your sister is in second year, and she’s making silly mistakes, too.”
“How odd,” Sybil tilts her head to the right and frowns lightly. “I’ve never known Ethel to make a mistake before.”
Mildred really laughs at that. She throws her head back and scrunches her nose, goes as far as to place a gloved hand on her belly.
When she quiets down, she goes to stand to the left of Sybil. “Ethel makes tons of mistakes. She just never lets anybody see, but that’s even sillier.”
“Why?” The younger witch asks. Her head comes up to Mildred’s shoulder. Hecate notices that both girls have their hair down, and Sybil’s near-white hair contrast starkly with Mildred’s dark hair.
It reminds her of a different time, one where she’d follow a waist-length head of blonde hair around the castle in the middle of the night and convinced herself that she wasn’t breaking any rules if she followed Pippa just to keep her safe.
Mildred smiles down at Sybil, and the kindness behind her teeth makes Hecate think of pink and white, of ribbons and silly charms.
“Because,” she takes a deep breath. “She doesn’t have anybody to celebrate with when she finally gets it right.”
“Oh,” Sybil says quietly, then scrunches her face up. “But everybody celebrates her when she’s done something perfectly. And that’s always.”
“Well, that’s just boring.” Mildred shrugs. “Last week, it took me six tries to summon a handkerchief – “
“You kept summoning your bed covers,” Sybil giggles.
“—and when I finally did it right, I felt happy. A different kind of happy than when I do things first the right time.”
“I’ve never felt that,” Sybil says dejectedly. Hecate thinks of the moments of brilliance in which Sybil’s concoctions and essays go perfectly well, how her eyes go wide with excitement. But she also remembers the slump of her shoulders as something goes terribly wrong and how the girl stops trying after that. Won’t lift a finger.
“Well, it’s a good feeling,” Mildred says, and hands Sybil the ladle. “I promise.”
“Alright,” Sybil looks suspiciously up at Mildred, but there’s a trust there that Hecate has never seen in the young girl’s eyes before. She’s seen fear and confusion, and dejection, but never this.
They work in silence for a couple of minutes, and Hecate wars with herself as to what to do. It is quite late in the evening, and the girls will likely be another hour before they finish and clean up.
Normally, she wouldn’t have let this midnight potion brewing go on as long as she’s had. But Mildred’s words had resonated something within Sybil, and the girl was now attempting to fix a mistake she made in class, something she’s never had the courage to do before.
Hecate casts as silencing spell and moves around the table to look inside the cauldron. Mildred failed this potion her first year, too, she remembers quite suddenly. And Hecate had caught her with a small cauldron under her bed that very night, using a colored pencil as a stirrer and a small flame inside a jar as light.
She had vanished the items and sent the girl to bed, but had allowed her to redo the potion during detention the next day. And Mildred had brewed it almost perfectly after an hour and a half. Mildred wasn’t scared to take twice as long as other girls, and she wasn’t terrified of failing a second, or third, or fourth time.
She just wanted a chance.
And here she was, giving it to Sybil.
“No, Miss Hardbroom says the textbook is wrong. It’s three lizard’s tails, not two.” Mildred mumbles, flipping the page of one of the books.
Sybil nods, trusts Mildred implicitly and adds three lizard’s tails. Hecate feels her chest expand and if she focuses on the feeling long enough, she might even call it pride.
They finish twice as fast as the girls’ did in the morning, and Hecate peers into the cauldron to gauge out the color. It’s golden, a little too light to be perfect, but closer to the color that it should be than Sybil’s earlier attempt.
“Okay,” Mildred says, and takes a deep breath. “Now, let’s test it.”
Oh, this just won’t do.
“Mildred Hubble.” Hecate reappears behind the two girls and takes great pleasure in the way Sybil squeaks and jumps high in the air. Mildred, on the other hand, simply sighs dejectedly and doesn’t bat an eyelash.
“Miss Hardbroom,” the girl says and turns around, ladle firmly in her hand. “It-it isn’t what it looks like. Sybil was just – Sybil was just passing by on her way to the restroom, you see, and- and—“
“I know,” Hecate takes a step closer, and tries not to smirk when the girls take a step back. “I know you were not about to test an unauthorized potion, Mildred Hubble.”
“No, Miss Hardbroom,” Mildred responds, like a liar. “I was not.”
She hums and takes a look at Sybil, who is cowering behind Mildred’s braver self. Hecate can see one eye, large and wide, blinking back at her.
“Detention, tomorrow. Bring your best cleaning clothes,” she folds her arms over her chest and watches as the girls exchange a confused look before nodding together. “Now, what is this?”
“A henbane antidote, Miss Hardbroom,” says Mildred, taking a step forward. “We were just…studying.”
“In the middle of the night?” Hecate appreciates the initiative the girls’ have taken, she truly does, but doesn’t quite understand why Mildred Hubble insists on doing most things in the middle of the night. Hecate supposes Mildred does it simply to rob her of her sleep.
“I couldn’t sleep,” Sybil speaks up softly behind Mildred’s elbow.
“What was that?”
“I said,” Sybil emerges from behind Mildred, hands clasped tightly together. “I couldn’t sleep knowing I made such a silly mistake, Miss Hardbroom.”
She doesn’t expect the honesty or the strong line of Sybil’s shoulders as she stands taller.
“Ah,” she opens her mouth but has not decided on what to say. Not yet. Instead, she extends her hand and waits impatiently as Mildred’s eyes, previously looking around the room distractedly, land on her expectant palm and hastily hands over the ladle.
A small sip of the potion tells her all she needs to know, and with Sybil’s round eyes on her and Mildred’s opened mouth flapping wildly like a fish, Hecate purses her lips and brings the potion to her lips.
It’s near perfect, of course.
She’s not even a little bit surprised, truly. Mildred seems to bring out the best in people, and Hecate is working on directing that energy back to Mildred herself. So far, she’s had no luck. The girl doubts herself more than Sybil Hallow does when it comes to her own magic, but responds kindly and affectionately when others make mistakes.
Perhaps this could turn that around, Hecate thinks as she turns around and sees twin set of eyes shrouded in thinly veiled hope.
“A mistake rightly fixed, Sybil Hallow,” she says, and manages to tamp down her smile when Mildred whoops and throws a fist in the air. There is a desperate relief behind her enthusiasm that makes Hecate do something she would never have done before – not in the middle of the night, or in the middle of the apocalypse.
She compliments Mildred.
“You had exemplary help,” she says, and can’t help but roll her eyes when Mildred makes a tiny choked sound in the back of her throat. “Mildred’s mistake, the first time she brewed this potion, was that she did not add enough dragon’s tongue. And now she can make a text-book henbane antidote.”
She tilts her head down towards the youngest witch.
“Progress, Sybil Hallow, is far more valuable than perfection. Do you understand?”
Sybil scuffs the floor with her shoes, meets her eyes shyly and nods slowly. “I-I think so, Miss Hardbroom.”
“Good,” she sniffs. “Now off to bed, the both of you. And if I catch you out of bed again, I will confiscate your maglets for the rest of term.”
Sybil jumps up and scurries off to the door, Mildred hot on her heels. But Hecate is not quite done.
“Mildred,” she calls the girl back and smiles when the girl slumps her shoulders in defeat as if she knew this would happen. She trudges up the steps again and stands in front of Hecate.
“How did you come to help Sybil?” Hecate widens her eyes just a fraction, just enough to make Mildred think twice about lying again.
“I-I really was going to use the restroom, but I heard a noise.” Mildred shrugs, plays with her gloves.
“So you followed it.”
“So I followed it,” she repeats and tucks her hair behind her ear. “And Sybil was just here. She –she looked like she needed help, Miss Hardbroom. I-I’m sorry I stayed past curfew.”
Hecate takes a deep breath and decides that she’s had enough words pulled out of her tonight. She places a hand over Mildred’s shoulder and waits until the younger witch looks up with wide eyes.
“You did good tonight, Mildred Hubble.” She smiles slightly when Mildred’s eyes grow even bigger. “I expect to see this kindness reflected back to your own mistakes.”
“M-my own mistakes?”
“Every witch makes mistakes. But it takes a brave witch to admit to them.” Hecate says and thinks about how unkind she’s been to the girl. To Sybil. “Your improvement is nothing shy of impressionable, Mildred.”
The girl nods and Hecate watches as her cheeks turn red. She drops her hand from Mildred’s shoulder and clears her throat, once, twice, and a third time when she realizes she doesn’t know what else to say.
“Off to bed with you, then,” she says in the strictest voice she owns and opens up her timepiece to avoid looking up again.
She hears Mildred’s feet shuffle loudly to the door – the girl is barefoot and still manages to make more noise than Sybil’s socked feet – and doesn’t close her timepiece until she hears her near the door.
“Uh,” Mildred’s voice startles Hecate into looking up. She’s halfway out the lab, stands in the middle of the doorframe and looks like she’s dredging every ounce of courage from her heart. “M-miss Pentangle said the same to me, o-once. To be kind to myself? Except she said it about – well, did you learn it from her? When you were children?”
Mildred snaps her mouth closed and her cheeks go red. Hecate feels her own face start to heat up and doesn’t like the way Mildred looks scared but confident that she’ll receive an answer.
“No,” Hecate says, stands very still. “No, I’ve just begun to learn.”
“Oh,” Mildred nods, looks relieved. “Well, I-I’m glad you’re talking to her again, then. Y-you should be kind to yourself, too.”
Mildred looks like she can’t believe she’s opened her mouth and said those things. Frankly, Hecate can’t either.
“Mildred.”
“Hm?”
“Go to bed,” Hecate says. She clears her throat because her voice sounds very tight, but smiles just slightly at the girl.
Mildred’s smile is radiant and kind, and Hecate is once again reminded of Pippa.
“Right!” The girl turns and sprints down the hallway. “Goodnight!” Her voice echoes loudly over the hallway.
And really, Hecate cringes. It’s the middle of the night.
She wonders if Pippa is awake. If she’d mind a late call from her. If she missed Hecate as much as Hecate misses her.
Mildred’s parting words stir something inside her chest, and Hecate transfers to her chambers and to the mirror without any care about the mess the girls have left behind.
She needs help, after all. Pippa has always been better than her at being kind.