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“Miss Hardbroom?”
A small voice drifts through her closed door. Hecate looks at her timepiece and notices its gone past 8:30, a time she usually spends revising her classroom notes.
As it has been the tradition for the past four terms, Mildred Hubble’s name is at the top of her page, underlined three times with such force that the paper almost tears.
Confiscated coloring pencils for using them in the middle of creating a sleeping drought, reads the neat handwriting next to her name.
“Miss Hardbroom, it’s um, Mildred. Hubble?” There’s another timid knock, and Hecate sighs deeply, turning the page of her journal. “I just…had a question, please?”
“Come in,” she says tiredly, opening the door with a flick of her wrist. She already knows Mildred is going to try and weasel her way out of getting her coloring pencils back, and Miss Hardbroom is in for a long rambling filled with excuses.
“What question could you possibly have a half hour before lights out?”
“Um,” Mildred enters the classroom sheepishly, head peeking in behind the potions lab’s door before her entire body follows. “I was in the library studying for tomorrow’s class because I don’t actually know what an assimilation spell- uh, potion does and I found a book that explained it rather well, but uh…” She pauses and considers her next words, an apprehensive look on her face.
Miss Hardbroom’s eyebrows rise higher and higher with every word she says and she finds that she can’t quite yet respond to Mildred even if she wanted to.
When was the last time she had caught the girl in the library past dinnertime? Miss Hardbroom can’t ever recall a time Mildred was anywhere else but with Maud and Enid in their rooms after dinner.
“Well,” Mildred starts before falling silent again. Miss Hardbroom feels a trickle of annoyance at her hesitancy. “The book’s pages are really old, and some of the pictures are faded and it says that you need calendula to prepare it but I really don’t know what that is, either, and there’s no picture of it anywhere in the library and I couldn’t find it in the supply closet, so I tried going by the description in the book but -.”
“Mildred,” Miss Hardbroom interrupts, and folds her hands over each other in a perfect picture of composure, something she very much does not feel. “What is your question?”
“Um,” Mildred looks scared, suddenly, and her gaze falls to the ground. Miss Hardbroom notices just then that the girl is hugging a rather large journal in her arms, her braids falling over it. “Is…is this what a calendula plant looks like?” She asks timidly, and unceremoniously drops the journal, jostling the entire table.
“It’s a herb,” Miss Hardbroom says distractedly, watching closely as Mildred opens the book up and flips hurriedly through the pages.
“Sorry,” she murmurs, and frowns in concentration. “It’s somewhere in here…”
Miss Hardbroom catches a glimpse of a Hypnapillion intricately designed in a dozen different colors and the tail end of a salamander’s vibrant yellow body before Mildred let’s the book fall open to the only page without any color at all.
She pushes the book a little closer to Miss Hardbroom, shakily inhales what she must believe is a small, inconspicuous breath, and takes a tiny step back.
Directly below her nose, Miss Hardbroom can barely contain her surprise at what she sees. She tries, Merlin, she tries her hardest but Miss Hardbroom’s eyebrows feel as if they’re going to lift straight out of her face.
“Does it? Look like a calendula, I mean,” Mildred asks, straining her neck to peer into her own book.
“Hardly,” Miss Hardbroom replies instinctively and tries not to feel too bad when Mildred’s shoulder slumps. But it truly doesn’t. The herb she’s looking for comes in cloves of three and is shaped rather peculiarly with bright blue dots adorning each of its six sides. Mildred’s has three sides and specks of ink spattered over each leaf, a poor imitation.
Miss Hardbroom purses her lips and mulls over how best to show her before she materializes a feather quill and poises it over thin air.
“The shape is more accurately drawn like this,” she says as a piece of parchment appears the second she moves the quill. When she’s finished, she looks up and sees Mildred swaying on her toes, trying her hardest to see the rough drawing upside down.
“Oh,” she mumbles and scrunches her nose. “That’s an es-estoile?” The word sounds unfamiliar coming from her tongue.
“Why, yes,” Miss Hardbroom says, frowning. “A star that has six-sides. Surely, you learned this at a younger age, Mildred Hubble.”
“Uh, yeah.” Mildred flushes. “But in school- ah, in non-magical schools, they teach it as a hexagon. I didn’t – I didn’t understand what an estoile was. In the book I was reading, I mean.”
Miss Hardbroom opens her mouth, but she finds that she doesn’t quite know what to say.
“Ah,” she settles on at last, unoriginal and plainly unimaginative. “I see.”
“Yeah,” Mildred croaks and there’s an awkward pause where neither of them say a thing and stare at a random spot on the wall.
“I’ll just read the description again, anyways.” Mildred shrugs and moves to take her book back. “I only wanted to draw it so I could memorize it. Sorry to bother you, Miss Hardbroom.”
Mildred wraps her hands around the heavy cover of her journal and Miss Hardbroom feels the sudden need to snatch it back just to leaf through it.
She despises art, doesn’t see the purpose in its frivolity but there is something about Mildred’s eyes as she looks down dejectedly that makes her open her mouth and say, “Which book did you read the description from?”
“Well,” Mildred frowns, and scuffs the toe of her boot against the floor. “The author’s name was Leon, um, Star- Star...”
“Leon Stargazer,” Miss Hardbroom finishes and materializes the book Mildred was just reading from into her open hand. “Herbs and their Magical Properties.”
“Yup,” Mildred nods her head, rising on the tips of her toes to look at the book. “That one.”
Miss Hardbroom looks down at the old weathered book, notices the way Mildred is itching to get her hands on it and quietly resigns herself to a late night of impromptu tutoring. If Mildred is willing to show up, Miss Hardbroom is willing to stay.
“Find the page,” she says, and sets the book down gingerly on top of Mildred’s journal. “And show me.”
Mildred does a funny little thing with her face, almost as if she wants to smile but doesn’t know if she’s allowed to. Miss Hardbroom sniffs and points rather obviously to the book, still sitting there unopened.
“Carefully,” she adds as an afterthought but realizes she needn’t had warned her because the girl is slowly turning the pages with just the barest hint of contact. The book, Miss Hardbroom thinks, is either very, very old, or Mildred Hubble truly does not want to be sent away.
This is the thought that makes her rise and circle around the table to stand next to Mildred, the thought that makes her unfurl her hands and wait patiently until Mildred presents the passage she had been studying.
“Truly abysmal,” Miss Hardbroom mutters four sentences in, itching to spill her red ink all over it. “This will not do. Some wizards should never have been given a spot on the shelf among great witches, Mildred Hubble, and you’ll do well to remember that.”
She doesn’t expect the small giggle that comes about the height of her stomach, or the surrounding warmth that spreads across her face, but she turns on an expert heel and makes her way to her cupboards with faked ease.
“You may examine my sample, but you are not allowed to take it out its jar, do you understand?”
“May I open it?” Mildred bounces on the balls of her feet and Miss Hardbroom thinks she shouldn’t be quite so excited, but she notices the way the girl picks up her journal with enthusiasm and takes a pencil somewhere from behind one of her braids.
“Do not store your utensils in your hair, Mildred,” she tries to scold, but the girl is rushing past her and settling quickly into the stool she usually sits at during class.
In less than twelve hours, Mildred will be back to sit at that very same stool, and she will know the answer to what shape calendula blossoms into at the end of a full moon. All because she wanted to.
“You may open it, yes,” Miss Hardbroom all but whispers, turning slowly to face her cupboard again. Mildred beams.
Beams.
Right at Miss Hardbroom.
Her hands are not shaking when she reaches for the singular clove she’s stored as backup for tomorrow’s class, and her breathing is under control when she unscrews the cap.
But her blood is singing with unrestrained surprise – surprise at Mildred, at her journal, at herself for not noticing what the young witch is always doodling away at.
When she reaches Mildred’s table, she notices her own crude drawing being carefully glued to the empty page next to Mildred’s attempt. A small cat appears at the right corner of the page, stretches slowly and then walks right out of the page, as if it were never there in the first place.
“Smells funny,” Mildred interrupts her thoughts. “Like pumpkins.”
“It has a peculiar smell, yes. Do you know when it is best harvested?”
Mildred shakes her head slowly, then abruptly, stands up taller.
“Only every other full moon! Starting in the second week of spring,” she rapidly says and sits back with an astounded look on her face, as if she’s surprised herself.
“The third week,” she corrects, and watches as Mildred’s eyes dim. “But a good answer, nonetheless.”
She’s never been one to coddle students. Never been the type of teacher that gives out praise for the sake of it. But she has always been the type of academic who learns from her mistakes, and is rewarded with that truth when Mildred shoots her a confused little smile.
“You have until I finish revising my notes to draw this.” She cannot help the sneer that graces her lips at the word, but she nods sharply at Mildred and turns towards her desk without further comment.
She goes through her lesson plan for the first years once more, tweaking things she suddenly does not find fitting, cleans out the cauldron that Beatrice Bunch left simmering for too long and burned, unnecessarily recounts her ingredients for tomorrow and finally takes a curious look towards Mildred’s station.
The girl is tugging at the end of one of her braids, head tilted to the side as her pencil flies over her paper.
Appearing silently behind her desk, Miss Hardbroom peeks over Mildred’s shoulder and sees a pencil replica of the herb sitting in front of her. If Miss Hardbroom hadn’t heard the light scratching noise of the pencil, she would have thought Mildred pulled the herb straight out of the paper with her hands.
“Impressive,” she mumbles and makes Mildred jump.
“Miss Hardbroom!” Mildred screeches, and throws her charcoal stained arms over the drawing. “It- It isn’t ready.”
“My…apologies,” Miss Hardbroom says, if only to keep herself from chuckling at the way Mildred glares at her over her shoulder. Before she rounds the table though, she takes another peek and notices the notes on the margins.
Green, reads Mildred’s messy handwriting, and an arrow points to the end of one of the leaves.
Red, another points to the stem.
Purple during the summer, another reads messily.
As Miss Hardbroom walks back to her station, she feels her magic surge from her fingertips almost instinctively, almost without thought.
“Ten minutes, Mildred,” she says, and ignores the open-mouthed looks of astonishment that Mildred is directing towards her box of coloring pencils, suddenly perched at the end of her desk. “And do not think I will not give you detention if that jar does not find itself back on its proper place before time is up.”
“I’m sure you would, Miss Hardbroom,” Mildred tries saying very seriously, but laughs at the last possible second.
Miss Hardbroom sniffs and turns a random page over.
I really would, she thinks, but she finds herself fighting back a smile.