Chapter Text
Hecate’s relief at being released from the grip of the ice was short lived as she pushed her own feelings aside to address what it was that was happening in front of her. If she felt peculiar then it was no more than she had when they had been surrounded by the ice in her potions lab, or when she had used the very last of her magic as well as Ada’s, Maud’s and Enid’s to punch her way free. It wasn’t until they were making their way back down the stairs that she took enough time to catalogue how every strange she was currently feeling.
The Hallow girls were talking behind her, their voices rising and falling in agreement and dissent about whether Ethel really would have done what she had offered too. Hecate reached out a hand to rest on the wall, steadying herself as the spiral stone stairs seemed to fall away and then rise up to meet her. She had watched as Ethel insisted that she would make the sacrifice, frozen in action even before the ice had claimed her entirely.
“Miss Hardbroom?” Esmeralda asked, causing Ada to look up from where she was walking in front of them.
“Apologies,” Hecate said, straightening up and focussing on putting one foot in front of another to catch up with the rest of the party.
While Ada made contact with the evacuated faculty to let them know it was safe to return with the students and then the Grand Wizard to inform him about Marigold Mould, Hecate ushered the students who had been frozen into her lab.
“Would you be good enough to play mother?” Hecate asked Ms Hubble, gesturing towards her tea service.
“Oh, of course,” she said, sounding genuinely surprised. “Is there a kettle?” Hecate twisted her fingers and with a wave of spell-less magic set the water boiling. The magic in her veins seemed to rush, tingle and recede in the wake of the action but it was back and she was in control.
“Thanks,” the woman said, offering her an uncertain smile. Hecate raised an eyebrow in response before turning to her potions shelves and selecting several restorative and strengthening elixirs.
“Miss Spellbody please lay out seven glasses,” she requested unstopping the flasks.
“Seven Miss Hardbroom?”
“That is how many of you there are here is it not?” she asked turning her pointed look on Maude and resisting the urge to look around the room and check her own arithmetic.
“I think,” Enid piped up. “That what Maud meant was that you and Miss Cackle were frozen too and that maybe you should have some potion as well.”
“I… neither Miss Cackle nor I are an underage witch,” Hecate countered.
“Still,” Ms Hubble said holding out a teacup in her direction. “If it’s not going to do any harm, it might put some colour back in your cheeks.”
“Oh Miss Hardbroom is always that pa…” Mildred piped up from where she was handing out more tea. “Never mind,” the girl said as she turned to look at her.
“It wouldn’t do any harm,” Esmeralda said.
“Oh very well then,” she conceded, unable to find the energy to put up much more of a fight. “Please drink your tea, take your potions and then you will go to your rooms to rest quietly for at least two hours.”
“Yes Miss Hardbroom,” they chorused in anything but unison. She filled the glasses now resting on the table with a steady hand ensuring that her dosing was generous but well within the limits of safety.
“Can I put some sugar in that for you?” Ms Hubble asked coming to stand beside her as the others all chatted away.
“Sugar?”
“In your tea. It’s good for shock.”
“I have not had…” she began only to realise the sheer lunacy of the statement. “Thank you for the offer Ms Hubble, but I will decline.”
“Well go on then,” the other woman said leaning against the desk and crossing her legs as though she were quite at home. Hecate arched an eyebrow. “Tea, potions, rest - wasn’t it?”
The urge to snap was strong but both the fact that she and her daughter had however saved the school and everyone in it less than hour ago, as well as the way her head was aching staved off the instinct. Instead she simply sat down in the nearest chair and focussed on absorbing the heat from the cup she was clasping.
Just as the students were returning their cups and glasses to her desk and heading out to their rooms, Ada appeared.
“The girls are going to rest for a few hours,” Hecate said, cutting off their excitable chatter at the arrival of the Headmistress.
“An excellent idea Hecate. Oh, I do hope one of those is for me?” she continued, gesturing to the remaining doses of potion.
“Of course,” she said, taking her own before Ms Hubble felt the need to remind her of it again.
“The events of the day have left me really quite out of sorts but I’m sure your brew will set me to rights.”
“It’s just some strengthening and reviving elixirs,” she said turning her head away from the compliment. “You don’t require anything else? There’s nothing more serious the matter?” The concern was more evident in her tone than she might have liked given they weren’t alone
“A cup of tea and forty winks wouldn’t go amiss but I really will be fine Hecate. And yourself my dear?” she asked, her insightful bluntness harder to deflect.
“Quite well thank you. What did the Grand Wizard have to say?”
“He will be collecting Miss Mould shortly. The rest of the staff and students are on their way back up and should be ensconced well before then.”
“It will be… reassuring to have all of our charges back underneath our roof.”
“That it will,” Ada agreed. “And surviving such a… thrilling challenge is well worth celebrating don’t you think? Today of all days.”
Hecate knew what it was she was suggesting before any more was said and her blood ran cold at the very idea. Ada’s eyes were twinkling though and she wasn’t going to change her mind on this point.
“Of course,you must stay Ms Hubble,” the Headmistress continued turning to their unexpected guest. “Our All Hallows Eve celebration shall quite the sight this year!” It had hardly been something Hecate was looking forward to before… everything. Now, if she were being frank with herself, all she wanted was to see the students safe, Miss Mould removed from the premises and then to crawl into a bath and then her bed.
“Well,” she said, standing and then having to try valiantly to cover the way the world rippled in front of her eyes. “I’m happy to oversee the handover of Miss Mould if you would like to focus on the returning girls and the preparations for the festivities?”
“That would be most agreeable Hecate.” she said. “Thank you.”
Calling on her magic to transfer herself yo the empty storage closet where Marigold was being held, Hecate stumbled as she rematerialised. The wall stopped her from losing her balance entirely but she had to cling to rough surface while the world spun and dipped around her. It had been a thoughtless act, one she usually performed countless times a day and usually with far more grace. She could feel the magic flowing through her veins so she didn’t think it was a lack of power was the problem but she was still half-frozen and in that moment her legs seemed disinclined to help her keep upright. Several deep breaths later however and she was at least confident that she wasn’t about disgrace herself by losing the meagre contents of her stomach.
While she would never condone Marigold Mould’s behaviour, Hecate was all too aware that she had already paid an almost unfathomable price. Her own feelings on the matter were so deeply tied in with the sensations of being trapped, of her honest intention to sacrifice her own magic and then watching one of her students do just that. She had tried to do her best to be supportive while they had waited but it was hardly her greatest strength on a good day. Once the Great Wizard had left with Miss Mould, Hecate turned and keen not to repeat the unpleasant arrival of earlier, began to walk up towards her rooms.
The sound of the students echoing through the corridors was both reassuring and grating against her raw nerves. Spirits were clearly running high on the back of yet another catastrophe narrowly averted, and more than once she was almost bowled over by someone careening around the corridor. The walk took longer than she felt it ought, and by the time she reached her own door she was once again aware of just how little she usually walked these days. There was no need really when she hadn’t left the grounds in three decades and everything within the castle was well within her teleportation reach. Still, to find herself feeling short of breath and her legs shaking with the exertion was frankly galling.
Sitting on the edge of the bed she closed her eyes, waiting for her pulse to slow and her breathing to settle. Her stomach was rolling but she wasn’t certain if that was a side effect of the pounding in her her skull, or the knot of anxiety that was still tight in her chest.
“Hecate?” The voice from her mirror was so unexpected that she jumped. “Hecate? Are you alright?”
“Pippa?” she asked, turning to look at her mirror. “What are…?”
“I heard that there had been a problem with Cackle’s founding stone and I had to make sure... Are you alright?”
“There was,” she said. “It was extinguished temporarily but the problem has been resolved.”
“Well there’s clearly more to that story, but it’ll wait until you’re not so obviously exhausted. You are all ok though no one has been hurt?”
“As you say… it is complicated. Miss Mould is the only one to have experienced any lasting effects however.”
“You look absolutely done in, Hecate.”
“I will admit to having felt better,” she conceded.
“But your magic?”
“Has returned and seems stable. I am simply… tired.”
“Well it must be bad if you are willing to admit that much. I’ll not keep you, but you know where I am if there’s anything I can do.”
“That’s… very kind.”
“Look after yourself Hiccup,” Pippa said, with a fond smile that sent something coursing through her. Checking the time, she realised that she had no time to contemplate it any further though or, to continue to feel sorry for herself.
Tamping down on anything that wasn’t purely practical, Hecate dressed in her formal robes her only concession to any lingering weakness was in donning several extra layers. She wasn’t sure whether it was the memory of the all pervading ice or just creeping exhaustion but she couldn’t shake the chill settling in her bones. The event itself was possibly no worse than any other of it’s type she had endured but today she simply didn’t have the tolerance for it. Having listened to Ada make her speech, she retreated to the door, away from the worst of it hoping to simply wait out the end of the festivities.
Only Mildred Hubble would fail to read the signals she was certain was exuding and come to stand directly beside her. Never before had a student proven so incredibly infuriating and yet repeatedly prove themselves to be fundamentally gifted and prone to saving them all. Hecate meant what she had said to Mildred about holding her to a higher standard and she had hoped that she had masked any growing fondness she might be developing. Transporting herself away had been a last ditch attempt at maintaining her usual air of impenetrable strictness. She’d only moved out into the corridor but when she rematerialised this time, her knees did give out and she found herself sitting on the cold stone flags.
She was shivering almost convulsively now but for the first time in what felt like days, it felt like there was fire in her veins instead of ice. Pressing a trembling hand to her mouth she breathed through her nose desperate not to give in to the rising urge to vomit. This would pass, it wouldn’t last forever. She just had to breathe, try desperately not to disgrace herself and it would pass. As long as no one found her sprawled here, it would all be fine.
“Miss Hardbroom?” Of the long list of people she had hoped not to fund her, this trio of first years were near the top. Beatrice Bunch asked, what was possibly the most redundant question ever;
“Are you ok Miss Hardbroom?”
“Of course she’s not Bea,” Miss Twigg said bluntly. “Go and fetch a teacher.”
“You really don’t look very well Miss Hardbroom,” Sybil Hallow said, much more closely and thankfully quietly than the others. “Worse than before even.” Hecate couldn’t put much thought into this particular revelation because the world was strangely unsteady again and while she hoped for a moment that it was the floor opening up to swallow her, her luck was simply not that good.
“Hecate?” It was Dimiti and if nothing else at least she could trust that someone vaguely competent was now in control. Hecate attempted to say something but it was mostly an undignified groan. “Let’s give her some room girls,” she said, clearly before lowering her voice significantly. “Here, just in case,” she said, conjuring a basin before reaching up to place a hand on her forehead. “Oh Hecate, you’re burning up.” Ice, fire and abject humiliation Hecate thought briefly as she lurched forward over the basin and was violently sick.