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It was only at Ada’s encouragement that Hecate was doing this at all. But Ada had been right.
She couldn’t give forgetting powder to the whole castle. If Azure Moon was going to study at Cackles, one of the other girls was bound to slip up eventually and mention Indigo to her. And then Azure was bound to tell Indigo.
The last time Hecate had kept a secret from her Indigo had found out in the worst possible way, and Hecate wasn’t going to let that happen again. She would have been much, much happier to have Indigo stay in the past, where she belonged, twice over. But Indigo never did seem to stay in Hecate’s past like she was supposed to.
So if she was to find out about her time as a witch sooner or later, Hecate wouldn’t make the same mistake twice. Indigo should hear this from Hecate, not secondhand from her daughter, or worse, from the likes of Ethel Hallow again.
So, Hecate had called Indigo to the school under the pretense of needing to discuss how Azure was settling in there.
Precisely five minutes late, according to the watch around Hecate’s neck, Indigo knocked on the door to the headmistress’s office where Hecate was waiting for her.
“Sorry I’m late,” she said, not bothering to make an excuse, simply coming in without bothering to wait to be invited. She took a seat in one of the chairs in front of Ada’s desk, and looked at Hecate expectantly.
Hecate stood up straighter behind the desk and shut her watch. She opened her mouth to start, but she couldn’t make any words come out and had to close it again.
“How is Azure?” Indigo asked tentatively.
“Azure is fine,” Hecate reassured her, finally managing to speak. “But she’s not actually the real reason I called you here today”
Hecate paused again, taking a small shaky breath, and Indigo tilted her head.
“There’s something I need to tell you and, well, I think it’s best to just show you.”
Hecate removed a small glass bottle from her pocket, containing bright green remembering powder. She removed the cork as carefully as she could; her hands were shaking slightly.
Hecate was confident she'd done what was best for Indigo, but that didn't mean Indigo would be happy with the decision Hecate had made for her...
“Wait,” Indigo told her. “I think I know what you’re going to say… Joy.”
Hecate gasped and dropped the bottle of remembering powder completely, spilling its contents all over the Ada’s carpet.
She gave it no notice.
“You… you remember?”
“I didn’t at first,” Indigo admitted. “But being back here with Azure started something. And then last week when Azure told me a rumor about a student with my name that disappeared back in time, right before she arrived, something clicked and, well, I remember everything now. I remember what you did for me.”
Hecate had to sit down. She moved awkwardly to the other chair beside Indigo’s.
“That’s what I was trying to avoid,” she said hoarsely. “I’d rather you heard it from me, this time. I am so sorry.”
“You have absolutely nothing to be sorry for,” Indigo laughed. “I’ve had a good life this time around, with my mother, with Azure… and that’s all thanks to you.”
“I promised you that I wouldn’t let you down again,” Hecate told her, hardly above a whisper.
“And you didn’t,” Indigo assured her.
“Then you are not angry that I made you give up being a witch?”
“Being a witch was fun, but it was never really about the magic. I only ever wanted to stay here for you, and then for Mildred. This was the only place I’d ever really had friends. Had anyone. But that changed when you sent me back. For once, I really belonged.”
Hecate nodded. She’d feel relieved about that later, she suspected, when the shock of Indigo already remembering had worn off.
“And I never really did belong here anyway, did I?”
“Whatever do you mean?”
“You were trying to send me away, weren’t you? You’d written to the Great Wizard.”
“But not to send you away! I never said that, did I?”
Indigo frowned.
“No, I suppose you never did. Wait, just before you sent me back you said ‘just as I was wrong to think that no one cared about me now.’ What did you mean? I assumed you’d meant Mildred, she was always looking out for me, I suppose.”
“Mildred Hubble? That’s who you thought I meant?” Hecate had to laugh in disbelief.
“Well if you aren’t going to tell me…”
Hecate sighed. In the interest of honesty, she supposed…
She summoned into her hand the scroll from the Great Wizard and, almost reluctantly, gave it to Indigo.
Hecate looked away while Indigo read it once, and then she read it again.
“You… you were willing to do that?” Indigo spoke after a minute. “For me?”
Hecate looked back at her.
“Of course.”
“Wow. Thank you. I’m sorry I accused you of not caring that day. I was a bit of a handful as a teenager, wasn't I?" Indigo laughed.
"Well, so was I. If I weren’t none of this at all would have happened, would it have?"
That was why she hadn’t wanted to do this; involve herself in Indigo’s life again, even slightly.
Nothing good had ever come from Indigo meeting Joy. It was her fault for screwing up Indigo’s life in the first place, and it had only been right that she put it back on track- as if Joy had never showed up to ruin things for her.
Now that Indigo knew everything again, surely she’d want to go her separate way from Hecate.
“Strange we’re the same age again, isn’t it?”
“Strange,” Hecate echoed.
“But it makes me think, now we are, and now that you can leave the academy and all, maybe I could take you out for coffee sometime?”
“For… coffee?” Hecate frowned, hardly comprehending.
“Yeah, you know, the drink,” Indigo said, with just a hint of teasing. “It’d be a date.”
“A- what. I...”
“Unless you don’t want it to be. It doesn’t have to be,” Indigo said hurriedly.
“I just don’t think, not after all this time, that it’d be…” she shook her head.
“Be what? We may have had completely different lives now, but we were still close once. I’d like to see if we could be again.”
“But… after everything that happened… I can’t,” Hecate said firmly.
“Okay, then. Just as friends?”
“I can’t do that either.”
“Why not?” Indigo demanded.
“Because! I can’t be responsible for ruining your life! Again!” Hecate burst out.
Indigo stared at her in shock for a long moment.
"Joy. Hecate. H.B.? I don't know what to call you now."
"Hecate I think, please."
“Hecate. You never ruined my life. If it weren’t for you, I wouldn’t have gone missing, and if I hadn’t gone missing my mother wouldn’t have known to look for me. Who knows where I’d be then?”
“Still better off, perhaps,” Hecate muttered.
“Once you were there for me at a time when absolutely no one else was. And you were probably the only one who could have mixed that potion well enough and quickly enough to send me back, once you realized that was where I needed to be. Who else could have done that for me? Who else ever would have?”
Hecate didn’t answer her.
“It’s just coffee.”
“Just... coffee.”
Indigo looked at her expectantly.
“Fine. It’s… a date.”
“Brilliant,” Indigo beamed at her, and Hecate smiled back, just slightly.
Perhaps Indigo was right, and perhaps she shouldn’t wait another 30 years to learn to stop blaming herself.