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She has been told, by those who have never bothered to delve beneath her surface, that she lacks imagination, lacks creativity. Small words from small minds who only see what they have been trained to see by a very small, very timid world.
The art of potionry requires a level of creative passion few can ever truly comprehend. A potion, in and of itself, is merely the sum of its elements, a liquid encased in a bottle. When released in conjunction with magic and the will of a competent spell-caster, it can become nearly anything the imagination can fathom.
A potion is a balance of science, artistry, precision, skill, and a certain degree of animal instinct that can never be taught. Hecate thinks of Mr. Daisy’s offensive machine, of the implications that potions can be mass-produced like bags of crisps to be delivered to human grocers.
A factory can manufacture ten thousand violins, she reasons as she measures out the ingredients, but will never produce a single Stradivarius.
There are times, times like this evening when her hands have a mind and will of their own. Measuring, weighing, sensing through the delicate nerve endings of her fingertips--each step is a single measure in a larger symphony. She can get lost in evenings like this, alone after bed check in her potions lab, experimenting, testing, eking even more power from the already powerful protection spells she designs for her beloved academy.
Tonight, tired as she is, her weary body and aching hands will not allow her to rest. Tonight, she pushes through the exhaustion of the past few days, her own thoughts corked tightly like the most volatile of potions as she continues her work.
Too much has happened for her to release them, not tonight with the school only just recovered in the aftermath of Agatha’s latest treachery.
Hecate notices only too late that her hands are grasping too tightly, only notices when a drop of lavender liquid tips over the lip and dribbles down the side of the bottle. She gasps as it singes her thumb, quickly placing the bottle in a holder as she wipes the residue on a nearby towel. Her hand burns slightly, a deep tingle that will grow harsher and more insistent if she does not take the proper actions to clean and treat the affected area.
Of course, she takes the proper actions to clean and treat the affected area.
And this is enough to destroy her rhythm. The dance is disrupted, and suddenly the weight of exhaustion lands on her like the air before a storm, heavy and unpleasant. She sits at her desk, head resting on fingertips, thumbs rubbing her eyes as if that act would ease their aching.
It is far harder to calm a disturbed potion than it is to merely prevent the disturbance in the first place, and the disturbed thoughts of an exhausted witch are no more easily calmed.
You are like this potion, young Hardbroom, Mistress Gillyflower had warned her in her second year potions class at the academy. You must learn to safely contain that magic of yours, lest you bring harm to yourself and others.
Arrogance and youth had laughed off this wise advice; sad experience, however, taught her the lesson soon enough.
Now Hecate Hardbroom contained herself like the most deadly of potions, in a hard, thick bottle tightly corked and kept far away from chaos. She’d learned the hard way the harm that came from carelessness, as she hoped Mildred Hubble would soon learn without such pain. She’d felt the shame of reaching so desperately for the validation of others, when such things often come at a price far too high to pay. Perhaps poor Ethel Hallow, wildly searching for her own worth in the eyes of a cruel and uncompromising family, might learn more safely that the truest validation comes only from within.
Her heart has been broken often enough to know that Ada is grieving tonight. Ada, the heart and soul and breath and spirit of this place, who lost the other half of herself after decades of heartache and pain and jealousy. Her earliest companion, her mirror image who had been locked in a decades-long battle for dominance, had chosen death over submission.
When she thinks of Miss Cackle, who mentored her and trusted her and soothed her rough edges, Hecate feels a surge of the old magic within her, that wild and arrogant mercury in her veins that simply knows it can fix things, given enough time and energy.
In her chest, under her ribs, below the skin wrapped in her clothing, her heart beats to the rhythm of flames from a wildfire. The mercury sears from her brain to her heart and out to her extremities, demanding to be of use.
As if mere magic could cure a broken heart.
Hecate knows if she is not careful, a drop of it shall pass her lips, dribbling onto her skin and burning her. If she is not careful, her magic will consume her flesh and she will forget the bottle, forget the cork.
If she is not careful, she will try to make it all right. She will be reckless, like Mildred. Desperate, like Ethel. And her grief, carefully bottled for all these decades, might swallow them all.
So she breathes.
She grounds herself.
She recites the periodic table of magickal elements in her mind, as Mistress Gillyflower taught her all those years ago, and recites it again backward just to be safe.
And when she is done, her hands are steady.
The bottle is corked.
The mercury settled.
Hecate Hardbroom takes a deep breath and returns to her work, knowing it will be well past the witching hour before her body allows her to sleep at last.