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Miss Hardbroom was pissed. She had 50 potions essays to mark in a time crunch and had run out of ink. She transferred to outside the store cupboard still reading the papers and speed-walked in before letting out a sigh of despair. Maud Spellbody had mixed up the common cat-trap flower with mandrake root. She rubbed her temples in frustration. Grades were falling behind and that meant a bad reputation for Cackles.
Having obtained the ink she needed, she turned around and almost crashed headfirst into Pippa Pentangle. Well, almost is an understatement. There came a muffled squeak from the blonde head on her shoulder. Hecate flinched and straightened up, trying to regain composure and found herself face to face with the person she least wanted to. Her heartbeat sped up.
She hadn't spoken to her old friend since the spelling bee, where they had exchanged apologies and an awkward hug, courtesy of HB's least favourite student. Pippa clearly expected them to be on friendly terms after this, but Hecate wasn't the best at social cues or reading the room, and so recoiled back into her potions lab, trying not to think of Pippa's strawberry perfume, and trying not to look at the pile of unopened letters that Pippa had sent her since.
Whilst this fiasco occured, neither had noticed the lock on the door clicking and the various chanting from behind it.
"Hecate," the fair headed witch said, putting her hand on her forehead and bending in the familiar "well met" motion to greet her.
"Pippa," she mirrored, but her voice caught in her throat. Gods, she hated that. There was this stiffness between them, and the air seemed to heat up.
A small voice in the back of her head told her to use a transferrence spell, disappear into thin air and wait until her head stopped spinning and she could think straight. Pippa usually had this effect on her. But she was Hecate Hardbroom, she was stronger than that, so she smoothed down her black skirt and cleared her throat.
"What are you doing here?" She was trying to make conversation but also genuinely curious.
"One of your students directed me here but, I think she might have got the location wrong," Pippa explained. Amusement twinkled in her blue eyes. Hecate kept her own eyes to the ground. She found it easier to talk that way.
"A first year?" Hecate inquired. But Pippa shook her head.
"Second, I believe."
Hecate groaned inwardly. So much for preserving a good reputation. She was suddenly aware of how little room there was in the store cupboard and tried to step back to put some distance between her and Pippa but tripped backwards over an old broom.
"Ooh- watch out!" Pippa grabbed Hecate's wrist before she could hit the ground and pulled her back up, their fingers entwining.
A memory flashed in Hecate's mind of how she used to grab Pippa's left wrist when she was scared, when they were at Cackles.
She hastily pulled her hand away and cleared her throat in embarrassment.
"Ahem, thank you," She said awkwardly, staring intently at the ground.
"No problem!" Pippa replied brightly with a wink.
Hecate tried to wrap the situation up there.
"Well-" she started, in a tone that implied finality, but Pippa cut her off, her eyes flashing with hurt.
"-Don't."
"Pippa..."
"Hecate, no. I don't want to hear it. No matter how many exams you have to mark, or how many meetings with Agatha you have, or how many detentions you simply must see to-"
Pippa was listing all of the lame excuses she had half heartedly came up with after Hecate had opened the letters. Ouch.
"Pips, I'm sorry." Hecate burnt with shame but still didn't look at her. Because it hurt to. She activated her transference spell just as Pippa cried : "Wait don't go!"
But for the first time in her life, she couldn't. She felt her every atom fighting against strong magic that was pushing her back. She frowned in concentration.
"I- I can't." And that was not something that was heard from Hecate Hardbroom often. She stopped trying and slumped in defeat, perplexed. Pippa tried the door.
"Locked," she announced simply. Hecate tried various unlocking spells.
"By magic," Pippa added.
"May I ask, which student directed you here?" Hecate asked, fearing she already knew the answer. Pippa's brow furrowed.
"I believe it was-"
"Mildred Hub-ble" Hecate finished, her eyes widening dangerously.
"You're too hard on the girl Hecate," Pippa's voice was soft. "It takes a strong witch to counteract a transferrence spell. She has talent."
"And an irritating lack of responsibility, disregard for rules and stubborn audacity."
"Reminds me of somebody I used to know," Pippa's lips quirked upwards as did her gaze.
Hecate's ears burned and she chose to ignore this comment. She straightened up and took a steadying breath.
"Well, this is a bit of a silly situation isn't it?" Pippa said, suddenly overcome by a girlish giggle. And with a big but good natured sigh, swiftly and gracefully set her self down on old wooden stool speckled with dry paint.
Hecate regarded such silly frivolities as not being able to stay standing still through narrowed eyes. Pippa, seeing her scrutiny, laughed.
"Oh come now Hiccup, do you always have to be so- uptight? Let your hair down once in awhile."
"It's an inconvenient situation Pippa, not the apocalypse," she remarked dryly and Pippa smiled.
"Anyway this is the second time she's set us up," Hecate acknowledged, and not well pleased by it either.
"And is that such a bad thing?" The tone was dangerously soft, and Hecate dug her plum coloured nails into the grooves of the golden watch that always hang around her neck. Pippa's voice held no more pain, just something dark and velvety that Hecate had only heard a few times in her life.
She finally looked up at Pippa, properly, and she felt Pippa look back at her. She was wearing pink, of course she was, she always was and Hecate almost smiled. Her hair was, sandy blonde and clasped gently at the back of her head compared to Hecate's tight, no nonsense bun. She hadn't changed really, the same bright eyes shaded with the same light brown lashes that had looked up at Hecate over twenty years ago.
"Well met, I'm Pippa. Pippa Pentangle,"
The voice was warm, unlike the wide berth and many snide remarks Hecate had faced so far.
"You're Hecate Hardbroom aren't you?"
To the hiccuping potion incident a year later.
"Stop * hic * laughing at me! Seriously."
"I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I just can't help it." Pippa giggled, in hysterics.
"Just reverse it already," Hecate grumbled.
"Ok, ok, Hiccup," Pippa giggled again. "The nickname is quite fitting don't you think?"
She poked Hecate's nose and winked, and Hecate blushed but quickly regained her composure. Her height, whilst she had always been self - conscious of it, did make her feel more powerful in certain situations.
"Well you're the short one, Pipsqueak," she teased, looking down at Pippa. Pippa, who reached up and tucked a wayward lock of dark hair behind her ear with a softness in her eyes and Hecate's heart swelled as she tried to remember how to breathe and that- oh-
That was why she couldn't deal with Pippa. Because Pippa still made her feel things she had never felt with anyone else. And it scared her. It always had. That was why she had ran.
To 4 years later. Hecate sobbing uncontrollably on a cold stone floor because she had lost the most important thing in the world. The person who understood her. And it was all her fault. Pippa, her Pipsqueak. There was a gaping hole in her life, a black hole threatening to suck her in if she surrendered.
"I miss you" She agonizingly admitted aloud into the bitter darkness of many winter nights that only Pippa had made starry. And then. A choked whisper, "I love yo-"
A sigh from Pippa broke her out of her trance. She realised neither of them had said anything. Pippa gently touched her forehead in frustration and did a small frown.
"Look Hecate, I came here to talk to you but I'm exhausted of chasing you. I think-" another frown, "I think I have to let-"
"No." The word was simple but complicated, wavering but firm.
"Pipsqueak, I want to talk to you but I can't, for the same reason I shut you out."
"And what is that?"
"I-" she realised her voice was caught in her throat.
"Well why do you keep coming after me?" She countered.
"Because, I can't live without you." Pippa replied simply, standing up.
"What?" Hecate whispered softly. Pippa moved marginally closer.
"I remember everything about you. I know your face because it's in my head every day and my dreams every night." She was still inching towards Hecate.
"I know when you are shocked or surprised, you raise your left eyebrow." She took a breath, as if to steady herself.
"I know when you mean business or are flustered," she lingered on this last word, "you widen your eyes," she kept her eyes locked on Hecate's shining ones.
Her voice turned dark and seductive, "When you are concentrating hard, your lips press together in a thin line." Pippa was close now, so close that Hecate could see her almost translucent eyelashes looking up at her, see her gaze flit down and fix on her lips.
Hecate released a breath she hadn't realised she'd been holding. She could see the tiny freckles faintly dotting Pippa's nose, even in the dim light. She wanted to trace them like constellations, and remember the nights they used to sit under the stars together.
She wanted to tell Pippa: you're my oxygen, you're my starlight, you're my temper, my laugh, my tears.
She wanted to say all these things but she couldn't say one. Instead she broke. And she didn't think about how it made her look weak to cry, because she was weak, weak for Pippa.
And it was Pippa, who now rested her forehead against Hecate's, which was adorned with faint crease lines of exhaustion.
"Oh Hiccup, go easy on yourself," She breathed gently, and Hecate, with a small sob, let her head fall on to Pippa's shoulder. Pippa was the same as she had always been.
It was the summer Hecate's mother died, and the summer of her sixteenth birthday. She was dreading coming back to school and being taunted and teased. She was also desperate to escape home and her father's anger. But she got through the first week alone, crying cascades of tears in her bedroom, bitter weeping when she wasn't surrounded by people. Even in lessons, or sometimes when she was wondering helplessly in the corridors, moments of anguish would overcome her, and she would fight the stinging in her eyes.
She would pretend not to hear the whispers of girls at lunch, in the hall, a constant buzz of "freak" "weirdo." She isolated herself completely. She threw herself into her studies. Teachers would ask her to stay back after lessons, concern in their eyes and she would brush them off.
But then.
But then Pippa was there. The blonde popular girl, who looked at her with big blue eyes, not full of suspicion and snideity like the other girls had, not full of concern and pity, like the teachers had, just, eyes.
The two grew closer, Hecate still sceptical that she would try and hurt her like her father had. Always a flinch whenever Pippa rested a hand on her shoulder, an inward wince of pain when she moved too quickly, Hecate all too well remembered the cruel blows she had suffered at home.
But slowly, ever so slowly Hecate yielded. To Pippa's kindness. Her gentleness. She was so soft with Hecate. And Hecate became brave enough to open up. There were times she would spend with and aching sadness in Pippa's arms, and Pippa would listen, and take Hecate's tight bun out and run her fingers soothingly through her hair, such a gentle gesture, whilst Hecate would bury her face in Pippa's shoulder, her heaving sobs easing, her grief melting away as it had came.
And how Pippa had such pain in her eyes when she saw Hecate's bruises and scars and raised welts. And she saw the fear in Hecate. And so slowly had run her warm fingers over them. And stopped at Hecate's arms, at the scars she had given herself because she had this twisted idea she wasn't good enough, and ugly, and everyone hated her, and she did too. Tears trickled from her nut-brown eyes. Pippa had looked up and held her gaze and her hand.
"You are the most beautiful and bravest witch I've ever known. Never change at heart. I love you." And that was it. The three words that Hecate had never heard in her life. And when Pippa planted a firm kiss on her cheek, she burned. Her heart went up in flames. And from the ashes, something stirred, something warm and beautiful.
And Hecate was back on Pippa's shoulder. She looked up at Pippa's blue eyes, the same one's that were just, there all those years ago.
"I never told you," she choked out.
"What?" Pippa says gently, and reached up to brush away the tears streaming from Hecate's eyes. Such a tender motion that Hecate's heart began hammering, and she clasped Pippa's hand to her cheek to keep it there. She closed her eyes.
"I never told you, all those years ago, I love you too." And then she leaned in and kissed her. It was all action and reaction, a lot of unsaid things unravelled in that kiss. It left Hecate skipping on the inside. And when Pippa pulled back and breathed: ''I've wanted you for so long," Hecate was dizzy with joy because she never believed that anyone could ever want her like that.
"I love you, I've loved you forever," and Hecate was crying again, trying to say everything. But Pippa silenced her a kiss, stronger this time, pushing her up against some shelves, and Hecate let herself get lost in Pippa.
Pippa pulled pins out of Hecate's bun until waves of dark hair fell to her waist to match her brown eyes. Never had Pippa seen a brown like the colour of Hecate's eyes. They were like dark pools of desire that she would drown in any day. The black eyelashes that framed them almost brushed Pippa's face.
She ran her hands through the dark shiny hair like she had done when they were young. Hecate, wrapped her hands around her and leaned back as Pippa peppered kisses onto her neck, leaving Hecate tingling and gasping, her eyelids fluttered and she bit her dark lip. She grabbed at the open back of Pippa's pink dress, clawing her.
She opened her eyes when Pippa seductively pressed her thigh in-between her own two and she could feel her knee pressing against her most sensitive spot, even through the tightness of her dress. "Pipsqueak!" She squealed but Pippa just continued kissing her with a smiling mouth as she began moving her knee in a grinding motion against Hecate. Hecate groaned deeply. Pippa stopped her kissing to nibble on Hecate's earlobe, elicting a moan from her lover. "The dress has got to go, dear," she breathed sexily......
..........It's safe to say that when Hecate finally left the cupboard finding the spells lifted, she was in some state. Giddy with happiness and her hair down with her dress placed haphazardly back on and her face as red as a tomato, she watched Pippa summon her broom and fly away, blowing a kiss.
She smiled, weak in the knees, pressing her fingers to her lips and blushing, and heard a distinctly Hubble - sounding whoop from around the corner as well as the sound of a few high fives, giggles, a "Way to go, Millie!" From Enid, and an American- accented "Finally!" That could only belong to Felicity Foxglove.
And although she would never admit to anyone, she had never been more grateful to Mildred Hubble in her life.