Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Looking back, Mildred doesn’t remember many of the events from that night. She does remember feeling jittery when the time had come and gone for Mum to be due home, and then a little perturbed when it was half past and their dinner had gone cold. She feels sickly ashamed of that now.

And she remembers mirroring Maud to pass the time - doesn’t know what they talked about, only that she’d eventually managed to lose track of the clock and been startled when there was still no Mum but a knock at the door instead.

“Hang on,” she’d said to the mirror. “I bet she’s just carrying groceries. Be right back.”

Her clearest memory by far is how it had felt to get halfway to the door and suddenly remember Mum had grocery shopped the day before.

It’s all vague after that. She does remember someone screaming. She remembers the policeman who filled the doorway and how he’d seemed too large and too male and too wrong . And Mum - Mum -

Something about a car crash, then words like hospital and and didn’t make it and I’m sorry.

I’m sorry. It’s a word she really hates. Hates it with the passion, with a rage the bubbles up inside her like a shout, like a cry for Mum. Mum. Mum.

And then more words, words like can’t stay here. And social worker . And no other relations.

But her world is closing in on her and she just wants Mum - but Mum isn’t coming for her - isn’t ever coming for her. And she’s down on the floor of the apartment, and she knows she making a scene, but terror is eating her alive. And she’s clinging to the leg of the kitchen table screaming over and over I need to say here and wait for Mum as a lady in a stiff cheap suit arrives and enters uninvited to pack a few overnight things for her.

It’s black after that, she doesn’t remember, refuses to remember any of it. Not until she feels a pair of soft hands on her back, brushing hair out of her eyes, gathering her close. And for a moment she thinks it’s Mum, rolls over to bury her face in her sweater, but it’s not a sweater, it’s a cardigan. And it’s not Mum’s smell but one sweeter, more floral. She pushes back and looks up into the eyes of Miss Pentangle.

“You’re not my Mum.” She remembers that, remembers the way it felt to think it was Mum and have it be a near stranger. Still, it’s someone at least slightly familiar, someone who has shown her kindness before and who is looking at her with kindness now, and she clings despite her rage at it not being Mum.

“No, I’m afraid I’m not.” Miss Pentangle says softly. She lets Mildred clutch at her and brushes the stray hairs that cling to her sweaty, tear streaked forehead behind her ears. “You just hang on to me though, sweetheart, you hear that?  You’re not going anywhere, darling, you’ll stay right here.”

And Mildred remembers, will always remember, the way Miss Pentangle sat on the floor beneath the kitchen table with her, holding her fast, stroking her hair, answering the questions that the lady in the cheap gray suit and terribly practical tan shoes fires at her from above, starting with, “Lady, I don’t know who you think you are -”

And she will always remember how Miss Pentangle had narrowed her eyes, her fingers twitching slightly in Mildred’s hair and how suddenly, the ugly, sensible shoes were retreating with a mutter of, “Paperwork says she has one aunt, dunno what you called me out for -”  and the too large policeman is shuffling through papers in confusion and arranging for custody to be transferred to a Pippa Pentzel, maiden name Hubble - and - and -

She doesn’t think she can remember anything after that.

Because after that it’s just all one long waking nightmare that seemingly lasts for hours, perhaps even days. Until one morning she wakes up in Mum’s bed, with a numb detachment from reality, to find Miss Pentangle sitting on the edge holding her hand and looking serious.

She wants to cry but nothing comes. She wants to run, but she lays leaden.

She is thirsty though, dried up and wrung out. When Miss Pentangle helps her sit and guides a glass of water into her hand she knows she should feel gratitude, but instead she just feels nothing.

She drinks a little and then, before she can cultivate it into anything other than a blunt question that teeters on the brink of being an accusation, demands,  “Why are you here.”

Pippa looks at her steadily and moves to place the glass on the table by the bed. Her mother’s bed. Her mother’s table. Her mother’s glass.

“Maud was still in the mirror when they came with the news about your mother,” she says gently. “She alerted her parents, who alerted Miss Cackle, and word was sent to me - you see I have rather more experience navigating the non-Magical world having worked with the parents of some of my pupils.”

She hesitates but then continues, “And I had been to see your mother on occasion - after you and I had met at the Spelling Bee. I’d figured that with your unique situation she might need a resource to talk to. We met up every so often to have a chat about you, about the magical world -”

Mildred feels the tears come then, so hot and sharp that the salt burns the already raw track marks on her cheeks.

“Oh, Mildred.” She feels Miss Pentangle move beside her and reaches out blindly to pull her close, sobbing into the cardigan that still does not smell like Mum.

“I want her back - I want her back,” she cries over the deep choking sounds that bust out from deep within her.

“I know, I know you do, sweet girl.”

She collapses into Miss Pentangle and cries herself out, eventually lulled by the feeling of gentle hands on her hair and the softness a murmured voice in her ear.

______

She can’t keep track of time that awful, awful summer vacation. It seems all her days blur and run together like muddied watercolors. Somedays she’s screaming, somedays she’s numb. She eats little and either sleeps too much or not at all, and takes to pacing the small apartment like a caged animal, confronting the void left by her mother at every turn.

She hears voices sometimes from the living room and knows Miss Pentangle must be making arrangements via phone and mirror, but she doesn’t care. Doesn’t want to know what comes next. Doesn’t want there to be a next.

It’s on a day where she’s slightly more lucid that Miss Pentangle helps her settle in a chair in the sun and coaxes her to eat a few bites of soup that the topic of what “next” might look like is finally broached.

She hears words like, Cackle’s and somewhere familiar and apartment and funeral -

And she stops listening. Leans back into the chair and tries to block out the sun and the sound of Miss Pentangle’s voice and the whole colorless vacum of a Julie Hubble free world.

There is a funeral, she thinks. Must have been because afterwards they return to the apartment and some of her items have been packed. Miss Pentangle’s assures her that all of the apartment, all of her things - all of her Mum’s things - will be packed up as well and transferred to Cackle’s where Miss Cackle has promised to store them until you come of age and can decide what you want to do.

She thinks she remembers standing in the apartment one last time. Looking out at Cackle’s in the distance on the hill, looking for her mother in the small rooms behind her. But maybe it’s a dream. More likely it is. The constant, constant return to stand in the living room and look for her Mum night after night in her sleep. Dream or memory, it hardly matters.

So she goes to live at Cackle’s, for the summer at least. Everything about her future is unclear and unknown, but at least she would have ended up back here eventually, she supposes.

There’s a brief, shining moment of happiness when Maud and Enid appear on the grounds the day after arrives back and she runs to throw her arms around them, the tears she wants to shed refusing to fall.

They offer their condolences. But they can’t possibly understand, she thinks, pushing them away, suddenly wishing she were all alone again. She wants them to leave, wants to be free to aimlessly wander the grounds, to think, or not think, to exist in a numb, spinning void of summer sunlight that she doesn’t seem to ever feel.

They stay for the week, trying to pep her up with unflaggaring positivity and affection, cajoling her along. She’s so relieved when they leave that then she does cry then, ugly, gaping sobs until Miss Cackle finds her and brings her to her office for a nice cup of tea.

It becomes a routine of sorts, she wanders the grounds in the morning, takes tea with Miss Cackle, subconsciously avoids Miss Hardbroom in the hallways, and spends the evenings trying and failing to coerce her mind to read through her spell assignments for the next term. Another thing that hardly seems to matter.

She grows so tired of the suffocation of the empty castle walls, and she finds herself climbing up to sit atop one of the turrets one clear evening towards the end of her second week back.

There’s no curfew. No one is checking to make sure she’s brushed her teeth, or has her light out, or is not roaming the halls at odd hours.

She sits beneath the stars and feels how very small she is.

______

One evening, not long after, she sneaking around the castle halls in search of Tabby. He’s seen a mouse and bolted again, and she really wishes he wouldn’t leave her like that. She’s so tired of people leaving her. And Tabby has been her only real comfort over the past few weeks.

Passing Miss Hardbroom’s room, she takes particular care to tiptoe around the light that seeps out from beneath the door, and she’s almost made it safely past when she hears her name. She pauses, one foot still in the air.

When she hears it a second time a deep uneasiness creeps up inside her. Moving silently, she stands before the door and listens hard, frowning when she can’t make out anything further.

She knows she shouldn’t. Knows how bad the consequences could be for her brazenness. But if people are talking about her, she wants to know . And Miss Hardbroom talking about her is never a good thing. Heart beating, she eases the heavy door open and peers through the crack, brow furrowed, trying to place a voice that is as familiar as it is unfamiliar.

“- her powers are so unstable, I fear this loss will only increase their unpredictability.”

“I’m just asking you to be more patient with her this year, is all, Hecate.”

That’s Miss Pentangle to be sure. And Hecate?  Mildred frowns even more deeply. Isn’t that Miss Hardbroom?  She leans closer.

The criticism of her skills is exactly the type of condemnation she’d expect from her teacher, but gone is the drawl and curt tone. In fact, Miss Hardbroom speaks quickly, her voice softer, as if her mask as Deputy Head has been drawn away to reveal something rather more - well - human.

“It’s not just the other students I’m worried about, Pippa, you have to know that.”

“And I do - you know I do, Hiccup.”

Hiccup?  Mildred’s eyes widen and she nudges the door open a bit further so she can peek around the edge. She can just manage to see them if she leans forwards a bit. Cups of tea lay out before them, and what looks like an abandoned chess game. But the opponents chair is empty and instead the two of them are sitting together on the stiff gray couch. Miss Hardbroom is speaking again and Miss Pentangle leans closer, listening intently.

“It’s just that -” Miss Hardbroom pauses, seems to struggle with her words, “she’s out there on the roof night after night. She’s not eating - though she will take tea with Ada, and I am relieved about that - but some days she hardly leaves her room, I doubt she gets out of bed. Others, she just wanders the grounds listlessly.”

“Can’t you help her, Hecate? Comfort her?”

“She hardly wants a teacher she hates prying, I should think.”

Miss Pentangle reaches out and takes Miss Hardbroom’s hand and Miss Hardbroom flushes, a look of shame on her face that Mildred feels certain she’d been vanished to oblivion for witnessing if Miss Hardbroom catches her out.  

“Hiccup, oh, Hiccup, don’t say that. You have been quite hard on her, I’m afraid, but now - now you’re in the unique position - more so than any of us - to understand her. ” Miss Pentangle moves closer until their knees just touch.

“In fact, even before now, you’re more similar to each other than you care to admit.”

Miss Hardbroom hangs her head and her fingers twitch beneath Miss Pentangle’s.

“I’ll only make things worse.”

“Oh, Hiccup, you won’t. Not if you permit yourself to open up a little.” Miss Pentangle reaches up and gently brushes her fingers under Miss Hardbroom’s chin until they’re looking at each other and Mildred bites down a gasp at how shiny Miss Hardbroom’s eyes look. But Miss Pentangle’s fingers are steady and she doesn’t let Miss Hardbroom look away.

“You know what I’m asking you.”

Miss Hardbroom ducks her head in a nod so that Miss Pentangle’s fingers brush against her cheek and Miss Pentangle drops her hand, both of them inexplicably blushing. Mildred has no idea what Miss Pentangle is asking, and shuffles forward a bit so she can hear Miss Hardbroom say in a low voice -

“And you? I - I - know we have spoken about it a great deal, and I know you have been speaking with Ada and - I -” Mildred watches her swallow, her fingers twisting together nervously in her lap, “I think you should go through with it.”

Miss Hardbroom’s face twists for a moment before she mumbles, “Not that I think you need my permission or - or -” but Miss Pentangle cuts her off and takes her hands again.

“Hiccup, your opinion means everything to me. It always has. It always will. I value it a great deal.” They look at each other for a moment, and then Mildred is sure she hears Miss Pentangle whisper, “I value you a great deal.”

They’re close together now, something in the air between them, and Mildred inadvertently leans in, trying to see from a better angle. Her hand slips and she nudges the door a bit causing it to  squeak in protest. Two pairs of adult eyes snap to focus on her and she gasps.

Miss Pentangles eyebrows jump up, but it’s Miss Hardbroom who truly jumps; she’s up on her feet in a flash staring at her, and it’s enough to make Mildred turn tail and bolt.

She knows she’s in for it now, knows how Miss Hardbroom cannot abide eavesdroppers, knows that the personal nature of the conversation is embarrassing enough for both of them that it can only mean the most dire of consequences.

Half expecting Miss Hardbroom to materialize before her at every turn, she dashes from hallway to hallway, heart in her mouth, until she reaches her room and pulls up the window sash, clambering out to seek refuge on the roof.

She collapses on the turret panting, mind whirling.

She’d only started to get over her shock at a gentle Miss Hardbroom and now she’s going to be hated more than ever. Drawing her knees up, she tugs at her hair in frustration and disappointment, sniffing back hot, angry tears.

It’s not fair she thinks . But she doesn’t know if she’s angry at herself for getting caught or at Miss Hardbroom for being - well - Miss Hardbroom.

It takes a few minutes to register the creeping sensation on the back of her neck, and when she whirls around, the woman in question is standing directly behind her.

Mildred screeches and nearly loses her balance, but Miss Hardbroom’s hand shoots out and steadys her, her grip vice like.

“Careful,” she snaps, face unreadable.

Mildred ducks her head but her shoulders stiffen in resentment.

“I don’t want to talk to you.” She says dully, turning back to let her legs dangle down the side of the castle wall. She doesn’t care if she’s being rude. This isn’t term, Miss Hardbroom isn’t her teacher right now. She shouldn’t even be here. She should be at home. With her mother. With her mother.

Mildred hunches further, focusing out at the stars and trying to keep the grief at bay. She will not cry in front of Miss Hardbroom, she just won’t.

She fully expects Miss Hardbroom to belittle her, or worse, transfer her back to her room and bar her windows and doors. Instead she is surprised when she settles next to her, her back to the skyline so that they’re more or less face to face.

They sit in silence for a long time and, and despite her words, curiosity - a rare enough thing for her these days - finally wins out.

“What did Miss Pentangle mean when she said we were similar? We are nothing alike. I’m the worst witch in school, I’m clumsy, and untalented, and you’re - you’re -”

“Overly critical and grouchy?”

Mildred nearly falls off the parapet in surprise and angles her head to stare at Miss Hardbroom.

She must be dreaming because there’s almost a smile on Miss Hardbrooms face, albeit fleeting, before it drops and becomes inscrutable once more. She tilts her head back to examine the stars before speaking again.

“I do suppose I owe you an apology, Mildred. I have been hard on you, harder than perhaps I should have been.” The words come as if they’re pulled from Miss Hardbroom one by one and Mildred feels a flame of anger lick up inside her.

“You don’t have to nice to me now just because my mum’s dead.” It’s comes out harshly, and Mildred feels ashamed the moment it leaps from her mouth.

Miss Hardbroom freezes and is quiet for a long time.

“My mother died shortly before I left for school,” she eventually says, in the same soft voice Mildred heard her use with Miss Pentangle.

She glances over at Mildred and hesitates, and Mildred stares at her, startled, suddenly attentive.

“I can understand feeling angry at an adult who should have supported you before, suddenly only making an effort after the fact. I remember what that feels like.” Her voice is very quiet and she looks down at Mildred, meeting her gaze steadily.

Mildred feels her eyes well up, and she blinks at the tears. “I’m sorry about your mum,” she whispers, her heart quivering. No one, not even Miss Hardbroom, should lose a mum, she thinks brokenly.

“No, Mildred. I’m sorry. I’ve been harsh with you, often unfairly. I think - I think because, to answer your question, I remember what it’s like to have such power at such a young age, to struggle to control it, to -” Miss Hardbroom clenches her hands into fists in her lap, “to harness it.”

She pauses and resumes her study of the sky. “I felt that if I could just control it, I could control the way I felt. I craved it - structure, control, rules - they all were tools I used to contain not just my magic but my emotions. I think I believed that if I only had more control, I could prevent anything bad happening in the future. And if I’d been a better witch I could have saved her. ”

A tear streaks down Mildred’s cheek and she nods.

Miss Hardbroom’s eyes shift over to her briefly, and she gives Mildred a nearly-there smile. “And then you show up at Cackle’s, with an enormous capacity for magic, that same uncontained power - but newborn into the world of magic. You existed outside rules and structure and had absolutely no control. And instead of following any magical precedence, you reacted quite instinctually - often getting into minor scrapes, it’s true, but when it came down to it, getting all of us, myself included, out of major ones.”

Miss Hardbroom bows her head and twists her fingers together in her lap.

“I do suppose I’ve tried to make you more like me and was increasingly frustrated when you continued to be Mildred Hubble.”  Miss Hardbroom looks over at her now, and there’s something behind her eyes Mildred’s never seen before and can’t read. “But I don’t want you to be like me - not now.

Miss Hardbrooms voice returns to its usual brusqueness, “I do want you to have more control, more awareness of rules and consequences, but that’s for your own safely, as well as your fellow students.” She studies Mildred and softens ever so slightly again before saying slowly, “I’ve begun to learn that there are also consequences for hiding behind a magical rulebook.”

She casts Mildred a significant look and says tightly, “When your friends return, try not to push them away. They can help you more than you’ll know you need.”

They sit in silence for a long while and Mildred tries to adjust to Miss Hardbroom’s admissions, turning them over and over again in her mind as the stars grow brighter above them.

“Miss Hardbroom,” she ventures finally and is met with a lifted brow which she takes an an invitation to continue.

“I haven’t finished my potions summer project,” she whispers, shamefaced. “I’d done all my other assignments, but then -”

“Come see me in the morning, ten o’clock.” Mildred sags but Miss Hardbroom continues in slightly less staccato tones. “Bring your project, we’ll look at it together.”

It’s strange, the lack of criticism that usually accompany any exposure of her inadequacies in front of Miss Hardbroom. But Miss Hardbroom also doesn’t say if you’re up to it. Or when you think you’re ready. It’s as though she knows Mildred needs to dive into something to divert herself, to fill the endless hours of time that creep by, hours that separate her further and further from the last time she heard her mother’s voice. But then, she considers, she probably does know.

She trips over a bashful, “Thank you,” and Miss Hardbroom gives a short nod, making to rise before hesitating.

“Don’t stay out here too long, though Mildred. Please, try to get some sleep.”

Mildred shrugs and looks back up at the sky. “It’s just - “

“I know.”

Their eyes meet and Miss Hardbroom lifts her eyebrows again slightly. “Tomorrow - ten o’clock, potions lab.”

She transfers away and Mildred’s left in the quiet of the night, a slight breeze ruffling the tails of her braids. She shifts to settle more fully back against the casement of the parapet and her knee nudges against something on the ledge - Miss Hardbroom must have dropped something.

Waving her hand before her, it takes a few tries before she’s able to magic a small ball of flame to hover by her side and coax it bright enough that she’s finally able to see that it’s a book. The cover is a deep cobalt, with a dozen of golden constellations embossed into the leather, and very worn pages though the book itself doesn’t look all that old.

Tracing a finger across the gold of the title - “Celestial Bodies: A Guide to Constellations and Other Stellar Phenomenon” - she cracks it open to reveal gorgeous illustrations of the night sky. She squints and the diagrams and then back up at where the stars glimmer above her, trying to piece it together, but it remains a mystery.

Still, the beauty of the book is enough for her to slip from her seat and clamber back through her window. She settles down in her bed with a proper light to thumb through images that seem nearly alive under the fingertips. Tabby reappears - as if by magic she thinks vaguely - and she strokes his warm fur and peruses pages until sleep overtakes her. And for the first time since her mother’s death she does not dream.

______

So her days go. She works on her potions project every morning at ten o’clock sharp with Miss Hardbroom, takes tea with Miss Cackle, and then has the afternoons to herself to wander the hallways and the grounds, making endless loops past the pond and through the eerily silent witch ball courts.

Sometime Miss Hardbroom will mention she’s low on an ingredient and send Mildred out into the gardens with precise instructions. She doesn’t ever say more than “thank you” when Mildred comes back with what she strongly suspects must be the wrong plant. Instead, Miss Hardbroom sends her out the next day, with more detailed instructions, and sometimes and clipping from a botany book to guide her.

Still, her nights are her own. Miss Hardbroom hasn’t mentioned the constellation book, and Mildred finds she prefers that. It’s something that has become special, like a secret. She doesn’t feel so alone now, so small under the stars, as bit by bit she begins to make sense of the diagrams and their accompanying notations written in a spidery hand.  

She’s out there one night after a particularly rough day, dangling her feet over the edge of a parapet and watching what she thinks is Capella with vague detachment when she’s startled by Miss Pentangle crawling out the window of the nearest tourret to join her.

“I heard you like to come up here,” she says, settling in beside Mildred.

“We can go in - if you like -” Mildred says quickly, unsure that she wants to share this private grasp at freedom from there world with anyone.

“That’s alright,” Miss Pentangle says slowly, “I grew quite used to being out on the roof with -” She pauses and shrugs, looking out across the night sky.

They sit in silence for a while and Mildred finds she doesn’t mind it. Miss Pentangle never has pushed her to talk, or asked how she is, has never said the words “I’m sorry for your loss” or “She’s in a better place .” In fact, Mildred realises, Miss Pentangle has always seemed to know just the right things to say, and not to say.

Slowly, she feels herself relax.

“Mildred, I’m sorry I’ve been rather absent. There’s been a bit of business that needed attending too. I wanted to wait until I had all the proper information, but now that I do, I’d like to ask your opinion on somethings.”

When Mildred blinks at her in response, she continues, gently.

“Non-magical authorities have on record, if a slightly, erm, doctored record, that a fictional person, Pippa Pentzel, is your legal guardian. It’s good enough to keep them from looking around for you but, in the Magical world, you do need to have someone stand as your guardian until you come of age.”

Mildred picks at a pill of lint on her sweater and only looks up as Miss Pentangle shifts to turn towards her more fully.

“There are options - people from the magical world, much like social workers, who can place you with a family.” Mildred flinches and Miss Pentangle lays a hand softly over her own.

“Or,” she says, and Mildred looks over, almost managing to be curious, “We could strike an arrangement. If you would like, I’ve procured paperwork to legally become your guardian. You’re in good, capable hands for most of the year at school, but on holidays, you’d have a place to come stay, if you wanted. Or if you’d rather stay with friends, their parents permitting. Or take a summer course or attend a sleepaway camp and need a guardian to sign your forms.”

Pippa takes a deep breath and continues, “What I’m trying to say is, I want you always to have an adult you can turn to when you feel the need. When you need to mirror someone, or ask for advice, or simply hear a hello. No one could ever replace your Mother, Mildred. But I want you to feel, if at all possible, less adrift. To know that there’s someone out there, someone looking after you.”

Mildred feels her eyes widen and for a moment she thinks Miss Pentangle must be joking.

“What, come live with you on breaks?”

“Only if you’d like to, Mildred. I want you to know that you have choices. That you’re not in this alone, and that Miss Cackle and Miss Har- well. That there are many people in your life who wish to support you in whatever you need most right now. I’ve discussed it over with Miss Cackle and she agrees - if you want to stay at the school on holiday’s you are most welcome. If you’d rather come with me, I’d feel lucky to have you. But, you do need a legal guardian.”

“And that would be you?”

“Well, if you think you would be okay -”

“I would,” say Mildred quickly. “I wouldn’t mind that.”

Miss Pentangle smiles and nudges her shoulder lightly.

“Good. Then we should talk about school in the fall. You’ve had an awful shock. You needn’t go back immediately - you could stay with me at Pentangles until you wish to resume your studies. Or come and study at Pentangle’s, or return to Cackle’s where I’m sure your friends and teachers would be very glad to have you.”

Mildred twists her fingers together in her lap and considers it. “I think I want to go back to school - here - I mean. I need the distraction. Otherwise I’m just -” She gestures vaguely, grief surging up in her once more.

Pippa covers her fingers with her own again and looks at her with such compassion that Mildred feels she can whisper, “I think that it’s my fault.”

“Mildred, no . No, it wasn’t your fault, it was a terrible accident.”

“But I - but I - I left her.” Mildred is crying now, and Miss Pentangle turns and pulls her down over the back of the parapet so they’re leaning up against it, rather than perched precariously. “I was all she had, it was just the two of us and then I l-left her to c-come here, and it must have hurt her so m-much. What if she never knew I loved her? What if she thought I loved her less because I w-went away?”

Miss Pentangle kneels in front of her and cups her face, raising her chin so that Mildred is looking up into her steady brown eyes.

“Your mother loved you so much, Mildred. She was so proud of you. She’d often speak of how brave she thought you were for coming to Cackle’s - entering a world you knew nothing about - where you were different from everyone around you. She was endless proud of how you succeeded here. How you saved the school time and time again when witches who felt they were better than you could not.”

Soft fingers brush tears from her cheeks and Mildred quakes. “But I miss her so much.”

“Yes, yes of course you do. But she was happy for you Mildred, bursting with pride. Tried to learn everything she could about your world so she could support you best. Had me drilling her on sections of The Code, if you must know.”

Mildred draws back, gulping in breathes, “Really?”

“Really, really.”

“I never knew -” and she’s crying again, pushing her forehead against Miss Pentangle’s shoulder as she kneels in front of her, gripping her sweater tight. “There’s so much I’ll never know about her,” she sobs.

She feels gentle hands in her hair and calms slightly at the touch.

“I know, I know, darling. But in time, you might learn more about her than you think. After all, the Julie Hubble I came to know was good, and fierce, and loyal, and very smart - all things that are within you as well. She gave you an impeccable moral compass, and I think when you stumble -  in the times you wish for her the most and wonder what advice she’d give you - you will look inside yourself and know, deep down, what she would have done. Though I know that’s a poor substitute for having her back.”

Mildred sniffles and leans back against the parapet exhausted.

“Miss Pentangle?” She takes a deep breath once her tears have slowed and lets it out in a woosh. “Would you mind awfully if I stayed at Cackle’s for the rest of the summer?  There’s only a few weeks left and it’s just, I want - I want -”

“Want to be somewhere familiar?” Mildred nods and Miss Pentangle smiles warmly at her. “Of course, my dear. I think that makes perfect sense.” She settles across from Mildred on the flagstone.

“Miss Cackle and I had a feeling that’s what you might want,” Miss Pentangle looks at her intently.  “She’s offered to let me come stay here at the castle with you for the time being - I would have to back to Pentangle’s a week before the start of term, but if you’d like -”

“You’d do that?” Mildred gasps. Miss Pentangle nods, studying her. “But only if you want me too.”

“I do, I do .” And Mildred doesn’t know until that moment how much she actually does want someone checking to make sure she’s brushed her teeth, or has her light out, or is not roaming the halls at odd hours.

“It’s settled then.” She claps her hands on Mildred’s knees, rubbing gently, and moves to stand. “I’ll leave you to your stargazing. But Mildred, please don’t stay out much longer. Do try to get a bit of sleep.”

Mildred promises and returns to Capella, the feeling of Miss Pentangle’s hands still warm on her knees.

______

It’s easier, somehow, with Miss Pentangle around. She often pops by the potions lab in the mornings where she’s working with Miss Hardbroom, bringing them jammy crumpets which makes Miss Hardbroom roll her eyes but actually entices Mildred into eating. She still joins Miss Cackle for tea, the older woman never asks her anything too difficult, and they take to exploring all the wonderful skulls and crystals that line her office walls together.

Miss Hardbroom is sending her more and more frequently to the garden for supplies but now Miss Pentangle comes with her, pointing out the differences between rare species of lilies, and seedlings, and roots, and they both flush with pleasure under Miss Hardbroom’s nod of approval when they return.

Sometimes Mildred sees them from the roof in the evenings - walking together. One afternoon she even catches Miss Hardbroom laughing in the cloisters over something Miss Pentangle - no Pippa, she’s asked her to call her Pippa - has said. It’s a strange sight, Miss Hardbroom with rosy cheeks and a smile lifting the corners of her mouth. She has a nice laugh, Mildred thinks absently, as she quickly ducks behind a column and resumes her search for wayward Tabby.

And now Miss Pentangle always calls her to dinner when the sun is low in the sky. They sit together by the wide open windows in the rooms she’s been given, feeling the late summer breeze meander through. Mildred tries not to think of her mum. Of how her favorite of time of day had always been dinner - even if it meant she had to stay up late. Mum always came home. And Mum always hugged her. And Mum always listened to her and asked her questions about her day and shared bits and pieces of her own. Until Mum didn’t come home. Until everything had changed.

But unlike Miss Cackle, or the newly arrived back Miss Drill who had gone flying with her yesterday, or Maud and Enid who she mirrors regularly now, Miss Pentangle isn’t afraid to ask her questions about Mum. Or bring her up in conversation. Or remark how Mum had loved how Mildred had started to wear her hair in two plaits once starting at Cackle’s - how sweet she thought she looked. In fact, Miss Pentangle sometimes knows things about Mum, or things from Mum’s perspective, that Mildred had never really thought about.

Like that, yes, Mum had felt a bit lonely with Mildred away at school and how she’d joined a bowling league down the street to keep busy. And that Miss Pentangle, even as wells versed as she is in the non-Magical world, had simply not believed that there was such a thing as bowling.

So Mum had taken her.

And I just couldn't believe it. The balls, the pins, the machine that brings the ball back to you. That machine -  Mildred! I’d never seen anything so funny in all my life .

And Mildred finds she’s actually giggling as Miss Pentangle - no - Pippa now - recalls how sore her ribs had been from Mum elbowing her to quit laughing all night.

Though perhaps it had been the pints they’d had, admits Pippa, eyes sparkling.

Until finally - we were losing so badly, Mildred - your Mum tells me do go ahead, do it - and she had me magic the balls to throw us the game. Horrid misuse of magic, I know. Puh-lease, do not tell Miss Hardbroom. But it was worth it to see the look on all the lads faces.

It doesn’t make her miss Mum less. In fact, it often makes her miss Mum more. But she feels a huge relief being able to talk about Mum. And with someone who actually knew her. It makes her feel more like Mum existed. Might still exists, somehow, somewhere, to a degree.

When the sun dips below the horizon, she clambers back onto the roof and waits for the first stars, flipping through her book to try to find their names. That’s Venus, she thinks, the evening star.

Only now, once the night draws in tightly around her, there’s a knock on her door and Miss Pentangle calls her down. Sometimes Mildred asks her to stay and say goodnight, but mostly she prefers to fall asleep reading with Tabby by her side. She is relieved that Miss Pentangle seems to understand that.

One night she awakens to hear the murmur of voices and tiptoes to the window. Peeking out across the expanse of castle walls, she sees Pippa and Miss Hardbroom sitting on the peak of the east wing roof. They’re talking quietly and from time to time Pippa will tilt back her head and points up at a star. Even from a distance Mildred can see light catching on Miss Hardbroom’s face as she alternates between watching the stars and watching Pippa, moonlight softening all her features.

And it’s funny, Mildred thinks drowsily, crawling back into bed and pulling the covers up around her chin, she’s never thought of Miss Hardbroom as pretty before. But something about scene sticks in her mind. When she awakens the next morning, she thinks maybe it’s was just all a hazy dream.

______

The term starts and Maud and Enid move into the tower room with her. It helps not to be alone - it helps when she awakens in the night with tears on her face and they all sit together on her bed, passing cookies from Maud’s mum or treats from one of Enid’s extravagant care packages.

Sometimes they’re able to dry her tears and giggle into the wee hours. Other times they crowd together as Mildred cries herself out and wake the next morning like a pile of sleepy kittens.

There’s often a creak outside the door, if they’re being particularly giddy, and Mildred knows it’s Miss Hardbroom - also knows that Miss Hardbroom won’t disturb her.

She’s pieced enough together to know by now that there’ve been many nights Miss Hardbroom has spent just like this during her own school days. With Pippa, rather than a Maud and Enid. It’s strange to picture - Mildred can hardly imagine Miss Hardbroom young at all -  but it somehow brings her a calming sense of reassurance to know she’s not the only one. To know she’s not alone.  

The dining hall is a different story. It’s crowded and noisy and it seems like everyone is whispering about her and staring and she just wants to disappears. Often she skips meals and Maud sneaks her food to eat later in the quiet of their room while Enid brushes her hair out and braids it in a single plait down her back for sleep.

It’s exceptionally dreadful one evening as Ethel, who had confused turnip seeds with parsnip seeds during lessons that afternoon - resulting in a foul smelling firework display above her cauldron - is particularly full of vitrol at Mildred over her own perfect potion.

Mildred doesn’t tell her that she’d already made that error and over the summer. Had already stood abashed before Miss Hardbroom who had sent her back outside after explaining that the difference could be noted by the flat tan of the parsnip seed, while a turnip was round and dark, though sometimes cherry, in complexion.

It doesn’t seem to matter to Ethel though, who first accuses her of cheating, and then whispers loudly, “It’s not fair that just because her Mum’s dead the teachers have gone soft on her.”

Everyone at their table freezes and stares, and Felicity whispers a horrified, “Ethel.”

Mildred hears a buzzing in her ears and studies her stew, ironically heaped with turnips, which surely isn’t helping Ethel’s foul mood. She stomach contracts and she feels Maud’s hand on her arm but she struggs it off.  

“You better watch yourself, Ethel -” Enid starts, but the buzzing in her ears is louder as she feels the weight of all eyes upon her as students start to turn and watch the row.

She doesn’t know why, but she snaps her head up and looks up at the high table, her eyes connecting with Miss Hardbroom’s, who holds her gaze evenly.

Something weighty materializes in her pocket just then and she reaches in with tentatively fingers to feel the mirror token that’s appeared there. Looking back up, Miss Hardbroom, face betraying nothing, gives a slight nod of her head towards the exit. Mildred is up and out of her seat like a shot, leaving the concerned voices of Enid and Maud behind her as she goes.

The halls are quiet due to the hour and she slips into the mirror chamber without incident, flashes her token and settles down to wait. She’s mirrored often with Pippa over the course of the first weeks of term, but never without a time set in advanced. She half expects Pippa not to show - to be busy with her own life, her own school - when Pippa suddenly appears in the mirror looking concerned.

“Mildred, are you doing alright?”

Mildred ducks her head and fights back tears. “I’m sorry to bother you, I’m sure you were at dinner.”

“Yes, I was, but I told you to mirror me at anytime, anytime, Mildred.”

“But what if you’re in lessons or -”

“Mildred.” Pippa stops her gently. “Anytime. Besides, look what I cooked up,” she raises her wrist and a pink bracelet winks and sparkles. “It alerts me anytime you request a mirror call.”

“Like a pager?”

“Pager?” Pippa frowns for a moment, trying to place the word, but then her face clears and she smiles brightly. “Yes! Exactly like that. Like a pager.”

There’s a bit of an awkward pause and then Pippa prompts, “Does this have anything to do with what happened in potions today?”

“How did you know about that?” Mildred gasps and Pippa laughs, pink appearing on her cheeks. “Oh, you know, I like to stay informed.”

“Miss Hardbroom?”

“She was very pleased with your performance, Mildred.”

“Ethel wasn’t.” And she recounts the whole scene at dinner.

Through the mirror Pippa bites her lip looking concerned. “You know that isn’t true, my dear. From what I know all your teachers adore you for your enthusiasm and your willingness to work hard and improve in your studies.”

“But Miss Hardbroom - “

“I’ve said before Miss Hardbroom is set in her ways, but she can change, Mildred. Especially when she realizes her ways have done more harm than good.” Pippa pauses, as if she’s just realized something. But she shakes her head and continues, “I know the two of you got off to a rocky beginning, but I believe that Ethel is missing the key information that you’ve both come to a new understanding of one another and are working to start again.”

Mildred nods, chewing on her thumbnail anxiously.

“As for Ethel Hallow, I suppose it’s difficult for her to see you get attention over your mother - and I say this confidentially to you Mildred no in any capacity as a Headmistress or teacher - that while Ethel’s mother is living, she isn’t particularly interested in parenting her two youngest daughters.”

Pippa’s lips crease into a thin tight line that Mildred recalls only seeing once before when she was interrogated by the social worker in the horrible tan shoes. “But you’re not to repeat that, Mildred, not to anyone. Not to Enid or even Maud. It’s only my opinion, and perhaps I shouldn’t even say it, only, I want you to see that in Ethel’s mind, you’re getting all of the attention that she so desperately craves.”

Pippa leans in so that she and Mildred are looking eye to eye through the glass. “And that doesn’t make it fair to you, and that doesn’t make it right, but it does mean that nasty as her words may be, she is probably hurting. In a different way than you to be sure, but she is missing her mother, much the same.”

Mildred let out a breath and says without thinking, “I wish you were still here.” She flushes at her selfishness. “Sorry - sorry - I - I know you have - “

“Things that can wait if you need me, Mildred. That’s a promise.”

And Mildred looks up at her hopefully.

“Would you like me to come to Cackle’s this evening? If I leave now I can make it before your bedtime. Miss Cackle has granted you special visitation permissions”

But Mildred shakes her head vigorously. “I think if people knew I was getting special visitation it would only make things worse right now.”

Pippa looks at her with concern.

“Oh, Mil.”

It’s the first time Pippa’s called her that and she flushes, looking shyly through the glass.

Pippa hesitates and then says, “I was planning on coming up to school this Friday, if you think you could get away for a few hours? I was hoping to see you but - well - there are some who agree that it could make things worse for you.”

“By some you mean Miss Hardbroom.”

Pippa winks at her. “You don’t miss much, clever girl.” But she sighs and looks consideringly at Mildred. “You have enough on your plate worrying about school work and missing your Mum. The last thing I want is to make anything harder for you.”

She looks sheepish for a moment and then seems to come to a decision. “I usually fly right to Miss Hardbroom’s window to - erm - avoid the fanfare of a larger arrival. Would you like to stop by? Maybe around six? No one need know.”

Mildred nods, finding herself surprisingly eagar for the visit.

“Excellent. Why don’t you just show up, dear, no need to inform Hecate - Miss Hardbroom - or she’ll put out a red herring that you’re attending a remedial potions lesson.”

“At least that would be believable.” Mildred sags in her chair.

“On the contrary. In fact, I’ve heard today wasn’t your only big stride forward in your studies this year. Miss Hardbroom informs me you’ve massively improved your rank in potions and I hear you’re near top of class in chanting. You should be very proud, Mildred. Very proud. I know I am of you. I know your mother would be.”

Mildred looks up, eyes smarting.

“Thanks, Miss Pentangle.”

“Pippa.”

“Pippa.”

______

And so Mildred carries the promise of Friday in her like a boone until six o’clock finally comes around and she nervously taps on Miss Hardbroom’s door. It opens of its own accord and she steps in, Miss Hardbroom and Pippa coming into view where they’re both huddled over the chessboard Mildred had seen on her last visit.

“Mildred!” Pipps says brightly, rising and embracing her. Mildred tries not to cling. Tries not to compare how much shorter she is than Mum, with curves in different places. She sniffles a little and hears the door click shut, turning to find an empty room.

“Gone to pick night blooming jasmine, I think,” Pippa explains, shepherding Mildred over the couch.  “Best harvested in the evening before moonrise.”

They sit and discuss Mildred’s day. Pippa shares antics of some of her students and Mildred feels the weight of the week lifting slightly.

When Pippa catches her examining the chess board she nudges her, “Know how to play?”

Mildred shakes her head. “Mum didn’t know either. Is that real chess, as in, non-Magical?”

Pippa smiles, her eyes pleased. “Yes. I had a non-Magical uncle when I was young, I adored him. He taught me to play and when he passed away he gifted me this set. I missed him so much that I brought it to school with me, but no one would play - it being a non-Magical game and all.”

She picks up one of the chess pieces and fingers it fondly. “I must admit, I had a bit of a hot head in those days. I believe I told everyone that they probably couldn’t win if they played against me anyway - that the logic was much too complex for them. But if they did dare, I’d go easy on them.”

“And what happened,” Mildred rests an elbow on the table and leans closer, intrigued.

“Well, this girl I hardly knew, who never spoke except for in class, but who always got top marks, sat down across the table and informed me that so long as I explained the rules to her, there was no need to go easy.”

“Miss Hardbroom?!”

“That’s the one,” says Pippa grinning at the memory.

“And?”

“And she very nearly beat me too. First time.”

“And that’s how you became friends?”

“Well, that’s when I knew I wanted to be friends with her.” Pippa taps the piece against her chin thinking. “I think for her she don’t consider anything other than the game and playing to win at first. As I recall, she didn’t give me the time of day until she’d solidly trounced me on three separate occasions.”

Mildred laughs but then flushes at her bold familiarity when she says, “Sounds like her.”

“Yes,” Pippa agrees, “Very singularly minded, that one.” She sets the piece back on the board and seems lost in thought for a moment, which gives Mildred the opportunity to voice something that has rattled around in the back of her mind throughout the conversation.

“But you said this set. You’re uncle gifted you this set. But - I thought - I thought this was Miss Hardbroom’s.”

Pippa seems startled for a moment and then a little sad. “I gifted it to Miss Hardbroom. Many, many years ago.”

“It must have been hard to part with something your uncle gave you, especially when you’d lost him,” Mildred says, thinking of Mum’s possessions sitting dusty and cold in the storage rooms below.

“Yes,” say Pippa slowly, slipping back into a hazy thoughtfulness for a moment before smiling warmly at Mildred and squeezing her knee. “We both had suffered a loss, we both found chess was a great comfort. Here, sit there,” she gestures at the vacant chair across and Mildred moves around and sits with a distinct feeling that Pippa’s purposefully diverting the conversation away from the topic.

Soon, however, she’s lost in the world of knights and rooks and queens and she hardly gives the matter another thought. She’s so absorbed that she doesn’t look up again until there’s a slight cough and she sees Miss Hardbroom watching them from the doorway, a glint in her eye. Pippa looks up and smiles, and some sort of silent conversation passes between them before Miss Hardbroom ducks her head ever so slightly and squares her shoulders, addressing Mildred.

“Ten minutes to lights out, Mildred, best head back now.”

Mildred studies her and wonders how three hours have passed so quickly, feeling dismay rise up with her as she stands.

“I’m really sorry if I’ve spoiled your plans.”

But Pippa’s hands are on her chin and there’s unmistakable sincerity in her eyes as she says, “Mildred, you’ve done no such thing. It was lovely to see you. It always is.”

Pippa hugs her and Mildred breaths in that smell, floral, so different from her mother, but now comforting in it’s own way. She pulls back and looks up. “May I tell Maud and Enid where I’ve been? They won’t tell, I promise. Only I don’t want them to worry.”

Pippa pulls her back in and squeezes her one last time. “Yes, I think that’s a good idea.”

Miss Hardbroom nods at her and escorts her to the door.

“Goodnight, Miss Hardbroom.”

“Goodnight, Mildred.”

The door shuts softly behind her and she hurries off to find her friends before the loneliness that swells up within her can overflow into something more.

Chapter Text

As much as she she doesn’t want it too, time passes. Pippa collects her for All Hallow’s Eve and takes her to Mum’s grave for the first time, kneeling beside her and laying a warm hand on her back as she weeps. The ground is cold, covered in late October frost, and Mildred lays her mother’s favorite flowers, mums, ironically, on her simple tombstone. It makes her cry harder, the reality, the finality, of it all.

Pippa helps her cast a Rite for Peace in Death, guiding her when her voice trembles a little too much, steadying her with warm, gentle hands when she fumbles with lighting the candles.

They clear away the small wisps of grass that creep about the base of the grave and Mildred presses her forehead against the cold stone, wishing with all her heart that her mere presence would will her mother back to life.

It’s late evening by the time they return to Cackle’s and even from the great lawn Mildred can hear the rumpus of the Halloween feast well underway. She bids goodnight to Pippa and heads directly to her room, skirting the festivities and desperate to be alone.

But when she opens her bedroom door, she finds a the flicker of candles on nearly every surface and Maud and Enid looking up at her, a feast of their own spread out across the beds.

“What’s all this,” she asks, taking in the nervous look on Maud’s face and the serious one on Enid’s.

“We thought we’d wait out the night with you.” Enid pulls her down onto the bed and shoves a pumpkin tart into her hand.

It’s only then she realizes how hungry she is.

They sit up all through the night in a vigil, mostly in silence, as souls pass from one world into the next.

Mildred can’t say she feels any different after, can’t say she felt her Mum in anyway other than the deep ache within her that’s grown far too familiar now. But she does feel a stuttering affection for her friends, as if the muscles of her heart are beginning to stir after months of hibernation.

The next day they’re all sleep deprived and a little grouchy as they head for classes, sashes tied sloppily and hair rather mussed.

Miss Hardbroom looks at their bloodshot eyes and heavy lids and doesn’t say a word.
____

Mildred doesn’t want to think about Christmas. Her first without Mum. Enid’s going to Brazil where her parents have a major leg of their tour. Maud offers to let her come home with her, but Mildred’s stomach twists at the thought of seeing all the happiness and joy of being a family on the holiday.

So when Pippa offers to bring her home with her for Yule, with a deliberate mention that her parents are traveling this year, Mildred feels relieved. Or as relieved as she can feel as the dread surrounding the holiday rises with each passing day.

It turns out to not be as bad as she’s expected. Pippa’s parent’s cottage is cozy and warm, filled with big windows that let in the winter light, and Mildred feels like she can almost breath around the weight in her chest as she sits in her pajamas in the sun her first morning there.

Pippa for her part is gentle and unpushy. She makes Mildred hot cocoa and pancakes, and they eat together the large butcher block table in the kitchen.

Yuletide still has a Christmas tree - a delivery wizard bring it by the afternoon of their first day - and Mildred helps drag it into the parlor where they situate it in the corner against the tall windows. Pippa puts on a record of Yuletide chants and Mildred slips away upstairs to sit in the bright, tidy room that once was Pippa’s. She’s curled on the pale pink duvet, tears leaking down her face when Pippa comes in, a cup of tea in one hand and a box in the other.

“Hi sweetheart,” she settles on the edge of the bed and sets the teacup down, stroking Mildred’s damp hair from her forehead. “It’s not easy, is it.”

Mildred shakes her head no, and Pippa proffers the box. “Sit up and have a look at these. I thought you’d want to have them for the tree.”

Sliding upright, Mildred sits cross legged and pulls the lid free. “Oh, Pippa,” she gasps, looking down at in the box which is filled with her and Mum’s Christmas ornaments. “You found them,” she says wonderingly. Tears slide down her cheeks as she reaches in and fingers a jolly santa bobble from one of her first Christmases.

“I held them aside when I packed up your Mum’s,” she admits. “I thought you’d feel better having them during the holidays.”

Mildred pulls out an ornament, chunkily decorated with glitter and plastic gems, a small photo of her and Mum in the center. Looking down into Mum’s happy face she cradles it between she hands and weeps.

“I miss her, I miss her so much.”

“I know you do, darling.” Pippa peeks down at the photo and smiles. “You look as though your about five there, don’t you?”

Mildred sniffs and nods. “I made it my first year at primary school for her.”

Pippa’s hand brushes across her hair once more then she leans back, snapping her fingers. A prettily wrapped box appears on the bed.

“I thought we’d wait until after super this evening, but I suppose now is as good a time as ever.”

“For me?” Pippa nods, producing a hankie and Mildred wipes at her tears before leaning forward and carefully sliding the box free from the wrapping.

Inside are three of her Mum’s favorite multi-colored sweaters.

“Magicked to fit you now and to enlarge as you grow,” Pippa says, her fingers twisting together in her lap almost nervously.

Mildred buries her face in the soft fabric and gasps, “They smell like Mum - after all this time -”

Pippa smiles. “And magicked to always retain that as well. I hope it’s alright.”

Pressing her face further into the soft, familiar fabric Mildred inhales around her tears, again, and again.

“I’d forgotten,” she admits between sobs. “I’d forgotten what she smelled like.”

Lunging forward she wraps her arms around Pippa, sweater pressed between them.

“Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.”

“You’re quite welcome. Now, why don’t you try it one on and we’ll go down and make sure your Mum had a good spot on the tree?” She holds up the handmade ornament and Mildred takes it from her with gentle fingers.

“Yeah, she’d like that.”

They pass the afternoon pleasantly enough after that. Pippa sings along with some of the chants as they decorate the tree, teaching Mildred the verses, as well as a spell to make the tree appear as if it’s covered in twinkling fairy lights.

Together they make cookies and end up in fits of giggles as Mildred regales Pippa with some incident involving first years and cat that had been transformed into a hedgehog.

Pippa’s laughing, flour dusted across her pink and white checkered apron, a bit smudged across her cheek, when Mildred really looks at her. Looks as if seeing her for the first time as someone who might mean more than her than just a grown up who’s gone out their way to be nice to her.

For a moment she wants to throw her arms around her and bury her face in her stomach, to be held by a maybe-mother. Pippa would have been a great mum, she thinks suddenly, and wonders for the first time why Pippa wants her when she could have had a child of her own.

Mildred stops mid story and pulls her sweater up to her nose with floury fingers, breathing in her Mum, stomach sinking. As if sensing her thoughts, Pippa puts down her rolling pin and reaches over, taking Mildred free hand.

“I’m really glad you’re here Mildred. It’s lovely to have you.”

Mildred manage a small smile, but watches Pippa carefully after that. Something has shifted within her - something that wants to be closer to Pippa than she’s willing to admit, wants her approval, wants her affection.

They’re quiet for a while, and Pippa leaves Mildred to decorate their cookies as she moves around the kitchen prepping dinner. They end up coming out rather clumsy, but they taste good, and Pippa lets her eat more of them than she probably should. Clouds have moved in and soft snow is falling rapidly, coating the ground and the tree branches outside and they have a late, light lunch under the newly decorated tree.

The sky is just starting to darken and Mildred’s laying on her stomach reading a witching comic when she hears voices from upstairs. Pippa had gone up a while ago to mirror her parents, but now she hears laughter and the sort of teasing tone it seems Pippa only uses around one particular person.

When she eventually comes back down, Mildred sits up and puts her comic aside.

“Was that Miss Hardbroom?”

Miss Pentangle hesitates, her cheeks tingeing pink.

“What does she do for Christmas, I wonder.”

“Well,” says Miss Pentangle slowly. “I believe Miss Hardbroom spends Yuletide at Cackle’s.”

“But Miss Cackle’s with her mum for Yule.” Mildred frowns. “And - and Mister Webb and Miss Bat went to Spain, and Miss Drill is with her mum and - and - you mean Miss Hardbroom’s all alone,” she squeaks with dawning horror.

“Mildred,” says Pippa cautiously. But then Mildred’s crying for reason she can put words too, loudly and childlishly bawling into Miss Pentangle’s pink Yuletide sweater.

“No one...should be…alone...on Christmas,” she sobs at an increasing volume.

Which is how a very awkward looking Miss Hardbroom ends up across from them for their Yuletide feast.

“Pass the potatoes, won’t you, Hiccup,” Pippa says absently, and Mildred chokes on her pudding. She looks back and forth from Miss Hardbroom, whose ear tips have gone very red and who looks like she’s about to bore a hole in the table with her eyes, to Miss Pentangle who is blushing furiously at her slip but who looks like she’s determined to bite down on a laugh.

Mildred clears her throat and launches into a question of beetle antenna vs bee brain in a Heachache Relief Serum and is relieved when the adults take up the topic with great enthusiasm, clearing the room from the suffocating tension.

They open crackers and Pippa teases Miss Hardbroom into flushing deep red on more than one occasion. She downright refuses to don the Yule crown that comes out of her cracker, so Mildred wears it instead, feeling happier than she has in a long while.

As the evening fades into the black mantel of night, Pippa ushers them all out into the garden. Mildred holds her breath as the both women cast the Yuletide Spell For Peace over the large stone basin set into the ground of the yard, until a small and flickering spark emerges. Then it’s Mildred’s turn and she adds her voice, her first ever Yule cast. It only trembles a little as she chants, and they all watch the flame flare and grow beneath her hands.

When she finishes, Pippa is beaming at her with misty eyes and even Miss Hardbroom looks approving.

They stand for a time in the building quiet of the night, the glow of the fire casting shadows across their faces, until Miss Hardbroom waves her hand and produces a silver lantern. Scooping up the flame with her bare hands, she deposits it within and passes the glowing lamp to Pippa, who receives it solemnly.

Mildred shivers, not entirely from the cold. Something about the weight of the moment makes her heart catch, as if she’s just witnessed something sacred she doesn’t fully understand.

Pippa notices and smiles down at her, nodding towards the house and they make to head back inside the warm. Well, that is until Mildred hits a spot of ice and goes down, sprawling in the snow like a rag doll.

“Oh dear,” Miss Pentangle says, drawing her upright but they’re both laughing and Miss Hardbroom flicks her wrist, lips quirking up, drying her immediately.

Inside the warmth, Pippa carefully sets the lantern down on the kitchen table.

“What’s that for,” Mildred finally voices, and Pippa looks down at her in faint surprise. “Oh yes, I suppose this is your first Yule. The Light of Yule burns into the night, it’s bad luck to blow it out. When it does go out, on it’s own, it blesses the inhabitants of the house.”

“That’s a nice tradition,” she says and means it, though her teeth are still chattering slightly.

“Mildred, dear, why don’t you wish Miss Hardbroom a Happy Yule and go upstairs and warm up? Perhaps a hot bath? I’ll be up in a bit to tuck you in.”

Tuck her in. Like a mother would. She ducks her head and manages a fleeting goodnight to Miss Hardbroom, before scurrying up the stairs and into the bath where she submerged herself and misses her own mother, the weight of the water nothing compare to the impossible ache within her.

She dresses in her pajamas and towels off her hair, listening as she hear Miss Hardbroom and Pippa’s voices rise and fall from downstairs. Carefully, she turns the knob and creaks the door open. There’s an unfamiliar laugh that surprises her until she remembers it must belong to Miss Hardbroom, and she crosses the landing on tiptoes and lurks in the shadow right above the stairs.

They’re standing by the door and Pippa is carefully, oh so carefully, wrapping her cloak around her shoulders. Miss Hardbroom blushes as Miss Pentangle’s fingers gently nudge her chin up to fix the clasp beneath it. It seems to be taking Miss Pentangle a great deal of time to fasten, and they’re still murmuring to each other, too low for Mildred to hear, but the intimacy of the moment makes her feel as if she’s intruding.

Finally Miss Pentangle draws back and smiles up at Miss Hardbroom, whose featured have softened into a gentleness Mildred has never seen on her teacher’s face before.

“I’m so awfully glad you came tonight, Hiccup.”

Miss Hardbroom ducks her head and says, “Thank you, Pipsqueak, it was a lovely Yule.”

They stand for a moment together, hands clasped, the air between them charged with, with - well - something, Mildred thinks. She almost wonders if they will hug, but Miss Hardbroom merely smiles a half smile and turns, opening the door.

“Wait!” Pippa’s grabs her arm and holds her back. “Wait right here, I’ll only be a moment.”

She disappears back into the kitchen and Mildred can see Miss Hardbrooms hands clenching and unclenching around the fabric of her cloak as she waits.

Pippa returns with a small, miniature lantern, scarcely bigger than a walnut, the flame a small prick of light within. She reaches up and pins it to Miss Hardbrooms cloak with gentle hands, though Miss Hardbroom protests a little.

“It’s really not neccess-”

“Hush, Hiccup, you deserve happiness and peace in the new year, too.”

Miss Hardbroom looks like she wants to protest that too, but quiets under Pippa’s soft gaze, bowing her head as she turns to open the door. Pippa catches her arm once more and raises herself onto her toes, placing a swift kiss to her cheek. “Happy Yule, Hecate.”

Mildred is very glad the door swings shut just then and masks her her fit of laughter, for Miss Hardbroom very nearly tumbles out into the night, an expression of utter shock on her face.

Turning, Pippa all but sags against the door, and Mildred scurrys off to bed on quiet tiptoes before she can be caught out.

Leaping into bed she pulls the covers up nearly over her head and waits for the adrenaline to wear off. Pippa must stand there for a long time, for Mildred’s very nearly asleep before she hears her begin to close up the house downstairs.

Later, she feels a weight on her mattress and rolls over to find Miss Pentangle perched on the edge of her bed. She’s brought up the lantern, and she sets it on the table beside the bed, it’s warm glow shimmering through the dimness of the room.

“All right?” She asks softly, and Mildred doesn’t know what it is - perhaps it’s the big meal or the way Pippa always knows the right things to say, or how today has been the closest Mildred has come to feeling anything close to happiness in months, or how drowsy she is - but she scoots down so that her head is nearly in Miss Pentangles lap.

“Will you hold me for a little while?” She voice sounds very young, and for some reason she feels guilty. Like Pippa’s doing enough for her without Mildred asking her for more.

But she simply moves so that Mildred can rest her head in her lap and beings to move her hand gently through her hair. “Anytime you need, sweetheart.”

It feels awkward at first, but soon she relaxes into it, clamping down on any feelings she has that this Is Not Her Mother. She allows herself to be comforted.

“I didn’t get you a Yule present,” she mumbles sleepily, and she feels Pippa’s hand pause on her forehead, though it resumes a moment later. But right as she drifts off, she’s thinks she hears her say, “Oh but you did, my sweet girl, oh but you did.”

Chapter Text

The small amount of peace that she’s found during Yule quickly fades when she returns to school. The winter is cold and damp and seems to hang over the castle like a fog, just like a deep depression seems to blanket her in from all sides. Her grades slip slightly and she has trouble making it to meals or getting out of bed. Maud and Enid cajole and coax, but she pushes them away, is sometimes moody with them to the point where their hurt faces just make her feel worse.

As the days grow slightly longer, she escapes their concerned eyes, slipping out onto the roof once more to sit beneath the cold March stars. She’s gotten better at interpreting the little blue book, but she finds she’s grown despondent, preferring to while away the hours of night that creep by in a detached that almost makes her feel as if she’s outside of her own body.

One particularly clear night, she’s absently searching the sky for find Volans, the flying fish constellation, when there’s a small cough behind her and she freezes, caught out.

She doesn’t even have to look to say, “I’m sorry Miss Hardbroom, please don’t expel me.”

Behind her Miss Hardbroom sighs, and Mildred tries to summon up fear of reproach, but her emotions seem muted, tempered and unreachable.

Miss Hardbroom takes up the space beside her, much like another night many months ago now, and gives Mildred an appraising look.

“I can’t allow you to be out of bed past lightouts out, Mildred. Particularly not on the roof, and not out on the roof without a Warming Spell.”

“I know the Warming Spell, Miss Hardbroom.”

“But you choose not to use it?”

Mildred shrugs and shoved her stiff cold hands further into the sleeves of Mum’s old sweater.

“Punishing yourself isn’t going to make you feel any better,” Miss Hardbroom say flatly and Mildred glances over at her.

“Is that why you’re not putting me in detention?”

“I don’t say I wasn’t going to put you in detention, Mildred.”

Kicking at the wall below her with the heel of her boot, Mildred huffs. “So then why bother coming out here. I’ll only come back later once you’ve gone.”

Miss Hardbroom casts her eyes to the sky, but says surprisingly gently, “I have rather a better idea.”

Small strands of curiosity unfurl within her and she turns slightly to better see Miss Hardbroom in the darkness.

“Cackle’s doesn’t teach astronomy,” she says slowly, “but I always have rather thought we should.”

“I don’t want more lessons,” Mildred mutters darkly, stomach squeezing at all the unfinished work she has piled up beside her bed.

“No, I was thinking something rather more - well - specialized.”

“What do you mean?”

“Private lessons.” Miss Hardbroom says plainly, “With me. Twice a week. No sneaking out here at all hours of the night, no staying out without a Warming Spell or during inclement weather. It will get you out the castle, away from it all, but it will also teach you a useful skill.”

Mildred straightens and peers up at Miss Hardbroom in the darkness. “You mean it?”

“I do.”

“Will there be homework?”

Miss Hardbroom laughs, the sound increasingly less unfamiliar to Mildred. “No. No homework. This will be just between us. Interest based only.”

She nods at the book in Mildred’s lap. “I see you’ve made a good start.”

Mildred pokes her fingers from the warmth of her sleeves to curl around the binding of the book. “Why did you leave this for me? That day on the roof?”

Miss Hardbroom is quiet for a moment before shrugging her thin shoulders in a jerky movement. “I suppose because it was given to me during a time when I needed it more than I knew.”

She stands and Mildred knows the conversation is over. “Go back inside for tonight, Mildred. Warm up. Get some sleep. We will begin next Tuesday.”

Mildred ducks her head in a nod and untangles her stiff limbs, passing Miss Hardbroom and clambering back down through her window. The room is delightfully warm, Enid and Maud sleeping soundly beneath their blankets.

Cautious of waking them, she climbs into bed and lights a small lamp on the bedside. Cracking open the now familiar pages, she flips to the front and runs her finger over an inscription written in faint pink pen that she’s never really noticed before.

For my Stargazer,

“Though my soul may set in darkness, it will rise in perfect light;
I have loved the stars too fondly to be fearful of the night.”

Yours,
P

P.S. Please don’t fall off the roof or Miss Broomhead will have some questions.

Turning over on her back Mildred snuffs out the light and hugs the book up close to her chest. She falls asleep and dreams that her mother is up there somewhere, just beyond the stars.
____

It helps. It does. Being outside in the brisk night air as the days warm slightly, having the security of additional structure during the hours where her mind typically rages and wanders; even Miss Hardbroom herself, stern but steady as she guides Mildred through the cosmos above them.

It’s a welcome break from the constant platitudes of “How are you?” and “It will get easier” that plague her days. Miss Hardbroom is all business, authoritative and knowledgeable all at once. She puts Mildred through her paces, though is more willing and more gentle in her corrections outside the confines of the classroom. She doesn’t pry into Mildred’s state of mind, and Mildred is grateful for it.

Instead, nearly every Friday now Mildred finds herself knocking on her door. And Miss Hardbroom always finds some errand or excuse to make herself scarce so Mildred can spend the evening confessing her darkest emotions to Pippa over chess, or, on worse weeks, securely in the safety of her arms. 

And so the year goes by. And when the sun returns, she find it slightly easier to breath around the pain that alternates between numbing her and cleaving her heart. It’s hard. But she makes it through term, focusing on endless revisions, and nights under the stars, and warm arms around her just before the weekend.

She visits Maud for a bit at the start of summer before joining Pippa at Pentangle’s. She’s never been to the school before, but finds it’s Pippa in most every way. The halls are large and bright, the windows huge. Everything is soft, and welcoming, and open, it’s almost like a dream - a castle from a fairytale.

They work in the garden together nearly every morning. The gardens at Pentangle’s are enormous, much larger than at Cackle’s and Pippa sighs one morning and admits that they better think about expanding again soon.

“I wish we had gardens like this at Cackle’s.” She replies, squinting at Pippa in the morning sun, sweat already dampening the base of her neck.

Pippa laughs at her from her straw at and stands, wiping her hands on her trousers. “Well, I believe you could. It’s just someone keeps bringing me all their seedlings rather than keeping them for their own.”

“Miss Hardbroom?” Mildred asks in disbelief.

“I’ve had to expand the garden three times since you put things right between us, Mil.” She tugs fondly on Mildred’s own hat and bends to free up the weeds from the around a catmint plant. “It’s her way of saying sorry, I suppose.”

They end up having to expand the garden. And Mildred notices that it’s true: Miss Hardbroom does visit often and always seems to come with a new cutting, or graft, or seedling - Pippa laughing and accepting it each time with a knowing look that for some reason makes Miss Hardbroom blush and slightly stutter.

In the afternoons, she likes to lay on the window seat of her room, which is large and full of sunlight, reading books she’s nicked from Pippa’s private collection. Her favorite is a series of two time traveling witches, and she reads nearly all ten volumes before the first month of the holidays has passed by. And at night, Pippa takes her up the roof where occasionally Miss Hardbroom joins them, and they all watch the stars over a late picnic dinner.

Mildred’s so caught up in gardens, and sunlight, and the advanced potions and spells she’s been studying with Pippa - in the way magic is finally starting to become second nature to her and she doesn’t have to try so hard or sometimes even think about it - that when she wakes one night, drenched in sweat and crying in her sleep she’s actually surprised. Well, that is until the creeping dread climbs up through her stomach like a vine, spreading an insidious feeling that she’s forgotten something, done something very, very wrong.

Leaping from her bed she rummages through the messy desk, searching for a calendar, dread rising hot and fast within her. She finds one and and tries to determine if today is a Wednesday or a Thursday or a Friday, though it doesn’t really matter. Her mother’s birthday was still last week. She’s still missed it, unthinkingly, selfishly, too busy with her own new life that she didn’t even think.

And suddenly she’s crying as if Mum’s just died all over again, great heaving gasps. She feels panic welling up inside her, clouding her vision, a roaring in her ears as her stomach jumps and shudders.

She doesn’t know how, but somehow she makes it down the stairs and across the landing to Pippa’s door, she doesn’t knock, can’t seem to control her shaking hands, her sobs echoing up and down the deserted hallways as she fumbles with the knob and stumbles inside.

The rooms are dark, and belatedly she remembers that it’s the middle of the night. That of course Pippa’s asleep, that she’s selfish to interrupt her, just as she’s selfish to forget about Mum. Mum. Mum.

She thinks of all the nights Mum had held her through night terrors, but her mother isn’t here now, no one is here now.

She’s being loud, she knows she’s being loud, but she seem to can’t quel her cries and tries to make it back to the door, halfway there when a light pops on and Pippa’s standing in front of her in a pink pajama set.

“Mildred, sweetheart, what -”

But Mildred curls in on herself, falling on her knees to the floor banging her fists against the cold stone. She can hear herself screaming, but doesn’t know where the words are coming from, it’s like she’s possessed, anger and heartbreak breaking free of her in a bellow.

“Bring her back, I want her back, why won’t you bring her back. I don’t want to be here, I want to be home with Mum, I don’t want to be here - I don’t want you.”

Pippa’s by her side in an instant, warm hand on her back stroking, but Mildred doesn’t want it, doesn’t want her kindness or her care. She wants her mother.

Shrieking she wrenches herself away and spills herself across the floor. In the back of her mind, she knows Mum would say she was having a right tantrum, and she knows she’s making a scene, but she can’t help it. She screams and slams her fists into the ground again, her hands and throat raw but she can’t stop, can’t calm down.

“I want her back.” She hollers, her whole body contracting with the force of her cries and she wonders if she might be ill.

Vaguely she hears Pippa whisper something, doesn’t care what it is, doesn’t care what she thinks about her right now. Then suddenly there are cool, strong hands on her shoulders pulling her away from the floor and onto her back, cradling her firmly against a long, thin body and Mildred snaps her eyes open, fighting dizziness, to look into the eyes of Miss Hardbroom.

It’s enough to startle the next sob right out of her. Miss Hardbroom adjusts her so she’s being held even more firmly, holding her against her as though Mildred were a small child. She doesn’t speak, doesn’t try to console other than to encase Mildred in firm, gentle pressure, steadily meeting her gaze.

Mildred sucks in a breath, then another, whole body twitching and trembling. She doesn’t let her eyes stray from Miss Hardbrooms, matches her inhale for exhale until finally some of the tension drains from her body and she sags in Miss Hardbroom’s arms.

“I’m sorry,” she whispers, mortification rising in her as she breaks eye contact and sees Pippa hovering just behind Miss Hardbroom’s shoulder. “I didn’t mean it - I didn’t mean what I said about not wanting -”

But Pippa crosses around and tentatively kneels beside them, hushing Mildred before she can even finish.

“It’s alright, my darling. It’s quite alright.” She hesitantly reaches out and Mildred takes her hand, noting the fresh tear tracks down Pippa’s face as well.

“My Mum - her birthday was last week. I only just realized. I forgot it - I forgot her.”

Pippa’s eyes widen. “Oh Mildred, I’m so sorry - I didn’t realize, didn’t even think to check - sweetheart, of course it’s a difficult anniversary.”

She looks up at Miss Hardbroom almost beseechingly, but Miss Hardbroom merely shifts Mildred a bit closer, until Mildred can hear the steady beat of her heart, and says nothing.

“I was going to make her a scrapbook of both of us. To keep her company while I was at school. I was going to - “ she’s crying again, “m-magic some of the frames so that I could send her pictures of my friends and me throughout the y-year.”

She turns and buries her head in Miss Hardbroom’s shoulder, her tears soaking the soft gray fabric of her nightdress and the spirals of dark hair that hang loose down around her.

“That’s a lovely idea, Mildred. She would have really treasured that.” And Mildred turns back, wiping her eyes to look at Pippa again. Remembers her stories of bowling alleys and quizzing Mum on The Code, and knows that Pippa’s qualified enough to say it.

“I just miss her,” she trembles.

“Yes,” Miss Hardbroom says, her voice gentle. “You will always miss her. There will always be times, and first times, you forget things. But it will never mean that you have forgotten her.”

Mildred lets out another breath and feels exhausting pulling her eyelids down. She fights it, but everything seems to take more effort than it should. She hears Pippa whisper and Miss Hardbroom shifts beneath her.

“Please,” she begs, eyes heavy, “please don’t leave me.”

Miss Hardbroom stills and Mildred slips into a heavy sleep.
____

She wakes in the half-light of a gray dawn and for a moment she doesn't know where she is. The bed beneath her is soft and she feels something on top of her hand and looks over to see that, even in sleep, Pippa hasn’t let go of her. She must be in Pippa’s bed, she thinks, nuzzling against the pillow drowsily. Even after the yelling and the screaming and the “I don’t want you,” Pippa remains steadfast, consistent, there.

Blinking back sleep, she relaxes further into the bed and feels something - someone - warm against her back. For a moment she thinks it’s Mum - the hard, long angles, the bony hips, the protective curl around her. She squeezes her eyes shut and allows herself to pretend it is. Doesn’t look to see.

Pippa must have summoned one of her sweaters because wasn’t wearing it before but is now. She tucks her nose into the collar and pretends.
____

When she wakes again, warm sun is streaming through the windows onto the bed and she’s rather overheated and fuzzy headed. Her eyes feel scratchy and her throat prickles as she pulls the sweater up and off, a bit lightheaded.

She slides from the center of the bed and hops to the floor, timidly approaching the door to the parlor.

She can hear soft voices, and she shuffles a bit before opening the door a little wider to slip through. Pippa and Miss Hardbroom are at the table having breakfast, Miss Hardbroom buried behind the daily witching paper and Pippa pouring tea.

Mildred stops and stares because they’re still in their night things and it’s such a relaxed scene that Mildred feels her tension drain a little further at the sight. They both look up when she enters and Pippa smiles while Miss Hardbroom meets her eyes rather shyly.

Gesturing for her to come closer, Pippa produces another teacup. “Hello there, Mildred, we were just having some tea. Come and have a jamy crumpet.”

She settles at the table, trying not to blush because next to her Miss Hardbroom is in her night dress which comes only just to her knees. She didn’t even know Miss Hardbroom had knees. In fact, she’s often wondered if beneath those long black robes she possessed wheels instead of legs.

It’s enough to make her smile as the bites into the crumpet and takes a long drink of water, her head clearing slightly.

Pippa passes her some apple slices and prompts Miss Hardbroom to read the gossip section. It takes quite a bit of coaxing, but when she finally does, her flat, contemptuous oration sends Pippa and Mildred into fits of giggles.

Mildred wonders if she still must be dreaming.

It's late morning, far later than their usual mornings, by the time they finish breakfast. Pippa reaches across the table and takes Mildred’s hand once more, turning it over so she can gently stroke her palm.

“Would you like to do something for your mum’s birthday? We can do anything you like. We should also discuss what, if anything, you would like to plan for the anniversary of her passing next month.”

She swallows, and takes a deep breath.

“Could we go and see her? Her grave, that is. I know - I know she’s not there anymore.” She says, hanging her head. “And maybe also, could we go on a picnic? Mum loved picnics. Somewhere with a lot of flowers.”

Pippa squeezes her hand. “That’s a lovely idea.”

“And could - could,” Mildred feels very shy all of a sudden, “- would you come too, Miss Hardbroom.”

Dark eyebrows shoot up and Miss Hardbroom looks first embarrassed and then as shy as Mildred feels. She ducks her head and simply says a quiet, “If you would like.”

Mildred sits back, relieved, and soon departs to wash and dress and join them both in the garden where they harvest queen anne’s lace and large poppy’s the size of Mildred’s head.

That evening, once Miss Hardbroom has bid them farewell and returned to Cackle's, Pippa seems pensive over their dinner. She seems about to speak on several occasions, but she closes her mouth each time and continues to play with her food.

Finally, when Mildred’s almost finished she says softly.

“Mildred, you know Miss Hardbroom is, well, rather a private person.”

Mildred nods and bites her lip. “Is this because I asked her to come with us on the picnic? I’m sorry if it -”

“No, no,” Pippa shakes her head and smiles a little, “In fact, I think she was quite flattered. No, this is about her being here last night.” She fidgets with her silverware and seems to search for her next words. “I think it would be difficult for Miss Hardbroom right now if people knew - if they - knew -”

“That you and her still have sleepovers?” Mildred supplies. “It’s alright, I won’t tell. I love when Maud and Enid come to stay or I go to theirs. I suppose why shouldn’t grownups still get to have fun with their friends. But I won’t tell, really. After all, it is Miss Hardbroom. I’m sure no one would believe me that she’s still secretly a teenage girl.”

Pippa stares at Mildred and then seems to sag in her seat a bit, though Mildred suspects she’s trying to hold in a laugh.

“All right. Fair point. I’ll tell her that.” Pippa’s laughing in earnest now and there’s such fondness in her eyes that Mildred can’t help but say again, “I’m really sorry about last night. If I can’t be with my Mum, I’m lucky to have you.”

She blushes deeply, but Pippa stands, and crosses around the table to brush a soft kiss to the top of her head. She wraps Mildred up in her arms and whispers “I’m lucky to have you too, Mildred Hubble,” before sending her upstairs to change into pajamas before their nightly chess game.

Chapter Text

The anniversary of Mum’s death is dark and chilly, with a creeping rain that never seems to stay away for long. They huddle beneath umbrellas in the cemetery and Mildred leaves flowers and performs the Spell for Peace in Death, hands steadier than they had been half a year before.

Miss Hardbroom enchants the candle to burn despite the rain, but they don’t end up staying long, Mildred glum and deferred, the weather matching her mood.

When the return back to Pentangles, Pippa suggest they have an indoor picnic instead. She holds up some dusty records that had been Mum’s - though Mildred isn’t sure when she’s had time to clamber through all their possessions in the Cackle’s basement to find them.

Still, it calming to hear Mum’s favorite tunes over the rumble of thunder outside. They set a blanket on the floor and light candles, settling down to eat. As the hour grows later, Mildred becomes more and more anxious. She wishes it were a clear night so they could climb up and see the stars, and she fidgets and paces until Pippa calls her back to the blanket, gesturing for her to lay on her back next to her.

Miss Hardbroom looks up from the book she’s reading and quirks and eyebrow, but Pippa merely grins and casts a spell that projects a star up onto the high vaulted ceiling of the room.

“Vigro!” Mildred names and Pippa’s smile widens, “And that’s Arcturus!” as she sends up another one.

Miss Hardbroom sets aside her book settles on her back next to Mildred’s glancing across at Pippa before quirking her finger and sending up Saturn and Altair back to back.

Pippa lifts her head and cocks an eyebrow at Miss Hardbroom, shifts down into into a more comfortable position, and creates the moon and the seven sisters in the Pleiades.

And then they’re racing - throwing up stars and spells at great speed until the rooms glowing with a cool blue light - until a whole galaxy hangs suspended before them.

The both lay back a little breathless and Mildred looks up in awe, as much about the sky that’s been brought to life, as she is about the creativity and skill of the two witches laying on either side of her.

“Woah.” She says softly and she hears Miss Hardbroom make a small pleased noise.

She points, and Mildred names the Taurus constellation then picks out Jupiter and a dozen other celestial bodies at Miss Hardbroom’s prompting.

“My, you two have certainly learned a lot,” Pippa says sounding proud, and Mildred looks over at Miss Hardbroom who looks as pleased as Mildred’s ever seen her.

“Can I sleep down here tonight,” She asks in a small voice, settling back and looking up at the gleaming cosmos above them.

“Of course you can.” Pippa flips onto her stomach and props herself up on one hands, reaching over to tuck a lock of wayward hair behind Mildred’s ear.

“I should head back, I’m afraid,” Miss Hardbroom sits up and looks around for her shoes, but Pippa reaches across Mildred and places a hand on her arm.

“Really, Hiccup, it’s dreadful out there.” Her voice grows soft, “Stay.”

Miss Hardbroom seems to hesitate, eyes flickering down at Mildred the back up to Pippa before she nods silently and settles back down.

Pippa moves back across to her side and returns her gaze to Mildred, fiddling with her hair again.

“Anything you need, sweetheart?” And Mildred knows it’s her way of checking in. Shifting closer she curls nearly against Pippa’s side, content to be close. She tries not to think about how one year ago she was waiting, waiting in the dim light of her apartment, dinner on the table, for a Mum who would never make it back to her.

“I like the stars,” she says, watching a meteor whiz by above. They all lay there in silence for a long time before Pippa summons blankets and pillows and tucks Mildred in tight.

“Goodnight, dear one.” Pippa breathes and when Mildred closes her eyes she can still see the glimmer of consultations in her mind’s eye, lighting up the darkness as she sleeps.

______

They do end up all going on a picnic a few weeks later.

The sky is perfectly blue and serene and Miss Hardbroom transfers them to a field teeming with wildflowers. It’s absolutely heaven and Mildred runs around gathering up armfulls of blossoms which she strews about the picnic blanket. Pippa shakes her hair free to let it blow in the breeze before handing out sandwiches. Miss Hardbroom pours them lemonade and they all take off their shoes and layout on the blanket - well - except for Miss Hardbroom who sits primly.

The sun is pleasantly warm, but not too hot and after they eat Pippa unplaits Mildred’s hair and weaves her a flower crown.

“There,” she saids, adjusting it so it sits just so on Mildred’s auburn hair. “Now you look like the Fairy Queen herself.”

Mildred grins and gets up to twirl around in her summer dress, feeling awful pretty and awfully giddy. The crown breaks free and falls down over her eyes,

“Whoops! Come here, I’ll show you how to fix it.” Pippa teachers her to weave together the fragrant flowers and Miss Hardbroom busies herself in a book, looking particularly unusual to Mildred in her creme blouse and high-waisted green skirt.

Tongue between her teeth, Mildred follows Pippa’s hands until she gets the hang of it, and she’s produces an even more elaborate crown which she places on Pippa’s golden hair.

“Now you’re a fairy queen, too.” Pippa beams at that and Miss Hardbroom looks over at her as she preens.

“Vanity is unbecoming in a witch,” she drawles, but a small smile plays at the corner of her mouth.

Pippa merely rolls her eyes good naturedly and once Miss Hardbroom’s been reabsorbed back into her work, tugs Mildred up and practically skips with her back into the fields of flowers. They weave necklaces and bracelets and tuck flowers behind each others ears, giggling, and Mildred really does think Pippa looks just like a fairy queen in her pale pink linen dress.

Biting her lip, eyes sparkling, Pippa pulls Mildred close and whispers to her, and Mildred draws back, nervous but gleeful.

“You think?” She whispers, and laughs. Pippa nods and their fingers move quickly, twisting together the biggest and prettiest flowers they can find.

When they’re done they have a crown fit for Queen Mab herself.

“Hiccup, dear,” Pippa says in honeyed tones as they approach - Mildred has to clap her hand over her mouth to stifle a giggle. “We’ve brought you a present.”

Miss Hardbroom doesn’t even look up from her book. “Not on your life, Pentangle.”

“Oh come on, Hecate, we’re playing fairy queens.” She twirls Mildred around until her skirt flutters in the wind, until they’re collapsing dizzy and breathless with laughter on the blanket.

From her spot on her back, Pippa looks up at Miss Hardbroom between her lashes - and Mildred has to nearly stuff her fist in her mouth to keep quiet - and says in the same sweet voice, “Please, for me?” She smiles beautifully up at Miss Hardbroom who is only pretending to read her book now. “And Mildred?”

Miss Hardbroom presses her lips together in a thin line but Mildred can see the amusement in her eyes.

“Alright, just this once.”

Mildred cheers and proffers their creation which Miss Hardbroom takes gingerly, nose wrinkling in mock distaste.

She moves to put it atop her head but Pippa sits up and grabs her wrist, stopping her.

“No! Hair down, you have to do it properly if you want to be a fairy.”

Miss Hardbroom sniffs. “But I don’t want to be a fairy, I want to be a witch.”

“Fine, alright, but you’re going to be the fairest witch,” Pippa teases, hand coming up to pluck a pins from Miss Hardbroom’s head until her severe bun releases and tumbles down into a long braid.

Mildred giggles even more as Miss Hardbroom gives a long suffering sigh and rolls her eyes as Pippa moves behind her and begins to run her fingers through her hair. Miss Hardbroom’s eyes slip shut for the briefest of moments and when she blinks them open it’s to Pippa arranging her hair to fall all around her shoulders and gently taking the crown to place on her head.

“Mildred. Hubble.” Mildred stops mid-giggle and freezes. It’s been a long time since she’s heard Miss Hardbroom take that tone with her. She risks a look and Miss Hardbroom is holding up a finger threateningly. “If you ever breathe a word of this to anyone outside of present company, I shall turn you into a frog .”

“Yes, Miss Hardbroom.” A giggle escapes. “Your hair is gorgeous though,” She says unthinkingly and they both blush a sunset red.

Pippa crawls back around and sits next to Miss Hardbroom, “Yes, she is gorgeous, isn’t she.” A small look passes between them and Miss Hardbroom’s fingers twitch in her lap. But she keeps her crown on and returns to her reading, cheeks faintly pink.

Mildred dozes off for a bit after that and when she awakens the sun is lower in the sky, warm golden light pouring over the fields of tall grass beyond their meadow and making the wildflowers glow with an ethereal light.

She’s alone on the blanket and for a moment she blinks sleepily in the sun before stretching and pulling herself up. She can just make our the dark of Miss Hardbroom’s hair in amongst the waving tall grasses and starts toward them, trying not to let her feet crunch too much on the ground beneath her. She’ll leap out to give them a fright, she thinks. She can just imagine Pippa’s shriek followed by laughter and Miss Hardbroom’s jump of alarm and heavy scowl.

Biting her lip in concentration, she moves forward in a near crouch, only to freeze at the sight of Pippa gently tucking Miss Harbroom’s long hair behind her ear. It’s a gesture so intimate that Mildred gasps, ducking into a particularly thick bunch of graces to watch unnoticed.

She feels like she’s invading something private, like she’s stepped into another world - perhaps truly a fairyland belonging only to the women before her - as Miss Hardbroom catches Pippa’s hand and brings it to her lips, kissing it gently, her eyes warm and soft.

Pippa says something Mildred can’t make out over the sound of the wind makes as it rustles through the grass, but whatever it is, Miss Hardbroom smiles at her. Golden sunlight makes her face glow as Pippa wraps her arms around her neck and leans up to kiss her.

To kiss her? Mildred watches transfixed as Miss Hardbroom’s hands come up to hold Pippa’s waist, pulling her closer. They’re both smiling a little when they part and Mildred swallows hard, suddenly making sense of a thousand tiny glances and gestures. Of gifted seedlings. Of conversations said without words. Of Miss Hardbroom in Pippa’s chambers in the middle of the night. Of sleepovers.

Oh. She blushes, but her heart is beating a happy tattoo inside her chest and she takes one last look at the pair - Miss Hardbroom is now straightening Pippa’s flower crown with careful fingers while they both laugh - and turns away.

It all makes sense now she thinks, and wonders if she’ll ever kiss anyone quite like that in the slanting summer light. Esmeralda Hallow’s face bursts into her mind, and she blushes further at the butterflies that appear in her stomach at the thought. No, Esme is far too grown up to want to kiss someone like her. And she really can’t imagine kissing anyone. Not yet. Maybe not ever.

She leaves the grasses and reaches the field of flowers once again, stopping nearly at their blanket. Keeping her back carefully turned away, she calls “Pippa? Miss Hardbroom?” pretending to scan the empty meadow before her.  

Perhaps she wasn’t as surreptitious as she’d hoped, because when they come up behind her and she turns, they’re holding hands, Pippa looking awfully happy and Miss Hardbroom awfully shy.

As they get nearer, Miss Hardbroom releases Pippa’s hand and settles in the corner of the blanket, plucking up a morning glory that’s fallen loose and holding it in her palm.

“Had a good nap then?” Pippa plunks herself down and pours more lemonade, leaning back on her elbows and closing her eyes against the sun.

“How long did I sleep?”

“About and hour, maybe more.”

Mildred knees on the corner of the blanket and watches Miss Hardbroom who is still examining the flower. She looks up briefly and smiles, moving one hand over the blossom, cocking her head, listening. She passes her hand over again, and the faint sound of brass instruments rises faintly from it.

“Oh, Hiccup, that’s nifty! A mini phonograph.” Pippa grins with excitement. Miss Hardbroom holds the small purple-blue flower out to Mildred who takes it hesitantly. “And Augmentation Spell, if you please, Mildred.”

Mildred feels a slow smile creep across her face and she recites the chant and waves her hand. It takes a moment, but then the flower begins to grow larger, the music’s volume increasing, as does the approval in Miss Hardbroom’s eyes.

The jazzy music floats out across the expanse of space, but Miss Hardbroom’s hands are busy again on the remaining flowers that are scattered across the blanket.

She twists them around her fingers before blowing on them, and soon the air around them is filled with fluttering butterflies made of creamy pink sweet pea blossoms, deep blue delphiniums, coral peonies, and sweet kings cup.

Mildred claps her hands and and Pippa sits up, her eyes very bright. “Oh you are a clever thing, aren’t you.” She darts forward and kisses Miss Hardbroom on the cheek,  causing her to flush the same shade as a field poppy butterfly that flutters near the the flowers of her crown.

Leaning back Pippa reaches up so a so that a delicate violet wood anemone can alight on her finger. “And you’re always on about the proper use of magic,” she says examining it closely. “Hiccup, these are wonderful .”

Miss Hardbroom ducks her head at the praise but glances up and locks eyes with Mildred, apprehension written clearly across her features.

Mildred holds her gaze and grins at her reassuringly. “These are the bats, Miss Hardbroom. I can understand why Pippa likes you so much.”

It’s the right thing to say, although all three of the blush furiously, and Miss Hardbroom looks grateful.

Though after a moment she bites her lip, and says in low voice, her eyes on Pippa, as though too embarrassed to look directly at Mildred, “You’ll keep your promise, from before.”

It takes Mildred a moment to realize she’s asking for her discretion in matters far larger than flower crowns.

“Yes, I promise.” She says, and means it.

She likes this, just the three of them laying under the wide open sky, as flowerlike butterflies swoop and dip over head, alone and in their secret world together.

Chapter Text

Pippa rents a seaside cottage and Mildred spends the final weeks of summer with a sunburn and her toes in the sand. She thinks of Mum - of course she thinks of Mum - and all their trips to the seashore over the years, collecting shells and listening to the ocean waves within them. It has seemed like magic. Back when that’s all magic was to Mildred, just a shell against the ear and Mum’s hand in her own.

Now she collects shells for various spells and potions, helping Pippa grind small pink ones into a fine powder to replenish the supply at Pentangle’s, or spending hours combing the sands until she finds enough mermaid’s purse to present to HB when she arrives. And it’s strange, to call her HB now, rather than Miss Hardbroom, to her face even. But something has shifted between them over the summer, something born from the hours they’ve spent together beneath the star strew sky and from the way Pippa smiles at the both of them with equal affection.

It’s increasingly less surreal to come down for breakfast and see HB sitting at the table pouring Pippa coffee. Or to sit with her in the late afternoon sunlight that fills the cottage and fuss around with various potions. Or to see her smile. And sometimes even laugh. She flits between the cottage and Cackle’s, and Mildred finds that she misses her presence the days that she’s gone. And from how often Pippa peeks hopefully out the window every so often, she knows she’s not the only one.

______

School resumes and she turns fourteen. Enid and Maud get her a new witching hat and Pippa gets her a brand new set of watercolors. She doesn’t think to expect anything from HB, but when they resume their biweekly lessons on the roof, she’s handed a parcel in brown paper and unwraps it to find a new book of constellations that when opened projects the celestial bodies so that they glow and wink around her.

Looking up at HB, eyes watering, Mildred knows that it must have been tracked down especially after the rainy afternoon they’d spent laying on the floor under the stars on the anniversary of Mum’s death.

She wants to hug her, but HB sits ramrod straight, fingers laced tightly together, and Mildred has spent enough time watching her with Pippa to learn that just smiling wetly up at her is probably as much as HB can probably take in this moment.

She treasures it. She treasures these late nights on the roof where often of late they spend less time on the stars and more and more time simply talking. Mildred learns that HB works magic in a way that makes Mildred realize how superficial her understanding actually is, how little she has comprehended even during her four years at Cackle’s. Magic to HB is like breathing, like life itself. It’s raw and powerful and HB controls it with every fiber of her being, holds it back so that it doesn’t crackle along her skin and singe the very air.

Now they spend nights on the roof but Mildred sits with her eyes shut, breathes when HB instructs, reaches inside of herself and feels something in there . Something that has always been there, perhaps. Something coiling and technicolor, and sometimes very dark and sometimes very frightening.

She understands now what HB had meant, that first night they’d met on the roof the summer Mum had died. Understands why control is important. Enormous capacity for magic , HB had said then. And Mildred had thought it was a stretch at the time. Magic was fun. It was an adventure. But now, feeling the late autumn air on her face, eyes tight shut, she feel the roil within her - the same heated bast that caused her levitation spell to cannonball her into the air on Selection Day all those years ago, the same trembling power that had lead to her clasp hands with her friends and save Cackle’s from Agatha’s Annihilation Spell. It’s a frightening thing, the surge and spark that unfurls throughout her entire being. Or it would be frightening, without the calm, measured voice beside her, coaching her, guiding her, into channeling it properly.

And Mildred realizes that if she had recognized this power sooner, she surely would have taken HB’s path of exerting control over every small aspect of her life. She’s jolted by the realization that as a child HB had come to school with this magic buzzing through her, grieving and alone in an unfamiliar place. Had had to find a way to contain everything she felt alone. Mildred’s heart trips at the thought, and without meaning to, she shoots sparks fifty feet out across the grounds before them, her eyes flying open in dismay.

Beside her HB tuts.

“Focus.”

Taking a deep breath, Mildred tries again. Calms her mind and thinks of Pippa. Thinks of Pippa and HB. Thinks of chess and two eleven year olds sitting beneath the stars.

Not alone then, she decides, relaxing further in order to better direct the magic whirling within her. Neither one of them had ended up alone.

______

Eunice is pretty, and funny, and smart.

Mildred can’t help but notice her immediately when the Proudspell Preparatory School of Magic comes to Cackle’s for a witch ball tournament.

The Fourth Years are already on the courts warming up when the rival school arrives, lead by a girl with lots of curly auburn hair and a captain’s badge on her uniform. She doesn’t know why, but her stomach goes all funny and she stops in the middle of the court and stares.

Until the ball comes and hits her in the face.

“Oy, Mildred Hubble, get your head back in to the game if you don’t want it getting wacked again!” Miss Drill calls before giving two short blasts on her whistle and motioning them in for a huddle.

Mortified, Mildred sneaks a peek over at the Proudspell team. They’re all laughing at her. Well, everyone except The Girl.

She winks and Mildred flushes .

A hand closes around her wrist and she blinks over at Maud who is looking concerned, pulling her away.

“What’s gotten into you, Millie? You look like you’ve been to fairyland and back.”

She drags her to the huddle where Enid is watching them looking particularly grouchy. “We’re never going to win the tournament if you don’t pay attention, Mil.” She scuffs the toe of her boot against the grass frowning.

Flushing even more deeply, Mildred feels a quick tang of hurt before anger flashes through her.

“What’s up with you? Besides, you’re one to talk.”

Enid glares at her and opens her mouth but Ethel beats her to it. “Will you all shut up and listen to Miss Drill? Maud is right, we can’t afford to lose this tournament, we’ll be out of the running for the Witch’s Witch Ball Cup if we do.”

They lose the tournament. Badly.

But Mildred doesn’t think it’s quite all her fault. Not entirely. It’s just that every time The Girl comes at her she fumbles the ball, or trips a little, or simply stops running and stands dumbly blushing. Enid is refusing to pass to her for some reason, Ethel spends more time shouting instructions than actually playing, and Felicity suddenly seems just as clumsy as Mildred feels.

By the end of their third loss they are all in particularly low and ornery spirits. Even Miss Drill doesn’t seem keen to dwell on their defeat in her eagerness to get them off the field, up to dinner, and out of her hair.

They pass the Proudspell team as they’re leaving the field. The Girl smiles again and Mildred suddenly feels very warm and like she hasn’t lost anything at all.

She feels even warmer when the winning team joins them in the Great Hall for dinner and the girl comes over and introduces herself as Eunice Edgecomb, Head of Year Four at Proudspell. Champion Witch Ball Captain and Prettiest Girl On Earth , says Mildred's head.

“Can I sit here?” The Girl, Eunice , asks and Mildred nods, blushing a little. It’s a tight squeeze with all the extra students and Eunice brushes up against Mildred a bit as she fits her self in. Mildred bites her lip and smiles shyly at the way their thighs just touch, her heart thudding rather quickly in her chest. She’s disappointed when Enid suddenly stands and excuses herself, and Eunice slides over into the unoccupied space.

Still, once she gets past being tongue tied, she finds that Eunice likes art, and astronomy, and her dad likes to take her camping on summer holidays. They sit talking and laughing until most of the other students have left the hall - until the headmistress from Proudspell calls out to Eunice that she best hurry or she’ll miss the transport.

Eunice conjures pen and paper and scrawls out her address in large loopy letters and makes Mildred swear to write and mirror.

“It’d be nice to have a friend outside of school,” she says, winking again.

Mildred sits at the table for a long time after she’s gone.

______

They write back and forth all term and Mildred forgoes her usually mirror slots with Pippa so that they can talk more. And when she does talk to Pippa it’s all she can do to keep Eunice’s name from cropping up at every other sentence. Pippa smiles at her, but doesn’t mention it.

She’s just come back from a mirror call one evening when she finds Enid in their room packing up her things, her face impassive.

“What’s going on - you haven’t been expelled have you? Please tell me you haven’t been, Enid.”

Enid shakes her head but doesn’t answer as Maud comes up behind Mildred in the doorway.

“We just thought that we’re all growing older and could use a bit of privacy, is all,” she says, and Mildred realizes that she’s already packed her own belonging.

It feels funny, to suddenly see Maud’s side of the room empty after all this time, and Enid’s quickly getting emptier.

“Oh.” She sits on her bed.

“It’s ok, Millie, we’ll only be just down the hall,” Maud follows her and wraps her arm around her shoulders, and squeezes her in for a hug before levitating her trunk and ferrying it down the corridor.

Enid finishes up and stands awkwardly by the door, her bag clutched in her arms in front of her.

They look at each other for a moment and Mildred feels like she needs to apologize for something but can’t seem to work out what. After a while Enid shrugs and leaves without a word.

______

She gets invite to Eunice’s that summer. She’s to stay a week and then they’re going to go camping with her dad. It feels like heaven.

Eunice is even prettier than Mildred remembers, even funnier, even smarter. They stay up nearly all night giggling in Eunice’s bed and Mildred feels like every cell of her body is continuously lit up light a lighting bug. She can’t stop looking at her. Brushing her arm against her. Blushing when she smiles.

And Eunice smiles back. Leans over her at the table in the morning to reach for more toast, body pressing for longer than it probably should. Sometimes at night she scoots in close to Mildred and whispers in her ear dreams for what she wants to be in life - a mediwitch - and where she wants to travel - Florence - and a million other details that are rendered into secrets by in intimacy of the darkened room and the warm breath against her skin.

They’re out in the woods behind the house on the day before they’re to leave for camping and Eunice is wearing a blue sweater that brings out her eyes in such a way that Mildred has hardly been able to string words together all morning.

Mildred’s following a shiny pattern of snail slime, hoping to harvest a shell or two, when Eunice comes up behind her.

“Look,” she says, holding out her hand where several dark, fat berries sit. “Wild brambleberries.” She pops one in her mouth and smiles slowly at Mildred.

Reaching out, Mildred goes to take one, but Eunice closes her palm and flips it over, her smile turning devious. “Here,” she stays, moving closer. Her hand comes up and she presses one of the berries against Mildred’s lips until she opens, trying not to choke as Eunice’s fingers brush against her skin. The berry is sweet and warm from the sun. She flushes.

They stand with their eyes locked for a breath, Eunice’s fingers still just touching her lips, until Mildred moves closer, heartbeating a harsh tattoo in her chest and hands trembling.  And slowly, very slowly, presses her lips against Eunice’s, eyelids fluttering shut.  

“What are you doing ? Get off me!” She’s shoved back so hard she falls, landing hard on the damp ground and her wrist twinges before her heart even has had the chance.

“What is wrong with you, Mildred Hubble? Spending all that time with Miss Hardbroom hasn’t turned you into a perversion has it?”

Mildred can only stare up at her in dawning horror, cheeks flaming until her heart catches up enough to scream in pain along with her twisted wrist.

Eunice is still staring down at her looking outraged and Mildred doesn’t think, just picks herself up and runs, cradling her wrist with her good arm until she reaches the house and skids to a stop in front of Eunice’s mum.

“I want to go home. I want to go home right now.” She anxiously shifts from one foot to another as Eunice’s mother looks up from the tart she’s making and frowns at Mildred’s muddy clothes.

“What happened dear? Is everything all-”

“I want to go home now. ” Mildred demands. She can see Eunice through the window walking slowly to the house. The last thing she wants it to be present when Eunice tells her mum that she - that she -

“ Now.” Mildred says again, with more power in her voice than she knew she possessed.

“Well, if you’re sure dear -” Miss Edgecomb waves a hand still frowning and Mildred feels herself re-materialize in Pippa’s chambers.

Pippa’s not there, but HB is.

She looks up startled at the sight of Mildred’s sudden appearance, and is on her feet in an instant looking at Mildred limp wrist and filthy, rumbled clothes.

“Mildred, what on earth -”

But Mildred throws her arms around her. Nevermind the searing pain in her wrist or the way she’s getting mud all over HB’s black silk dress. She buries her head against HB’s sternum and hangs on as if she’s a mast in a stormy, heaving sea. She doesn’t care that HB stiffens beneath her. She hugs and hugs and hugs until HB’s hands come to rest on her back, cold and slightly hesitant, but there.

They stand like that for a long time until Mildred pulls back and wipes at her eyes. “I never want to see Eunice Edgecomb again.”

And then she’s crying, crying hot wet tears and her heart is breaking - she didn’t think her heart could do that again after Mum - and HB is looking very, very startled indeed.

“Sit.” She directs Mildred to a chair at the table and moves her fingers quickly through the air summoning paper and pen, writes a note so quickly with her mind that the pen blurs through the air, and the paper vanishes before Mildred registers that she’s sending a note to Pippa.

Mildred complies, wincing as her wrist jolts, the extra movement of awakening a fire that seems to flare through her bone as tears still stream miserably down her face.

Brow furrowing, HB crouches next to her and takes her arm, straightening it and Mildred whimpers.

“What did she do to you,” HB sounds terse and it almost makes Mildred draw her arm back.

“Mildred.” She amends softening, but Mildred only cries harder. HB’s just performing the Healing Spell over her arm, murmuring softly, fingers dancing against the sodden fabric of her sleeve, when Pippa arrives. Mildred’s never seen her in such a state, grey and trembling. She sways slightly on the spot when she sees them and HB rises and moves to her side.

“What happened.”

“It’s alright, Pippa, she’s alright.”

But Pippa doesn’t buy it, not until she’s kneeling next to Mildred and has examined every inch of her with frantic clammy hands.

“Did something happen with Eunice?” Pippa’s voice is gentle, her eyes concerned, but Mildred glances at HB and only cries harder.

“Oh dear,” Pippa breathes and pulls Mildred into her, soggy dress and all against Pippa’s lovely cream blouse.

“Did you fight? Did she hurt you?” HB hovers by Mildred’s chair and her voice drops to her most deadliest Deputy Head at that last bit.

But Mildred can’t look at her. “She - she said mean things about HB,” She finally cries into Pippa’s shoulder instead.

She feels Pippa’s hands move and pull her back so that she can see her face. “Why on earth would she say things about Miss Hardbroom,” she says looking baffled.

But the words start to tumble out of Mildred, humiliation and heartbreak warring. “I - I - kissed her. And she pushed me down. And - and,” Mildred can’t say it. Can’t say the words and settles back on, “and then she said mean things about HB.”

Even with her eyes squeezed shut she can tell Pippa and HB are furiously having one of their silent conversations. It ends rather suddenly and she feels HB move from beside her but Pippa says, “Hiccup, stay,” rather sharply and she stills.

Looking up Mildred can see she’s halfway to the door but still can’t meet her eyes as she sobs out, “Sorry - I’m s-so s-sorry.”

HB is back by her side so fast Mildred thinks she must have transferred and she’s crouching back down next to Pippa and placing cold hands against her hot, tear drenched face.

“You have nothing to be sorry for, Mildred Hubble. Nothing.”

Mildred looks down at them, each holding one of her hands now, anchoring her.

“But I - but I kissed her.”

Pippa shoots a small look at HB and then squeezes Mildred’s newly healed hand. “There’s nothing wrong with feeling the way you do, Mildred. Just like you have nothing to be sorry for. Even if she doesn’t return how you feel,” Mildred starts to sob again, “even if she doesn’t - which not everyone you fall for in life will - she still shouldn’t have pushed you or called anyone names.”

Mildred sucks in deep trembling breaths and her anger at Eunice’s words against HB outweighs her heartbreak for a moment.

“I hate her! I hate her! I never want to see her again. How dare she!”

Pippa smiles slightly and leans up and brushes a kiss to Mildred’s forehead. When she leans back Mildred sees that her free hand is cupped against the back of HB’s neck, stroking the nape where a few wisps of hair have escaped from her bun.

It’s only then that Mildred realizes how silent and still HB is, her eyes a little bloodshot. But she squeezes Mildred’s hand tightly and leans into Pippa’s touch. When she speaks her voice is rather gravely.

“Sometimes," she starts, then stops. “Sometimes, people behave badly out of fear.” She clears her throat and and her eyes slide over to Pippa briefly before returning to hold Mildred’s gaze. “That doesn’t make what they do right. It doesn’t mean they don’t hurt other people with their reactions.”

“And sometimes people are just bigoted and prejudice for no damn reason,” Pippa bursts out. HB quels her with a look and Mildred suddenly knows this isn’t the first time Pippa’s gone off about the topic in HB’s defense.

Pippa takes a deep, steadying breath, and brings a hand to Mildred’s cheek. “Oh, my sweet girl. Heartbreak is a terrible, terrible thing.” She moves fractionally closer to HB and Mildred watches the dance they do, the dance they have always done, and about a thousand more pieces of the puzzle that is HB and Pippa’s relationship fall into place.

She leans forward and throws her arms around both of them, crying less out of heartbreak now than out of sheer relief that they are here with her, arms tightly entwined around her own.

Chapter Text

When school begins she doesn’t mention Eunice, not even once, and Enid and Maud don’t ask, though she thinks they might feel a little bit relieved. Or perhaps she’s just relieved to have Enid friendly with her again, laughing and joking and sneaking about the halls at night as they have always done.

Yule approaches but somehow it seems slightly easier this year that the two previous. Her heart still twinges, and she cries at the first snow, and does feel blue more often than she has of late. But time is dulling the sharpness of grief into an solid aches that lives perpetually just under her heart.

She builds snowmen with her tutor group of first years and gets into a pretty rowdy snowball fight with Enid (Maud refuses to take part). They drink hot cocoa and help decorate the great hall with steamers, shooting the blue and silver colors of Yule into the air by magic until the whole room shimmers and sparkles like an icy lake. In the evenings, they sit by a huge fire in the study hall and pass revisions back and forth, eyes growing sleepy as darkness gathers outside the window.

She thinks she might be happy even. Almost. She’s eating regularly and, aside from late night revising, she’s getting more sleep now that her night terrors have all but subsided.

Which is more than she can say for Pippa. In the weeks leading up to Yule, Pippa appears at their mirror calls looking more and more troubled, deep circles that half-moon beneath her eyes deepening at each meeting. Mildred’s been so busy she hasn’t stopped by for their Friday evenings in more than a month, and she frowns at the mirror now wondering if Pippa is overworking herself.

It’s not until HB arrives at class one day not long after with a twitch in her firmly clenched jaw that Mildred truly begins to worry. She’s sharper than even usual with the class and assigns them three times the standard homework, raising her eyebrows to a dangerous level when they grumble in protest. Mildred suspects anyone less versed in the inner workings of HB would not suspect anything more than a bad day, but the fact that HB is purposely avoiding meeting her eyes is the last straw.

After lessons she marches to the mirror room and swipes her token - because like hell she is going to try to have this conversation with HB - and throws herself down in the chair to wait.  Pippa appears, looking even more careworn than before, still somehow managing to smile at her through the glass.  

“Are you and HB fighting?” She demands without preamble.

She’s surprised when Pippa looks first shocked, then confused. “Fighting? Why would - ” She stops and frowns. Bites her lip and frowns more deeply.

“Uh, are you?” Mildred waves her hand by the mirror to try to get Pippa back on track. She feels she might be pushing her luck, but Pippa never has looked so worn down in all the time she’s known her, and Mildred is not letting another miscommunication ruin her and HB for another thirty years.

Pippa looks up and for a moment Mildred thinks she might be near tears.

“What do you want to do about Yule this year, Mildred?”

“Don’t change the subject,” she snaps.

But Pippa merely looks perplexed again for a moment before shaking her head as if to throw off whatever thoughts seem to be crowding her mind.

“Oh. I’m sorry, Mil. It’s just - ” She fidgets in a way that is much more HB than Pippa, but takes a deep breath, her face relaxing slightly. “The last two years my parents have traveled for the holidays. But this year they would like to meet you - they’d like us to come for Yule.”

“Really?” Mildred grins. “I’d love to meet them!”

But Pippa merely looks more harried. “Do you not want them to meet me,” Mildred says slowly, cold slicing down the back of her neck.

“Oh course I do, sweetheart. They are going to adore you. Just adore you. I promise.” Pippa makes a motion as if to reach for Mildred and then laughs a little as her and meets the glass. “Whoops,” she say. “Someday they’re going to invent a mirror you can just step through.”

“So, we’ll go to your parents. What about HB, will she come?”

And, ah. There it is.

Pippa’s face returns to looking troubled and she won’t meet Mildred’s eyes.

“HB and I aren’t fighting Mildred. It’s just, she also thinks we should go to my parents and I can’t persuade her otherwise.”

“So it’s you who don’t want to go to your parents.”

Pippa laughs a little at that and shakes her head again. “I’m sorry, I’m not being very clear about this. It’s just that -” she pauses and seems to pick her words carefully.

“My parents aren’t fond of HB. And that’s putting it nicely. She hasn’t been invited.”

Mildred watches in sympathy as Pippa’s face nearly crumbles, but she draws in deep breath and squares her shoulders returning her eyes to Mildred’s with steady determination.

“So you, see, it’s a bit of a conundrum.”

“Because you want to see your mum and dad, but you also want to spend Yuletide with HB.”

“And you,” Pippa amends. “And with you. I suppose I should have asked you sooner what it is you want to do. I just didn’t want to pressure you either way and I didn’t have an answer.”

“I suppose I would want to spend Yule with HB - no offence to your parents, I’m sure they’re lovely,” Mildred says slowly. “But they have each other at least, don’t they? And we’re all HB’s got, aren’t we?”

Pippa does cry then, though Mildred can tell she’s trying really hard not to.

“And maybe - maybe we can go to to your mum and dad’s for Yule lunch?” Mildred adds. “That way they get to see you at least a little on Yule.”

Smiling at Mildred through her tears Pippa sniffles a bit and says, “I knew I should have asked you sooner.”

Mildred grins at her but then looks serious. “Why don’t they like HB?”

Pippa casts her eyes to the ceiling and hums a bit. “They’re not very pleased with how we parted ways last time.”

“You mean when she broke your heart?” Mildred says bluntly.

Pippa winces and Mildred suddenly realizes the wound still might be a little fresher than Pippa lets on. “They worry,” she shrugs but looks unhappy.

“Well,” she say, thinking, “I think HB should come with us to lunch at least. How are they going to get to know that she’s alright if they haven’t seen her in thirty years and won’t give her a second chance?”

Pippa opens her mouth but Mildred cuts her off, “And I don’t care if she’s invited or not. She’s your - she’s your HB - and if they don’t want her there, than I’m not going either.”

At first she thinks she’s really gone and said the wrong thing because Pippa’s sobbing - no, no she’s laughing - laughing and crying just a little and beaming through the mirror at her.

“Mildred Hubble,” she says once she’s calm, “you are truly Julie Hubble’s daughter.”

Mildred feels her heart flutter in her chest and bites her lip, bittersweet tears crowding her vision.

“You think so?” She whispers.

“I know so,” Pippa leans forward and holds her gaze. “In so many ways.”

Biting her lip Mildred smiles shly. “I’m glad.”

They talk a bit more before dinner bell rings and Mildred prepares to get up.

“Wait, Mildred?” Turning back she sees Pippa has moved even closer to the mirror and is pressing one hand against the glass. “I just wanted to say, again, that I think you a very special witch.” Pippa swallows and then smiles, eyes very bright. “And I also wanted to say, that I love you. Very, very much.”

Gasping, Mildred crowds close to the glass and places her hand against Pippa’s, wishing she could feel her warmth. “You mean it?” Pippa nods solemnly, eyes wet again. And Mildred sniffles a little before she’s able to say, “I love you, too.” They sit for a moment until the bell rings once more and Pippa inclinds her head. “You better go.”

“Yeah,” she wipes her eyes and rises, looking back at Pippa one last time.

“Go on, then, wouldn’t want to be late.”

Mildred smiles and heads to dinner, a glow around her heart.

______

When HB doesn’t make an appearance, Mildred waits until most of the students have headed to their rooms or to the library before she makes her way to HB’s door and knocks. HB has to know it’s her, after no other student would probably dare disturb her after her dangerous mood all day, but still, she feels almost cowd when the door swings open on HB’s severe glare.

She doesn’t wait for an invitation. Brushing past her she desposites herself in a sprawl on the couch, raising her eyebrows in a silent challenge.

HB’s fingers twitch, but so does her mouth a bit and she settles in a high backed chair across from Mildred, spine as ramrod straight as ever.

“I’ve been informed that you think I should,” her lip curls, “ gatecrash your Yule lunch.”

“Not my Yule lunch , our Yule lunch. And, Merlin, Pippa doesn't waste time.”

HB purses her lips and sits up even straighter. “I’ve heard about your intent to decline the invitation should I not attend, and I must tell you now that I insist you must go.”

Mildred sits up and stares at HB. “We’re not leaving you alone on Yule - what, you think we’re going to just let you sit at home and -”

“That,” HB says, jaw clenching, “is precisely what you’re going to do.”

Crossing her arms Mildred bites back the sharp taste of frustration.

“I don’t understand why you can’t just go and -”

HB gives her a look so ominous that her voice quails and repeats, “I don’t understand,” in a very small voice.

“The Pengangle’s have every right to not want me in their home, Mildred. I must respect that.”

“But they want me, and they want Pippa, and if they want that, how could they only want a part of us.”

HB rises so quickly Mildred thinks she’s going to lean in and breath fire as she does when she’s particularly angry, but instead she turns away and it takes Mildred a moment to see her subtly trying to wipe away tears.

She stands with her back to Mildred for a long, long time and then says without turning. “You must understand that I hurt Pippa very badly. Very badly.”

“But you came back. Eventually, you came back,” Mildred says, voice still timid, unsure of the boundaries now.

Slim shoulders shrug jerkily and Mildred bites at her bottom lip. “You’re not - you wouldn’t - you wouldn’t leave again would you?”

HB whirls around, eyes wide and raw with pain.

“I won’t. I wouldn’t. ” It’s the first tinge of emotion in her voice tonight and Mildred presses on.

“Well, so then Pippa’s mum and dad are going to have to just get used to you, aren’t they? If you’re not going anywhere.”

She looks hopefully up at HB, but HB shakes her head and crosses to sit next to Mildred on the couch.

“But what if they don’t,” she says in nearly a whisper. “What if they never do - and Pippa - it would destroy her. All over again. I couldn’t, I won’t do that to her.”

Mildred is close enough to see the fear in HB’s eye, the way her lips tremble slightly even as she clamps her jaw shut tightly.

“But what if they come to love you,” Mildred whispers back, the word feeling unfamiliar on her tongue, said for the second time tonight after so long withheld.

HB blinks at her. Reads between the lines. Reaches out and takes her hand.

“Not everyone has a heart like yours, Mildred.”

Mildred thinks about her Mum. “But look at Pippa, she must have learned it from somewhere. Her heart is - “

“Everything,” HB finishes, a tear finally breaking loose to streak down her cheek. “It’s everything.”

Squeezing her hand tightly Mildred smiles, “I think you should come. How will you know if they feel differently after they see how happy you make her - how happy you make each other - unless they spend time with you?”

HB looks uncertain but Mildred pushes on. “Besides, I’ll be there. How bad can it be.”

She grins winningly up at HB who rolls her eyes but laughs just a little. Mildred released her and jerks her hand, pulling - and then pulling a bit harder as it sticks a little - a hankie from the air. HB really does laugh then and takes it looking mollified.

“Thank you, Mildred.”

“Now, I think you should go mirror Pippa back and tell her that you’re coming along. I don’t think she’s slept since All Hallow’s and if she passes out in her Yuletide pudding her parents really may blame you.”

______

And while in the end, the afternoon is far from free of awkward moments of silence and uncomfortable glance, Mildred thinks Pippa’s parents are plenty nice. Still, she announces loudly that she’d like to sit next to HB at lunch and presents such a united front of affection for both Pippa and HB that by the time they leave that evening, Mrs Pentangle walks them to the door and says, “Do come back soon, you lot,” with a significant look between the three of them, which Mildred can only interpret as acceptance.

Once they’re out of in the snow Mildred let’s out whoop and races around, kicking up white puffs and throwing herself down to make a snow angel.

It’s awfully quiet, and when she raises her head to see where her audience is she finds them still standing on the pathway, kissing so deeply that she has to drop her head back down again, cheeks red from more than just the cold.

______

That summer Pippa rents the cottage by the sea again and they spend most of the holiday there. HB’s around more than ever now and while she still flushes a dark red whenever Pippa leans in and kisses her cheek in front of Mildred, it seems like they’re finally growing more comfortable expressing affection in her presence. Mildred even sees HB holding Pippa’s hand as they walk along the beach one day at dusk, though she let’s go quickly when Mildred turns around to show off the sharply pointed auger shell she’s just discovered.

Pippa invites Maud and Enid to come for a week towards the end of the holidays. She hasn’t really wanted to share Pippa before, even though she loves her friends with all her heart. It’s just, Pippa is special. Pippa’s become her home, just hers and hers alone. Well, hers and HB’s.

Mildred gets a funny feeling in her stomach at the thought of HB. She’d announced at dinner the night before Maud and Enid were set to arrive that she’d be heading to a conference in London in the morning. Pippa’s eyebrows had shot up in surprise though she said nothing. Neither of them had eaten much of their dinner after that, and Mildred had gone up to bed feeling like she was failing to grasp one of the many nuances of their relationship.

She’s known HB long enough to understand her desire to slip away for the week, to leave Maud and Enid and Mildred and Pippa to the sun and the sea without her, but, still, Mildred wishes she would stay. She’s kept her promise all these years, never breathed a word to her friends or anyone else, not even Eunice, about Pippa and HB. For much the same reason that her friend’s haven’t met Pippa. It still feels private, secret. Maybe that’s because HB wants it that way.

She tosses and turns late into the night and finally gets up and slips silently from the house to wander down to the beach. The water is cold on her toes and she stands listening to the monotonous song of the waves until her eyes feel heavy and she makes her way back up the path to the cottage.

She’s just coming up the porch steps when she hears voices and peeks in to see Pippa and HB standing in the nearly dark kitchen, lit only by the small flame of a flickering candle.

Pippa’s still in her pajamas but it HB is up and dressed, her packed broomsachel in her hand.

“So that’s it, you’re just leaving?” Pippa is saying. Her voice is flat and Mildred skulks deeper into the shadows of the porch, listening.

“It’s better this way.”

“You always are the one who gets to decide what’s best for us, aren’t you.” She doesn’t sound angry, just tired, though HB still flinches.

They stand awkwardly, as if an invisible wall has been erected between then.  

“It’s just so hard - so hard - to always watch you leave.” Pippa all but whispers.

HB bows her head, fingers curling and uncurling at her side. “Look what happened with the Edgecombe girl.” She says, voice strained, and Pippa’s head snaps up.

“Maud and Enid would never - never - think of you like that.”

HB shrugs, just the barest lift of her shoulders.

“It would be,” she seems to search for the next word, “unwise for me to stay. They think we’re merely friends - if they were to discover -”

“I’m not ashamed of what we are. Least of all, I’m not ashamed of you, Hecate Hardbroom. Are you?” Pippa sounds fierce though her voice trembles and she steps closer to HB, ducking her head to try to see her face.

“Am I what?”

“Ashamed of this? Of us?”

HB raises her face, and Mildred can see shiny eyes glinting in the candle light.

“No. No. Never. I could never be - no .” Her voice wavers, “It’s just - it’s just -”

“Just what?” Pippa soften slightly but doesn’t reach for her.

“I don’t know if I’m ready to share. I’m not sure I’m ready to share you.”

And then Pippa’s pulling HB against her and murmuring things that Mildred can’t make out but that make HB tremble and she’s dropping her bag and pushing Pippa back against the table and kissing her - and Pippa’s making sounds that make Mildred’s stomach bottom out - and HB’s whispering I love you, I love you, I love you into Pippa’s neck as Pippa pulls her close and moves against her, legs coming up to wrap around her waist as their mouths reconnect - and then they’re both making sounds - and - and -

Mildred backs away slowly, quietly, and heads back down the beach. The moon is just peeking out from above the few clouds that scatters across the sky. It catches the waves, making them glint.

She finds a rock and sits for a long time looking out at the sea, thinking inexplicably of Enid. The sounds of the waves feel like the rising and receding tide of something that’s awakened low in her belly that she can’t quite place. And she doesn’t know why it makes her feel so very warm but also so very lonely.

______

In the morning HB is gone and Pippa looks tired but seems cheerful enough. She bakes every type of cookie imaginable and greets Maud and Enid with open arms, grinning at Mildred as they exclaim about the view down to the beach and the treats stacked high on the counter.

The non-Magical town of Glen Cove isn’t too far down the road and they stroll through the summer sun, buying ice cream and window shopping at the seaside shops.

Mildred takes them to a video arcade and they spend hours playing, laughing uproariously all the while. There’s even a bowling alley in town so they do that too, and Pippa catches her eye and they share a smile, remembering.

It’s towards the middle of the week when there’s a knock on the door just as they’ve sat down to dinner. Pippa frowns over at Mildred who shrugs and hops up, scooting around Maud’s chair to open it.

HB stands on the doormat looking hesitant and a little bashful.

“I thought,” She says in that way of hers that sounds like she’s pulling her words out of drying cement, “I might pop round for dinner.” Mildred grins, but HB remains on the doorstep and looks through to meet Pippa’s eye from where she still its at the table. “If that would be alright.”

“That would be the bats, Miss Hardbroom.” Mildred says, gesturing her in. HB looks grateful for both the welcome and the formality, and it’s all Mildred can do not to hug her.

Pippa rises and conjures another chair. “I can’t think of anything better.” She smiles at HB, her eye saying more than her words, and Mildred can just see her brush the back of her hand gently against HB’s arm as they sit.  

She can also see Maud and Enid trying not to giggle, sitting up a little straighter and shooting her looks.

She kicks Enid under the table because of the two she looks closer to laughter at the thought of eating dinner with a teacher , but tries not to laugh herself as Enid scowls.

And it’s not as awkward as she feared it might be. HB is on her best behavior, certainly less bat-like than she is at Cackle’s, though certainly not as relaxed as she is in private.

For their part, Maud and Enid adjust quickly, and Enid grills her about her day at the conference, since ‘Bee Magic’ as Enid likes to call it is one of her favorite aspects of potions. They discuss the latest debates around the effectiveness of powered versus silvered bee brain, and Enid gives even HB a run for her magic with her knowledge of why bee elements are preferable in transportation spells to other invertebrates. She gets so technical about the magical properties  of bee’s innate directional abilities lend to a potion, that even Mildred, who has always teased her about this interest has to stop and stare at her.

“You really love this don’t you?”

“Yeah, I guess so.” She shrugs and looks embarrassed but Mildred grins at her. “I think it’s awesome.”

Enid blushes a bit and Pippa looks back and forth between them, smiling in a way Mildred isn’t sure she likes. She’s glad when HB steps back in and saves them, offering to lend Enid a book on the subject when they return for term in the fall, which Enid enthusiastically accepts.

They launch back into it while Pippa, Maud and Mildred gather the dishes and deposit them in the sink, escaping to the porch. Pippa catches Mildred eyes and they share a look of fond amusement, and Mildred wonders just how much Pippa can guess about her feelings.

She and Maud leave her with a book on the porch swing and wander down the the beach, talking and laughing, and collecting seashells simply because they’re pretty and not useful. A while later Enid trips down the path towards then and they splash around a bit in the water as the sun sinks below the horizon.

“You never told me HB could be so - well - cool , Mildred.”

“If by cool you mean a big nerd,” Maud says, splashing her.

Mildred laughs. “You both are big nerds.” She has to bite back a That’s why I love you , and turns away to splash a little farther into the sea.

They muck about until they’re thoroughly sandy and just a little bit chilled and then head back to the beach where Mildred and Enid plop down side by side.

“Woah,” says Maud, staring up at the cottage, and they scramble back up to look. Through the gathering darkness, the bright kitchen window shines like a glowing postage stamp, Pippa and HB just visible, standing close together in the yellow light. Pippa has her arms around HB’s neck and is smiling up at her, a look so familiar to Mildred by now that she forgets that the intimate knowledge sets her apart from her friends.

When HB leans down and kisses Pippa softly, sweetly Enid breathes, “I knew it!”

Startled Mildred looks over at her in dismay. “You did?”

“Well,” says Enid, her eyes still trained one the window square where Pippa’s hands have come up to brush over HB’s cheeks, cupping her head and deepening the kiss. “It’s the way they act around each other, isn’t it? The tension . Do you remember HB at the Spelling Bee? It was so obvious.”

Mildred flushes and crosses her fingers that this is the only thing Enid has noticed.

“Did you know about this, Millie?” Maud asks, gawking up at the cottage. HB and Pippa have moved to stand on the porch, and they watch as Pippa kisses HB one last time before she transfers away.

“Is it serious?” Enid demands.

And Mildred thinks of waking up after a night of terror pressed between the two of them. Of lingering looks over breakfast, a snowy Yule, and a summer spent in fields of flowers. Of studying the stars with HB in the dead of night, and Pippa helping her with her school work, of Pippa with flour on her cheeks and a smile like the sun, and HB, the moon, always orbiting, only sometimes settling to land, but it’s enough. It is always enough.

“Yes,” she breathes in response to both questions, feeling a wetness on her cheeks and she turns away, leading them down the beach away from the house. They scurry to catch up with her and she waits until her cheeks dry enough before slowing down and linking arms with them.

They walk together under the moonlight and Mildred swears them both to secrecy and lets them into her world a little more.

Chapter Text

Mildred barely sleeps during her sixteenth year of life. She goes back to school only to be crushed by the workload of preparing for the Witching Entrance Exams, the amount of work the sixth form is given, and on top of it all, how badly she wants to kiss Enid Nightshade with every passing day.

But that’s not all that is keeping her up at night. No, that’s all almost background to the quest she’s really on. Something that she’s been thinking about since Yule last year, something Pippa said that she can’t seem to shake out of her mind.

So she sneaks to the library after curfew, spends hours cutting her fingers on the pages of dusty old tomes, leaning in close until her eyes smart, and neck aches. More than once she awakens slumped sideways on a library stool, the early morning sun making her grimace and squint.

There’s only one chance to get this right, she thinks. After all, her secret project isn’t one she can really test . She imagines the look on HB’s face if she does get it wrong, and redoubles her efforts at checking her work.

It takes her until nearly the end of the school year to feel ready. She’s either going to do it or not, and at this point she’s put to much of her heart and soul into this to turn back now.

So she waits until a lovely April day. The spring flowers are just blooming and the weather is nice enough that most of the students wander outside to study on the lawns. It’s HB’s day off and Mildred makes sure to arrange that she and Pippa go on a picnic far, far away from the prying eyes of their respective schools. And far away from Mildred.

And she gets to work.

HB’s wards to keep students out of her rooms haven’t worked on Mildred in years now, and she is easily able to magically flip the lock and enter.

Her hands shake a little as she sets up her cauldron and triple checks her ingredients:

Three golden hairs from Pippa’s head. Check.
Three long, dark hairs from HB’s. Check.
Six sets of wings from six queen bees (gathered by Enid of course). Check.
Liquid silver, heated and stirred twice counter-clockwise before measured. Check.
Seven different petals from seven different flowers, dried and pressed. Check.
An owl feather. Check.
An acorn. Check.
A button from HB’s wardroom and one from Pippa’s. Check. Check.
Nine ounces of water, imbued with the light of a full moon and strained thrice. Check.

She adds them in to the cauldron, reading and reading each line from her notes, before stirring seven times clockwise, twelve times counter-clockwise.

She closes her eyes and thinks of Pengangle’s. Of the small pieces of beeswax she’d tucked up on a window ledge, of the honey that she’d smeared along the edges of the floorboards on her last visit over spring holidays. She thinks of Pippa and HB’s sitting in the window seat there on summer evenings, of Friday night chess matches in this very room.  

Slowly, she begins the chant, squeezing her eyes tighter still, her heart thumping with both the thrill of the magic and the adrenaline of what getting this right could mean. What it would mean.

She feels the spell burst from within her and slumps back on her heels exhausted, eyes still shut. She doesn’t want to know if this doesn’t work. Doesn’t want to open them only to be hit with bitter disappointment at best, disaster as worst.

She opens her eyes. On the far side of HB’s room there’s now a door, a pentangle carved into the heavy wood. Blinking, heart hammering, Mildred rises on stiff knees and shaky legs and cross the room. She places her and on the knob. And pulls.

And there it is. All of it. The door opens and she steps into Pippa’s room at Pentangle’s, a smile splitting across her face. She whirls around the closes the door behind her, reaching up to brush her fingers across the small bat insignia that ornements the cream finish on the reverse side of her handiwork.  

She can hear the merry voices of Pentangle’s students on the lawn outside, and she throws the door back open, content to wander back and forth at the suit of rooms her spell has created at her leiser.

Finally she can’t bare her glee and spins and spins and spins around in Pippa’s room until she grows too giddy and too dizzy and drops to the floor.

She must doze off a bit because she wakes with a jolt to HB and Pippa staring down at her. “Mildred, are you alright? How did you get here, did you fly all this way?”

She sits up and rubs her eyes, smiling up at them.

“I thought I’d drop in for a surprise visit. But I suppose I should get back to Cackle’s. Wouldn’t want to miss supper.” She makes a big show of stretching, then crosses to the new door, smirking at the gasps behind her as they notice it for the first time, and opens it to reveal HB’s rooms.

“Guess I’ll just see you later then,” she says, and cheekly shuts the door on their stunned faces.

She waits, and is standing against the doorway with her arms crosses when it flies open and HB and Pippa fill the doorframe, staring at her.

“Mildred, what -?”

“Oh, hello again,” she says sweetly, watching as Pippa’s eyes flick back and forth between the rooms and HB’s narrow rather dangerously. “Did you need me back at Pentangle’s Pippa? Won’t be a problem.” She steps forward and brushes past them, sprawling across one of Pippa’s pink arm chairs.

“You might have to merge your decorating styles a bit,” she says examining her nail with a coolness she very much does not feel, her insides vibrating with mirth. “It’s rather a startling transition, I must say.”

Pippa claps a hand over her mouth, eyes wide in disbelief, as if she’s finally getting the picture.

“I can’t figure out a ward to keep students from each school crossing over should they, by any chance, get into one of the rooms.” Standing she shoves her hands bashfully into her pockets and adds, “I’m going to need your help with that.”

HB’s eyebrows are so far up her forehead they might as well be in her hairline. “You were able to perform a highly, highly advanced - nigh impossible - Spacial Merging Spell, Mildred Hubble, but you are unable to adequately execute a simple, fourth form level Repellent Spell ?”

She’s moved closer all the while, her voice whisper soft. The effect of HB looming over her isn’t nearly as intimidating as it once was though, not now that Mildred very nearly matches her in height.

“Are you even surprised?”

HB throws back her head and laughs, deep, and full, and sparkling, like nothing Mildred’s ever heard from her. It fills her up inside  and spills out of her in her own laughter, Pippa joining as she crosses the space and pulls Mildred into a tight hug.

“You are something else, Mildred Hubble. A very special witch indeed.”

“Thank you,” HB says, eyes slightly glassy but filled with warmth. She moves to the doorway and examines it, before stepping through into her own rooms and crossing to examine the contents of Mildred’s cauldron.

Pippa takes Mildred's hand and follows her through, wrapping her arms around her as they stand and watch HB fuss through Mildred’s notes.

“Very advanced magic,” HB mutters again, flipping through some diagrams until she lands on one of a dissected bee.

“Asking Miss Nightshade some research questions, I see.” Mildred blushes and shrugs, smiling happily at the small crease that draws up between HB’s eyebrows when she’s really interested in something.  

“I’ll walk you through it later if like, I think I should go and get some sleep. I’ve been working in this nonstop since nearly last summer.”

Pippa pulls her close and kisses her cheek, bumping her forehead against Mildred’s gently.

“Really, thank you. You - you’ve given us, both of us, such a gift.”

“It was your idea really,” Mildred mumbles, pleased but slightly pink.

“Was it?”

Mildred ducks her head and grins, “Yeah, you said you wished someone would invent a mirror you could just step through. Well, I mucked about with mirrors for three months without getting anywhere. It wasn’t until I started thinking about how every entrance is actually and exit and started listening everytime Enid went on about Bee Magic and how bee’s can always find their way home that I started to get anywhere at all -” She break off and blushes, HB and Pippa both staring at her.

But they look so happy and so proud that Mildred bites her lip, needing to hear it. “I - I hope it’s okay.”

Pippa grasps her hands and holds them tight.

“Mildred, it’s the best gift anyone could ever have given us.”

From where she kneels on the floor HB nods and murmurs, “Very impressive,” before diving back into the notes.

“Oh dear, I rather think she’s going to be reading through your work all night.” But she’s looking at HB with such an expression of tenderness that Mildred suddenly feels she should wrap this up and make herself scarce.

Squeezing Pippa’s hand one last time she makes for the door. As she turns to shut it behind her, she sees Pippa reach down to pull HB up off the floor, sees how HB’s eyes slide away from the notebooks and up to Pippa’s, darkening as they meet.

She shuts the door and waits until she’s down the next corridor before she squeals, hopping around in a circle and grinning at the ceiling.

Giddiness races through her and when she unseeingly slams into a very Enid shape someone she doesn’t hesitate but throws her arms around her neck laughing as they crash together.

“What are you so happy about?” Enid says, arms still around her, noses nearly bumping.

“Everything.” Mildred says and kisses her. And when Enid kisses back, Mildred feels like she could fly.

______

It’s a happy summer. Mildred suddenly has free access to both Pentangle’s and Cackle’s and spends her days racing back and forth between the two places - the two people - that have become her home.  

She gets to spend long afternoons with Enid down by Pentangle’s lake, and even gets to visit her very grand home and meet her parents, though they leave soon after for tour and Enid suggests they return to Cackle’s.

It’s more like home anyway, she says as the sprawling estate gets small and a smaller beneath their brooms. And Mildred feels her heart flutter with affection that they both feel the same, that Cackle’s isn’t just a school. It’s a place where they both found something to hold on to. Something worth fighting for. Found each other too.

She’s sitting in Pippa’s rooms one evening working on one of her university applications, though really she’s thinking of how Enid looked this afternoon when she’d fallen asleep on their picnic blanket. How the soft, dappled light had played across her skin and how Mildred had wanted to kiss her so badly. And so she had.

So it’s understandable when she doesn’t really realize that Pippa’s come in and is standing by the couch next to her, talking to her even, until she finds a hand waving her out of her revery.

“Mildred, earth to Mildred?” Her papers have half slipped off her lap and she sheepishly straightens them. HB smirks at her from across the room and Mildred has to resist the urge to poke out her tongue.

“Stepped into a fairy ring for a moment there, did we?” Pippa wrinkles her nose fondly at her and settles next to her. “I wanted to discuss something with you - about your upcoming birthday.”

“I don’t want a big party or anything,” Mildred says quickly. “Just maybe we could make dinner with HB and maybe Enid and Maud if that would be alright. Something like that?”

Pippa takes her hand and gives a small smile. “You never want anything big, sweetheart. You do know that we’d do anything for you, to make you happy? You don’t have to feel like you don’t deserve it, or that you can’t ask for something that you want. You know that, darling, don’t you?” She tugs gently on the tip of Mildred’s braid, and Mildred feels her eyes smart.

“It’s just that I don’t want - don’t ever want to be -”

“You’ve never been a burden, dear one. Never could be, never would be.” She tips her head so that it nudges against Mildred’s for a moment and then sits back.

“Actually, that’s what I wanted to speak to you about.” She shoots a look over at HB who folders her evening paper and rises, magicking the armchair so that slides in closer and she can sit across from Mildred, their knees almost touching.

“When a witch or wizard is legally placed into the guardianship of someone who is not their biological parent, there’s often a ceremony that goes along with it. Normally this sort of thing is done when the papers are signed, but we felt it would have been too much at the time - too much like a replacement -” She pauses and Mildred nods remembering the darkness surrounding the days when Pippa first came to be her guardian.

“When a witch comes of age, there is also a small ceremony, traditionally performed by a witch’s parents. I wanted to know how you would feel if - it would be ceremonial only really - since Hecate is not legally your guardian  -” an awkward look passes between them “- and we’re not, not - well. We both want you to know how much we love and support you, and how proud of you we are. And we’d like to - ”  

“Yes.” Mildred says. “Yes. Yes. ” She throws her an around Pippa, the other reaching blindly for HB who takes her hand, holding it gently between both of her own.

When she finally draws back, they’re all rather teary eyed, but Mildred feels a certainly growing within her, warm and sharp and steady.

“Yes.”

______

Which is how she finds herself in one of the beautiful stone gazebos down by Pentangle’s lake on the evening of her seventeenth birthday. Enid and Maud stand on either side of her, solid, unwavering witnesses. Her one hand tangle’s briefly with Enid’s while the other squeezes Maud’s elbow before she steps forward to stand before Miss Cackle, who is there to officiate. Pippa and HB fall in next to her and take her hands, holding them as Miss Cackle reads through The Rites of Adoption, her blue eyes sparkling behind her glasses.

It seems like so very long ago that she spent a summer taking tea with her headmistress. She can hardly remember anything about those days except feeling like her heart had been ripped from her very body and the nearly overwhelming desire to throw her teacup despite Miss Cackle’s indisputable kindness. She squeezes Pippa’s hand harder and Pippa squeezes right back.

When Miss Cackle finishes, she turns to Pippa and Pippa raises her hand and places her fingers gently against Mildred’s forehead, reciting her portion of the rite. She can feel HB’s hands on her shoulders, and turns, and HB repeats the spells her hands cool against Mildred’s skin. Her face is solemn, but her eyes glint at Mildred in the light of the candles that float above them below the gazebos roof.

When she’s done they turn back and Miss Cackle passes Mildred a stone chalice carved with daffodils and filled with water strained through lilac blossoms. Mildred sips from it, passes it to Pippa who drinks as well before returning it to Mildred who sips and passes it to HB. Taking her final sip, Mildred let’s herself think of Mum. Of how magical mum would find this moment. And for the first time ever, she knows that Mum would be glad she’s here. Standing between who people who love her deeply, with two more just behind her. She blinks back tears and hands the calice back to Miss Cackle who vanishes it and waves her hands, chanting the final Rite.

When it’s done she sags slightly and moves to hug them, but HB catches her arm and raises a brow.

“Not yet. We still have your coming of age ceremony.”

They all move into a circle around her, reaching up to pluck candles from the air above her. She stands at the very center as Maud passes her a long red candle, it’s wick fresh.

When they’re assembled there’s quiet for a moment and then Miss Cackle steps forward once more and chants the Rite for Coming of Age, touching her flame to light Mildred’s candle. She steps back and Mildred walks a full circuit around the perimeter of the circle before she returns to her place in the center, blowing out her candle and turning to face Maud, who steps forward.

“You’ve been my best friend since the day I crash landed on your balcony, Mildred Hubble. You’ve stuck by me, and stood up for me, and believed in me when I didn’t believe in myself, every time. I couldn't ask for a better friend. Bright blessings, Millie.” She lights Mildred’s candle and steps back and Mildred repeats her circuit, blows out her candle, and turns to Enid.

Enid’s eyes are very bright when she steps forward, and Mildred feels her cheeks warm. They look at each other across the glow of the candles shyly. “I never wanted to belong anywhere before,” she begins, shifting from foot to foot. “Not until that night when we snuck into the confiscation room to rescue Muddles.” From the edge of the circle HB makes a hissing noise but Miss Cackle nudges her, laughing softly.

“Even though you were at Cackle’s on a trial basis, you risked it all to help me. No one had ever done something like that for me before. And they way you spoke about your friendship with Maud, I just knew I wanted you to feel the same way about me. I’d never had a friend before. No one had ever made me want to belong. But that night, I knew I wanted to belong with you. I always have wanted to.” She finished blushing, and lights Mildred’s candle, avoiding Mildred’s eyes as she makes her next round.

Candle out again, HB steps forward and Mildred feels the nervousness she used to get in her stomach back when she was very young and HB was still such an enigma.

“Mildred. Hubble.” HB begins slowly, and Mildred breaks into a grin, which HB returns, though only with her eyes, her face nearly impassive. But Mildred knows, and it’s enough. “Rare is it to meet a witch of your talent. Rarer still to meet a witch with your heart. It’s been an honor to watch you come of age.” Mildred glows as bright as her newly lit candle at the praise and HB withdraws.

Mildred take the next circuit more slowly, trying to tamp down the emotions growing inside her but it doesn’t work. But the time she turns to Pippa she’s already crying.

The candle light illuminates the delicate beauty of Pippa’s face as she steps forward and Mildred wants to drop her candle and cling to her. She speaks before Pippa can.

“You saved me,” she says, suddenly needing Pippa to know, to know how she feels about her. “You were there from the first moment. You hardly left my side. You held me, you comforted me, you loved me.” She’s crying openingly now. “You loved me.”

Pippa’s crying too, “From day one.” She whispers through her tears. “You make it very easy, Mildred Hubble.”  

She draws a deep steadying breath and brings her free hand up to wipe at her tears. “I’ve always said you were a very special witch, Mildred. It’s truer now that it has ever been. With everyday that passes your generosity of spirit, your humor, your instinctual reaction to be kind - I don’t think you know how rare that is. You’ve brought so much love into the lives of those around you. I can only hope that you know how much it is returned.”

“I do,” Mildred whispers, her eyes never leaving Pippa’s. “I do.”

Pippa tilts her candle and lights Mildred’s, together they watch it flame.

“May your cauldron, and your heart, always be full.” She steps back and Mildred makes her final circuit making eye contact which each the people in the circle who have helped make her what she is, pausing beside the space that has been left empty, reserved with honor.

“I love you, Mum.” She whispers, tears falling thickly, before returning to the center. She rotates in a circle and chants the closing Rite, before flicking her wrist and producing a paper lantern from thin air. Turning she makes her way down the gazebo steps alone, until she reaches the edge of the lake. Lighting the lantern, she holds it before her feeling it warm her hands. And then, with Mum’s face warm in her mind, she releases it, watching as it floats up, up, up to tangle amongst her beloved stars.

It’s very quiet for a long time. When, finally, she looks back at the gazebo it’s mostly dark, empty except for the silhouettes of two familiar figures. They wait for her at the top of the stairs and Pippa embraces her, holding her close breathing her in like she was her own. And now I guess I am , Mildred thinks tremulously.

After a long moment Pippa steps back and HB moves forward, pulling the silver watch that lives around her neck up over her head and down over Mildred’s instead.

“But - but - it was your mother’s,” she gasps her hand coming up to cup the heavy timepiece.

“And now it’s yours.” HB smiles gently. She throws her arms arms around HB, fully prepared for HB to stiffen as she often does before returning affection. But HB holds her tightly, hand coming up to stroke her hair.

Pippa moves in to embrace her as well, until both their hands are smoothing over her hair and face, eyes damp and bright with pride.

“Our girl,” Pippa whispers, tilting her head against HB’s shoulder, fussing with the chain of the watch so that it lays more evenly against Mildred’s blouse. It’s a gesture she’s observed between Pippa and HB so many times by now it fills her with warmth from head to toe.

“I am yours,” Mildred feels herself gasping around the emotion rising in her throat, “Have been yours. For years and years now.”

HB is blinking back tears, and Pippa’s full on crying, and Mildred pulls them both in close until she she is buried between them, can smell their familiarity, feel their heartbeats surrounding her.

And they stand under the moonlight, a trio, a family.

Chapter Text

It’s amazing how her possessions have scattered themselves over the years between Pentangle’s, Cackle’s and the cottage at Glen Cove. It takes her most of the summer to gather everything up to pack into her trunk. HB, for her part, is having absolute kittens, having packed and repacked Mildred’s potions kit on at least twelve separate occasions.

“She’s just anxious, sweetheart,” Pippa sighs, smoothing a hand over her hair as they peek in and observe HB muttering over the kit for the third time that week. “She’s going to miss you an awfully lot, you know.”

And Mildred realizes that while Pippa sees her often enough, is always there for a mirror call, or a late night where Mildred sneaks down to HB’s room - and HB gives a mild sigh of disapproval but always lets her in - she stills sees Pippa much more frequently than other girls get to see their mums. But HB - well - HB has seen her nearly every day since she was eleven.

Suddenly feeling like a small child all over again, Mildred slips through the door until she’s standing by HB’s workbench. She remembers being terrified of the woman in front of her and how big and strange this room felt then. But all she can feel now is home, home, home.

And she’s sniffling and choking a bit because this leaving feels like leaving and HB looks up in surprise at her.

“Mildred - what -?”

But Mildred throws her arms around her waist and wails into her blouse, “I don’t want t-to l-leave y-you.” She’s crying, big, gulping sobs, hasn’t cried like this in years. It feels silly, like too much childish emotion when she’s supposed to been grown up enough to move onto more grow up things. The thought only makes her cry harder.

But HB wraps her arms securely around her and Mildred can feel her taking deep, shaking breaths under her hands. Peeking out from around around Hecate’s shoulder Mildred sees Pippa watching them, her hand raise to hide a smile, eyes wet. A silent conversation must pass between her and HB, as it so often does, and Pippa smiles, nods reassuringly.

“May I transfer us?” Hecate’s voice is rather gravely and Mildred nods, cheek scraping against the fabric of HB’s dress.

She expects them all to arrive back in HB’s rooms, for there to be tea and maybe crumpets with perhaps an extra bit of jam as HB and Pippa cajole and sooth her into a more dignified state.

Instead, it’s just her and HB that re-materialize and she starts with surprise as she feels a cool evening breeze against her neck.

Pulling back she looks around, taking in the rooftop where she’s spent so many nights. First alone, then with just HB, then with HB and Pippa.

She pulls back and looks up at HB questioning, but she’s met with only an enigmatic smile and a gesture to take up her seat on the nearest parapet.

They settle, and HB tips her head back to watch deepening blue of the late summer sky. Long moments pass and they fall to naming the stars as they begin to appear.

Venus and Sirius and Capella and Vega.

“Oh look, there’s Spica,” Mildred points, and HB reaches out and catches her hand, bringing it in to rest above her heart briefly, before releasing it.

“There’s something I’ve been meaning to speak with you about, Mildred.” She voice is serious, more akin to her Deputy Head Voice than what Mildred is used to hearing when they’re alone together.

She shifts uncomfortably, feeling like she’s about to be caught out about something, unsure about what it is.

“Pippa’s already given me the sex talk,” she musters, mainly because she knows it will make HB flush.

It works wonders.

“Well,” says, HB stiffly, smoothing invisible wrinkles out of her skirt. “That’s a mercy.”

Mildred tries desperately not to giggle at her discomfort before being quelled by a sidelong look.

“It’s a matter I would like your opinion on.”

“Oh?” Mildred shifts to so she can look more fully at HB, straightening up and trying to seem grown up. These type of exchanges are newer, still rare, and she treasures them.

“A spell or -?”

Hecate smiles gently and shakes her head. “No, rather more personal, than that. It’s about the school.”

“What, Cackle’s?”

“Yes.” HB seems to relax a bit, leaning back on her hands to study the sky.

“The time has come for Ada to choose a successor. Having no bloodheir of her own, The Code requires her to select someone to inherit the guardianship of the school.”

“Miss Cackle’s retiring?” Mildred blurts out, and HB smiles gently at her. “Not yet, but she is thinking about the future. Cackle’s has a very long standing tradition. It’s been run by her kin since nearly ancient times. But the line ends with her, and she’s anxious to secure the school’s future into a new age.”

HB pauses and relaxes her fingers from where they’d steepled together in her lap.

“She’s asked me to do the job, and I’ve accepted.” She pushes an invisible strand of hair behind her ear in an uncharacteristically demure move.

“Oh, HB - that’s the bats! You’ll be Headmistress then?”

“Eventually.”

HB shoots her a furtive, sidelong look and hesitates, and Mildred, excited as she is, has learned to pick up when HB is trying to get her to piece something together for herself.

“But you said you had something to ask me? I think it’s grander than finding starliss on a full moon, if that’s what you want to know.”

“Thank you, Mildred.” HB lips hover near a smile and she turns so that they’re sitting face to face, growing serious again.

“Mildred, you know that I have no bloodheir myself - “ She hesitates, looking Mildred in the eye before continuing. “I will have no bloodheir. But Ada and I have been discussing it, and we feel - we feel that you have a deep connection to the school and to what Cackle’s stands for. And we both hope that you will consider taking on the school at the time of my retirement.”

Heart leaping, Mildred gasps, “You mean - you mean me , be Headmistress ?”

HB looks at her gently. “You needn’t decide now, it’s a very big choice to make. But we thought with your interested in pursuing an educational track next year - well. We’ve been watching you really. You’ve excelled with leading tutorials for the first and second years and,” HB pauses a sly look crossing her face, “and with your success as Mistress Darkbroom , we really feel that should you wish to teach, we’d be eager to have you back at Cackle’s once you’ve completed your studies.”

“You mean it?”

“Yes, we mean it.” HB smiles. “More than that, Mildred, we - Ada, Pippa and I - we all want you to feel as if Cackle’s is your home. That you’ll always have a place here, no matter what.”

Mildred feels her heart crumpling up in her chest, unprepared for how desperately she’s been yearning for the sense of place that HB’s words bring her.

“But - but -” She finds herself sobbing, “But I’m leaving .”

HB looks at her through the steadily growing twilight and takes her hand once more. “But you’ll always somewhere to come back to. Always.”

Flinging her arms around HB’s neck Mildred sobs into her shoulder for a bit, and HB pats her on the back until she’s able to stop gulping for air.

Once she’s calm, she looks out past HB, out at the parapets and the towers, and the warm red stone she loves so dearly, across the grounds where she’s played, and learned, and cried, and fallen in love, and lost. Past all the moments of the last seven years that have made her who she is now, sitting beneath the stars with warm arms around her as she whispers “ Home ” into HB’s neck.

She sits back hiccuping and brushes her tears away bashfully.

“Looks like you’re not the only one deserving of your nickname, Hiccup.”

They turn and find Pippa leaning against a nearby parapet looking at them both fondly. She holds out a basket, a lantern, and a blanket and joins them on the turret.

“Here, I brought -”

“Crumpets and jam!” Mildred crows, peering into the picnic basket.

Pippa settles beside her and leans over to kiss the top of her head.

“Just for you, my love.”

Mildred flushes at the endearment, but then so does HB, whose entire body relaxes in Pippa’s presence, as it almost always does.

“You told her then?”

HB ducks a nod and Pippa leans forward and brushes a kiss over her cheek, making Mildred and HB blush in unison once more.

“Good.”

They have their supper under the stars in contented quiet until Mildred is struck suddenly by a thought.

“What about Pentangle’s?”

“Hmmm?” says Pippa, from where she’s curled on the blanket, resting on her side as Mildred leans up against her.

Tilting her back she tries to see Pippa’s face but gives up and settles for watching the way HB’s hand is positioned just next to Pippa so only their thumbs are touching.

“You guys can hold hands, you know I don’t mind,” She rolls her eyes and watches as HB’s face flames into crimson, legible even in the darkness.

Pippa laughs and doesn’t move, waiting until HB slides her hand over and enwines their fingers, struggling all the while to retain her dignity.

“What about Pentangle’s” She says, with a distinct air of trying to steer the conversation away, especially since now Pippa’s thumb is stroking over her fingers.

Behind her, Mildred feels rather than hears Pippa snort, and HB nearly manages to crack a smile.

“Well,” say Mildred, straightening so that she can look at both of them, “I was only wondering who would be Headmistress there once Pippa retires,” she ventures, hoping she’s not out of line.

But Pippa smiles at her and let’s go of HB’s hand, gesturing Mildred back down so she can stroke through her hair.

“Pengangle’s is a bit different. I’ve told you it’s a modern school - it’s not bound to the same ancient magic that governs Cackle’s. When the time comes, I’m free to interview and select the candidate who I think would do the best job, who would uphold the values of the school to their best of their ability.” She hand moves down to squeeze Mildred’s shoulder, “Like what Ada has done with securing you both for Cackle’s. The difference is, even should I have had a bloodheir, The Code wouldn’t require that heir to inherit.”

Mildred looks and sees something pass between Pippa and HB, but it’s too fleeting to interpret and she shifts so she’s laying on her back, looking up at the stars.

“That’s good, I suppose,” She reached out and brings HB and Pippa’s hands to rest on her stomach, linking them. “Like, what if your heir doesn’t want to run a school, what if they want to be a broomstick gymnast or a professional chanter? Or what if they’re truly horrid at it, or - like - like Agatha.”

A small from gathers between HB’s eyebrows as it always does at any mention of Ada’s wayward twin. “It’s an unfortunate case, Agatha. I don’t think there had ever been twins in the inheriting line before. It did put the school at a great risk. It is a danger of tying the line into a family.”

Pippa nods, “But usually the inheritor knows from a young age they will grow up to continue the lineage of Cackle’s. It’s a great responsibility, a great honor, I believe that the magic creates a bond between eldest daughter and school.”

“Is that what happened to Agatha? She grew up her whole life feeling bound to the school but knowing she would never inherit it?”

But HB shakes her head, her frown deepening. “Ada and her sister were very close as children. As soon as Ada was old enough to understand her responsibility, she swore she’s share it equally with her sister. It wasn’t until Agatha started to cause trouble that she was forced to reconsider.”

“I suppose that’s true,” Mildred sighs. The evening breeze tickles the wisps of hair that had fallen loose from her braid against her cheeks and she feels content, relaxed by the warm, comforting weight where Pippa and HB’s hands rest on her stomach.

“So really, Miss Cackle governs the school by choice as well,” she concludes. “If Agatha was first born and had the bond.”

She looks up at HB who looks rather surprised. “I suppose so.”

“Well,” Mildred places her hand atop the ones laced together on her stomach, smiling up at them. “She’s done a great job, and you will too, HB, no need to worry about any bond. You care about Cackle’s that was enough for Ada and it will be enough for the school too.”

HB looks gratified and even a little pleased, and Mildred never wants the evening to end. Never wants the morning to come when they’ll load her trunk onto her broom and she’ll fly off to Weirdsister leaving them behind.

But at the stars shift slowly above them, she’s bolstered by HB’s words and she seals them into her heart.

You’ll always have a place to come back to. Always.

Chapter Text

She’s just had a quarrel with Enid. She doesn't know why she can’t just say the words that Enid’s needs her to, why she’s being so stubborn and foolish about three little words that she feels , she’s sure she feels, but that she cannot seem to produce when expected to. And while she knows it will all be alright, they’ll be alright, she’s frustrated and grouchy, a small headache pulsing behind her right temple.

She’s only just thrown herself into a chair by the fire in her dorm when there comes a succinct knock at the door. Grumbling, half hoping, half dreading it’s the person on her mind, she slouches the door and opens it on a very anxious looking HB.

“HB? What is it? Is everything alright?” She scans HB from head to toe, assessing any potential trauma or damage. She remembers the knock on the door from the night her mother died, and for a moment it’s hard to breath. “Pippa - how’s Pippa?”

HB’s hands are on her elbows immediately, steadying her.

“It’s fine, everything is just fine.” She squeezes gently and looks slightly abashed. “I suppose I should have mirrored a head to say I would be coming.”

“No! No, it’s fine, I’m glad to see you. Come in -” Mildred turns rushing to tidy up a bit, blushing at the organized chaos that clutters most of the surfaces of her room.

But HB is looking around fondly as she closes the door and removes her cloak, hanging it on the hook by the door.

“Come in, come in - sit down.”

Mildred conjures tea, sloping it slightly as she rushes the pouring spell. She uses the corner of her sweater to mop up the saucer before she hands over HB’s teacup with a bit of a grimace.

And yes, there is the classic eyebrow lift, which makes Mildred flush, but the small qark upwards of the lips makes her grin despite it. Even if she does feel rather sheepish.

“Yup, still your Mildred Hubble, causing trouble,” she quips, setting down in a chair.

HB rolls her eyes but settles across from her, snapping her fingers to produce a tin.

“Gifts from Pippa,” and she smiles as Mildred shoots forward and tears the lid off.

“Jam cookies!”

“Your favorite.”

Mildred bites into one and closes her eyes. It tastes like home, like family, like love. She nearly sniffles.

When she opens her eyes, HB is up, pacing in tight turns before the fire.

“Everything is alright, isn’t it?” She asks, suddenly uneasy. “You two haven’t quarreled?” She thinks of the afternoon she’s spent with Enid the the rocky way it makes her stomach feel.

HB stops short and turns, fingers twitching at her sides.

“No.”

“Then what - then why? Not that I’m not happy to see you - “ She frowns. It’s been a long time since HB has seemed so inscrutable to her.

Finally she settles on a blunt, “Tell me,” pointing to the chair and trying to sound stern.  The effect is diminished somewhat by the smile that tugs up over her face at the realization that she’s adopted this method of handling a cagey HB from Pippa.

HB settles back down with a sigh, wringing her hands in her lap.

“I was wondering,” she begins in a low voice, but the stops, looking distraught.

“Go on,” Mildred prompts gently, proffering a jam cookie. HB shakes her head but relaxes slightly.

“I was wondering,” she tries again, “if you think - maybe. If I could - it if would be a good idea -”

She halts again and Mildred nearly rolls her eyes in fond frustration.

“HB?”

“I was wondering if you think that Pippa would want to marry me.” It comes out in a rush and HB sags back in her seat, red and embarrassed in a way Mildred’s rarely seen her.

She laughs, then realizes her mistake as HB stiffens again looking mortified.

“No, no -” she laughs again “-Sorry - sorry, it’s just that, yes. Yes . Pippa would.”

HB looks started, “She would?”

“ Yes.”

“I just - I just, I wasn’t sure -” HB is wringing her hands again looking pained.

But Mildred thinks back to an overheard conversation on the beach all those years ago.

“I’m not ashamed of what we are. Least of all, I’m not ashamed of you, Hecate Hardbroom. Are you?”

“Am I what?”

“Ashamed of this? Of us?”

“No - no. Never. I could never - no, it’s just - it’s just -”

“Just what?”

““I don’t know if I’m ready to share. I’m not sure I’m ready to share you.” ”

She loses herself for a moment in the way Pippa had murmured to HB then, of the way she had taken her in her arms and kissed her in a way that even now still makes Mildred blush.

HB’s voice startles her back to the present, “I’m not sure it’s a good idea.”

“Why wouldn’t it be a good idea?”

“What if she doesn’t want to?” HB’s voice is smaller than she’s ever heard it and Mildred’s heartaches for what, even after all this time, HB still struggles to see. She leans forward and paces a hand on HB’s, stilling them.

“She’s really, really proud to be with you, you know.”

HB doesn’t have to say it - the how could she be is written clearly across her face.

“You need to accept that she is, Mum.” It’s the first time she’s ever called HB anything other than HB or Miss Hardbroom, and HB’s head snaps up. Mildred flushes, but continues on resolutely.

“You need to accept that you are loved and people love you.” She feels herself tearing up and squeezes tighter, “You know, Pippa would throw a parade to let the world know how she feels about you. She only doesn’t because she knows you’d be embarrassed.”

“I’m not embarrassed,” HB chokes out, “Not of her. Not ever of her.”

“I know,” Mildred says, shifting over so she’s balancing on the arm of the chair next to HB, her hands still clutching tightly at HB’s trembling fingers.

“I know ,” she repeats.

“Do you want to marry Mum?” She repurposes the word and fixes Hecate with a stare determined to demonstrate that no matter what, they are already a family.

HB jerks in surprise again and lets out a shaky half-laugh.

“I never put much stock in marriage, I suppose. I know what we have and it’s more than enough.” She looks up at Mildred and there’s something in her eyes, a gleam of hopefulness that makes Mildred smile down at her.

“But sometimes, sometimes I think, I think about if it were just the two of us,” she unclenches her hands and turns them over so that she’s clasping her hands around Mildred’s own “and you, of course. Something quiet, no fanfare. And not because I’m ashamed or embarrassed,” she looks down and Mildred thinks she might be on the verge of tears.

“It just - it just feels -”

“Sacred?” Mildred supplies and HB looks up at her gratefully.

“Yes.”

She thinks of what she knows about HB and Pippa’s love, of the soft touches, and murmured assurances and the deep and unfailing ability to comfort and support. It’s always been a private thing, a special thing. Theirs and only theirs. And, she supposes, her own as well now too.

“What about a Binding Ceremony?”

HB tilts her head and Mildred can see her thinking hard.

“It’s like a marriage, isn’t it?” Mildred continues, “It has the same recognition under the law, the same weight. Perhaps more - the ceremony is much older - a more ancient form of magic after all.”

Eyebrows nearly to her hairline, HB lets out a shaky breath and nearly smiles as Mildred hurries doggedly on.

“They’ve just gone out of fashion, is all.” She shrugs, “The magical community preferred big parties and revelry now - plus, the magic behind Bindings is pretty arcane. But before marriage, Bindings were common. And often done in private, since the joining of two magical beings through a Binding is fairly intimate. It’s not understood by many. But I read a little about it while doing research for my Magical Anthropology course.” She flushes at how quickly she’s been talking, and how she’d been researching not just for her coursework. Not that she’ll admit to it.  

But HB is biting her lip and nodding, her uncertainty slipping away and Mildred nudges her over, slipping into the seat next to her, wedging herself against HB’s bony angles so she can rest her head on her shoulder.

“Think about it she says,” squeezing HB’s hand. “She’ll say yes.”

“I just want to make sure that she knows, without a doubt, with out any chance of ambiguity, how much I care for her.” HB pauses, swallows as if there’s something sticky in her throat before correcting herself, “How much I love her.”

She swallows again, and Mildred feels the way her fingers twitch beneath hers, a sure sign HB is struggling to manage her emotions.

And something stirs in Mildred mind, something, something back from a long way off, before she ever would have dreamed she’d be curled up in a chair with Miss Hardbroom talking, of all things, love .

“I remember,” she says slowly, as if recalling a vivid dream that’s slipping away upon waking. “I remember before my Mum died. Before everything changed. Before, I - well - it’s like I became a whole other person.”

She looks up and HB is staring at her, listening intently.

“It was so easy to say “I love you,” back then. I said it to Mum all the time, I said it to my friends - even my new friends - Maud and,” her breath catches on the next word, “Enid - all the time my first years a Cackle’s. It was so easy. Easy as breathing.”

HB’s fingers release hers and come up to wipe the tears that are falling down her face, though she doesn’t even recall starting to cry.

“And then it was like - like it became dangerous to love. To feel that feeling. Because what if what happened to Mum happened to Maud or, or, Enid, or Pippa, or you ?” She feels HB breathing beside her, feels the way her fingers continue to swipe against the tears on her cheeks, the way she’s cupping her cheek with an understanding in her eyes that makes Mildred repostition on the chair until she’s curled up like a little girl again. And HB holds her just like her mother used to hold her - if only slightly more delicately - after a playground squabble or a skinned knee.

“And then nothing was easy.”

“Not even breathing.”  Mildred can hear the the way the words rumbol up from where she has her ear presses against HB’s chest over the backdrop of her heartbeat.

Mildred reaches down to the watch that hangs around her throat, running her fingers against the grooves that have been worn into the edges from years of HB doing the same.

“Yeah.”

The sit together for a while in quiet understanding, holding each other.

Finally HB shifts, and Mildred moves to sit beside her again, their fingers still twined.

“You should ask her.”

“What if she says -”

“She won’t.”

Their eyes meet and though her lips are pursed in a thin line, Mildred knows by now how to recognize the look of affection in her eyes.

“I suppose…” HB trails off and studied her, her expression shifting back to uncertainty. “Would you - I wondered if you might - though you needn’t accept -” HB struggles, and Mildred merely lifts her eyebrows and waits patiently.

“I’d very much like it, if Pippa does agree, if you would,” she takes a tremulous breath, “if you would be the one to perform the ceremony.”

Mildred shoots upright, giddy and grinning. “You mean it?!”

“I - yes? If you are comfortable -”

But Mildred’s arms are around her, nearly choking her and cutting her off.

“ Yes. Yes! Of course - “ She’s beaming too much to finish the thought, cheeks aching with happiness.

HB let’s out a breath so deep that Mildred suspects she’s been holding it for about forty years, looking sheepish but pleased.

“Alright then.”

“Alright then,” Mildred echos, before unwinding herself and pulling Hecate out of the chair. She summons HB’s cloak and begins to shoo her towards the door. “Go ask her. Actually, tell her. At this point I don’t even understand how it’s even a question .”

HB blushes and Mildred pulls her into a brief hug before saying, “And - and give her all my love. You take some too.”

Their eyes connect and understanding passes between them.

Hecate’s hand comes up and cups her cheeks and Mildred feels that feeling she gets when HB goes all gentle on her. All motherly.

“We love you, Mildred. So very much.” She leans in and places a kiss to her forehead, lingering, before drawing back, eyes bright.

“I know.” she says around a sniffle, “I know. Now go.” She swats at HB and laughs as dark eyes narrow at her dangerously.

“Besides, there’s someone I need to go see myself.”

______

They pick midsummers for the binding. Well, Pippa picks midsummers. Mildred gets the distinct impression that HB is more concerned with the spell and ceremony rather than place of date. In fact, Mildred thinks HB might be ready to ask her to perform the ritual right here, right now, on the spot, if it meant being made Pippa’s sooner.

“But you are mine,” Mildred overhears Pippa say one late May night as they’re out collecting wild eglantine in the light of the moon. “The ceremony won’t change that we’re already each other’s.”

But Mildred has noticed a change in HB since that night in her dorm room. How she now seems to thrum with longing when she looks at Pippa, stands too close to her that she previously ever would have dared, approaches the planning with an unexpected urgency as if she cannot wait a moment more.

Pippa spends the evenings embroidering traditional binding gowns, pale silver with onyx beading for herself and a midnight silk shot through with rose gold for HB. She squints down at the complicated patterns in a dusty old tome and often has to gently nudge HB when she presses so close to Pippa’s side that it hinders her from moving an arm freely. Which is often.

The spell itself is fascinating to Mildred and she spends hours pouring over the archaic tongue, HB guiding her. Occasionally they have to call Pippa over to help with a bit of translation they get caught up on, once she even sits right on HB’s lap to get a better look at the runes. And HB doesn’t even seem to notice, simply wraps her arms around Pippa’s waist from behind and rests her chin on her shoulder. And that’s when Mildred knows how desperately ready HB is for this next step.

______

The night before the ceremony she gives them gifts: a watercolor for Pippa that she’s painted of the three of them sitting together under stars, enchanted to reflect the sky of the given season, and a near replica of the watch that now hangs around her own neck for HB.

“I didn’t want to just replace it,” she says, watching as HB examines it with misty eyes. “There are something that can never be replaced.” She curls up between them and smiles, “But sometimes what comes of it can matter just as much.”

Leaning over she clicks the button and the timepiece opens in HB’s hand. Only it’s not a watch, it’s a locket, with Pippa in one frame and Mildred in the other.

“So no matter what,” she continues, “you’ll always have us with you.”

______

Just before midnight, on the shortest night of the year, they return to the field where HB made a flower play a love song so many years ago. The day Mildred realized that starlight, and chess sets, and a thousand secret looks all added up to a sweet yet extraordinary devotion.

All added up to love.

She waves her hand and the field shifts, the tall grasses blowing in a sudden wind as she transfigures the land so that the space of flowers on which they stand is shielded them from the larger meadow. One more wave and the thousands for wildflowers under their feet glow a phosphorescent silver, casting light up to catch and scatter against Pippa and HB’s robes.

They both face Mildred, HB looking solemn and Pippa a little damp about the eyes.

“Are you ready?” She asks quietly and Pippa moves forwards and pulls her close, kissing her cheek.

“Yes.”

Mildred catches her face and holds it gently, wiping at tears with her thumbs. “I love you,” she says looking into Pippa’s eyes. Says it with all her heart, as if she might not have a chance to say it again. As if this time it matters most of all. Pippa embrasses her again and then lets go, turning to HB and taking her hands.

“Are you ready?” HB nods and Mildred can see how her fingers tighten within Pippa’s, belaying her emotion. Pippa steps back and Mildred draws in a deep breath.

“Ok, then. Let’s get started.”

Pippa and HB turn and stand back to back before where Mildred stands at the westernmost edge of the tall grasses. They turn their hands so that their palms just touch, and Mildred begins The Binding Chant.

After so much practice, the ancient tongue flows freely from her, but she’s unprepared by how it sounds in the stillness of the night, with the moon throwing long shadows over the land. Or with the image of HB and Pippa as they slowly move aways from each other, each walking a separate journey around the perimeter of the circle. They meet at the easternmost end and pass by each other, once, twice, thrice until they come to a stop on their fourth circuit, face to face.

They press their hands together, palm to palm, before turning and walking as one to the center of the circle.

Mildred’s chant becomes more intricate, the the vowels softening the consonants, rippling out into the night around her. And as the tune lilts, she feels her magic growing inside her, bright and full of love.

HB and Pippa turn back towards each other, and Mildred raises her arms and begins to snake warm tendrils of magic around them, wrapping them in the very words that flows from her, gathering them close and tying them together. The strands of golden light take on their own life, glowing impossibly brighter until they seem to sing themselves, a sweet nearly angelic counterpart so gorgeous that it brings tears to her eyes.

Pippa and HB are both lost from view, their robes dropping to the ground as the celestial light encompasses them, floating just above luminous carpet of wildflowers. And Mildred has to turn away, the music from the light too pure and sweet to witness any longer. She weeps then, from joy and the beauty of it all, somehow managing to keep her voice steady, rising and following in time to a magic older than time itself.

She’s filled then with memories.

Of being a small child, swung around by her mother. Mum’s curly hair and sparkling eyes. The way she used to kiss Mildred atop the nose and call her Millie-Love. She remembers getting toast crumbs in bed on weekend mornings as they snuggled together over breakfast. Of losing her first tooth and waking in the night to catch Mum swapping it out for a quid. And how she’d kept her eyes tight shut because Mum had always taught her to believe in magic.

She remembers Pippa holding her beneath a kitchen table on the very worst day of her life. Remembers Pippa crawling out on the roof with her and holding her hand after a nightmare even after Mildred had been cruel. Always holding her steady. Always grounding her. She remembers Pippa’s perfect, beautiful face in perfect detail, of how her nose crinkles when she laughs and how she’d pressed her fingers to the mirror glass the first time she’d said “I love you.” She remembers Pippa teaching her chess to help her broken heart, just like she taught HB so many years ago.

And she remembers HB. How scary and larger than life she’d seemed those first few years at Cackle’s, back when Mildred had hardly come up to her waist. How the first time she’d held Mildred it had been to soothe her terror. How her long dark hair had fallen then, a cloud of night about her, the strong security of her arms, and how she’d had slept curled protectively around her afterwards. How now she seems desperately familiar and knowable , softened by flower crowns and whispered secrets and years together perched on the rooftops communing with the stars.

She doesn't know if time passes, only that it does, as the golden light expands pressing against her back, warming her very soul. The music reaches a peak and she feels all the love she’s ever known, Mum, and Pippa, and HB, and Maud, and Enid blooming up inside her, filling her heart with that same glorious light. Behind her the light increases to such a degree that she has to close her eyes against it or be blind.

Suddenly it flares, bursting up, and up, and up into the night sky, streaming all around her in a warm, pulsing rush. The ethereal strains of music ring out a final note and lingers in the air as silence falls once more. When it all settles, she finds that she’s on her knees, hands in the soft earth, tears in her eyes.

A ray of light flares once more, though she doesn’t recall more words to the ceremony, and it takes her a moment to realize that the sun is just cresting over the land in the east. The tall grass around them have vanished, leaving the sun to slice through the darkness over the meadow as dawn breaks the night. Her heart flutters with warmth once more.  

There’s a soft noise behind her and she sits back on her heels for a moment, waving her hand to return Pippa and HB their robes before she turns to meet them.

They’re standing in the center of what once was the circle, holding each other as the golden morning washes over them. There’s still a faint glow where their bodies touch and Pippa moves to press her forehead against HB’s, kisses her sweetly as a beam of sunlight blots out them momentarily against the sky. Hecate must whisper something then because she draws back and smiles and HB bows her head so Pippa can place a kiss there as well.

They turn as she approaches and she expects them to look shy. Instead they look calm and steady, as if they will never have another secret between them, not ever again.

The sun is in her eyes and she’s blinded for a moment, though it might just be from the tears that stream down her face. They open their arms to her and she steps into their embrace, joy rising within her, bright like the sun. And as they wrap her in their arms she can feel the warm, sacred glow that still emanates from their bodies.

Like love.

Like magic.

Like home.