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The call comes in the middle of the night, and Hecate groans at the voice through the other side of the mirror, a faintly frantic, “Miss Hardbroom? Miss Harbdroom, are you there?”
It’s been a few months since she’s heard from Mildred Hubble, now off at college, undoubtedly terrorizing some other poor potions mistress, and Hecate forces herself to sit up, to blink blearily at the mirror across the room.
Beside her, Pippa snuffles in her sleep, reaching out when she moves to get out of bed.
“Hiccup?”
“I’ll be right back.”
Pippa makes a grumpy noise that makes Hecate almost smile, before she slips on her robe and waves her hand to tame her hair.
She moves to sit at her desk, lights a candle, answers the call and glares at Mildred, looking back at her, hair wild around her face, looking anxiously into the mirror.
“Mildred Hubble.”
Mildred nearly wilts in relief. “Oh, thank bats. I didn’t know who else to call—it’s not my fault, I swear, I—” She pauses, seems to take in Hecate’s appearance, the darkness of the room. “Did I wake you?”
“It’s three o’clock in the morning.”
Mildred winces. “I forgot about the time difference,” she says, stumbling over herself to apologize, and Hecate tiredly holds up a hand to quiet her.
“I am awake now,” she says, a bit curtly, but Mildred doesn’t seem to care, takes a deep breath, and is suddenly explaining how her flatmate tried to cheat on a test by using an advanced knowledge potion but she mistook bat’s blood for crow’s blood and now she’s got amnesia and can’t remember her name or anything else about herself and she’s gone and locked herself in the dorm room ensuite and “I found a book about amnesia potions and it said if it wasn’t reversed within twelve hours she’ll lose her memories and she’s been like this all day and the cure requires sheep’s horn but it’s a restricted ingredient and I tried to get it from the Dean’s office but I got caught and now our dorm room is under lockdown until the morning’s exams and I tried to tell our R.A but she doesn’t trust me because I accidentally turned her cat into a ferret my first day and there isn’t anyone else I could ask and I can’t get to the library and—”
“Breathe.”
Mildred stops abruptly, her face going a bit red and she inhales sharply, exhales too quickly and coughs.
With a sigh, Hecate resists the urge to put her head in her hands. “How long has it been since your flatmate took the potion?”
“Ten hours.”
“What ingredients do you have on hand?”
Mildred gives her a quick run-through of what she has in her dorm, and it’s far less than she expected—American universities are so distrusting, she thinks sourly—but it will have to do.
“Flies wings can sometimes be substituted for aloe in memory-related potions,” Hecate explains. “Mix together five flies wings, two centimeters of ginger, two ounces of spring water to one ounce of cow’s milk, and the calamus of a dove’s feather, in that exact order.”
Mildred nods hurriedly and gets her cauldron, and Hecate watches carefully as she does as instructed, carefully but efficiently. When the potion bubbles a pretty pink, Hecate tells her to let it simmer for five minutes precisely, and in the meantime, sends her a spell on her maglet to open the ensuite door.
“You must convince her to drink the entire potion, otherwise the effects will only be temporary. If that happens…” Hecate contemplates for a moment—maybe not the safest spell to teach Mildred Hubble—before asking if she has any arrow root.
“A little bit,” she says, biting her lip. “But I need it for my exam tomorrow.”
“Then we shall hope the potion works well enough. However, in the event that it does not, rub a mixture of two parts arrowroot and three parts rose along your doorframe. This will counteract the lockdown. You’ll need to get your flatmate to a nurse immediately.”
Mildred pauses what she’s doing and blinks. “Did you just tell me how to break out of my room?”
Hecate ignores the flush to her cheeks. “Only if necessary. Do not make matters worse for yourself if you do not have to, Mildred Hubble.”
Mildred nods, gathering the ingredients just in case, and Hecate watches—almost proudly—as Mildred recites the spell to open the bathroom door. She retrieves the potion and disappears into the ensuite, and Hecate can hear hushed voices, urgent and low.
She jumps a bit when there’s a hand on her shoulder, and looks up to find a bleary-eyed Pippa standing over her in her nightgown, blinking.
“What’s going on?”
Hecate sighs. “Mildred Hubble.”
Pippa smiles. “Ah. Should I put on some tea?”
Hecate snorts, but nods—this isn’t the first time Mildred has called, nor will it be the last, and more often than not, they actually wind up… talking. After whatever crisis she’s found herself in has been averted, Mildred will settle back in front of the mirror and tell Hecate all about life in New York City, about her college classes and friends and the magic she’s learned and what she’s struggling with.
Hecate pretends to be annoyed, but she secretly enjoys their chats, though she prefers them at a more reasonable hour. Hecate will inevitably hand out advice, and Mildred often writes her a follow-up letter a few weeks later, detailing how her suggestions helped her on an exam, or explaining how she failed and asking ways to improve. Hecate always writes her back immediately—she says it’s so she won’t forget, but Pippa always gives her a look as if to say she knows better—and then their conversations will die out for a few months, until Mildred calls again, sometimes just to say hello.
Hecate never imagined she’d have this sort of relationship with Mildred—never really allowed herself to while she was at Cackle’s. It hit too close to home, Mildred reminding her of herself when she was young, when she was still Joy, when she was vibrant and ridiculous and kind. She knows she punished Mildred unfairly for that, and has done her best, now, to make it up to her.
Pippa says Mildred knows, that she doesn’t blame her for it, but it sits uneasily in her chest, sometimes, the way she treated her. She can only hope what she’s doing now makes up for it, makes her less like Broomhead and more like the person she wants to be, the person she’s always been just a little bit scared of.
Vulnerability isn’t her strong suit, she knows, but Mildred seems to see past her in ways that so many don’t. They’ve been through rough patches and screaming matches and bitter silences, but Hecate still remembers the night Mildred showed up at her door, tears in her eyes and a letter clutched tightly in her hands.
“Did you write this?” she’d asked, and Hecate had frowned down at her letter of recommendation, the glowing commendation she’d written for Mildred’s application to witching colleges.
“It has my name on it, does it not?”
Mildred had glared at her through her tears, and Hecate had sighed.
“Yes. I wrote it.”
Mildred had stared at her—stared, and stared, like she was really seeing her for the first time, and then without a word, wrapped her arms around Hecate’s waist and refused to let go. Hecate hadn’t been quite sure what to do, standing in her doorway with a sobbing Mildred holding her so tightly, but she’d eventually settled her hands on her shoulders and patted her gently and said, very quietly,
“You are a bright, caring young woman, Mildred Hubble. The witching world is lucky to have you.”
Mildred had only cried harder, and Hecate had eventually had to pry her away and tell her to return to her rooms to get some sleep.
After that, for the last few months Mildred was at Cackle’s, things between them settled. Hecate still pushed her and Mildred still pushed back, but almost always with a smile, knowing now how Hecate really felt about her, the confidence Hecate had in her, despite her misgivings and surly attitude.
Pippa returns with two mugs of tea, and pulls a chair closer so she can sit next to Hecate, asks what’s happened. Hecate fills her in, and Pippa hides her smile behind her cup, hands wrapped around the porcelain, and Hecate stares for a moment at the ring on her finger, delicate and gold with pink stones, the ring Hecate had picked out, the ring she’d put there not three months ago, in a small, private ceremony.
Ada had been there, and Dimity, and two of Pippa’s closest friends, but if Pippa wanted a bit wedding, she’d never said. Never made a fuss. She’d seemed perfectly happy with the small, intimate affair, and even that, too, had been partly Mildred’s fault, after her call one night a year ago, asking bluntly and out of the blue,
“So have you proposed to Miss Pentangle yet?”
Hecate had nearly choked on her tea, whipping around to make sure Pippa was still fast asleep, and berated Mildred for ten minutes for her insolence and invasion of privacy.
Mildred had merely grinned.
“So that’s a no, then?”
Hecate had glared, and Mildred had dropped the subject, but it wasn’t six weeks later that Hecate finally did work up the courage to give Pippa a ring, and when they’d told Mildred over the mirror, she’d beamed so brightly, and Hecate had marveled at that—they joy she had for someone else’s happiness.
For her happiness.
It makes moments like this all the more tolerable, when Mildred returns with a frown, sets her cauldron on the table and says,
“She drank it all. And she seemed to remember who she was, and me, and where we were. And… then she fell asleep.”
Hecate nods. “Perfectly normal.”
“On the bathroom floor?”
“Leave her there,” Hecate says, and Pippa gasps, smacks her lightly in the arm.
“Hecate!”
“She’ll be fine.”
“At least get her a pillow,” Pippa says, and Mildred grins and hurries to do so. When she returns, she sits down and greets Pippa, her smile wide, and the two talk for a while while Hecate sips her tea and listens.
They’ve become somewhat friends as well, and Hecate knows Pippa thinks almost as fondly of Mildred as she does.
They talk for over an hour, the three of them, Pippa with her hand on Hecate’s leg beneath the table, Mildred chattering on excitedly about new spells she’s learned and how horrible her Chanting teacher is, how he always makes derogatory comments about the boys in his class. Pippa scowls, but gives Mildred a list of readings on the importance of diverse chanters and tells her not to back down.
Mildred writes down the names of the articles and the authors and promises to read up on it, tells them all about her potions mistress too, and how she’s smart, “but not as smart as Miss Hardbroom. She didn’t even know you could freeze flower petals for faster incorporation!”
Pippa laughs, both at Mildred’s outrage and Hecate’s smug smirk.
“Careful, Mildred, it’ll go to her head,” Pippa teases, nudging Hecate’s shoulder.
Hecate sniffs, but Mildred just smiles. “That’s okay. You’re still the best witch I know, Miss Hardbroom.”
Hecate feels the words curl around her, bright and warm, and does everything in her power not to smile. “Yes, well. You still know relatively few witches.”
It’s what she always says, and Mildred always shakes her head, grinning.
Eventually, Mildred looks at the clock and blanches, says she has to go, that she still needs to study for tomorrow and “I don’t suppose you have any tricks for making plant regrowth potions?”
Hecate rolls her eyes and Mildred smiles. “Worth a shot.”
“Goodnight, Mildred Hubble.”
“‘Night Miss Pentangle. Thanks again, Miss Hardbroom!”
The connection severs, and Hecate grumbles a bit about manners and Pippa laughs, kissing her cheek. “Back to bed?”
Hecate shakes her head, and Pippa nods, knows that she’s too awake now, that she won’t sleep anymore tonight. “I’ll stay up with you.”
“You don’t have to—”
“I have to be back at Pentangle’s in a few hours anyway,” Pippa shrugs. “We could go for a walk if you like?”
Hecate smiles. “I’d like that,” she says, and Pippa stands up, brushes a kiss against her lips before returning to the bedroom to get dressed.
Hecate stays a moment in front of the mirror, a small smile on her face. Before she can talk herself out of it, she reaches for her maglet, types a quick message:
Carbonated water instead of spring water will yield faster, more accurate results.
She shakes her head at herself, her own softness, and a moment later maglet chimes. It’s a quick cartoon drawing, hasty but still quite good, of herself, holding a sign that says, Best Witch Ever.
Smiling to herself, Hecate saves the file.