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We all have a clear image of the way our lives are supposed to be, and for every person, there is a range of scenes they replay in their mind's eye. Some are driven mad by any slight deviation, some replay a conversation in their head years after it had actually happened, and some people start believing that this desired version of events was what had really transpired. Constance Hardbroom was none of these people.
The tall, sharp-featured witch was not one for retrospection. She was practical enough to know that life was meant to be difficult, but chance and no other mystical force could take everything away in an eye's blink. Therefore, she worked hard and left nothing to chance, for it may take her life in a not-so pleasant direction, despite all her efforts. Giving her Mildred Hubble for five, long years, for example.
The increasingly cold classroom had been empty for hours, and Constance had been sitting in the same place at her desk for the duration. Typically straight-backed, she had her sharp quill dipped in red ink for marking. A droplet welled on the sharp tip, disturbing in colour. Her hand had frozen in place, hovering above the students' paper, ready to spew forth well-constructed criticism, when everything had stopped. The feeling on her chest was almost crushing, and she could not help but watch the painstakingly slow detail of the red ink droplet drooping, slipping from the pointed nib of her quill, and falling. Naught could escape gravity, and the air rushing around the wet ink was almost mesmerizing as it fell and splattered on the top-right corner of the thin parchment, drying instantly and leaving quite a large circumference. Here, it did look like blood.
Constance wondered if she'd been sitting too long, and perhaps it was time to lock-up and start ushering the girls to dinner. No, there was something wrong. She tried to read the final page on this paper – 'The Importance of Good Decision-Making In Life' – and the words seemed to blur before her eyes. She felt extremely close to crying. The last time she had felt this out of herself was when her old form mistress Hecketty Broomhead had visited the Academy. But this… no, this had nothing to do with that old bat, did it?
Stacking the papers in an almost mechanical fashion, Constance slipped them into her desk drawer for another day. Standing in front of the blackboard, slender-yet-large hands spread across the desk, deep in thought, she could not wipe the image of the ink blot from her mind. Once-stained, and forever stained, she needed to know what had stopped her in her tracks, what was making it difficult to breathe. This sudden sense of unreality was unsettling. She could almost see herself there, dark hair scraped into a plaited bun, thin, hourglass frame poised despite the clear emotional upheaval. Eyes slightly widened and plum lips parted in a total pause. As the drop stained the paper, the feeling stained her mind. And it was more than that. This thought – or feeling – itself, it was bothering her. The permanence of decision-making. Not just this essay, but her instruction of these girls in making the right decisions, when she couldn't recall making one in her life.
Of course, Constance Hardbroom had made many decisions in her life, and most of them highly important. Extremely intelligent as she was, and very capable of recognizing beauty, imagery and metaphor, she did not see decisions of 'crossroads' as they were at the time. She had known her route exactly, and therefore not bothered to see the other paths, as they were. Because of this, she could not recall what they were, and all this came to greet her from on intake of breath to the next. It was suffocating.
For the first time in a spotless career, Constance felt something missing from her life. The visit from Miss Broomhead certainly had been rattling, and reminded her of her talents, never being good enough, and her place in the school. Not even the Headmistress. And why was that? She wasn't Amelia – maybe a more talented witch in terms of potions and spells, but not as wise. Missing something. That little voice that told the Headmistress what to do in times of discouragement, or where an answer was not reasonably foreseeable. She could not remember this feeling, this anxiety. Constance Hardbroom, since she could remember having plaits, was always prepared, too prepared to be nervous, too prepared to be off guard. She tried to instil this quality in her pupils, as difficult as it was with those with a slightly less aptitude for learning. And yet those expressions of hope and effort, she felt a weight more crushing than the ocean, and darker than her garb.
For all her efforts, she had settled into this job, advising these girls how best to rule their lives, and yet she had simply gotten what she could take. Sleep was not the only thing she had missed in her strict sticking to the rules. Her cat was the only family she went home to, the only places she went were to better herself for Cackles'; she lived and breathed the school, but for what recognition? Not even recognition – what then? She could do anything, but why had she chosen to do this? The thing that pressed on her the most was the answer she couldn't find. She was suddenly acutely aware of how very dark and very cold the room had gotten, her thoughts interrupted by the distant sound of boots on stone. The girls were milling in through the front doors, into the Great Hall for egg and chips. Now was her chance. When the last girls' bootlaces clacked around the corner, Constance slipped down the passage, to the stair case leading to the teachers' quarters, the pit of her belly as cold as the castle itself.
Cursing her constant punctuality for a change, Constance knew that it would only be a matter of time before they realized her absence; perhaps they had already! But she doubted that Miss Cackle or indeed any of the faculty or even students would think to look for her up here.
Atop the castle parapet, she had done something rash, something against the rules. She had climbed out of her bedroom window and floated from the sill to the castle roof, where she currently sat in her purple pajamas and black bed robe, washed of most of her little colour in the moonlight. So far, so… nothing. Perhaps tonight's pudding was cheesecake. Perhaps Amelia would be preoccupied, or perhaps she was so used to Constance's presence that she would not notice for some time. Maybe the only way she'd really know she was gone is in the almost entire lack of shouting. She bit her lower lip to prevent its wobbling. She didn't want to cry over the fact that the only reason they'd miss her is because she wasn't keeping the students' in line. That they didn't like her as a person. They didn't even know her as a person. Who… who was she, as a person. She scrunched her eyes together, as though any tear that escaped her closed eyes was going to get a right telling off.
A sudden creak made Constance jump. She gulped, swallowing her tears. Perhaps her moist eyes would catch in the moonlight? She leaned back gently, withdrawing her cold, bare feet from the edge of the building. She jumped again, her strong, horse-like heart stammering when the head of Mildred Hubble popped up from the window. The silly girl smiled apologetically, whilst trying to get a grip of the upper ledge.
"Oh, here!"
Constance offered her slender forearm lest the girl might fall. Still a clumsy, twig of a girl at the age of sixteen, she thought wryly.
"What, pray I tell, are you doing up here, Mildred Hubble?"
Despite being the one in her pajamas playing truant from dinner, Constance adopted her usual authoritative tone immediately. Perhaps this way, Mildred would not ask questions.
"Miss Cackle sent me to look for you, Miss," came the out of breath reply as Mildred struggled to pull herself into a sitting position next to her teacher. Constance noted her tightly shut eyes, and remembered that the silly girl was deathly afraid of heights.
"I... see." Secretly, she was relieved that she had been missed. Of course she had. They did not hate her. Few frivolous times she'd enjoyed with her cohort, but at least there had been a few. She felt herself blush uncharacteristically, as she was beginning to feel more and more foolish. "And did they tell you to do so buy climbing out of a window on the top floor of this establishment? And no less my bedroom window? Hmm?"
Mildred's eyes blinked open, her knuckles white from holding onto the stone precipice. "Oh.. no, Miss Hardbroom, it's just that, Miss Cackle told me a few places to look, and that if I didn't find you there, to look everywhere. She didn't want to set anyone into a panic, just in case I found you. And to be honest Miss, I'm glad I did."
Mildred gulped, taking a brief peek at the cold, dark ground below them and whimpering slightly. "Can I just ask Miss Hardbroom - ?"
Constance's dark eyes flashed.
"You may certainly not, Mildred Hubble. You may be in your final year of this Academy, but my business is my business!"
The girl seemed not to notice the chastising tone, and was looking rather ill as she squinted again.
"I'm sorry, Miss Hardbroom, it's just... well... I come outside when I want to be alone or to think... especially if I'm upset. I just... hoped that you weren't." She gulped again, though whether in nervousness of the height or of Constance she could not tell. "Upset, that is."
Constance took a deep breath, her face softening a little as Mildred open one, timid eye, to check her teacher's reaction.
"I will admit to you then, Mildred, and this is to go no further than this roof top..."
"No, Miss."
"That I was feeling... well..."
Constance folded her arms over her long, torrent of shiny, brunette hair. "Unappreciated, Mildred. And... well, lonely, if you must know."
She was surprised to hear the girl giggle, stifled by what must have been quite a stern look on her face.
"I'm sorry, Miss, it's just that, if you were feeling lonely, why did you go as far away from everyone else as possible."
Constance had long given up on feigned anger to deflect questions.
"Very well, Miss Hubble. I suppose the more correct word I was searching for is 'isolated'. I feel... well, again, not that it's any of your business, but I feel - felt - as though I didn't really fit in here."
Mildred's eyes were fully opened, and she stared at Miss Hardbroom in disbelief. "You? YOU? Of all people, you fit in here the most, Miss!"
Constance made a 'tsh'ing sound in the side of her mouth.
"But you do, Miss Hardbroom!" Mildred protested. "You do the most for the students, make sure things are running the way they're supposed to be. As for me... I'm the opposite. I'm hopeless at everything and you're the best at everything, and that's what makes you such a good teacher, you're always a good example."
The last bit touched a nerve, and she had to blink away tears. It was not often - in fact, never, that she was told she did a good job. Or perhaps she sought perfection constantly, as was the bane of her own Form Mistress.
"I - I am?"
"Yeah!" Mildred pushed enthusiastically. "And everyone was looking quite worried. They might be a little scared of you, sure, but um..." She hesitated, and saw that Miss Hardbroom was smiling, even if slightly. "But they knew something must be wrong for you to be missing from dinner patrol."
The corner of Constance's thin, shapely lip twirled up in a smirk. "Indeed. Mildred, if we were to go back inside and down to dinner right now, would you be willing to grant me a favour?"
"Of course, Miss."
"Don't tell anyone that I was perched on the school roof like a common barn owl. I wouldn't want them to actually think that I have... feelings."
Mildred grinned. "Of course not Miss Hardbroom, just as long as... " she gulped. "As long as we can get down from here."
Constance smiled, pointing her pointer and pinkie finger. A jolt of purple energy, and they were outside the Great Hall. Mildred blinked in surprise, then smiled, as she saw Miss Hardbroom wearing her usual, fitting black dress, her hair scraped back into an elegant, braided bun
She gave her student a small smile. "Shall we?"
Mildred smiled back. "Of course." Her face then became shame-filled and sullen, as Miss Hardbroom pushed open the doors of the Hall, her voice ringing in the room loud and clear.
"And if you hadn't made that mess, Mildred Hubble, I might have made it to dinner ON TIME."
No one else saw the subtle wink and smile. Then, Miss Hardbroom turned back to the rows of gaping students.
"Well? No one told you that you may stop eating!"
The vague looks of relief of the teachers' faces and the hurried scraping of forks on plates was all she needed. She was home.