With the prospect of leaving school in just over a month, I started wondering how Fenella and Griselda would feel when they left Cackles. Here is the resulting short, slightly femmeslashy and not overly brilliant piece. Enjoy! And if you know them, I don't own them.
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Four years of mischief making, escaping Hardbroom and causing as much chaos as possible without getting suspended/expelled/detention had flown by, and the day that Fenella Feverview and Griselda Blackwood thought would never come had arrived – the day that they left Cackle's Academy.
The night before the graduation ceremony Fenella had packed up all her belongings, checked that her black satin robes and least dented hat were all ready for the assembly tomorrow and handed her textbooks back in and went to see if Griselda had everything ready for their way of making sure Cackle's would never forget them.
It was something of a surprise to see that the world's most organised human being (apart from Constance Hardbroom) was nowhere near packed and ready to go. In fact, Griselda was sitting on her bed, staring into space, with all her belongings scattered around her.
"Griz?" Fenella began, slightly worried, "Are you OK?"
The blonde girl looked over and nodded, making a few half hearted attempts to stuff a pile of clothes into her bag.
"No, you're not." Fenella crossed the room to sit on the ancient bed beside her, the mattress sagging dangerously near the floor as she did so. "What's up?"
Griselda could deny all she liked that nothing was wrong, but Fenella could see right through her and would not hesitate to cross question her for hours on end.
"I know we should be looking forward to this, Fenny, but.....I don't really want to leave," Griselda finally confessed, sounding almost ashamed of herself.
Fenella raised an eyebrow.
"I mean, I can't wait to get away from awful dinners, being given two hundred lines with an inordinately long number of sub clauses, day long cross country runs and HB breathing down our necks. And of course it'll be great to get back to somewhere with electricity," Griselda said, almost breathlessly. Fenella knew she wouldn't be saying that if she didn't know that HB was shouting at the third years who were setting the hall up for tomorrow – normally, all you had to do was mention her name and she would appear in the room. Apparently, making sure all the chairs were spaced exactly three centimetres apart in rows of four was more important than checking to see if the school's most mischievous witches were planning any graduation disrupting prank.
"But?"
"Fenny, I know this will sound so stupid and you're probably going to laugh at me but this place, and most of these people....they're like family. And I'll miss them. Even things like hearing Miss Cackle say at every graduation that thing about setting things that we love free."
Griselda was crying now – it was the first time Fenella had seen her do so in a long time. She pulled her best friend into a hug.
"Oh, Grizzy. I really do know what you mean. And I'm scared about leaving here too."
It was Griselda's turn to look questioning.
"People will think we've gone mad to say this but the other girls don't know how good they've got it. In a few years, they won't be somewhere that's so protected – they'll be out in the world, and - "
She didn't need to finish. Though few people thought Fenella and Griselda were ever scared of anything, they were both slightly apprehensive about going out into the big wide world, ten light years away from Cackle's Academy.
"At least we're going to be together, though," Griselda whispered, seemingly ashamed of herself again. "I wouldn't be able to do it if I didn't have you."
Fenella felt herself blushing. She knew she was exactly the same – not having Griselda at Weirdsister with her would not be pleasant at all.
"Some day, we'll have our own school, Fenny. We can teach them to do everything that we did."
The memories came flooding back to them both – accidentally pulling Miss Drill into a swamp when they got stuck doing their first ever cross country run, their time machine, the dance routines, the time when they managed to convince Miss Bat that by breathing in a tiny bit of helium, you could reach unbelievably high notes. They had been given 200 lines each of "I will not encourage members of staff to inhale chemical gases so the note reached will dislodge tiles from the roof" but it was worth it.
An idea came to Fenella at that moment. "Have you got everything for tomorrow?"
Griselda pulled away from her friend's arms and pulled a small box out from her bedside drawer. "I thought you'd never ask......."
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At the start of the new term, Miss Hardbroom lead her new first year class down the corridor to their first potions lesson. She had been delayed having to move aside to avoid Miss Drill running her over on her bike so she was not in the best of moods. This was not improved when she came in to her potions lab and saw what the first years were all looking so stunned at. Her eyes narrowed and she made a mental note to go visiting that evening.
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That evening, Griselda and Fenella were curled up on Griselda's bed, pouring over a huge (and probably forbidden) spellbook from the Weirdsister Library.
"This reminds me of HB," Fenella sighed nostalgically.
"I wonder what she's up to now," Griselda mused.
"She is standing immediately opposite you, Griselda Blackwood and wanting a little word with you two," a third, icy voice added. Both girls jumped and the book crashed to the floor,
HB was standing there, large as life and looking distinctly displeased.
"Normally I would not travel all this way, but I believe you two have a confession to make."
"To what, Miss Hardbroom?" Fenella asked innocently.
"Would you care to explain exactly why the plants – which I had kept in glass bottles and away from you for a reason – appeared to have taken over the potions lab and caused it to resemble a section of virgin rainforest?".
"Well Miss Hardbroom," Griselda began "We didn't think it was good for them to be so cooped up."
"After all, Miss Hardbroom, Miss Cackle did say, if you really love things, you must set them free."
Miss Hardbroom did not react in the expected way. Instead she said "I see," and opened her handbag, pulling out two parcels. She handed one to each of the girls and disappeared.
Both the girls looked rather stunned. Fenella opened her parcel and onto the bed fell an envelope, a pen, a note and what looked suspiciously like their jotters from detentions at Cackle's/
"Oh no...."
The note read
Dear Fenella,
Pleased as I am to see you are doing well at college, I was distinctly unamused by your parting gift. Therefore, I would like your book sent back after it has been filled with two hundred lines of "I will not twist the headmistress' words for my own amusement.
Constance Hardbroom.