"I hear Mildred Hubble's left Weirdsister." Constance Hardbroom heard the words as she entered the staffroom, uttered by Miss Crotchet and apparently instantly capturing the interest of the rest of the staff. Constance sighed inwardly. It was two years since Mildred had left the school, and they all still seemed to take an exceptional - and immoderate, to Constance's mind - interest in what she was doing. But then, perhaps that was hardly surprising, given the attention that that strange gift of hers - drawing things and bringing them to life - had attracted. Though she had worked harder in her final year, she would hardly have got into a prestigious institution like Weirdsister without it.
"I thought she still had another year to go," said Miss Drill.
"She does, or she did," answered Miss Crotchet, who somehow always seemed to know the latest gossip in the witching world, "It seems she was struggling in the second year - they thought she was going to fail it - and now she's left and she's going to go to an art college instead."
"It seems a waste of her talent," put in Miss Cackle, mildly.
Constance felt that they were all looking at her as if expecting her to say something. She finished pouring her cup of tea.
"She is a grown woman," she said, at last, "It's hardly our affair what she does or doesn't do with her talents. I wish her every success."
She dematerialised then, and relocated to her private quarters - let them, she thought, make of that what they will.
Mildred Hubble had been the bane of Constance's life ever since she started at Cackle's. Constance had known she had strong magic - she had felt it coming off her in waves - and it had been maddening that she didn't seem to know what to do with it. Constance had had an inkling that she might prove to have some strange gift, although she had never guessed what form it would take.
She had been hard on her, of course - too hard, some had said. But how else was one to draw out the magic the girl refused to use and didn't even seem to realise she had? Mollycoddling never taught anyone to be a witch. Throwing down challenges, on the other hand...
In some ways, Mildred had reminded her of herself, which had been irksome to say the least. She too had been the girl with the strong magic and no idea how to use it, the slapdash girl who needed to be challenged and disciplined - at least according to Heckitty Broomhead, and, whatever one might think of her methods, Mistress Broomhead had certainly turned out some powerful magic-workers over the years.
And yet, in other ways, Mildred had been as different from anything Constance had ever encountered as could possibly be imagined. The girl was so very outgoing; she could probably have made friends with the Abominable Snowman if she'd put her mind to it. She always believed the best of people, and was innocent in a way that had left Constance rather fearful for her going out into the big wide world beyond Cackle's sheltering walls. And she always wanted so desperately to help. She went rushing in with her half-baked ideas and inane schemes because of some deep conviction that it was her very duty to fix everything for everybody, and she seemed to imagine that she would be immune to any consequences, that it would all work out in the end, because she was on the side of the good, and good always triumphed over evil, right? The most bizarre thing about this overly emotional, unnecessarily naïve and all-round impractical approach to life was that it seemed to work for her. She always came out of things that would have destroyed anyone else smiling and looking round to see what needed to meddled into next. She careened from one disaster to another, had the organisational abilities of a gnat, and then somehow came up smelling of roses and absentmindedly performing magic so strange and powerful that no one had ever seen it before.
It was no wonder that Weirdsister College had proved a poor fit for her. The girl wasn't academically minded, as Constance - having marked her essays for four years - would be the first to attest. She had done well in her exams, it was true. She had quietened down in her last year at Cackle's; they had been fewer madcap adventures and rather more studying. Constance had seen how she took to her headgirl responsibilities and how she worked hard on her revision, and felt ever so slightly proud.
After the discovery of her gift for bringing drawings to life, everyone had accepted it as inevitable that she would go to Weirdsister. Her gift was unheard of, a first; those high up in the world of witching education wanted her somewhere where they could see her, and study her if they wanted. Whether she was really suited to a life of essays and academia was another matter.
It was hard to be magically gifted, to be powerful. Everyone talked so much of your potential, and seemed to forget that you were a person as well.
Miss Crotchet's announcement in the staffroom had come as no surprise to Constance. Constance was the only member of the academy still in regular communication with Mildred, and nobody knew a thing about it. The two of them had formed a dubious sort of connection in their years of annoying one another; a strange sort of respect had grown up between them, a recognition of certain things that they had in common. Mildred had written to her - in that awful untidy scrawl of hers - to ask if leaving Weirdsister was the right thing to do.
"I just don't feel I really belong here," she had scribbled inelegantly, "I got through the end of year exams all right, but I felt like death afterwards. Everyone else seems so efficient. Do you know Ethel colour codes her coursework? I can't even find mine most of the time. The other day I turned my room upside down looking for an essay, and it turned out it was right in front of me the whole time, I'd been drawing on the back of it. I can't help thinking that there has to be somewhere where I'd be able to do a lot more good than I'm doing by struggling along here." - Then she had begun rambling in her usual unnecessarily candid fashion about how her boyfriend didn't seem to be able to accept her witchcraft ("I drew some roses and a champagne picnic and brought them out of the paper for him on Valentine's Day because I thought it would be romantic, but he looked at me like I'd grown two heads") - as if Constance was really qualified to comment on matters of the heart. Only someone as clumsily open as Mildred would ever select Constance as a confidant.
Constance had not attempted to address the subject of Mildred's love-life in her reply, though she privately felt that both of the young men who had so far competed for the girl's affections were entirely unworthy (a hardened black magician whom Mildred was convinced was "very nice, really" and a non-magic-worker with a prejudice against witchcraft - that girl really knew how to pick them). But she had taken a very deep breath, and, in handwriting much more precise than her correspondent's, she had told the truth - or at least as much of it as she felt that Mildred, with her naïve approach to the world, could possibly handle.
"As you probably know, Mildred, I did extremely well in all exams and academical matters when I was at university. I also left as soon as I possibly could. My personal tutor thought that I would stay on to do postgraduate work; everyone thought I was bound for a career at the forefront of magical research. While my approach to academic work was far from being as chaotic as your own (colour-coding coursework is an excellent idea of Ethel's), I do somewhat identify with feeling "like death" in the aftermath of exams. In my last year of university, I barely slept and I barely ate. My personal tutor had piled expectations onto me, and did not care how I damaged myself so long as I met them. My success in the exams was a hollow victory indeed, and decided me on the future course of my life. It may have occurred to you that teaching the basics of Potions to first-year students is a rather odd pursuit for someone who could by now have been high up in the Witches' Guild. I have often been told that I "wasted" my abilities in leaving the university, that I turned my back on my potential. But I came to Cackle's because I wanted to, because I was tired and because I thought it would be quiet (I was wrong in this assumption, but that was beside the point); and then I stayed because it was the right place. I read in a rather polemical book once that one does not become a witch by being dictated to; that a witch is one who does things, by herself and for herself. If "doing good" is what you want to do, then for goodness' sake be witch enough to go and find somewhere where you can do it."
It had not been very long before the reply had come back to tell her that Mildred had left Weirdsister and was starting at an art college in the autumn; apparently, it was what she had wanted to do "before everyone started thinking I was going to go to Weirdsister, I didn't want to let anyone down". In the meantime, she was volunteering at a cat shelter, and had discovered several healing spells that worked well on distressed cats. She promised a full update on her love-life in the next letter, a promise which made Constance shudder. The girl seemed to have adopted her as some sort of agony aunt.
Although, saying that, her letters seemed to be coming less frequently now she had left Weirdsister. Perhaps she was learning to make her own decisions. That was a good thing, of course (a witch must stand on her own two feet), although it made Constance feel oddly bereft.
Mildred had evidently found it easy to walk away from what had been expected of her, far easier than Constance ever had. That was hardly surprising; despite her rampant desire to please, doing the right thing always came easily to Mildred. She would go through life in her sunny, happy-go-lucky fashion, bringing happiness to others, "doing good" and always snatching herself back from disaster at the last moment. Some people really did have all the luck.
It occurred to Constance that she was a part of Mildred's luck, that having a good mentor and adviser had helped. She herself would have found it far easier to choose what she wanted from life if she hadn't had the strident tones of Mistress Broomhead telling her exactly what she was going to do as if the choice was not hers to make. But modesty and low self-esteem would not permit her to admit that she might have done something good at last; she knew there had been times when frustration had made her far too hard on Mildred, and if advising her now could atone for it, then so be it.
She had drunk all her tea while she was thinking this over; she noticed her empty cup in some surprise. A clock struck somewhere, and she was back in the present moment, aware that she had a class to teach. She could not always be thinking of Mildred Hubble, although - she could just about admit it in the privacy of her own mind - she would be rather sad when no more letters came from that most frustrating of ex-pupils. She would surely not be of use for much longer now that Mildred was on the right path, and who would write to old HB for the mere pleasure of it?
Constance shrugged away these thoughts, and went to take her Potions class.
(Of course we all know that Millie will be writing to HB for the rest of her life, and probably visiting her in the holidays, and HB will moan about it but secretly be pleased.)