Another Christmas tree had just appeared. The academy seemed to have an outbreak of them this year. It might have been tempting to put it down to some sort of rogue magical working, but the frequent sight of a tinsel-draped Miss Bat scurrying about with boxes of decorations indicated that the explanation was probably a good deal more prosaic.
All the same, it was getting ridiculous. The big Christmas tree had been put up in the great hall as usual at the start of December, and a couple of smaller ones had appeared in the staffroom and in Miss Bat's classroom just as they always did - but then the girls had gone home and it had all got out of hand, and now they were popping up everywhere. The latest was in the library. Miss Bat had been decorating it that morning, and making a great racket while she did so.
Miss Hardbroom did not approve of it at all. This was not much of a surprise - there was very little which Miss Hardbroom did approve of, and it was well-known that she acutely despised Christmas.
Christmas, to the Constance Hardbroom mindset, did not present a tempting prospect. It combined all the things she disapproved of most, from overeating to forced jollity. And the jollity was forced. Constance Hardbroom was not one of those who believed that Christmas was a panacea for all ills, a magical time when nothing could possibly go wrong, a day of unadulterated peace and goodwill to all men, women and magic-workers. It was just another day - unfortunately one on which everyone felt they had a perfect right to go about grinning manically, engaging in increasingly mind-numbing "festive" pursuits, and vigorously chastising anyone who did not do likewise. To even think of working at Christmas was forbidden - and, unfortunately, working was what Constance liked doing best.
She wasn't really a Scrooge, not exactly. She was just different. Things other people enjoyed left her cold - and vice versa. She wanted to be left alone to pursue her studies, to read books, to write academic papers, to work on her lesson plans for the next term. She did not want merriment thrust upon her. It wasn't that she didn't know how to enjoy herself, as was widely rumoured; it was just that she enjoyed herself differently from most people, more quietly, more sensibly. She and the rest of the world just didn't understand each other.
And she was not in the slightest looking forward to that awful Christmas Dinner, with Egbert Hellibore making sexist remarks, Algernon Rowan-Webb giving voice to inane jokes, Phyllis Pentangle giving vent to that awful braying laugh of hers, Miss Bat getting tipsy and mutilating unsuspecting Christmas carols - and of course that damn non-witch woman sitting there, at a dinner where no non-witch really had any right to be, not doing anything specifically, simply being her usual irritating self...
Imogen.
The name whispered through her mind as it had so often in recent...what? In recent days, weeks, years? She spent a lot of time thinking about Imogen Drill - more than ever since the end-of-term party, and that moment under the mistletoe.
She sighed. What with that, and the infernal glinting of baubles and tinsel, jingling of bells, caterwauling of carols and general sounds of festivity, it was no wonder she couldn't concentrate on her work today. She had barely written more than a few words, and, though there were reference books strewn on the table around her, she couldn't seem to focus on any of them. If anyone said anything, she'd blame it on the latest tree. It was a Distraction. A library was no place for a Christmas tree.
Her mind swung back round to Imogen. She was avoiding the woman, of course. It was not too difficult to keep out of someone's way in a place as big as Cackle's academy. The only difficulty was in fighting the urge to go and put herself very much in Imogen's way, and...
And what?
Well, be kissed again ideally - perhaps even on the lips - but of course it wouldn't be that simple. Things never were.
Constance, surprisingly enough, had a genuine regard for Imogen Drill, despite their disagreements - possibly even because of them. She rather admired the woman's determination, her refusal to back down in an argument. She would perhaps have liked to enter into a...relationship with Imogen, but the complications were infinite, and made it impossible.
Constance had had experience of romance, a great many years ago, in a past which few people would have believed she'd had. She knew the teachers and students of Cackle's couldn't imagine that she had ever been young; she sometimes doubted it herself, and wondered if it hadn't all happened to someone else. She was forty-two now; it was a full twenty-five years since the heady days of her first love. A woman, of course; Constance had always known she didn't like men in that way. A nice girl. Perhaps it would have been True Love, if things had been different.
But it had had to end, because...well, because Constance was Constance. That anyone could be loved "for who they were", as the popular phrase went, seemed to Constance to be a frankly fallacious assumption. She had never found anyone who loved her for who she really was. Some had said they did, of course - said it, and then immediately begun to try to change her.
The fact was that people didn't like it if you were strict and hard-working and fond of rules. They thought you needed to "loosen up", as the phrase was, to enjoy yourself more. They decided something dreadful must have happened in the past to make you so "uptight", so "unfeeling", so "abnormal". Surely no one could really be happy living like that, they reasoned; surely all this strictness and uprightness was nothing but a façade; surely the woman underneath was tender and vulnerable and damaged. They decided on all this, quite without consulting you, and then they set out to Save You From Yourself.
Constance did not want to be saved. Being saved was, she felt, highly overrated. She could look after herself. She had fashioned a strict and organised life for herself, in which all things ran smoothly and standards were met, and she wanted no one to interfere with it. There was nothing to be gained by letting strangers root about amid one's emotions and memories. She was in control, and she intended to keep it that way.
She would have to stop avoiding Imogen soon. They were colleagues after all; she couldn't keep out of her way forever. They would have to talk. It would all be so terrible and emotional and untidy. Imogen would be left thinking that Constance felt nothing for her, when the very opposite was true. But what else could be done? Constance was talented at many things - potion-making, the art of discipline, speed-reading - but she was no good at articulating her deepest emotions and innermost thoughts. She would have to make out that the woman meant nothing to her, cut her losses and move on.
"Love", Imogen had whispered to her, some inarticulate confession about "love". Constance had heard that word before, long ago, and more than once. Some people used it with positive abandon. Did Imogen really love her, or did she only love some idea of what there might be hidden behind the mask? Surely she only loved what she thought Constance might be, what she thought she could be, if only she were a little less "uptight".
Imogen herself was, after all, anything but uptight. Those casual clothes she wore, her passion for always running about, her love of the outdoors, that perpetually messy hair of hers...Constance smiled rather fondly, quite without meaning to. She was a good teacher, though, and she did actually seem to be quite interested in magic even though she could not use it herself. They'd had quite a few interesting conversations over the years they'd worked together, when they weren't squabbling their way through staff meetings (Constance always squabbled with the rest of the staff, and often opposed their ideas merely on principle; it seemed expected of her). In truth, Constance thought a good deal more of her various colleagues than she would ever have let on, and she thought a great deal of Imogen in particular.
But...colleagues. That was all they could ever be. She'd keep her head down and get through the tortures of Christmas, and then she and Imogen would have to have a little talk, and their moment beneath the mistletoe would be consigned to the depths of the unspoken past, where it surely belonged.