oxo
Miss Drill's walks were always of an astoundingly brisk speed, being a PE teacher, but she had never stormed through the castle's halls with quite as much hurry.
All the while, she was intently listening for sounds of explosion coming from behind her, and was at least momentarily relieved that none were to be heard.
Constance would kill her. She would kill her for destroying her lab, and then she would kill her again for making her play sports.
Either way, she'd be pretty well dead.
When she finally reached the courtyard, Miss Drill was greeted by the most ordered chaos she had ever seen.
Half of the girls were fighting with the net, which seemed to have taken a life of its own, while the other half was busying themselves with the balls. Not one girl was slugging about in the background, not one looked anything but eagerly busy. In the middle of it all stood Constance, still engrossed in "Volleyball - A How-to Guide".
Miss Drill sighed. It seemed that either you scared the living daylights out of the girls, or you didn't.
She took a moment to gather her courage, and then cleared her throat.
oxo
Back in the lab, almost all of Form Three threw itself upon Mildred the second the door had closed behind Miss Drill. Notably absent were only Ethel and Drusilla.
"What happened to you hair, Millie?"
"Yes, what happened?"
"Why didn't you tell us you were going to cut it off?"
"Why did you cut it off?"
And while they were too busy chattering to even let Mildred answer, Maud and Enid looked at each other. They had noticed the tiny smirk on Ethel's face, and the openly wicked grin on Drusilla's.
They'd be damned if Mildred still wanted to keep out of their war.
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Miss Hardbroom was finally getting to the core of the mystery. I had been a tough fight, but the next page would at long last introduce her to the secret of awarding points.
Her head snapped up when she heard someone clear their throat. What were those girls up to now?
When she saw Imogen standing in the door, a look of badly suppressed panic on her face, her eyes narrowed. She closed the book with a sharp snap! and stiffly walked over to her.
"I thought I had made it very clear that you were to leave the lab under no circumstances," she hissed, bringing her face very close to Imogen's.
"But, you said to come get you if –"
"I told you to get one of the girls, Imogen."
"I –"
She cut her colleague off with a movement of her hand. "Never mind that now. What's gone wrong?"
Imogen looked decidedly sheepish.
"I think the lab is about to –"
Just as she was about to say 'explode', there was a gigantic bang to be heard behind her, a result of fifteen mini cauldrons blowing up simultaneously.