Epilogue

Miss Hardbroom was sat at her desk in her classroom, uncharacteristically lost in her own thoughts. The girls had finished their potions for the day and were tidying away their ingredients. The elation she had felt at banishing a shamed Mistress Broomhead from the school and now faded in the cold light of the next morning. It had now been replaced with a constant sense of unease. It was well over a decade since she had last seen Mistress Broomhead, and Constance was older, wiser, and far more assured. However, the fear of Mistress Broomhead discovering where she was had hung over her for so long that, now it had happened, she could not help but feel trepidation. Her mind running wild with all the fears she had not felt since she was a young witch.

She was startled suddenly from her ruminating by a loud crash. She rose to her feet and saw that the shelves which she had reattached to the wall only that morning had once again come crashing to the floor. Amid the debris of wood, upended boxes of ingredients and rolling glass bottles stood the figure of Mildred Hubble, seemingly frozen in place in surprise, her hand still outstretched to place a clearly too heavy bottle onto the shelves.

"Mildred Hubble!" Miss Hardbroom exclaimed, loud and sharp with exasperation. "You pulled those shelves to the ground only yesterday! Why do you never learn girl?"

"I'm sorry Miss Hardbroom" came the familiar refrain, as Mildred surveyed the chaos at her feet in a kind of astounded wonder.

"Girls, you may go" Miss Hardbroom dismissed the class "As for you Mildred Hubble, do not just stand there, clean up this mess at once!"

Miss Hardbroom watched as Mildred, her back to her, knelt on the floor to begin clearing the mess of destroyed shelves. Mildred did as she instructed without protest, but Constance could see the slight sag in her shoulders brought on by her teacher's stinging criticism.

Echoing through her exasperated words, she could hear the words Mistress Broomhead had often said to her. Constance was confident in the fact that she was a very different teacher from Mistress Broomhead, in fact she had dedicated her whole adult life to ensuring that was the case. No matter how hard much Constance had worked, or how talented Constance was, all Mistress Broomhead had wanted from Constance was what she could gain for herself. As Miss Hardbroom, Constance wanted every girl to achieve their best, no matter how naturally talented they were. Even girls like Mildred Hubble for whom everyday seemed to be a clash of daydreams and disasters.

But despite being the opposite of all Constance believed an educator should be, she had to admit that in one way or another, everything she knew had come from Mistress Broomhead. The hardest lesson, and one that Constance still sometimes struggled with even now, was that no matter how talented, and independent and capable she was, she would never have gotten anywhere if she hadn't taken the helping hand offered by others.

Miss Hardbroom looked at the kneeling figure of Mildred Hubble and sighed.

"Here, Mildred Hubble" Constance said, dropping to her knees beside her "Let me help you."