Whoops it's been a while but I got back from camp last week so now I'm relaxed and ready to finish this story. The best is yet to come……
Miss Hardbroom immediately sprang into action. She stood up from the dusty floor pulling Hope with her. "Ow!" Hope winced at being pulled up so abruptly. Miss Hardbroom turned around and raised an eyebrow. A sharp menacing arch that made the girl stop rubbing her arm. "Now listen, There might possibly be a potion that will unstick us so we have to go to the potions lab." Hope nodded because it sounded like a good plan to her. She was perfectly willing to let Hb take charge; after all the woman did know her potions. Miss Hardbroom continued, "And let's try to not make our disadvantage so obvious. If I can fix this, no one will have to know." Hope nodded in agreement, it wasn't like it would earn her cool points with Ethel if she found out that Hope had to be attached to Hb all day. "Yeah no problem you can just pretend I am in trouble and you are going to give me another day long detention." Hope looked up with the realization that she had said that sarcastically out loud when she didn't mean to. But instead of looking Peeved Hb got a crazed look on her face; "yes that might just work." So the two started from the basement all the way up to the potion lab.
Of course it would just so happen that Miss Tapioca was coming up the stairs with a big dish of something that looked like a cherry cheesecake. "Well hello Miss Hardbroom, Hope, Whata lovely day outside eh?" Miss Hardbroom nodded curtly but there was nothing she could do because Miss Tapioca was ahead of them on the stairs and moving rather slowly so as not to drop the cheesecake. "Yes I was just taking this up to Miss Cackle for a little tea time snack." "Oh snack…" Hope hadn't had lunch yet and the mention of tea time made her realize how hungry she was. But glancing up at Miss Hardbroom she could see that food was the last thing on the teachers mind. "Well you know Ima sure Miss Cackle wouldn't mind if you joined her." "Err no Miss Tapioca, Hope here still has to finish her detention and I don't think tea time is the right way to go about it." Hope suddenly had a vision of an everlasting detention. She wasn't just going to have to spend a Saturday afternoon with Miss Hardbroom, she might have to spend a day with her and….a night to! She would gladly have given anything to go back into the dungeon to clean bottles just as long as HB wasn't attached to her.
Luckily after Miss Tapioca shuffled down the hall to the staff room, Miss Hardbroom and hope were able to make a clean sweep to the potions room. HB flew immediately to the cupboard behind her desk and started shuffling through large books one handed. She passed down a fat purple book to Hope and said, "Start looking for either an unsticking or diluting solution or possibly a Foster's fix all potion." Hope opened the book. Wow, this was a lot more complex than their potion manuals. Now Hope loved to read more than anything and she had browsed through a few of these advanced spellbooks before but these were just so much more complex than she was used to. She glanced up at Miss Hardbroom who was leafing through them at record speed. Impressed Hope started flipping through the pages to find any potion that might help, even if it was one that could burn an arm off. "Here" Miss Hardbroom muttered loudly, more to herself than anything. Hope waited patiently as her aunt stared at the potion for a while and nodded. "Okay, yes well, the new is good. This potion, when applied to two objects stuck together will dilute the bond. However this doesn't say that it will work on humans but the ingredients seem to be in the first few elements and so I don't believe they will cause us any damage." Hope had to stop and think about her study of the elements last summer; the last 6 were poisonous when consumed and the first few were absolutely harmless and used in most potions (eye of toad, wing of bat, tooth of wolf, ect…) "However", Hb continued "this potion takes about 12 hours to simmer so we should start on it soon." "Yes because the liquefied frog tongue is at its purest state so it will set permanently in 24 hours." Miss Hardbroom stared at her for a second with her eyebrow raised, but in an approving way. "It looks like someone has been reading out of the third year textbook." Hope blanched for a second and then nodded in a humble sort of way. "Yes well at least know we know the facts, I always like to know exactly what is going on. So most of these ingredients can be found in here but we will need to go back down to the dungeon to see if we can find the rest."
So the two made their way back down into the dungeon. Luckily most of the girls were outside playing in the yard or taking a walk in the woods because it was such a lovely day. If it had been raining they would have been swamped with girls. The dungeon was still a mess. Miss Hardbroom looked at the mess for a moment then waved her arm and all of the ingredients flew back into the jars which unbroken and flew back up on the shelves in the correct order. "But but….if you could do that in the first place why did I have to…." "That's why they call it detention." Miss HArdbroom smiled a little. "Besides it was much more effective than giving you lines again because between you and Mildred there is enough written to surround the world a few times!" So the two of them set about collecting the items. Or rather Miss HArdbroom dictated and Hope collected. After gathering the last jar (fish eyes, ewww) the two went up stairs.
They were almost clear when Ethel suddenly walked up the stairs. Hope's heart sunk because the only way that this situation would get worse was if she was teased later by Ethel. "Oh Miss HArdbroom I have been looking for you all day, I have to ask you a question about the assignment you gave on Friday. I believe I thought of another way to do the potion…" Miss Hardbroom's face was priceless. Normally she gave Ethel this smug smile but on this particular day she was feeling particularly crabby and so she waved her off with a glare. "But Miss Hardbroom, Hope's detention should be over by now, it's almost dinner." Miss HArdbroom quickly moved Hope's hand behind her back and started explaining to Ethel that Hope's detention was for the whole day and so she wasn't done yet. Hope wanted to laugh because at that very moment she saw there hands in a different light. It almost looked like they were on a date! She always saw her cousin holding hands with boys and now she realized that Miss Hardbroom was the closet thing to dating hand holding she had gotten. She had to bite her lip to keep a straight face.
The potion mixing was very quick indeed. Mainly because Miss Hardbroom did it all. Hope sat mesmerized by the different ingredients making flashing colors. It was an art, a show but Miss Hardbroom took to it as if she were making a bowl of oatmeal; like it was the most regular thing on earth. Speaking of oatmeal Hope's stomach had started to rumble. Luckily after the potion was done and covered Miss Hardbroom got up and motioned for Hope to follow her. They walked down the hall and headed toward the staffroom. It made sense to Hope because she would rather eat without the stares of her fellow students. HB opened the door and Miss Cackle, Miss Drill, and Miss Bat looked up from their dinners waiting to see why Miss Hardbroom was so late from dinner duty.
