Imogen placed her hands on her hips and stared at the building in front of her. She had been expecting a fortress, something with thick walls and guards at the gate; a place bristling with security. She was somewhat surprised to find herself facing a plain looking two-storey building that looked more like the retirement home they'd settled her Granddad Arthur in than a top security prison for the magically unstable.

"Don't judge by appearances," Miss Cackle had told her, without explaining further.

From the way that Miss Cackle led the way, Imogen had the impression that it wasn't her first visit to Ash Vale. She wondered fleetingly if Agatha was the only member of the Cackles family to have gone spectacularly off the rails.

The walls inside the place had been painted an unenthusiastic grey. The air had the unmistakable tang of bleach and, from what Imogen could work out, no-one seemed willing to look anyone else in the eye. There were a lot of furtive glances in their direction from the staff as they tried to ascertain if they were truly visitors, or patients trying to brazen their way out of confinement. Again Imogen's thoughts turned to Agatha. If Miss Cackle's twin had spent any amount of time within the walls, then she could understand the unease of the staff.
It wasn't a question she wanted to broach, but as another nurse ducked back into a side ward and slammed the door shut, she realised that she had her answer.

"The family requested no visitors." The nurse on station had been all smiles when they'd first approached. She looked as though it had been several years since her uniform properly fitted, which Imogen privately suspected was due to a yo-yo attitude towards food and dieting. Her greying hair was cut into a long bob that bounced in time with the rest of her as she moved around the department. She had smiled warmly at them as they'd approached and asked their names and who they wanted to see. As soon as Miss Cackle had mentioned Audrey, her whole demeanour switched, her smile contorting into a scowl and immediately barking out the stock sentence that she now repeated parrot fashion whenever a question was asked.

"So she is here?" There was still a smile on Amelia's face, but truly now it was only there for show.

"No visitors," the nurse repeated, dropping the reference to the family as she tired of repeating herself.

"I'm sorry…." Amelia pulled her glasses down to the tip of her nose and peered over the top of them at the name badge pinned to the woman's ample chest. "….Mary…" she finally worked out from the blur of letters in front of her. "We've come rather a long way, this is rather an important visit, so please excuse me if I don't give a damn what the parents of Audrey Hawthorn did or did not request."

Whilst Mary's face coloured to match the fire extinguisher that stood in the corner, Imogen debated whether or not it was wise to place herself between the two women who were now most definitely squaring up to each other. Experience gained in the past two years had taught her that standing between two practised members of the spell-casting community was not something that sensible non-magical people did. She'd found herself staring up into the slightly amused, but mostly disapproving glare of Miss Hardbroom more times than she cared to remember during her first term. The lecture that followed usually involved the rather unnecessarily sarcastic suggestion that she might be well advised to teach 'ducking' as part of the sporting curriculum.

She left the two women to paw the ground and took a look at the list of room allocations that was pinned handily on a nearby clipboard. There was little to betray what the women had done to warrant a place on the floor, but all twenty rooms in the ward had an occupant. One A. Hawthorn showing as the longest resident.
Imogen walked wordlessly over to the door, and stared in through the small pane of glass. "She's over here," she said finally, as she sensed a lull in the escalating argument behind her.

Moments later Miss Cackle was at her shoulder, elbowing her out of the way.

"You can't go in there," Mary said somewhat redundantly as Amelia pushed open the heavy door and entered the room.

There were no concessions to comfort within the small space. There were no windows; the four walls of the room were all painted the same dull shade of off-white, with no picture or painting to break up their starkness. Besides the bed, the only other objects in the room were the neat stack of machines that were keeping Audrey alive and a rather wilted bunch of flowers that had been thrown unenthusiastically into a vase. The air was filled with a steady hum of machinery, punctuated by a regular beep as the machine regulating the comatose witch's heartbeat informed anyone who cared to listen that the patient was still alive.

Mary muttered something offensive in Amelia's direction and then stalked off in search of a doctor, or security, or someone who would pay attention to her. Amelia had stopped listening to her; her eyes drawn to the white-haired witch who lay motionless between the heavily starched sheets. There was nothing to the woman, the arms that lay on top of the covers were so thin as to be almost skeletal; her cheeks were sunken and she looked to be at least twenty years older than her actual age.
She heard the gasp from behind as Imogen came to stand beside her. "I thought Mistress Broomhead said that Audrey was at school with Miss Hardbroom."

"She did," Amelia replied distractedly, as she tried to see if there were any residual signs of contact with a strong magical entity. Powerful magic had a tendency to leave a trace, a signature form that could identify the wielder. She sighed inwardly as she got nothing from the room, but the smell of antiseptic and a stronger feeling of nervous energy radiating from Imogen.

"What happened to her?"

Amelia bit her tongue, promising herself that she wasn't going to lose her patience. She tried quietly shushing the woman; hoping that she'd take the hint, but as she heard the slow intake and release of breath she knew instinctively that Imogen was pondering another question. "Yes it was magic, yes it was very powerful magic, and no it's not a subject that it's considered polite to discus in front of a witch who's not in a position to answer back." She paused for a moment. "I'm sorry Imogen, I know this is all new to you, but I must ask that you let me take the lead, and if you have questions, please leave them until we're alone."

There was a huff of a breath and then silence. Amelia wanted to say more, but at that moment a harassed looking doctor entered the room, an out of breath Mary hot on his heels. "Tell them," she ordered the man before he'd even had the chance to adjust his stethoscope and introduce himself. "Tell them what the parents said."

From the way that the young man smiled at her, Amelia got the distinct impression that someone at some point in his life had told him that he had a way with witches. She met that winning smile with a firm set of her jaw and folded arms. She watched as his confidence faltered slightly.

"Tell him." That was nurse Mary again. She wasn't much taller than Amelia, and the doctor towered over both of them. The young man with a mop of curly brown hair had to be over six foot and he was currently being bullied by the two women in front of him. He tried a smile again; less confident of success.

"Audrey's parents did request that she not have visitors."

"Really? And when were they last here to request that?"

"I'm sorry?" the doctor looked rather flustered; unaccustomed to having his word questioned.

"Audrey's parents," Amelia pushed her point home. "The Hawthorns….When did they make that request?" She was quietly confident that no-one had been to see the patient in a long time. The lack of immediate response from the doctor proved her point. "Well, if they don't care about the welfare of their daughter, they should be glad that someone else is showing an interest." She glared at the man, daring him to challenge her. "I have some questions Doctor…."

He looked down at his feet. "Milligan," he replied quietly.

Amelia drew herself up to her full height. "I don't think we require the presence of nurse Mary any longer. I just have a few questions for you about your patient." She paused. "I take it she is your patient?" The doctor mumbled something by way of a reply. "Speak up man. What's wrong with you?"

"I am her doctor."

"Well, I'm glad we've cleared that up." She looked past the doctor to the fuming woman behind him. "Nurse Mary, if you wouldn't mind."
Puffing her cheeks out with obvious frustration, Mary stalked from the room.

Constance stared down at the rope that encircled her wrists. She had tried every spell she could think of, but nothing worked. The suppression enchantment on the rope was a powerful one, but it wouldn't last indefinitely. She would keep testing it, waiting for that moment where her magic would break through.

She angled her head towards the door as she heard movement from the other side. She had been waiting patiently for the past hour for someone to come back. Alice had plucked at Stephanie's sleeve, whispering something in the taller woman's ear until she had been swatted away and Stephanie had reluctantly left, muttering something under her breath. Constance had sensed that Alice had wanted to stay and explain herself further, but she had pulled up short and settled for a nervous smile before scuttling from the room and pulling the door closed behind her. Aside from the turn of the key in the lock, Constance had heard nothing further until now. The key once again scraped in the lock and the door swung silently open.

"I hear you've been hiding yourself away from us all these years?"

Constance squinted at the figure who was haloed by the light out in the hallway. She'd known that there had been someone else behind the whole business, and as she saw the other woman in the doorway, she realised that she'd always expected it to be Eliza. She'd not been the brightest or the best of them, but she'd had a fierce ambition. She might never have topped a class, but she knew how to manipulate those around her to get what she wanted. She had charmed the whole school; Constance didn't think there had been one girl in the whole place who hadn't wanted to be friends with her. She included herself among their number.

"I did wonder if you'd show."

"Not even feigning surprise Constance?"

"What would be the point. I knew this couldn't be Alice's doing. She's too easily swayed by those around her to have come up with something like this. And Stephanie…Stephanie's too busy looking for someone to blame for her own lack of ability. There had to be someone else. Someone else standing just out of sight, pulling the strings, and from our coven… well, it just had to be you."

"Do you ever get tired of being so smug?"

"What of the others?" Constance glanced around at the small room. "Did they answer your call so eagerly, or were they wanting to do nothing more than leave the past buried where it should be?"

"Where there is one…" Eliza intoned the phrase and waited for Constance to pick up the rest of it. She narrowed her eyes when the sentence was left hanging. "Come now Constance, have you forgotten your allegiance?"

"Allegiance?" Constance shook her head. "We owe it to each other to never meet again. What we did was foolhardy in the extreme, and you know as well as I that it's left its mark." She took in the slightly unsteady gait of her former friend as she made her way to the far side of the table. "What has it done to you?"

"This?" Eliza coughed as she took a seat, pausing as she struggled to get her breathing back under control. "Why do you imagine that this has anything to do with what happened back then?"

"Because everything we do, no matter how small is somehow connected to that one event. It's the one string that binds us all together. As long as we live it will continue to dog our footsteps." She took in the dark-rimmed eyes and the subtle shaking that pervaded the woman's limbs. "How long have you got?"

Eliza shook her head, her long dark hair sweeping slowly from side to side with the movement. "No. No. You are not dictating the subject of this conversation."

"So tell me why I'm here. Tell me who else is here? Tell me who else has been ruined by that one night?" She scanned Eliza's face, looking for an answer. "The council are looking for me. It will only be a matter of time before they trace my magic to this spot."

"And then you will finally stand with us," Eliza told her calmly, her dark eyes giving nothing away. "I have wondered a number of times down the years why you were spared when the rest of us were expelled."

"Spared! I would hardly call what I went through 'being spared'."

Eliza let out a short bark of a laugh. "Don't you dare sit there and try and tell me that you had it hard."

"I had to face them everyday. I had to face them and have them know what I'd done." Constance blinked away the unhappy memories of that year at college. "I don't think I spoke to anyone for the rest of that school year. Do you know what it's like to be feared? To walk down a corridor and have people move out of your path because they don't want to associate with you. No-one would look directly at me, no-one wanted to sit anywhere near, in case contact with me would somehow affect them."

Eliza wasn't to be silenced. "At least you had an education. No other recognised witch school would take the rest of us. I was lucky; my parents could afford to privately fund my education, but Alice…she'll be the last witch in her family line." She caught the expression of surprise that crossed Constance's face. "What, didn't you think about that whilst you were progressing through the levels? There's no witch family she'd ever be accepted into. Her line will end with her."

"And the others?"

Eliza took a moment and examined the nails on her right hand. "Twenty years and you finally decide that you care what happened to them?" There was another flinch, another slip of the mask before it was smoothly replaced. "Oh I know we all had to agree not to consort, not to meet, but did you really do nothing to try and find anyone?"

"The council ruled…"

"And you obeyed them like some sort of mindless sheep?" Eliza couldn't be bothered to try and contain her anger any longer, slapping her hand down hard on the table. "I always thought better of you. You….you sit there in the ivory tower of your own making and practice the craft as though it's something you've a god given right to do." She pushed herself to her feet, pacing unsteadily along one side of the room. "Giving talks on the finer arts of potion making, whilst the rest of us are forbidden from attending any meetings with other witches." She rounded on Constance. "And don't try and tell me that you didn't know."

"Truly, I had no idea."

"Right, so what….you thought that we all went off to live happily ever after?" There was an anger in her eyes. "That night, that one venture, it ruined us; ruined all our lives, but you…look at you. It's barely touched you."

"Is that what you think?"

Constance's refusal to display any sort of emotion was starting to frustrate Eliza. She wanted to get some sort of reaction from her, some show that she was still the same witch she'd once known, however deep she might have buried that part of her. "You are the only one of us who has the freedom to practice, and yet you lock yourself away."

"I teach," Constance replied firmly.

"You're wasting what was denied us. You squander the gift you have."

"I teach so that no girl will ever do what we did," Constance said coldly. "I make sure they understand just how powerful and corrupting magic can be. I teach them that it is not some toy, some thing to be trifled with. It is a gift, but it is a dangerous one if not treated with the proper respect."

"When did you become so sanctimonious!" The words were spat in Constance's direction. "You were never this dull at school. If I recall correctly, yours was the vote that decided the matter."

She watched as Constance stiffened, finally satisfied that she had found a way in through her opponents armour. "Oh yes. I remember that. None of this would ever have happened if you'd cast your vote the other way."

"No, you can't pin this on me. I wasn't the one who suggested the idea."

"But you didn't exactly object to it either."

"I made a mistake, and I've had to live with the consequences of that every day since."

"No Constance, we've all had to live with it, but you shut yourself away from the rest of us, wallowed in your own small-minded self-pity. Locked yourself up with the craft; dedicating yourself to it" Eliza tilted her head to one side. "What are you? Another Broomhead?"

I am nothing like Mistress Broomhead!" the words flew from Constance's mouth with more venom than she intended. A response that was only met with a wry smile.

"So some of the fire is still in there, however far down you may like to think you buried it. Thought that mention of old Broomhead would get some reaction." Eliza looked levelly at her. "I heard that she took you on as some sort of special project. Is that what finally broke you? Is that what made you the waspish figure you are today?" There was no reply, but that in itself was telling, and for a second, there was a feeling of pity that passed through Eliza's mind. She banished it as quickly as it had formed, quickly recalling to her mind all the things she'd been denied. "We're going back," she told Constance; watching the look of horror and disbelief that spread across the woman's face. "We're going back and you are going to help us."