That night, she got home to find the house empty. There was a note on the table;
Motorway pile up, I might be at work until late. Sorry!
This note would usually have made her annoyed, and bought her a long, lonely evening. But now… she was alone in her house, no one would be home for hours. She pulled out her wand. It felt good to hold it, she hadn't done so in seven years. It was like finally falling into a warm, soft bed after the longest day of her life. As she raised the wand, a warm surge filled her entire body. She suddenly forgot the reason she had given up magic, the promises she had made; the past few weeks had given her a taste of magic, and now she couldn't go back. She brought the wand crashing down, exploding a vase in a fountain of gold flames.
All of a sudden, she seemed to awaken terrified from the long-awaited sleep. She stared around; she was standing in a pool of glass, her wand at her side. The next thing she knew, she was sobbing, tears falling onto the shards of glass glittering on the floor, her wand shaking uncontrollably as her arm quivered with tears. The reasons and the promises had come flooding back as the glass had hit the floor; the smash seemed to have awoken the sleeping dragon, and now he was back. Back to hurt, back to ache, back to grieve and back to cry.
***
The woman screamed.
The wand hit the floor with a smash, and a man laughed horribly in the distance. Gold flames licked at her, she was in agony…
Then two pairs of hands came out of nowhere, and dragged her away from the flames she had survived for so long. But then the hands went away, and the darkness was worse than the flames; she needed the hands back, the darkness hurt in a different, more terrible way… but she mustn't go back to the flames, they had hurt so much..
Miss petal was screaming. Her boyfriend woke with a start.
"What's wrong? Where are you? Are you okay?" He said in a terrified voice.
"Yeah… I'm fine… bad dream," She said breathlessly, turning away so he could not see the tears dripping silently onto the crisp linen.
***
Miss Petal sat at her desk, watching the children drip paint onto the newly laid carpet, then trying to rub it off with their feet, leaving a large dark blot. Today she couldn't care less; a simple charm would clear that right up. Then a huge knot tightened in her gut. She couldn't go back to magic, she had to remain strong, she had promised, vowed not to, she couldn't go back on her word – not now, not after so many years…