Well folks,here we are.The confrontation… butdon't expect too many an swers just yet…! There's probably still a million things wrong with this,but it feels like I've been stewing over it for weeks,so… time to stop tinkering, I think! Keep reading, keep reviewing, you lovely people...

Aggh, does anyone know how to solve FFN's idiocy over italics?

CHAPTER TEN

The girls and staff of Cackle's obeyed the order to line up against the castle's walls, their feet crunching loudly on the frozen snow as they moved. Other than that, there was scarcely a sound to be heard; there was no attempt at a protest from the girls, despite the bitter cold and their insufficient cloaks. Even their eyes were still. Indeed, the only indication that they were alive at all came from the gusts of steam exhaled from mouths and nostrils, veiling them in a mist of their own creation.

They stood with their backs pressed against the walls, feeling the winter cold seep from the stone through their cloaks, stealing any resistance they might have had. The puffs of breath came faster as they waited for what would come, a visible sign of the terror that lurked behind the imposed compliance.

But nothing happened.

Even Ethel and her companion had seemingly vanished, leaving the school apparently alone, lined up like prisoners awaiting execution from a tardy executioner.

No-one moved.

The clouds of breath came smaller and with ever increasing speed, and the breathers grew pale with a pallor that could not entirely be attributed to the moon.

A owl tooted, an inadvertent warning, a sound that carried far in the stillness of the night, but there was no reaction.

Finally, a figure wrapped in its own personal shroud of mist stepped out of the shadows and approached Miss Cackle. By virtue of its mask, it towered over the diminutive headmistress, but when it spoke, the voice was familiar.

It was Agatha Cackle.

'Well, here you all are, just as I've wanted you for years. You won't outwit me this time, Amelia. This time you're finished!' Her laugh was gloating and triumphant. 'And you can't do a thing about it. You're frozen, all of you!'

She laughed a second time. 'But you're feeling it all, aren't you sister dear? Yes, that's a tear trying to leak – but it's too cold, it'll freeze.' She came even closer, invading Amelia's space, and dropped her voice, a futile endeavour, for it was still clearly audible. 'Perhaps that's the way to go… just leave you like this, and you'll freeze all right – to death!'

'That wasn't the agreement!' a harsh female voice shrieked from the trees. 'That's no fun! Release them, Agatha!'

'You hear that?' Agatha hissed. 'They're after blood, they don't care whose. When they're done with you, freezing to death will seem… kind.'

She wiggled her fingers and watched avidly as the girls and staff regained control of themselves once again. Nearly everyone was quiet, but in the distance, further down the wall, could be heard the high plaintive crying of a terrified child.

xxx

Mildred managed to get her breathing under control. Hyperventilating would help no-one, and it would only attract further unwanted attention if she was to lose consciousness and fall into the snow. Even surrounded by her friends, she shuddered inwardly at the thought of being so vulnerable before an enemy: an enemy that was more numerous than they had initially thought.

Behind Agatha, through the veils of mist and darkness, she could make out a row of ghostly hooded figures. The mists moved in time with their advance, and the girls began to instinctively huddle together in the face of an unknown threat.

'This is it, isn't it,' Mildred murmured to Maud where they stood on either side. 'There's no way we're going to make it out of this alive.'

'Not without our magic,' Maud agreed sadly. 'And even if we did have magic –'

She broke off, and Mildred had to force herself to breathe carefully again. All of these weeks without magic had fooled her into thinking of magic as a shield, a defence, but the pureblood Maud's hesitance to think likewise reminded her of the reality, and numbness took over.

It really doesn't matter, she thought. Magic or not, we're still dead either way…

Mildred felt someone take her hand, and flinched away, back against the faithful stone of the castle behind her.

'It's only me,' the someone whispered in a voice that Mildred had not heard for some time. 'I'm so sorry, Millie. I've been so awful this term. I don't know what came over me.'

'Enid?' she heard Maud say disbelievingly from her other side.

'It's me,' their once-and-hopefully-future friend said with uncharacteristic meekness. 'I'm sorry.'

'Tell us again if we make it out of this,' Mildred whispered back. 'Then it'll really mean something.' But she squeezed Enid's hand all the same, and reached out her free hand to Maud, who took it with fervour.

The darkness crept closer, tendrils of mist reaching out as if to caress, fingers swelling to envelope some of the youngest girls.

Someone screamed.

'What was that?' Jadu murmured fearfully from Enid's other side.

There was a second scream, and the girls huddled together even closer.

Mildred, flanked by her closest friends, closed her eyes as hard as she could and prayed as she had never prayed before. Do something, HB, she wished, do something, before we're all lost…

xxx

A third scream, long and high and wailing, was cut off with brutal suddenness, and it jerked Miss Cackle out of her stupor of shock and horror and into action.

'Stop this now,' she demanded, her voice trembling thinly in the air. 'Le t the girls go, Agatha – it's the school you want, it's always been about the bricks and mortar with you!'

'Ah Amelia, so sweet, so naïve,' Agatha returned from where she was still shrouded in the mists. 'I'm afraid, dear sister, that you are behind the times. This time… this time, the buildings would simply be the icing on the cake. This time, I – we - want more…'

'You can't have the girls!' Amelia told her through lips that were stiff, and not just from the cold. 'You can't!' Desperate for some kind of reassurance, she reached out blindly, looking for someone to hold on to.

'Too late, Amelia,' Agatha said, and Amelia jumped back, startled, as her sister's face appeared out of the mists, deprived of its mask, her head seeming to float eerily amongst the nothingness.

Amelia gasped, and relaxed as a warm, firm hand took hers with a light but definite touch, steadying her. Constance, she thought gratefully. Davina, as she knew from experience, tended to cling, and Imogen was further along the wall in an attempt to keep her out of the line of fire.

But Agatha was ranting in her usual style, and Amelia forced herself to listen – only to find that it was not simply the same old story.

'Once upon a time, the school would have been enough. I could have sold it, made a fortune. But now… I'm after something better, something more.' In the half-light, her eyes glowed fanatically, and Amelia took a frightened breath and tried to retreat back against the support of the castle walls, the rough granite digging through the thin fabric of her cloak and pajamas.

'What do you w-want?' she asked, and cursed herself when she heard how she stammered.

Agatha grinned, showing a mouth void of most of its teeth. 'I do want the school, but I want its flesh and blood, I want its soul. I want your girls.'

Amelia's knees weakened. 'Why? They're children!'

'I shouldn't have to tell you, sister dear. You're a teacher. Tut tut, what would Granny Cackke say?' Abruptly, her voice dropped in pitch, sliding down the register. 'If we have the children, we have the future. We can train a new generation to believe in the Dark Lord, and they will train their children after them. We may lose a battle, but we will win the war!'

The fanatic glow was back and numbness took hold of Amelia. She had always known her sister was amoral, but the amorality had always been rootless, with little incentive or intent beyond a half-imagined grievance. Now she realised that Agatha had become a convert, a cult member, and that made her suddenly truly dangerous.

As she finished her speech, Agatha raised her hands and her companions moved closer, half-out of the mists and shadows. Their pale conical masks rose high, illuminated by the light of the moon. They were chanting, a hypnotically rhythmic litany.

Amelia was too frightened, too horrified, to try to decode it. She tried to take a breath but it caught in her throat as her body rebelled. Her lungs tightened, a cruel band across her chest, cutting her in two, and spots began to dance before her eyes.

We're trapped, helpless, she thought in confusion, aware she was perilously close to unconsciousness.

'Constance,' she said automatically, the plea turning the name into a prayer, 'please.'

'I think our work here is done,' a silky male voice said, and it derailed Amelia from her headlong fall towards blessed unconsciousness. 'Well done, dear Agatha. You shall be rewarded handsomely.'

The voice crept ever closer as it spoke, but Amelia was already too distressed to react when the face of its owner hovered momentarily above that of her sister, a face from a thousand nightmares. It was bloodless and almost noseless. All the life and colour of this – this creature that threatened them all was contained in the sparkling red eyes.

Amelia opened her mouth to try a final defiance – and she was bleakly certain that it would be the final one – only to be forestalled by the voice she wanted most to hear.

'Don't count your chickens, Tom Riddle,' Constance said in a low tone that grew in strength and volume, word by word. 'You were defeated once before. What makes you think it cannot happen again?'

'And how, pray, will a bunch of magicless women and children do that?'

Agatha cackled in the background, but Amelia ignored it, her pulse pounding so loudly through her ears that she could scarcely hear what was happening, only inches away.

'Yes,' Constance agreed, and her voice swelled as it regained all of its velvet resonance. 'We're defenceless as you understand it. Powerless indeed. But isn't it true, my lord' – and the title became a mockery on her lips – 'that you have been defeated before by the weak, and powerless, and defenceless?'

'Constance,' Amelia whispered in protest, heedless of the fact that her deputy would probably not hear, and would in all likelihood ignore the caution if she did.

'Shall I kill her, my lord?' Amelia heard Agatha ask, and her stomach churned as her twin's seemingly disembodied head bounced with hopeful glee. 'Can I? Can I?'

A long, pale hand pushed Agatha's head away, and it vanished into the grey ether.

'A battle,' Voldemort said, sounding pleased at the prospect. 'A challenge after all, and I do like a challenge.'

'Well, you won't get one this time,' Constance told him in the low tone that was well known to every inhabitant of Cackle's Academy as a signifier of her most profound and dangerous rage. 'We can't match your power, you've made sure of that. But there's another power, one that does not depend on magic, or potions and spells. Cackle's Academy!' Constance finished on a shout, and for a few seconds the energy in that shout dispelled even the enclosing mists.

And behind it, there was the ethereal sound of hopeful singing.

xxx

'We have to do something,' Mildred said desperately as the battle of wits between Miss Cackle and her sister escalated. 'We can't just stand here.'

Maud looked exasperated, as she had so often done during their years together. 'What d'you want us to do, Millie? We're stuck. There's nothing we can do. All these magical enemies, right on our doorstep… What is there to do?' Her voice trembled as she ended, and even in the dim light Mildred could see how her eyes shone with tears.

'Maybe there is something,' Ruby began thoughtfully from Maud's other side. The faces of her friends lightened somewhat; Ruby was known for her unorthodox solutions, just as Mildred was known for her flashes of insane insight. 'And the best bit is,' Ruby continued, 'it's not magical at all.'

'What do you mean?' Enid asked, her smooth brow wrinkling in puzzlement. 'How will that help?'

'Millie, Jadu, were you ever dragged to Sunday School as a kid?'

Startled by this unexpected question, they murmured an assent, and Ruby smiled. 'Don't you remember this: love is patient, love is kind…?'

Mildred turned incandescent with renewed hope. 'Maybe that's it,' she said excitedly. 'The epidemic took our magic, but it also took our – our faith in each other. Our love for each other.'

'Yes!' Jadu's face was also aflame. 'I remember it too. We did it in primary school.' She began to quote: '"Love always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. Love never fails." Then the end, "And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love". Don't you see? '"Love never fails,"' she repeated. 'It could work!' Then her face fell. 'How do we let the others know?'

Maud's smile was angelic. 'We sing it, of course.' And she lifted her voice and began to sing the words Jadu had recited in a very simple tune, just as Miss Hardbroom shouted her call to arms.

xxx

'What are those kids up to?' Fenella whispered in her neighbour's ear as the singing made its way up the line, a rippling wave of ignited hope. It was the first time she'd voluntarily spoken to the other girl in days. 'It's –' She stopped, realising the identity of the girl to her left.

Griselda shook her head, a finger to her lips, as she listened. 'They're singing about love,' she whispered back. Her eyes dropped. 'And faith, and hope … and all the things we haven't been, lately.'

Understanding crossed Fenella's face and she linked her arm through her best friend's. 'They're singing about togetherness,' she realised, and when Miss Hardbroom called out 'Cackle's Academy' she quickly put two and two together and answered the call, nudging Griselda as a hint to do the same.

Griselda gave the biggest smile Fenella had seen from her in weeks, and she turned to her next neighbour and took her hand.

'Cackle's Academy,' she murmured, 'pass it on. Just keep saying it, over and over.'

xxx

For the first time since the epidemic had hit, Constance Hardbroom was standing steadily on her own two feet with no need for any kind of support. Her magic remained inaccessible, but she was aware of the once-familiar thrumming deep inside that told her that it was still there, a thrumming that seemed to swell in time with the volume of the girls' chanted 'Cackle's Academy'; she was sure she'd even heard a few bright sparks launch into the last verse of the school hymn, despite their dire situation.

Pride filled her; pride in her school, in her colleagues, in Amelia's gentle perseverance and Imogen's doggedness, and Davina's… sheer battiness. Pride, too, for the girls, her girls, who seemed to have quickly understood what she'd only just fully grasped herself. They might defeat Voldemort with magic, but a line from a letter of Minerva's had suddenly made itself clear: Dumbledore says that love is the power the Dark Lord knows not. Magic alone was not what was needed in this case.

And it was clear he had realised what she now knew as she drew herself up to her full height and faced him squarely, without fear.

'No!' he screamed, a shrill shriek of rage that reverberated around the woods and the castle walls, sparking off a host of frightened squalls from the animals who lived there. Even the girls were momentarily silenced, but they started up their chant almost at once, and Constance stepped forward, straight and tall.

'You're too late,' she said clearly. 'You thought we would be easily defeated, that we would fall apart without our magic. We haven't. You've lost, my lord.' Once again her tone was mocking, unafraid to taunt the dark, and Voldemort's pale face contorted.

'I never lose,' he hissed, suddenly snakelike. With a movement so quick it was inhuman, he whipped his wand from his robes and commanded, 'Avada kedavra!' - and a green bolt of death hurtled unerringly towards Constance.

'Oh, no you don't,' she vaguely heard someone – Amelia? – scream, and the next thing Constance knew she was flat on her back, crashing painfully onto the frost-hardened earth, her hand still in that of her rescuer.

Constance blinked as looked at their linked hands, her stunned mind taking a moment to understand what it was seeing: they were glowing gold, a shimmering thread that bound her to every girl and teacher in the school, a thread that bound them all to the magical rock of the castle itself. And all at once, she knew what she had to do.

Gently, she detached herself and rose to her feet with her old grace. She could not spare the time to check on her rescuer – if ever there had been a need to think only of the good of the school, it was now. She straightened; the thrumming within her had become tangible, a wild exhilaration, and Constance knew that her magic had returned in full. It almost burned her fingertips, begging to be used.

'Would you like to try that again?' she asked, a knowing smile twitching her lips. It was the smile that drove her pupils mad, convincing them that their Deputy Headmistress knew more about them and their doings than she should. It was deliberately provocative, and she used it to full effect now.

'One always likes to please a lady,' Voldemort hissed. He raised his wand, and Constance could see how several of the hooded figures beyond stepped closer, almost entirely out of the shadows. 'Shall we oblige?'

Their answer was a string of curses, some obscure even to her. She remained unmoving, watching them come towards her, that smile still playing about her mouth.

xxx

'It worked!' Mildred exhaled when the thread of gold materialised, linking hand to hand, girl to girl, pupil to mistress. Even she could see the flash of something not unlike uncertainty on Voldemort's face, and the downright fear on Agatha's.

Yet as the seconds ticked by, they were still caught in their impasse. Curses had been thrown at Miss Hardbroom, and the Deputy Headmistress made no overt move to defend herself.

'What's happening?' Enid whispered, clinging tightly to Mildred. 'Why doesn't she do something?'

'Perhaps she's just waiting for the right moment,' Maud put in, breathless from tension and anxiety as they watched.

'They're going to kill her,' Mildred said frantically. 'Why doesn't she – '

The were robbed of speech and breath when they saw what happened next. Their form mistress raised a hand, as if in welcome, and cupped it. The spells hit, and she glowed red for an endless while as she fought to subdue the curses. Finally, finally, the aura around her turned white… a white that grew, banishing all the darkness it touched…

…and the girls knew no more.

xxx

'Constance!'

Constance was vaguely sure that she knew that voice, and equally certain that something important was going on and it might be useful if she could only open her eyes. Yet it seemed to require too much energy; all she wanted to do was to float in this white nothingness, to treasure a rare instance of peace.

'Constance, please!' the voice begged. 'Please w-wake up.'

It was the hitched sob that penetrated, more than the plea or despair, and she carefully, wearily, opened her eyes and stared into the face that hovered above her, dripping tears that fell like rain onto Constance's skin.

'Amelia,' Constance said numbly.

Amelia smiled through her tears. 'Thank heavens you're all right.'

'What happened?'

Amelia's tears came faster. 'Y-you saved u-us a-all. Again.'

Constance studied what she could see of the face of her employer and friend in the moonlight. The tears streaming down her cheeks made her vulnerable and suddenly old. 'I'll have to ask for a pay rise,' she said half-seriously.

Amelia giggled, verging on hysteria. 'Oh, Constance.'

Constance stared over the older woman's shoulder, a frown deepening between her brows as memory trickled back, and she tried to raise herself. Amelia attempted to push her back, and Constance grabbed at her restraining hands.

'Amelia,' she breathed, the name a prayer of gratitude. 'You're alive.'

'Yes. Got through the whole thing without a scratch.'

Constance's grip tightened on her superior's hands. 'And the girls?'

Amelia's face receded into shadow. 'We lost three,' she said starkly.

'Oh, Merlin.' Guilt crushed Constance's chest. She hadn't been fast enough… 'Who knocked me out of the way earlier?' she asked abruptly, her mind trying to escape the reality of those three dead pupils. 'I thought it was you –'

'I w-wasn't fast e-enough,' Amelia sobbed, unwittingly echoing Constance's thought of a moment before and visibly collapsing into herself. 'It was Davina who saved you, Constance. It was Davina.'

Constance pressed her lips together against the yell of rage that wanted to come. Dear, silly Davina… She found herself yearning to shout at her colleague one final time, to watch her fluttering into her cupboard in high dudgeon after yet another argument about trivialities.

She sank back into a stupor, only half aware of Amelia's sobs or the mushy snow beneath her, a cold veneer of softness over the iron ground below. When a tear-streaked Imogen, accompanied by a shell-shocked Fenella and Griselda, came to help Constance to her feet she said and did all the right things. She managed to assist with ushering the traumatised girls back through Walker's Gate. When Imogen asked her to help carry Davina's crumpled body back into school, Constance went without a word, even when Amelia protested. She sat with Davina and the bodies of her lost pupils in the Great Hall all through what remained of the night, refusing to leave for food or rest.

She could cope perfectly well on little sleep or sustenance, she told Amelia when the headmistress anxiously urged her to go to bed.

She was still sitting there in her silent vigil when the first rays of the weak winter sun stole through gothic windows, illuminating the still figures lying on the centre of the dais. She was aware of only hollowness inside as she watched the pale golden fingers stroke the faces, lending them some semblance of warmth.

'And the greatest of these is love,' Constance murmured, thinking of so many things. She gave a bitter laugh.

Love had indeed given them their victory, but at a terrible price.

xxx

*cautiously peeks out of trench* Um, tissue warning? Maybe? More seriously, what did you think of this? This was written right after I'd written Ch 2 and had to be subsequently rewritten. Does it work? Is it too confusing? Not dramatic enough? Too religious? – although that kinda just happened, I've always loved those verses. *crawls back into trench*