The End Of Childhood

The End Of Childhood 

TW: Mentions of abuse.

Constance Hardbroom’s life has not always been the easiest. Having an austere upbringing during childhood and only allowed something practical for a birthday had to have stemmed from somewhere. It started because of a woman named Mistress Hecketty Broomhead, her maternal grandmother. That vile woman had never allowed her to call her Grandmother. The deputy headmistress of Miss Cackle’s Academy For Witches closed her eyes as she gingerly ran her hand over her shoulder blade, feeling the whip scar underneath.

Memories flashed before her eyes, making her swallow hard. She remembered being shut in a dark, cold dungeon for calling Mistress Broomhead Grandmother. She remembered the whip cracks against bare alabaster skin and how her cries for mercy had fallen on her grandmother’s deaf ears. She trembled as she remembered entering Witch Training College and realizing her grandmother was to be her personal tutor. This was when Constance Hardbroom knew her childhood was over. 

Picking up her baby girl Star in one arm  and draping the other around her eldest Constance Persephone’s shoulders, she vowed to them she would never treat them as her grandmother had treated her and her mother before her. As the memory washed over her, tears streamed freely down the deputy’s cheeks as she finally broke down and wept.