A Bad Spell for the Worst Witch

by Jill Murphy

  CHAPTER THREE

  ire-drill was followed immediately by breakfast in the dining-hall and everyone was surprised to see Ethel deliberately sitting down next to Mildred, for it was common knowledge that the two were not on the best of terms.

  ‘You haven’t changed, I see,’ remarked Ethel provokingly.

  Mildred ignored this jibe and sprinkled sugar over her bowl of porridge which resembled a drought-stricken river-bed.

  ‘Actually,’ continued Ethel, ‘I’ve got a bone to pick with you, Mildred Hubble.’

  ‘Oh?’ said Mildred. ‘What?’

  ‘It’s about terrorizing my little sister,’ replied Ethel.

  ‘I don’t even know your little sister!’ exclaimed Mildred.

  ‘Really?’ said Ethel. ‘Are you sure you don’t remember telling a poor little girl named Sybil some stupid story about being turned into a frog?’

  ‘Gosh, was that your sister?’ asked Mildred.

  ‘Yes, it was, as a matter of fact,’ replied Ethel.

  ‘I don’t know why we didn’t notice, Mil,’ said Maud, rallying to her friend’s side. ‘We should have noticed that spiky nose anywhere.’

  Ethel turned deep mauve with rage.

  ‘Oh, come on, Ethel,’ said Mildred, trying to make peace. ‘It was only a made-up story. She was being a bit of a weed and in any case I went to cheer her up in the first place.’

  ‘A fine way to cheer people up!’ retorted Ethel. ‘Terrifying the wits out of them. Sybil still hasn’t got over the shock — and don’t you go insulting my family. Sybil’s delicate, not a weed.’

  ‘Look, Ethel,’ said Mildred firmly, ‘just stop it, will you? I’m not getting into a fight over some silly little first-year whether she’s your sister or not, and if you’ll excuse me, this porridge is bad enough hot, but cold it’s inedible and there’s a long way to go till lunchtime.’

  ‘I won’t forget this,’ muttered Ethel. ‘No one insults my family and gets away with it.’

  ‘Weed!’ exclaimed Mildred, feeling suddenly reckless after all Ethel’s prodding. ‘All you Hallows are weeds, weeds, weeds!’

  Ethel got up and flounced out of the hall, looking grim.

  ‘You shouldn’t goad her,’ said Enid. ‘You know what she’s like.’

  ‘I know,’ said Mildred, ‘but she does ask for it sometimes with all her airs and graces. No one insults my family,’ she mimicked in Ethel’s voice. ‘She’s just an old windbag, she’ll have forgotten by tomorrow.’

  ‘I wouldn’t be too sure about that,’ warned Maud.

  After breakfast Miss Hardbroom announced that the rest of the morning would be devoted to cat-training. All the girls were presented with black kittens in their first term at the academy and these were trained to ride on the back of their broomsticks. Mildred, however, had been given a rather dim-witted tabby because there hadn’t been quite enough black ones to go round. It seemed rather typical of her luck that she had ended up with the wrong sort of cat, and she couldn’t help wondering if Miss Hardbroom had made sure that the misfit kitten had been given to Mildred, rather than someone like Ethel.

  ‘I hope you have all been practising during the holiday,’ said Miss Hardbroom, as the girls all lined up with their brooms hovering next to them and the cats perched on the back – that is to say, most of the cats were perched on the back. Mildred’s tabby was clinging desperately to the front of her cardigan, its claws hooked in and a wild, desperate look on its face.

  ‘The cat is supposed to be on the broomstick, Mildred,’ said Miss Hardbroom wearily.

  ‘Yes, Miss Hardbroom,’ agreed Mildred, dragging the cat from her front and reducing the cardigan to shreds at the same time. The desperate creature immediately spread itself flat on the back of the broom with its eyes glued shut as if awaiting execution.

  ‘How many terms have you been training that cat, Mildred?’ said Miss Hardbroom. ‘Look at the other cats. None of them seem to be finding it so terribly difficult to just sit on their brooms. It is not as though they were being asked to do an aerobatic display, Mildred. Now take that cat to your room and work with it there for the rest of the morning. The creature is not fit to be seen until it is properly trained. It is a disgrace to the academy.’

  ‘Yes, Miss Hardbroom,’ said Mildred, now faced with the embarrassing task of prising the unfortunate cat from the broomstick and making her way miserably from the yard with the taunting stare of Ethel boring into her back.

  Inside her room, Mildred decided to get into bed for a few minutes to warm up. It was a freezing cold day and her feet were like blocks of ice after the session in the yard. The cat, delighted that its ordeal was over, burrowed under the covers like a furry hot-water bottle, and although Mildred had only meant to sit and get warm, within a few minutes her eyelids began to droop, and before long she was fast asleep – so fast asleep that she did not hear the door opening very quietly.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  he noise of the bedroom door being slammed woke Mildred with a start. She opened her eyes and froze with horror and disbelief at the sight of a vast creature staring down at her with green eyes each as big as a lilypond.

  Mildred closed her eyes again, hoping that perhaps it was only a nightmare, but when she sneaked another look, the apparition was still there, and now it began patting gently at Mildred with its gigantic paws.

  Terrified, Mildred backed away and crashed into something hard, which seemed to be a huge iron railing towering above her. However, at this distance from the monster, she could see that it was none other than her own tabby cat, which for some reason had grown to the size of a mammoth.

  Knowing the cat as well as she did, Mildred could see that, despite its size, it was frightened out of its wits. Her suspicions flew at once to Ethel having cast a spell on the cat to get even with Mildred for the insult to Ethel’s family.

  ‘Don’t be scared, Tab,’ she started to say, but much to her surprise, all that came out was a strange hoarse noise sounding rather like ‘Craark!’

  Panic began to grip Mildred as it slowly dawned on her that not only Tabby, but also the bedstead, all the furniture and even the bats sleeping round the picture rail were many times larger than usual. This led her to the alarming conclusion that it was not they who were bigger, but she who was smaller – and a lot smaller.

  She peered over the edge of the bedstead and saw a cliff of bedcover stretching endlessly to the stone floor. Tabby began purring which sounded, to the miniature Mildred, like a squadron of aeroplanes taking off.

  ‘Oh, do stop it, Tab. I can’t hear myself think!’ she tried to say, but once again the words seemed to stick in her throat and come out as a croak.

  Mildred decided to get to the chest of drawers, on which stood a small mirror, so that she could see just how small she was. The end of the bedstead was only a few inches away from the drawers, but in her new tiny condition it appeared to be miles. However, to her great surprise, she suddenly felt the impulse to take a flying leap at the huge gap, and landed with the ease of an acrobat on top of the chest.

  ‘How strange,’ thought Mildred, ‘I had no idea that I could jump like that!’

  She soon discovered why, and it was not a pleasant discovery. Looking back at her from the mirror, with eyes like saucers, was a small, olive-green frog. Mildred turned round, but there was no one behind her. She stretched out her hand and saw a green, damp limb reach out to touch the mirror-frog’s webbed foot.

  Mildred began to cry, and as she lifted her hand to wipe away the tears she watched with horrified fascination as the reflection did the same.

  ‘This is no use at all,’ Mildred said to herself sternly. ‘Sitting here crying isn’t going to change anything. I must get help.’

  She jumped back onto the bed and noticed something lying on the pillow. It was a giant-sized clump of weeds, Ethel’s way of telling Mildred who had cast the spell and why.

  Mildred leapt to the floor and sat there for a moment, reflecting how nice i
t was to be able to jump such an amazing distance without getting hurt. It reminded her of the disastrous pole-vault on the school sports-day, when Enid had cast a spell on Mildred’s pole to help her, but had inadvertently overdone the magic and Mildred had sailed through Miss Hardbroom’s study window.

  However, the ability to jump was the only pleasant aspect of Mildred’s new condition and a sudden, hot wave of panic seized her. She felt utterly trapped in her small, cramped frog’s body, her knees felt bent in the wrong place and her arms were too short, and it was quite terrifying trying to speak and only being capable of a hoarse croaking sound. There was a large gap beneath Mildred’s door, and she decided to set off and find someone to help her. Watched by her baffled cat, Mildred squeezed through the gap and hopped away down the corridor, convinced that nothing could be worse than just sitting helplessly in her room.

  As it turned out, she would have done better to have stayed on her pillow, for there she might have been found by Maud or Enid who would possibly have put two and two together at the curious sight of a cat and frog nestling on the same bed. But outside her room, Mildred was just a common frog who had strayed into the School, where it would be unlikely to occur to anyone (except the wicked person who had done the deed) that it might be a second-year witch under an enchantment.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  ith the worst possible timing, Mildred turned the corner just as Miss Hardbroom strode through the door leading from the yard.

  ‘Well, well,’ she said, bending down and picking up the little frog, ‘what have we here then?’ And without further ado, she crammed Mildred into her pocket and marched off.

  It was not very pleasant in the pocket. Mildred felt around in the bumping, musty darkness and discovered a whistle, a notebook with a rubber band round it, and a voluminous handkerchief.

  The next thing she knew, Miss Hardbroom had pulled her out of the pocket and plonked her unceremoniously into a high-sided glass jar. Through the glass she saw that she was on a shelf in the potion laboratory and the tall figure of her form-mistress was swirling out of the door.

  Mildred felt absolutely dreadful. There appeared to be no way of escaping and even if she did escape, she had no idea what to do. She wondered if Ethel would relent and change her back, or whether she might be really wicked enough to leave her as a frog, for ever. She also wondered if Miss Hardbroom and the class would begin to wonder where she was, after a while.

  They were wondering where she was at that very moment. Miss Hardbroom had, in fact, been on her way to Mildred’s room when she encountered the frog. After leaving the potion laboratory, she soon discovered that Mildred was not in her room and set off to look all over the school where, of course, she did not find the missing pupil. The class when questioned did not know where Mildred was either. It was a mystery.

  ‘Perhaps she’s run away?’ suggested Enid to Maud as the girls trooped in for dinner. ‘H.Β. was cross with her about the cat.’

  ‘I don’t think so,’ said Maud. ‘She would have taken the cat with her if she’d done that.’

  ‘Well, I can’t think where she is then,’ shrugged Enid.

  ‘Nor can I,’ said Maud. ‘But if you ask me, Ethel’s got something to do with it. She’s got that look on. You know, that I know something you don’t sort of look.’

  ‘We’d better keep an eye on her then,’ said Enid.

  Meanwhile, in the potion laboratory, Mildred was desperately trying to overbalance the jar by climbing up the side and leaning on it. However, she could only get up a little way before she tumbled backwards, as the jar had a heavy glass base which proved impossible to overbalance. After several tries she gave up and wept a pool of panicky, frustrated tears. All she could do now was to rely on Ethel being merciful (which was not one of Ethel’s main qualities). Also, Mildred realized that even if Ethel was feeling merciful enough to confess, it was quite possible that no one would realize that Mildred was actually the frog in the jar.

  Form Two filed into the potion laboratory after dinner for an hour of spell-making. Maud and Enid were still racking their brains as to the whereabouts of their friend, and Mildred felt utterly helpless as they passed by her jar and she heard Maud say, ‘Perhaps she has run away, Enid. I mean, I can’t think where else she’s gone and she knows she’ll get into the most dreadful trouble if she turns up now without a good excuse.’

  ‘I’m here!’ Mildred tried to shriek, but it only came out as a frenzied croaking.

  ‘That is the noisiest frog I’ve ever had in this laboratory,’ snapped Miss Hardbroom with a piercing glance at the jar. Mildred lapsed into silence and fixed her eyes on Maud in the hope that she might be able to send some sort of message through the air – like a radio wave – to her friend. It almost succeeded.

  ‘Enid,’ said Maud, as they sorted through the ingredients for an invisibility potion, ‘I’m sure that frog’s staring at me. It hasn’t taken its eyes off our table for the last ten minutes.’

  ‘Don’t be silly,’ said Enid, ‘frogs don’t stare at people.’

  ‘Well, that one does,’ said Maud. ‘Look!’

  Enid looked. The little frog was definitely gazing hard in Maud’s direction, and when it saw Enid turn to look, it began jumping up and down and croaking like a mad thing.

  ‘Maud,’ said Miss Hardbroom, ‘would you please remove that frog from the jar and put it into the box in the cupboard? We do not wish to listen to that noise all afternoon.’

  ‘CRAARK!’ pleaded Mildred, ‘CRAARK! CRAAARK! CRAAARK!’ Maud approached the shelf cautiously, reached into the jar, and took Mildred out.

  Mildred gave one last, long look into Maud’s eyes, but she could see that there was no hope of Maud recognizing a half-mad frog as her best friend. There was nothing for it but to flee.

  Mildred leapt into the air as high as her new, powerful legs would take her, and landed with a soft ‘splat’ on Maud and Enid’s bench.

  ‘Don’t just stand there girls!’ bellowed Miss Hardbroom, ‘Catch the creature!’

  The entire class took off in pursuit of the frog as it sprang nimbly from bench to bench. Hands clutched and faces loomed, and suddenly Mildred remembered that the class would be making an invisibility potion. (Miss Hardbroom had told them to revise for it after breakfast.) Mildred dived for Ethel’s bench, knowing that Ethel would have made the best potion of all, and there it was, dark green and bubbling in the cauldron, with a half-full test-tube conveniently spilling a puddle of the liquid onto the bench. Mildred’s frog-tongue shot out and lapped as much as it could.

  ‘Oh, Miss Hardbroom!’ she heard Ethel cry, ‘The frog’s disappeared!’

  Mildred heaved a sigh of relief and leapt onto the floor where she huddled in perfect silence under the bookcase near the door.

  ‘How very strange,’ mused Miss Hardbroom, ‘not only the noisiest, but also the most knowledgeable frog I have ever been privileged to meet.’

  ‘I’m sure it was trying to tell me something,’ whispered Maud to Enid. ‘Perhaps it knows something about Mildred?’

  ‘What could a frog know?’ asked Enid.

  Maud shrugged her shoulders. ‘I don’t know,’ she replied, ‘but it was no ordinary frog. I can tell you that for certain.’

  CHAPTER SIX

  owering beneath the bookcase, Mildred dared not move in case she had begun to be visible again. (When you have taken an invisibility potion, you reappear very gradually, head first, followed by the rest of the body.)

  In fact, being invisible is a very odd sensation indeed. Imagine holding out your leg and feeling it with your invisible hand while being unable actually to see it. For this reason, walking becomes rather a difficult experience as you can feel your feet moving along but cannot see where they are going. This means that you often find yourself moving in the opposite direction to the one intended which, of course, is extremely annoying.

  Mildred held out her arm to see if it had begun to reappear but it hadn’t. Her patience paid off at las
t when she heard Miss Hardbroom tell the girls to pack up their books, and after much clattering and bustling, the door closed and the laboratory fell silent.

  Mildred hopped out and looked around. As usual, there was a gap of several inches under the door. In fact, it seemed to be a school speciality that none of the doors fitted properly and the windows (most of which were slit windows) had no glass in them at all. The whole school seemed to have been designed with the sole purpose of freezing all the pupils to death.

  Mildred squeezed through the gap and set off as fast as possible along the corridor and down the spiral staircase to the yard. From there she hopped to the pond at the back of the school, for she felt sure that she could hide safely there in the weeds and rushes while she tried to find some solution to her appalling problem.

  Sitting on a stone in the middle of the water was the large frog that Mildred had often seen, and which had been the inspiration for the tale which had scared Ethel’s sister.

  ‘Craark!’ it said, and to Mildred’s delight, she found that she could understand what the creature meant. It said, ‘What on earth’s the matter with you? Where’s the rest of your body?’

  Mildred realized that her head had reappeared, which must have looked rather alarming, bobbing about all over the place with no body attached.

  ‘Don’t be afraid,’ said Mildred. ‘I’ve taken an invisibility potion and I’m just coming back into view. You’ll be able to see all of me in a moment.’

  ‘Where did you get the potion from?’ asked the frog, slipping silently from the stone and swimming across to Mildred’s head.