This is pure fluffiness that I couldn't get out of my head. It was also supposed to be mildly funny.
Two other points in general - I felt rather silly on learning that there should have been goats in the Great Outdoors story. This is the kind of detail I wish I'd had - but I am severely/profoundly deaf and the Powers That Be did not deem that subtitles were necessary on the WW DVDs. Nasty horrible people. So anything I write is based on what I can see and understand via lipreading, hearing aids, powerful headphones, and online episode guides.
Point no2 : I want a character beta. Someone with an eye for characterisation and who can prod me into finishing more ambitious projects. Any takers? My email address is on my profile.
Enjoy.
Graduation Day
Newly graduated witch Mildred Hubble was crossing the great hall of Wyrdsister College, her eyes scanning the crowd in an attempt to find her parents. Sudden impact reminded her that paying attention to her immediate surroundings was also a good idea.
"Oh – I'm sorry -" she murmured absently to her victim as her eyes continued to scan.
She was cut off ruthlessly.
"Mildred Hubble. Still not looking where you are going, I see."
Mildred's hands clenched tightly around her paraphernalia of cat and broomstick in shock at the sound of that well-known voice. "M – Miss Hardbroom?" she squeaked.
Her former teacher was standing in a pose that had become very familiar to Mildred in her four years at Miss Cackle's Academy – back ramrod straight, black hair pulled into a tight bun, pursed lips, and arms folded across the chest with spell casting fingers at the ready. The newly professed witch gulped as all her feelings of grown-upness and sophistication began to leak out of her as inexorably as air leaks from a pricked balloon.
Then she caught sight of something glimmering Miss Hardbroom's eye.
She looked closer.
No. It couldn't be. Could it? Was that the tiniest hint of a vestige of a twinkle?
The mere suspicion of that twinkle caused her chin to come up and she met Miss Hardbroom's gaze straight on, noting as she did so that they were now level. "Are you here to see Ethel graduate?" she asked politely.
Cackle's Deputy Headmistress raised one dark brow slightly. "Not just Ethel," she said simply.
Mildred's jaw dropped.
"Oh, do close your mouth, Mildred Hubble. I've told you before, you look like a demented goldfish when you gape like that. It's not every day that the former worst-witch-of-the-school graduates with honours, you know."
Midred blinked. "Er, thanks. Miss Hardbroom. I think."
Miss Hardbroom tutted impatiently. "As coherence seems to have deserted you yet again, I shall go and find Ethel. I will speak to you and your parents later."
"Yes, Miss," her ex-pupil returned meekly, feeling completely ridiculous. Even now it is difficult not to be over-awed by H.B., she thought.
That lady rolled her eyes and gave vent to a sound that Mildred would have described as a snort coming from anyone else. Then she smiled. Not sarcastically, or tentatively. Mildred had seen those before – but an honest-to-goodness smile that her former pupil could only remember exchanging with H.B. once before, on the day that Sybil Hallow and Amelia Cackle had between them managed to thoroughly discomfit Hecketty Broomhead. Only then, she remembered, H.B. had withdrawn the smile almost at once when she'd realised who she was grinning at.
Perhaps now ... Cautiously, she returned the smile.
"Well done, Mildred," Miss Hardbroom told her, before vanishing, leaving Mildred gaping yet again.
She shook her head to clear it, and shifted Tabby's weight from one arm to the other. "You know, Tabs," she said conversationally, a wicked grin curving one corner of her mouth, "I really think H.B. is going soft in her old age."
"I heard that, Mildred Hubble!" Miss Hardbroom's voice boomed out of nowhere.
The wicked smile broadened into a grin and Mildred gave a sigh of satisfaction as she headed towards the back of the hall, where she'd just spied her parents talking to (unbelievably!) the Hallows. She hummed as she walked.
All was right with her world.
-fin.