Hair of the dog
Summary: One day, the battle of wits between Ethel and Mildred goes too far, and a life hangs in the balance. Can Mildred use her mistakes to her advantage before it's too late?
Disclaimer: I own nought save the plot, and Jill Murphy created the characters. I'm using them as played by the wonderful actresses of the second series. This takes place towards the end of said series – the gang are in form 2, and Miss Bat is still around.
One
Another day, another disaster.
Mildred looked into the cauldron containing what should have been her and Maud's latest potions test with dismay. Whilst the rest of the class were stirring pots of clear blue, gently simmering liquid, theirs was the colour of custard and bubbling thickly.
"What do you suppose we've done wrong this time?" asked Maud gloomily, ladling up a scoop of the gloop and letting it go with a plop. "I think it was too much water reed."
"Or too little bindweed," said Mildred, holding up a large clump. "I think we should put some more in."
"You have two minutes remaining," came Miss Hardbroom's voice from the front of the class. "You should have finished by now. Blabbermouth potion isn't that slow to brew."
The two second-years looked at their potion and then at each other.
"Well, it can't be much worse than it is already," said Maud. "Put the rest of the bindweed in Millie."
Mildred chopped the bindweed roughly and threw it into the cauldron, which began to bubble ever more violently until a puff of smoke exploded, causing the girls to jump back with a squeal.
"And Mildred and Maud's perfectly timed explosion signals the end of the test." Miss Hardbroom could be seen moving through the smoke, which dissipated with a wave of her hand. She had her usual expression of mercilessness affixed firmly in place. "Seeing as though no-one else's potion produced quite such spectacular effects, I'm expecting something extra special from you two." She peered into the cauldron and raised her eyebrows, which all the girls had long since come to know as a very bad sign.
"Oh dear." She walked back to the front of the class. "Girls, I want you to decant your potions into the bottles provided and, in turn, take a teaspoonful. We don't want you all babbering gibberish all day."
Mildred picked up the empty bottle on the desk.
"Shall we see the damage?"
Maud ladled up a spoonful of potion and poured it into the bottle.
"Well, it certainly looks better than it did before," she said. The liquid had stopped effervescing and had turned a pale, opally colour.
"It's still not right though. Look at Ethel's."
They looked up at Ethel and Drusilla's desk, where their bottle of beautiful, sapphire jewel-coloured potion had made them speak perfect gobbledegook for a few seconds.
"Mildred and Maud," called Miss Hardbroom. She was looking horribly expectant. Maud poured a few drops onto the teaspoon and was about to swallow it when the teacher spoke again. "Wait." She came over and looked at the bottle closely. "Girls, I can honestly say that whilst you have definitely not made a blabbermouth potion, I have no idea what you've made instead. I think there's only one place for this particular concoction." She stalked across the room and opened the dangerous potions cabinet, placing the bottle on the top shelf. "We don't want any unexpected nasty side-effects, do we?"
"She does," muttered Maud as they packed away. "You can see it in her eyes. There's nothing she'd like more than to see us suffer."
"Oh dear," said Ethel in an annoyingly loud voice as Mildred passed her to hang up her apron. "Poor Mildred's got her potion so wrong that she's ended up in the dangerous potions cabinet. Wherever next?"
"That's enough Ethel," called Miss Hardbroom, firing a spell at the cupboard to lock it. Ethel closed her mouth but not for long.
"Useless," she hissed n Mildred's ear.
Mildred glared at her darkly, an hundred spells passing through her mind as she envisaged Ethel as a pig, a frog, a flea…
"Hurry up Mil," yelled Maud from the door. "We'll be late for chanting."
Mildred ignored Ethel's smirk and left the room, Maud casting a contemptuous glance back over her shoulder at her friend's tormentor.
Ethel burst out laughing as she and Drusilla followed them out.
"Has Hubble Trouble ever made a potion correctly?" asked Drusilla of no-one in particular.
"You know, I don't think she has." Ethel tried to control herself. "I wonder what she made this time." They stopped outside the door to the chanting classroom. "Shall we find out?" she asked Drusilla, an excited glint coming into her eyes. "Batty isn't there yet."
"I don't know Ethel. It's in the dangerous potions cabinet."
"That's only because Miss Hardbroom hasn't had time to work out what it is yet. Besides, I wasn't suggesting that we tried it ourselves. Do you honestly think I'd willingly drink anything Mildred made?"
"I'm still not sure."
Ethel sighed at her friend.
"What's wrong with you today?" she said. "Normally you'd jump at the chance to get Mildred into some sort of trouble."
"Normally I would, yes, but this is the dangerous potions cabinet we're talking about here Ethel. Don't you think that's going a little bit too far? Hardbroom's not stupid, if she thinks it's dangerous then it probably is."
"She only put it in there to make an example," said Ethel. "I mean, how badly wrong can a blabbermouth potion go?"
Drusilla still looked unsure, which caused her friend to stamp her foot in indignation.
"Fine. You don't have to be in on it. You just run and get Miss Hardbroom when Batty falls down the stairs. You need never know what's gone on."
"What?" Drusilla began, but Ethel had already scampered back to the lab. A few seconds later, she heard the trill voice of Miss Bat singing her way down the stairs from the first years' classroom, followed promptly by a scream and several painful thuds. Drusilla took this as her cue to race back for the potions teacher, but she was impeded by the flood of fellow second years coming out of the chanting room to investigate the disturbance.
Back at the lab, Ethel was waiting for Drusilla with impatience. She'd charmed the stairs ages ago, but there was still no sign of her. She's probably bottled it, thought Ethel grimly. I'll have to have words with her later. Just then, the noise from the other end of the corridor became so great that Miss Hardbroom noticed it without the need for Drusilla's intervention and came outside, ready to deal a swift and painful punishment to the perpetrators of the racket. Ethel slipped inside a spent a few moments considering the cabinet whilst she searched for the spell to unlock it. She'd never realised how handy such a spell could be.
"Kista pandorum partus thesorum," she muttered, and the doors flew open. She grabbed the bottle of opal-coloured liquid and shut the doors, but before she could think of the reverse spell a familiar voice stopped her in her tracks.
"Ethel? What are you doing?"
Ethel whirled around to find Sybil standing just inside the doorway, looking shocked and shrewd in equal measure. Ethel tried to slip the potion into her bag surreptitiously, but she couldn't manage it.
"It's none of your business," she snapped. "Second-year stuff. Besides, what are you doing in here anyway?"
"I have a potions lesson next," said Sybil levelly. "Once Miss Hardbroom has finished peeling Miss Bat off the bottom of the stairs. Don't you have chanting now?"
"Alright girls," came the voice of their formidable potions teacher. "Into the classroom, there's nothing to see. Ethel, what are you doing in here?"
"I... forgot something Miss Hardbroom. I'm leaving now." Ethel pushed past the gaggle of first-years and her somewhat bemused teacher, praying that no further questioning would ensue. After all, Miss Hardbroom was hardly likely to suspect her perfect student, was she?
Miss Hardbroom raised her eyebrows to herself but said nothing.
"Girls, today we'll be looking at laughter potion again. The ingredients are on the front desk, please form an orderly... I said ORDERLY line to collect them."
As Sybil passed the dangerous potions cabinet to collect her ingredients, one of the doors swung open with an ominous creak. Sybil shrieked, which sent the entire class into hysteria.
"Oh for goodness sake! What's the matter now?" asked Miss Hardbroom.
"The cupboard door opened by itself Miss," volunteered Clarice.
Miss Hardbroom sighed heavily and strode to the cupboard, magicking it shut once again.
"It's called a draught, girls, and there are quite a few in this castle. Nothing remotely sinister or supernatural. Mind you," she added under her breath. "I could've sworn I locked that cabinet five minutes ago."
Unbeknownst to the teacher, Sybil had heard this muttered aside. She snatched up her ingredients and returned to her desk, Ethel's guilty eyes foremost in her mind.
XXX
"I reckon that this is exactly the same semolina that we've been served up for the past three nights in a row," said Enid in disgust as they sat around the table that evening. She swallowed a spoonful with a grimace. "It certainly tastes like it."
"All semolina tastes the same," said Maud. She went to pick up her own spoon but found herself without one. "Millie! You were supposed to be picking up the spoons! You've forgotten again."
Mildred looked down at the table to find that she didn't have a spoon either.
"I was sure I picked up a couple of spoons. Oh well. I was miles away." She got up and squeezed past Maud in search of cutlery. "Well? Talk amongst yourselves!"
Her friends laughed and leant in to continue their conversation. No one paid any attention to Mildred's unguarded pudding as Ethel leant over and poured a few drops of the potion into the bowl.
"Ethel?" The voice made her start and she upended the bottle, emptying the whole lot into the sticky semolina. She looked to her left to find Sybil and Drusilla looking at her, unamused. Ethel retreated to her own table and stashed the bottle back in her bag.
"I still think you've gone too far this time," said Drusilla.
"Well there's not exactly much you can do about it now, is there?" said Ethel, irritated. "In fact, thanks to you I put the whole bottle in. I didn't intend to do that."
"I'll tell Mildred what you did," said Sybil. Ethel gave her a withering look and the first year appeared to shrink visibly beneath her gaze.
"Will you really?" Releasing her little sister's attention, she looked over to watch Mildred coming back to the table with two spoons to replace the ones that she had summarily puffified when no one was looking.
"It's ok Mil," said Maud as Mildred went to squeeze past her again. "I'll move up and have your bowl. It's not like you've eaten any of it, is it?" As Mildred sat down in Maud's newly vacated seat she passed her friend a spoon sheepishly.
"I'm sorry. I was..."
"Miles away," finished the group as one.
"Where were you daydreaming at?" asked Jadu. "You've been distracted all afternoon."
"I was thinking about Ethel," said Mildred, stirring the bowl in front of her absentmindedly. "When she came in late to chanting after Miss Bat fell down the stairs this morning. She was holding something and I didn't see what it was."
"You know Ethel," said Maud. "She was probably only trying to bait you into doing something irretrievable and getting yourself expelled." Maud became aware of another presence behind her and spun round to find Ethel's face alarmingly close to her own. "Oi! Don't eavesdrop on other people's conversations! It's rude!"
Ethel, who had leant over to check that all the potion had been absorbed, scowled and turned back.
"I don't know what's going to happen after that blabbermouth potion though," said Mildred sadly. "Imagine it. In the dangerous potions cabinet. Soon the entire school will think that I'm trying to turn people into tadpoles."
"Why tadpoles?" Maud began, but again felt someone else behind her. "Look!" she said angrily, turning round. "I've already told you once... oh, hello Sybil."
Sybil said nothing in reply, instead looking at Maud's semolina as if it was alive and about to jump up and bite her.
"Well?" snapped Maud. "What is it? It may have escaped your notice but when semolina goes cold it magically transforms into inedible wallpaper paste, and mine's halfway there already."
"I..." Sybil started to speak but then caught sight of Ethel's smirking face out of the corner of her eye and couldn't go through with it. "No. It's not important right now."
Maud finally turned back to her pudding, quirking an eyebrow as if to say 'well that was a waste of time'.
"I wonder what she was going to say," pondered Enid. "She does look very worried."
"Wouldn't you be if Ethel was your sister?" snorted Ruby.
"Let's change the subject," said Maud. "Is it me or does this semolina taste even worse than usual?"
Enid rolled her eyes.
"We've just been saying how it always tastes the same!"
"Maybe it's just my mouth playing tricks on me." She shrugged. "Trying to make meals a little more exciting perhaps. Well." She pushed her half-eaten bowl away. "There is absolutely no way that I'm finishing that. Thank goodness HB isn't on duty."
The girls left the table and as they neared the dining room door, Mildred cast a glance backwards at Ethel and her sister. Sybil was watching them leave, her petrified eyes trying desperately to communicate some sort of message.
"Come on Millie!"
Reluctantly Mildred left the room, wondering what Sybil was too scared to say.
Please review, this is my first fic for this fandom.