Merry Christmas!
I hope you've enjoyed my little Christmas presents. I have been busy recently writing a number of chapters and stories for Christmas Day. I don't own the Worst Witch, but I own this one-shot and I hope you enjoy it and tell me what you think since I am doing something different here.
Enjoy!
Cynicism in one so young.
Why did Miss Pentangle, someone who didn't know anything about her, offer her a scholarship?
Mildred Hubble, first year student at Cackles Academy, just could not work it all out. Sure, when she had met the glamorous witch who apparently had a history with Miss Hardbroom, and then, later on, arrived with a doughnut in her bedroom. Mildred's first impression of the woman was she was quite nice. But then again so too was her impressions of Miss Gullet. Look how that had turned out. It had only been a few weeks for Mildred since the older witch who had been biting at her heels, constantly deriding her in front of the entire class, calling her "a non-witch freak" or even a "waste of space," but the memory was still there had left after being returned to human form after she'd gotten a taste of her own medicine for transforming Mr Rowan-Webb into a frog and leaving him in the pond for thirty years.
Personally, Mildred would have left her that way, to really make it sink into the woman's sad excuse for a mind. But anyway, Gullet had left a bad taste in her mouth. Unlike HB, who was a little bit more subtle at times, Gullet had made it perfectly clear how much she disliked Mildred. No, maybe not dislike. No. That was too mild.
No, hatred was probably the better term. By the end of the first lesson, the feeling the mutual.
Mildred had loathed Gullet. Maud was too naive; her bespectacled friend believed if she just studied, Gullet would warm to her. Couldn't she tell Gullet was out for her blood? Nothing she did would have changed that, but anyway it no longer mattered to her in the least.
Mildred didn't feel much pity for the woman now she'd been revealed to be a thief who had taken away the Spells Science teacher job away from Mr Rowan-Webb. Part of her wished the woman was still trapped in that frog pond and would be for thirty years to come before she was transformed back into her human form. It would be poetic justice considering what she had done herself. Ordinarily, Mildred didn't like to think about wishing pain on others, but Miss Gullet was one of those people she had no problem wishing had received a bit more than what they'd actually gotten.
But anyway, Mildred was still wondering why on Earth Miss Pentangle had offered her a scholarship.
Why was the woman so interested in her anyway? Surely there were other "true witches" for her to be interested in? Thinking about that, about how HB seemed to think only "true witches" should be in Cackles and do things like the Spelling Bee, only served to make her sneer angrily, and yet it made her wonder if perhaps she should just leave. What about Maud, Enid, Felicity, or even Ethel? Why weren't they being offered a scholarship?
It made no sense to her, but Mildred wasn't going to ask even if a few questions might reduce the mystery.
What was the point?
She had learnt that not all witches and wizards made sense. Besides, sometimes they lied to her face.
But those girls…They were better at magic than she was, they had grown up with magic around them whereas she had grown up in the non-magical world, an upbringing so many people in this damn school had constantly used to bully her due to her ignorance of the witching world. Even Maud and Enid sometimes had problems being seen with her, so Mildred had tried to keep her head down and she often wondered if the pair of them would eventually decide to leave her. In fact, there were days she actively looked for signs of that happening but she had no intention of making it worse. Mildred was not one of those people who played games with those whom she liked, the games where they tested people to see if they would still be friends.
They were cruel, pointless and they could make the people being tested leave anyway while the person who played them originally felt vindicated for some stupid reason where they lost everyone around them and blamed their former friends rather than themselves for leaving than them for playing the games in the first place.
Mildred wasn't going to do that because she had no idea how far Maud and Enid could be pushed before they decided they'd had enough of her.
But what made her so suspicious of Miss Pentangle was how much the woman reminded Mildred of Miss Cackle. Physically they were nothing alike. Miss Cackle was old whereas Miss Pentangle was much younger, but it was their attitudes that were similar. Both of them presented a cheerful front for the world to see.
But what was behind Pentangles' front?
But it was their manner that was similar, and that was one of the reasons why she was so concerned about the scholarship offer.
Miss Cackle had given her a chance to learn magic at Cackles on a trial basis after that mess with Agatha on Selection Day. Everyone had discovered she was a girl from outside their world, so she'd been sent away without a qualm, but it hadn't been until she'd stopped Agatha things had changed and she was allowed into the school on a trial basis. It hadn't gone well for her because none of the teachers were willing to give her the benefit of the doubt, and actually, teach her anything about magic. None of them were willing to sit her down, and give her a few hints or tips about how to make spells work.
Potions was worse. During her first week alone, Mildred, although knowing Miss Hardbroom wasn't really all that fond of her, tried to ask the older woman for help. She had stayed behind after class one day, and she'd gone to the woman after plucking up her courage to ask for her help. What did the woman do? She went extremely still and quiet, almost like a statue of granite, though ice was more appropriate considering the womans' mood.
Hardbroom had leaned over the table top, pinning Mildred down with those laser-like eyes of hers, and in that quiet, reptilian hiss of hers, snapped "Witches do not beg for help."
And for the next five minutes, Mildred was subjected to a truly horrible lecture from the woman, who then changed her tactics by insulting nearly every member of Mildreds' family. Well, by the end of it, Mildred was so angry and fed up she was actually wondering if she could get away with justifiable murder in the magical world. She was just sick and tired of it all.
By the end of her first week, the feeling she had inside of her body and in her mind and heart made her wonder if the trial was just some big con. By now, Mildred was convinced of it. She just didn't have any proof.
But somehow Hardbroom didn't hold a candle to Cackle.
Even now Mildred was unsure of what to think about the elderly headmistress, and it was one of the reasons she was reluctant to really trust Miss Pentangle as well. The older witch had constantly and consistently smiled at Mildred, basically telling her to do her best. But when the girls back was turned it was a totally different story.
Every few weeks Miss Cackle and Miss Hardbroom dragged her mother into school. That in itself was scary since her mother was a nurse at the hospital, and she often worked the night shifts. Mildred had learnt quickly as a child how to take care of herself when Aunt Mo was looking after her. But for her mother, it was an extremely time-consuming part of her mothers' life. She had to deal with difficult patients as it was, so the last thing Julie Hubble needed was to be dragged into Cackles when she was seeing someone. What if the teachers, because of their lack of common-sense and not really thinking properly, dragged her mother into the school and brought a patient along for the ride? What, in their wisdom, would they do next?
That worried both Hubbles, and the last thing Mildred wanted was for her mother to be antagonised anymore. Julie knew how much she wanted to be a witch, but Mildred was starting to see there was a fine line that was drawn between reality and dreams. Further down the line, she might actually want to be expelled.
It wasn't as if she was learning anything, right, except that the teachers just about tolerated her. Even Mr Rowan-Webb, the one teacher who owed her anything, didn't really bother to teach anything to her. Miss Drill, whose class mirrored the non-magical world the most with her subject, always treated her neutrally.
For months now, Julie was starting to dread going to work because neither Miss Cackle and Miss Hardbroom had any sense of timing, but what really annoyed both Mildred and her mother was how the teachers thought they could say whatever they liked, and Julie would just take it. Mildred had known for a long time what Miss Cackle said about her not focusing in classes. Did she really think mother and daughter did not speak? Big mistake. For months, Mildred had had to listen to her mother basically plead with her to just keep her head down. Mildred had tried that a dozen times, but it didn't seem to make any difference, since Miss Cackle kept saying she didn't focus. Well, it would be difficult to focus when you were out of your depth.
Miss Cackle was not just a liar, she was a hypocrite. The proof lay in those meetings the headmistress and her deputy had with her mum.
Would the same thing happen if she accepted Miss Pentangles offer? Mildred just wasn't so sure, and yet as she sat outside the hall where the Spelling Bee competition was being held, it was all she could think about. What else could she do? HB had made it abundantly clear to her she wasn't meant to do anything at all during this stupid contest, so Ethel had to take part in all of the rounds.
So essentially all of those stupid lessons Mildred had been forced to take part in with Ethel, having cauldrons blow up in her face, having to put up with those snide comments from Hardbroom basically telling her as a girl from a non-magical family it was a bad idea for her to participate when truthfully Mildred didn't care about the contest in the first place, listening to Ethel call her the Worst Witch time and again, having Miss Drill take the food out of her mouth literally and blowing that whistle in her ear, it was all for nothing. She was forced to sit in a chair the entire time, ignoring Ethel and everything else around her. Truthfully she hadn't really been surprised; the teachers wanted to win this stupid competition, and they didn't want to risk losing because of her.
No, it made sense they'd want Ethel Hallow to win it for them. Personally, Mildred didn't care about the Spelling Bee. She was at one of those points in her life where she just wanted to leave the school and take Tabby (another reason she wasn't happy here, not since HB had just taken her cat away like she had the fucking right) and go home and forget Cackles and being a witch. Anything was better than this.
As she sat in the chair, her mind replaying the conversation with Miss Pentangle again and again, Mildred wondered to herself what was going to happen if she accepted.
While she was waiting for the contest to just be over, she wondered what would happen if she did accept the offer. But a number of questions went through her mind all the time.
Would she have friends who didn't look at her pityingly from time to time like Enid and Maud did sometimes? Would she have someone like Ethel Hallow who refused to leave her alone? Would the teachers be like the ones she had already? Would Pentangle betray her trust the way Cackle and Hardbroom frequently did? Would she finally learn magic in a manner similar to how she was used to lessons being taught to her instead of being expected to know the principles already? Or would she be go from one school to another where her roots were being sneered at?
Even later when the woman herself forced Cackle and Hardbroom into a corner to make her participate in the Spelling Bee, and listening to what Cackle said after she'd succeeded with the Weather Spell (She was getting really tired of the lack of faith in every one here; did it never occur to them that if they actually sat her down and speak to her about where she was going wrong, then perhaps she wouldn't have caused so many accidents? But unfortunately common-sense was a contradiction in terms, right?), her concerns just grew.
In the end, when she had helped Hardbroom and Pentangle become friends again (She wasn't sure why she was bothering, really - Hardbroom had never really done anything for her, and she didn't know Pentangle all that well in any case), Mildred had turned it down, but not for the reasons the teachers thought.
At Cackles, Mildred at least knew where she stood. While she regretted telling the visiting Headmistress the answer was no, the reasons were a little bit more broader than she would have expected.
Mildred had already learnt to endure Cackles, she couldn't bear to do it again with a new school by getting her hopes up.
But as she made her polite refusal, keeping her suspicions to herself, Mildred asked herself when she had become so cynical.
I hope you enjoyed this.