Disclaimer: I don't own The Worst Witch

A/N: I am still working on editing my other one-shot but this little fic came to me on the bus yesterday morning. I might do a follow-up companion piece but I shall see.


This Year's Black

Chapter One

Six-year-old Hecate Hardbroom absolutely hates the colour pink.

She hates everything about it: from the way she looks when her mother dresses her in it, to the disgusting way that the "p" sounds pops on the tongue.

It's the only colour that always stays in the box of pencils when she colours in. An expert hand guiding the other colours carefully within the picture, always careful never to stray outside of the lines.

Her favourite colour is black.

Granny Hardbroom tells her that black is 'sophisticated' and 'much more becoming of a lady'. Hecate nods at her words, though she doesn't really understand yet what they mean. She just knows that black looks more "witch-like".

The young Hardbroom lives and breaths the craft.

She can spend hours, alone in her room, pouring over spell books and magical theory, voraciously devouring every word within them as she comes to terms with the power that she has and the responsibility that comes attached.

Black is the true cloth of calling for a witch.

Whereas pink, that just feels like little girls playing dollies and dress up — two out of many games that the other neighbourhood girls have excluded her from on account of her not being pretty enough. Or because her name begins with an "H," or for some other petty reason that little girls use to masquerade their innocence behind a malicious intent.

She tells herself that she doesn't care.

She tells herself this all the while knowing that she doesn't believe it.

They aren't the only ones who can play pretend.


Seventeen-year-old Hecate Harbroom absolutely hates the colour pink.

She stands, slightly aside from the other girls on her first day of College, unable to take her eyes off a girl who embodies everything about the very colour she detests.

One look at this girl, in all her pink and perfect, and she's instantly transported back to the past and to those girls who made her feel like she was never good enough. She internally sighs, resolving to put all of that behind her and start anew. The old feeling of inferiority is quickly reinforced though as the mysterious blonde suddenly catches her eye before she turns away and whispers something to the girl next to her.

Hecate scowls, swearing there and then to have as little to do with this barbie as is physically possible.

Luck is not on her side though as they are instantly assigned to be roommates. It's horrible, it's awkward, and it's ... the beginnings of an unexpected yet deeply treasured friendship.

She stills hates the colour pink, but she likes Pippa Pentangle.

Until she hates her again.

Maybe even more than the colour pink.


They make up years later, thanks to some kind-hearted intervention from her very worst pupil, and for that Hecate is grateful. She's reluctant to admit it, but she's missed Pippa.

She's even sort of missed the pink.


Some months later as she takes in the pink lingerie hastily discarded across the floor, the perfectly pink manicured hand currently clasping her own, and the way the pink bedsheets tangle around her girlfriend's naked body, thirty-nine-year-old Hecate Hardbroom muses that she just might have a new favourite colour.