Disclaimer - Same old thing, I don't own the Worst Witch.

A/N - Although I approve of her enthusiasm and imagination, La Catrina de Cackle's takes on my earlier work are her own and it is completely different from the ideas I've come up with for this version of the Worst Witch.

The Revelations of Expelled.

Leaning against the wall of the lift as it rose, Mildred smiled at her mother even though the pair of them were dead tired and worn down that it felt as though their very bodies were made of lead.

Julie grinned at her. "See?" she said, though her smile was more of a tired grimace and her cheerfulness was forced.

Mildred nodded, smiling in much the same manner. "I do, mum, but thanks for helping me get the job."

"No problem, honey," Julie replied. "So, do you think you'll stay?"

Mildred smiled. "Definitely. I love art, mum, but I'm a realist; ever since that mess at Cackles," here her smile, and her mother's, became grimaces as they remembered that visit they'd had from Cackle and Hardbroom, "I've come to see that we don't always see our dreams come true. I'd love to be an artist full time, but I don't want to keep painting and painting. I want to work and paint on the side."

Julie nodded, inwardly concerned by what her daughter had just said. While she was pleased her daughter had grown up, though truthfully she wished Mildred was still that little baby she had been, she didn't like the view Mildred had with her art, but it was a realistic view. She was just surprised Mildred had asked her if she could become a nurse, and she had called in a few favours to get Mildred her job at the same hospital, and she had worked one shift but she knew in time there would probably be double-shifts in store for Mildred.

"How's college going?" she asked, wondering if she had asked that question a few times recently.

Mildred's chuckle and the exasperated look on her face told her that she had. "It's going great mum," she replied, repeating the same thing she had been saying for the last few days, "though the art teacher isn't very good at looking at giving everyone their own projects."

"This teacher… Hardbroom level?" Julie asked carefully.

"No, thank god," Mildred replied, memories of HB's bias reappearing in her mind. "He just wants us to follow the same lessons, do the same things. I thought when we got into college, I'd do my own project, but it hasn't happened yet."

Julie mulled it over for a second in her mind. "That's college, Mildred," she said at last as the lift finally came to their floor. Julie didn't say any more until the pair of them had got out of the lift and she didn't say anything until the doors had closed. "You know that some teachers who teach something as creative as art prefer teaching their lessons in much the same way as teachers in other subjects; they take their students through the same things every day, but I see your points, Millie."

Mildred smiled but yawned when they got to the door and Julie opened it. Mildred switched the light on and looked around in delight, glad to be home, and Tabby ran towards them in greeting. Mildred grinned at her cat as she petted him; Tabby had been the only friend she had had at Cackles, and while she had good memories of Maud and Enid before the expulsion she saw those memories with a pinch of salt. Tabby was the only thing she really had from the Academy that she held onto with any kind of joy, and it helped the cat had barely left her bedroom/dungeon at the Academy. Out of everything else she had owned, she still had the pointed witches hat and the badge and sash off of her uniform. Nothing else. She and her mother had burnt the rest since the uniform shirt had been ill-fitting at times, and her boots had been too tight for her circulation, so she had gone around with her laces untied to give her feet some blood. She hadn't wanted gangrene to satisfy the teachers.

Julie fixed them both up some beans on toast - they both wanted a filling meal after spending so many hours at the hospital. When Julie handed Mildred her own plate, she watched her daughter tuck into her food and she followed suit.

They chatted as they ate. "So, what kind of things are you going to do at college tomorrow?" Julie asked.

"I've got art and photography tomorrow," Mildred replied, forking a piece of soggy-buttery toast smothered with beans and sauce and putting it all into her mouth, chewing on it while she pondered on the rest of her mother's question. "I've also got to get started on that piece of photography homework, but I can do that in another few days."

Julie nodded, not saying anything about her daughter's homework. She knew Mildred had taken her camera out a few times as part of her homework in the past, and this was no different. "What about your other subject, English Lit?"

Mildred yawned as she was about to eat a particularly crunchy looking piece of toast. "I haven't got that tomorrow," she said, "it's just art and photography tomorrow. I can't wait to begin ceramics in a bit, for now, I'm stuck working on charcoal."

"I thought you were okay with charcoal?"

"I am, I just wish there was more variety during the lessons," Mildred replied, thinking back to the lessons she'd had at Cackles for a moment. Thanks to her lack of knowledge about magic and magical culture, Mildred had no idea what would have been considered a normal lesson plan. But since everyone had expected her to follow it through without any real effort on their part, Mildred had had problems keeping up before her expulsion.

When she was kicked out and went to normal secondary school, she had a better and easier time with lessons. In college, it was just as easy, especially since her lessons were divided into three classes rather than her getting a dozen consisting of subjects she had zero interest in.

"What about you?" Mildred asked her mother.

Julie was surprised by the question. "What do you mean?"

"Do you think you can handle the hospital without me?" Mildred joked.

Julie gave a tired laugh. "Oh, I think so love," she said, "if not I'll come to the college so you can hold it up!"

Mildred laughed quietly as her mother turned the joke over her head. When the Hubble's were finished with their impromptu meals, Julie put the plates and cutlery into the dishwasher and set it up before the pair of them got ready for bed.

It took time for Mildred to go to sleep, but then that usually happened whenever she thought about Cackles Academy or something else that was bothering her.

Mildred had had quite a few sleepless nights thinking about the school over the years; she might have been expelled and had returned to her non-magical roots, which so many at the Academy had wanted her to do over time. After her expulsion, she had experienced a few sleepless nights thinking about the Academy, before the confrontation with HB and Cackle.

Even now Mildred still couldn't comprehend what had possessed the two witches in thinking it would be alright to be so thoughtless and insult her mother, did they really think she'd ignore that and everything else they had said and done? Did they truly think she would have just forgotten the way Hardbroom had gone out of her way to make life as uncomfortable as possible?

Despite her pledge to put magic behind her, she had had quite a few nights where she had been incapable of getting any actual sleep shortly after her expulsion. She had been entered into non-magical school, begun getting her head around the subjects, but she had still wondered….She had almost run away from Cackles, ironically a few weeks after she had helped expose Miss Gullet's crime of transforming Mr Rowan-Webb into a frog and leaving him in a pond for 30 years. But the wizard teacher had stopped her. Told her that a little voice would go "what if?" if she had decided to follow through with her plan, and just leave. The questions were straightforward the moment the wizard had given her the scenarios. What if she had run away and regretted it for the rest of her life? What if she wished she had buckled down and actually studied, which she did?

It was ironic she had been expelled and those two words in the question posed to her as a scenario because she had been heartily sick of Cackles, sick of the teachers - HB, Drill, Gullet and even Miss Cackle, sick of the lessons where the teachers used them as an opportunity to use her as a scapegoat whenever something went wrong, or because she made a stupid mistake that brought them down on top of her head like a ton of bricks.

But more importantly, she had become so heartily sick of Maud and Enid, again ironically because after her expulsion she definitely wanted nothing to do with them after they had torn her beliefs that they were pals to shreds, and Maud's inability to grow up and see Enid was not a threat to her. Whether or not they were friends still, she didn't know, didn't care either.

But after her expulsion and her entry into a different school in the non-magical school, she hadn't expected to get a few restless nights, but she had. She had dreamt of going back to Cackles, learning how to brew potions and master spells at last, but as time passed that old dream died out one chunk at a time and by the time she met Miss Cackle and Miss Hardbroom again the dream had died and she had begun to accept the fact she would never be a witch.

The ironic thing; Mildred seemed to have gotten a grasp of performing spells. Oh, they weren't anything special or spectacular. They were just simple flicks of her hands that helped her with some of her housework, but that was it.

But the reason for Mildred being restless tonight was because she wondered what the future held for her. She didn't know if she could cope with being a nurse in the same manner as her mother, but she had already spoken to her mother about this. Her mother knew where she was coming from; when Julie had first taken the job as a nurse at the hospital, she had been daunted with the hours, the unpredictable shift patterns, the late nights, the lack of rest, the lack of food and time to drink. But her mother had adjusted to it. Mildred had no doubt she herself would get used to it, but she was worried about how long it would take for her to adjust but she was lucky enough that her mother had the same job and had the experience to help her.

But what worried her was the fact she would need to juggle work with college. The good news was she had plenty of time on her hands at home, and she usually spent it at the flat or she was hanging out with some of her friends. But her Auntie Mo had gotten her a job already at a cafe with the owner an old friend of her aunt who owned Mo a few favours, and she had been happy to give Mildred a job. True, she had needed to master her clumsiness so she didn't trip and smash orders and let her aunt down, but Mildred was earning cash and she was developing her skills.

Meanwhile, she had plenty of time to work on her art, but if there was one thing she had received from Cackles was it wasn't to expect miracles. When she had been a kid she had had hopes she could be like Da Vinci, Monet…. but what angered and upset Mildred the most was how much more Cackles had taken from her. She had wanted to become an artist when she'd been younger, but as she had grown up she had realised that being an artist was a matter of success, which meant she would need to grow as a person, get a good job and use that job to supply her with her art materials. But what made it more tragic was she hadn't worked it out until much later when she was trying to figure out what she wanted to do with her life, when she had been younger she had never contemplated becoming a nurse like her mother, though she truly didn't have a problem with that and besides she had no intention of giving her art up.

Mirabelle Hubble had tried everything she could think of to restore the coven's Founding Stone since that crazy evil wizard drained it of its magic.

At first she had been delighted when the Council had gifted them with the Founding Stone, magical objects of great power which supplied whatever it was meant to feed with pure magical energy, constantly sucking up and releasing the magic released by spells and witches and using that magic to make the coven, business, shrine, or school with magic to make it a focal point for the Craft, but when she had heard there were wizards and witches out there who rebelled against the Code and the law of the Council, stealing the magic stored within each stone they encountered and then used the magic to cause devastation and death she had begun to wonder if the Stone in their coven was really needed.

Covens didn't need Founding Stones, but the reason was the Council wanted to create focal points of magic where magic would be stronger so then they would have places of great history.

When the coven had been founded, the Magic Council in their infinite wisdom had provided the coven's caves with the stone in order to truly create a magical environment. They wanted schools, covens, shrines, libraries that collected and catalogued and researched magical culture from different and distant parts of the globe. They wanted witches and wizards to be inspired by the past by living, learning, and working in a magical place powered by a Founding Stone.

They wanted the next generations to go out there while maintaining magical traditions and history and preserving the collective knowledge of the various families in order to create magical history for the future generations to be proud of.

Mirabelle shivered as she clutched the Founding Stone to her chest like a desperate mother trying to coddle her child in her haste to escape the caves. When the coven had first chosen the caves as their place, they had used their magic to make the caves as inhabitable as they possibly could while they had maintained as much of the original caves here and there, making up their collective minds to leave the caves in their natural state for the time being until the coven witches found some use for them.

Some of the caverns had been enlarged under the force of their magic, the spells widening the passages and the ceilings so they could actually pass through them without having to take a deep breath to squeeze their way through to one cavern to the next. They even created new rooms in the rock, hollowing out large chunks of rock out of the caves, creating fluted columns which the witches decorated in magical runes and pictographs.

When the witches first came to the caves, the network of caves, passageways and caverns had consisted of a spider's web of large and narrow passageways and caves, with large and narrow caverns and chambers. Once they were finished the cave network had been carefully redesigned into a new network shaped around a series of concentric circles with magically expanded or created new rooms on various levels. Drapes and tapestries the sisters had collected over the years were hung across the natural rock while sconces of magical fire to illuminate the caves lined the walls.

Mirabelle had barely paid much attention to the Magic Council's attention when they found out that she and her sisters were creating a new coven. But when they had informed them that they were going to give them a Founding Stone, Mirabelle and the rest of her sisters had been delighted.

A Founding Stone in their coven would allow Mirabelle and her sisters to grow their coven, attract new sisters who would help introduce younger witches to the beauties and the benefits of continuing the magical tradition of covens which were one of the great symbols of a witch. More than one coven had done the same thing over the centuries. They had started a coven, and taken their daughters to them in order to study under other witches who helped teach them how to brew potions and some complex magic in order to inspire the younglings to become even better than their elders.

The idea of creating a coven was passed down like the magic which their daughter inherited from their mother, which had been passed down the line from their grandmothers, and more than one coven had earned a place in magical history by helping create new potions or spells.

Mirabelle understood what the Council had wanted to do. They wanted magic to truly flourish. They had provided a host of schools, colleges, universities, shrines, and libraries with Founding Stones in order to make them magical. So in order to create a magic school, the Magic Council would need to supply them with the means of making that place magical. Without a Founding Stone, there would be no magic school. No magic shrine.

In the past, the Council had been very stingy about giving such a Stone to a coven. When the Stone clutched in her arms had been given to the Coven in order to make it truly magical in order to sow the seeds to make magical history.

The Magic Council had recently begun a program where they had authorised the building and founding of new magical schools and colleges on top of what was already available, which was mostly a few schools though covens were primarily responsible for the education of young witches. The idea was to educate the next generations of witches and wizards in order to inspire them into discovering new spells and potions, to inspire new ideas and truly and ultimately make the Magical World better. Mirabelle had heard the Magic Council had recently taken an interest in sending people out into the world to explore it, to travel the various countries and learn how they governed their own magical communities and what they had to offer.

The Council wanted to make Magical Britain great, and they had begun using Founding Stones to make places magical, like sowing acorns in a large patch of land to grow new oak trees over a wide area. They wanted schools and covens to educate and continue magical training and impart their traditions while the covens were responsible for passing on the tradition of the coven to their descendants in the hope of continuing the coven through their future daughters and granddaughters or inspire them into founding their own covens as time passed.

Magical museums and Libraries had been founded with Founding Stones in order to make them truly magical. They wanted the museums to showcase the past and provide the magic needed to preserve whatever was collected over the years while inspiring the youth to look at the past to create the future.

By setting up Magical Libraries, the Magic Council hoped to create collections of scrolls and books enriched by magical culture and knowledge of the ages past, and with that, they would create that future they wanted.

Mirabelle shivered. This was one of the reasons she hated the idea of Founding Stone powering the coven. She just didn't understand how that evil wizard had managed to find the Stone. She and her sisters knew how dangerous it was to just leave the Stone out in the open like that, and they had placed it in a part of the catacombs they'd assumed would not be touched, but they were wrong. Now the Stone was drained, and the frost was settling in.

Magical frost.

Mirabelle shivered once more as she walked uncertainly through the caves towards the entrance where she would hopefully manage to escape, trying valiantly to stop the chill from getting to her. Magical Frost was a highly parasitic form of magic that fed off the powers of a witch or wizard unlucky enough to be nearby. It was one of the after-effects of a Founding Stone losing its magic, and the frost was the stone trying desperately hard to recover the magic it had lost.

As she passed through the caves, Mirabelle prayed she didn't become frozen in a block of ice which could never be thawed as the place became magical black-spot. None of the coven sisters had realised the full extent of the evil wizard's crime until the magical frost had begun to set in, and when their spells went awry. At first, it was small effects, annoying effects; Mirabelle had tried to brew a few potions hours ago, but the imbalance of magic in the caves had caused the cauldrons to explode.

When her coven sisters had realised what was going on, they had evacuated the caves immediately; they had quite a few younger girls visiting and the older witches knew that there was nothing they could do so they'd evacuated before any of them had become frozen as the magical frost tried to feed off their magic. One or two of them had tried to pool their resources and reignite the Stone, but it hadn't worked. They had been frozen in blocks of ice, and so the rest of the coven had evacuated, prepared to face the consequences. The Magic Council would disgrace them for the Founding Stone going out, but that was preferable to be frozen inside a block of ice as the Magical Frost tried to consume their magic.

But Mirabelle had tried. She came from a family of great witches, and if there was one thing that was inherent in her family line, it was stubbornness. She was not the type to simply give up.

But even she knew deep down it was hopeless. With the ice and the frost settling in, attacking and leaching off the magic imbued in the caves, Mirabelle knew that if she didn't escape then she would be permanently frozen into a block of ice.

She had already tried to give the stone her magic. The whole lot just to reignite it, but she had underestimated just how much magic the stone needed. It was not enough. Oh, she had felt the stone accept the offering, but it was not enough, it wanted more. Much more. Soon Mirabelle had realised what the stone wanted.

It wanted the magic of her family's future. It wanted the magic of her daughter, and her daughter and all the daughters to follow. Mirabelle felt sick at the thought of her family losing something that made them who they were, she just couldn't do it. Mirabelle, like all Hubble's, had nothing against non-magical people despite the fear they showed towards witches and wizards, but that didn't mean she wanted to spend any real time with them, never mind want her family to suddenly join them. It went against everything Mirabelle had been taught, and everything she believed in as a witch.

But there was no other way.

Mirabelle was tempted, really tempted….. it would be so easy. Just….abandon the Stone….. abandon the caves the Coven had created….abandon all of their hard work in making the caves a magical centre….just walk away and hope she got out before the frost got to her and froze her in a block of ice… and face the wrath of the Magic Council…..

But she couldn't. She knew she couldn't just walk away. It was fine for other witches, they didn't have to put up with the Hubble need to help, to do something to make a solution to the problem. It didn't take long for Mirabelle to realise she would have to sacrifice the magic she herself carried but also the Hubble family magic, but she couldn't face it.

Mirabelle just could not make a sacrifice without knowing what the long-term effects of her decision would be for her descendants. Would they remember their heritage? Would they pass the Hubble grimoire through their family line as was traditional from one generation to the next, or would it be forgotten?

But more important questions filled her mind than whether or not her daughter and her granddaughter and all the granddaughters to follow would be happy and healthy? Would they adapt all right to their new world? Would they be struggling? Or would they fall and die, succumbing to the terrible diseases non-magical people fell to on a daily occurrence?

As she had pondered those questions Mirabelle had remembered that she could see what had become of her family. Some time ago, she and her coven sisters had encountered the Mists of Time, and they had taken a fragment of the Mists and placed it inside a crystal bottle, compressing it down until its magic was contained. It had been a nightmare to imprison the fragment, but she knew the bottle was inside the cave network.

If she could reach it then she could travel into her family's future and see what had become of them, and if they were happy then she would be happy to give her magic away.

But if they were unhappy….

Mirabelle decided to fly that broomstick when she came to it, right now she had to get her hands on the bottle.

Quick.

That was where Mirabelle was heading to right now, to the chamber where the bottle was. When she entered the chamber, she was relieved to see the caves were frost free. That made sense, the coven sisters had spent a year reforming and building new chambers in the caves, founding the coven formally and becoming a centre of education for the next generation, but they had yet to completely fill the caverns and chambers with magical books and artefacts and some of the chambers had become mere storerooms.

Unfortunately, it was so disorganised she couldn't see the bottle or any sign of it. Mirabelle cursed as she searched the chamber, resisting the urge to use magic to immediately solve her problem; the spell probably wouldn't work anyway, but if she performed magic of any kind, even the simplest spell, it would just hurry the frost up. The last thing she wanted was to find the bottle containing the Mists of Time fragment and just end up frozen in magical ice, unable to escape and be trapped forever while the ice ate her magic. But she believed she was in luck here for the time being; not a lot of magic would have been used in the past since the coven had been founded and the chamber and the passageways outside were just used for storage.

With a bit of luck, she should find the bottle and be on her way.

Well, at least that was the theory. There was so much stuff here, and she had to search through all of it to find the right box. She knew the bottle containing the Mists of Time fragment was in this chamber, they all knew. It had been a risk placing it here, but they had wanted to create the coven slowly, and it would be likely placed inside a box which would be unlikely to be disturbed by an outsider.

Mirabelle searched frantically for the bottle. Her search was hampered by the amount of ornate wooden boxes cluttering up space. Her coven sisters had filled chambers like this without giving much thought at all to make a system, and now she was having to look through each box. She had found boxes of jars filled with potions and ingredients, spare robes, drapes, tapestries that had yet to be put up, cauldrons made from various metals, candles, and books.

Mirabelle searched each one thoroughly, and she looked through the chamber for over half an hour though it felt more like an eternity while she kept her eyes focused on her search and looking around the chamber for the first signs of the rock freezing up. After searching a seemingly eternal number of crates, she was looking through a box full of carefully folded drapes. Mirabelle sighed and wondered how many drapes this coven needed; as a witch, she was supposed to live in a place where magic was essentially worshipped in all but name, and their decorations were designed to highlight that, but that didn't mean too many things couldn't get old really fast.

She searched through the drapes carefully, keeping an eye out for the first signs of the frost, but so far she was still in luck. After about five minutes of removing one layer after another, she finally found what she was looking for, tucked away under the weight of the drapes. Mirabelle closed her eyes and laughed with relief before she reopened her eyes and picked up the bottle out of the box. She idly wondered who had buried the bottle in this particular box, but she decided it didn't make any difference now. Whoever had done it had probably planned to keep it in a box full of harmless objects to fool anyone who may have wanted to plunder the coven.

The bottle looked like someone had taken a number of really think pieces of crystal and then used heat to remould them into a new shape, the end result made it look like another someone had grabbed some hammers and chisels had broke as much of the crystal away. The Mists of Time fragment was trapped inside. It was compressed by a number of spells placed inside the crystal. The Mists of Time were too dangerous to simply rely on a mere crystal bottle being the only thing keeping it stable and contained. Mirabelle made a quick study over the bottle. It wasn't touched by the frost yet so there was still time.

Once she was finished she hurried over to the Founding Stone, and just as she was picking it up, she jumped back with a yell of shock when she saw, in a corner of the chamber, a patch of magical frost that began to spread like mould.

Mirabelle shoved the bottle into a pocket of her cloak and rushed down the passages, cradling the Founding Stone in her arms as she went. It was a nightmarish experience running through dark passageways and tunnels all the way to the entrance, even for a fully trained and experienced witch, but when she saw the light at the end of the passageway she almost cried with relief.

When she reached the cave entrance she stopped and realised she couldn't just take the stone with her, not into the woods and certainly not into the future to see her descendants. Time travel would not prevent the magical frost from spreading out, and even if one of her descendants was non-magical, she was not going to endanger them.

She sighed and placed the Founding Stone just tucked out of sight of the entrance and she rushed away from the caves to put some distance between herself and the caves.

She stopped when she came to an old oak tree in the forest and she decided this was far enough, and she took out the bottle. As she placed her hand on the stopper, she thought about the incantation she was going to need to use, she had to get this right the first time. As she spoke the incantation carefully, she uncorked the bottle and felt the magic of the Mists of Time leak out, Mirabelle hoped that her plan would work out.

Mildred leant against the wall of the lift tiredly. She had had a long day at college and at work. The cafe's owner, Caitlyn, had decided to put her on the till today in order to teach her new skills. Mildred was just relieved Caitlyn had invested in a till that was more modern and told her what change to hand out to the customers, otherwise, she would be floundering as she tried to work out what change she had to hand out.

Maths had never been Mildred's strong point, she could do the basics but there were some parts she simply didn't have the ability to do so she was glad she had made it clear to Caitlyn what she could and could not do with Auntie Mo's help. But fortunately Caitlyn didn't have problem with that since she had made sure her cafe was always brought up to date while making sure the place was clean and tidy, immaculately clean and tidy every day of the week thanks to a contract with steam cleaners, and that included installing wifi in the cafe, and making it into a more cosier version of Starbucks or Cafe Nero.

Sure, there were one or two customers who were more demanding and caused her a few headaches. Mildred grimaced as she thought about that old bloke who'd come into the cafe a few times, reacting with disgust each and every single time he saw the prices of the cakes Caitlyn and a few others had worked so hard to bake for the business, asking in a huffy and angry manner about the prices and why they seemed so steep.

Mildred had seen him a few times when she was serving another table. Caitlyn was always able to handle him in a calm manner, but when the old man was gone she would comment that if he didn't like the prices or the cafe then he shouldn't come in.

When Mildred dealt with him, she had adopted Caitlyn's manner in dealing with him. Caitlyn was always careful never to offend or be rude to any difficult customers, she would always be kind and courteous to them even if they were a problem. It usually worked. When Mildred came to dealing with the old bloke, he had been annoyed by the prices of the slices of coffee and walnut cake, which didn't make sense because they were only £1.50, but he had still thrown a hissy fit. Mildred had been as polite as she could be towards someone like him, and soon he walked out of the cafe.

Something new to add to my CV, she thought to herself as she waited for the lift to reach her floor.

Mildred glanced at her watch, pleased she wasn't doing anything tonight. She wasn't going to the hospital tonight. Her mother had made it clear to the administration she had college and she needed to work on them a few nights but she would work at the hospital when she could. The hospital admin was okay with that, not that they had much choice.

When the lift finally reached her floor, Mildred got out, carefully poking her head out of the door. A new nosy neighbour had moved to the block of flats and she had already begun eavesdropping poking her nose into other people's lives. Mildred and her mother had already seen her once or twice, looking at the portfolio Mildred sometimes carried, or sniffed disdainfully whenever she saw their nursing uniforms. Mildred didn't know what her problem was and frankly didn't give a damn one way or another. She wasn't going to say or do anything unless the woman made the mistake of saying something about her or her mother, but not before. She had made the mistake of taking Ethel's potion ingredients which messed up the blonde's potion during Selection Day. She wasn't going to make the same mistake of looking and accidentally making an enemy again.

The corridor was clear and so Mildred headed for her flat door and unlocked it.

"Mum, you in?" she called as she stepped through the door while looking around the flat carefully. It looked like she was alone, she couldn't see anyone in the living room area or the kitchen. As she slipped off her jacket, she froze in shock when she heard someone behind her ask.

"Are you one of my descendants?"

Mildred whirled around and found herself looking at a woman who had jaw-length white curly hair. She noticed with some surprise the woman, this stranger, had a surprising resemblance to her mother. But then Mildred took note of what she was wearing. The woman was dressed in the robes and black cloak of a witch, and she had a pointed witch's hat on her head.

Who was this witch?

More next time.