Disclaimer: Doctor Who belongs to the BBC and Worst Witch belongs to Jill Murphy; you know the drill

Feedback: Always appreciated

AN: The idea came to me when I realised that these two shows share an actress who plays a crucial role in the lives of the protagonists; it's just a short bit of work, set around 'Hollow Wood' for the staff and students of Cackle's and just after 'Twice Upon a Time' for the Doctor, focusing on the Doctor in particular seeing life in Cackle's, but I hope you'll like the results

The Great Doctor

She'd been a witch for over a year now, and there were still times when Mildred had no idea how she was expected to deal with this new world.

She had hoped that her second year was off to a better start than her first, after she had completed her summer project and managed to get in some practise with her broomstick flying into the bargain, but even if the staff had been very understanding about her role in the building collapse on her first day, it still felt like she hadn't made that much progress since her previous year. She could at least attribute what had happened during that fire drill to her still being partly asleep, and she'd had some hope that Ethel's opinion of her would have improved after she'd helped the other girl deal with that cloning mess, but the way she'd set up that whole thing with the family trees to convince her that Mr Rowan-Webb was her grandfather…

Staring back at the school, Mildred shivered in her cloak, still not sure what had possessed her to go outside at night at a time like this. The best thing she could think of was that her time as a bat had left her with a few nocturnal urges that she was having trouble shaking off, a hopefully shorter-term equivalent of Mr Rowan-Webb's continued habit of leaping around and catching flies with his tongue. She still wasn't sure how she'd convinced herself to get caught up in that 'competition' with Ethel and Felicity in the potions classroom, but even after exhausting most of their available ingredients and being caught by Miss Hardbroom, as well as being 'assigned' to replace the missing ingredients the next, Mildred had spent the last hour finding herself unable to get to sleep.

She appreciated that she could have stopped the competition if she genuinely thought it was a bad idea, but she just didn't get Ethel sometimes; why was the other girl so determined to put her down? She appreciated that the rules of the Witches' Code limited Ethel's options from the beginning, and she could understand the concept of sibling rivalry on an academic level, but Ethel constantly seemed to feel as though she could only do better by making it clear that others weren't as good as her at something. Mildred was never sure if she'd contributed to that or not with her 'mistake' during Selection Day, but if the teachers could forgive her for that mistake, why was it so hard for Ethel to do the same?

Then again, maybe it was just a cultural gap thing or something like that. She knew that she was getting a better handle on magic in general, after her successful summer project with Einstein and her improved flying abilities, but then there were things like Ethel goading her into that potions contest and she felt like Harry Potter after Draco challenged him to that duel in Stone, where she knew there was some stuff she didn't understand about the culture but had no way of knowing who to talk to so she could be sure what to do.

Ever since that time she'd made herself a staff and learned far more about the potential of chanting than she'd expected, she'd privately wondered if there was something else she could do with her magic that might help her improve, but she just didn't know…

Looking up as she heard a faint noise, Mildred was surprised to see a distant orange glow up in the sky. For a moment she assumed that it was just an aeroplane or a helicopter flying lower than usual, but that view quickly shifted when she glimpsed something apparently fall from the glow. It was a long distance away, but her night-vision had been forced to improve from all the months she'd spent in her room with only candles for light, and it didn't take long to realise that someone had fallen from whatever was the source of that glow.

Mildred barely stopped to think, pulling out her broomstick and elongating it back to a useful length- grateful beyond words that she'd been testing Maud's summer project recently- before she hurtled into the sky, gaze fixed on the falling figure. For a few moments, she thought she wasn't going to reach it even as she drew closer to her target, but a final burst of speed allowed her to catch up with the mysterious figure from the sky, Mildred's half-remembered physics courses coming together with her flying lessons to help her adjust her speed so that she dived down to catch the figure as it fell rather than trying to catch them from below.

With the figure 'safely' in front of her, Mildred realised to her surprise that she had just caught a woman, apparently in her mid-thirties, with shoulder-length blonde hair and hazel eyes in a wide smile. Mildred might have taken the woman for a witch who'd fallen from a broom, but her clothes bore no resemblance to the traditional robes, as she instead wore a black velvet frock coat that looked like it had been through a literal war or two, over a black waistcoat and trousers and a low-collared white shirt.

"Hello," the woman smiled at Mildred, as though they'd just bumped into each other in the street rather than Mildred rescuing her from a life-threatening fall. "Lovely to meet you; what's your name?"

"M-Mildred," Mildred replied awkwardly. "Mildred Hubble."

"Mildred Hubble?" the woman replied, looking thoughtful for a moment before smiling broadly once again. "Delighted to meet you, Mildred; I'm the Doctor."

The smile faltered as she glanced back over Mildred's shoulder. "At least I think I am; am I really the Doctor without the box…?"

"Box?" Mildred repeated in confusion, but the only response she received was for the strange woman to collapse over her shoulder. Lost for a better response, as she struggled to keep her broom up with the new weight, Mildred desperately directed the broom towards her tower-bedroom, praying that Miss Cackle wouldn't be too upset about this as she cast a quick spell to remove the glass from her window before she crashed into it. As soon as she'd entered her room, Mildred virtually threw her mysterious new acquaintance onto her bed, wincing as Tabby jumped off the mattress with an indignant yowl.

"Sorry, Tabby!" she whispered apologetically to her cat, who had run to the foot of the bed. Looking up at her voice, Tabby let out a curious meow, but then seemed to calm down as he turned around to leap back onto the bed, 'examining' the strange woman with a curious edge to his purr before he settled down with his head beside the woman's right hand as it lay alongside her, her left now draped on her chest.

Looking at the unconscious woman now lying on her bed, Mildred allowed herself a brief chuckle at the absurdity of it all; she was pondering her place in the magical world barely a few minutes ago, and now she had some strange woman on her bed and no idea what to do about her.

Still… Mildred mused, glancing at her watch and quickly thinking over her assigned schedule for tomorrow. Assuming I'm right about when Miss Cackle's available, if I just drop in on her before Miss Mould takes us out, this could work…