Chapter 3

Chapter THREE Our first lesson was potions. My favourite! I watched in excitement as Miss Spindlewick handed out a shiny new cauldron to every pair of witches in the room. These cauldrons were bigger than the baby ones we had been allowed to use last year. I poked my head right into mine and Carlotta's, disappearing into the

velvety blackness. 'Can you heeear me?' I said. My voice sounded all strange and echoey as it bounced off the inside walls. 'Head out of your cauldron Mirabelle!' snapped Miss Spindlewick

as she walked past. I quickly took my head out of the cauldron and glanced at Carlotta who was trying not to laugh. 'Mirabelle!' whispered Carlotta. 'We really do have to try and be good this year. We promised!' 'I know,' I said. 'I'm sorry. I forgot! I'll try harder from now on.' 'Right!' said Miss Spindlewick from the front of the class. 'Today we are going to learn how to make a colour changing potion.' 'Ooh,' said the class. 'If you make it correctly,' said Miss Spindlewick, 'then you should be able to change the colour of this rose with just

a splash of the mixture.' She held up a red rose in a vase that had been sitting on the corner of her desk. 'Once you've made your potion you will come up and take it in turns to put a drop of it on this rose. The more drastically you can change the colour, the higher your mark will be.' She put the rose gently back down on the desk. 'You may open your spell books at page eighty seven and begin!' There was a riffing of pages around the classroom as everyone opened their spell books.

'This doesn't look too hard,' said Carlotta. 'I'll go and get the ingredients from the cupboard,' I said, jumping off my stool and hurrying over to the big store cupboard where all the jars and bottles were kept. I had to wait a little bit as everyone else was also trying to get their ingredients too but at last I was able to squirm in and get all the things we needed. There were so many little bottles that I had to put some of them in my pockets in order to get them back to the desk. Meanwhile, Miss Spindlewick had turned off the lights and was busy

lighting candles all around the room. 'For atmosphere,' she explained. 'Witch magic always works best with a bit of atmosphere.'