Mildred Hubble

Mildred Hubble is a major character in The Worst Witch children's book series by Jill Murphy. She is the protagonist in all the books. She is friends with Maud Spellbody and Enid Nightshade and has a strong rivalry with Ethel Hallow and Drusilla Paddock.

Mildred Hubble in the books

In The Worst Witch Mildred is in the Winter Term of her first year. She is shown to be tall and thin with long, black hair which she wears in pigtails. On the day of the cat ceremony, Mildred is given a tabby cat instead of a normal black cat which fails to sit on her broomstick without even trying to hold on. This prompts the form sneak and goody-two-shoes teacher's pet Ethel Hallow to taunt her about it. After losing her temper, Mildred turns Ethel into a pig (though she did it under threats of a frog transformation) whereupon Miss Hardbroom materializes in the courtyard and tells Mildred to take Ethel to the school library and reverse the spell. From then on, Mildred and Ethel become deadly enemies. In revenge for the pig transformation, Ethel curses a broom she was lending to Mildred for the Halloween celebrations at an abandoned castle. This results in the broom turning bucking bronco-like and nearly throwing Mildred off. After furiously being set an interview with Miss Cackle and Miss Hardbroom, Mildred runs away where she comes across another witch that looks like Miss Cackle but is actually Miss Cackle's evil identical twin sister Agatha Cackle who is jealously trying to throw a mutiny against her sister and take over the academy. In the nick of time, Mildred turns Agatha and her malevolent coven into snails and takes them back to the school, whereupon her interview is cancelled and she is made a heroine.

In The Worst Witch Strikes Again she is assigned by Miss Cackle to show the new girl, Enid Nightshade, around the school, much to the chagrin and disappointment of both Maud and Miss Hardbroom. Throughout the novel, Enid gets Mildred into trouble without owning up. In A Bad Spell for the Worst Witch she is turned into a frog by Ethel Hallow after telling her younger sister a pretend story about Miss Hardbroom turning a pupil into a frog after being two seconds late for a lesson. This is how she discovers Algernon Rowan-Webb. In The Worst Witch All at Sea, after being given a normal black cat after Fenella Feverfew transferred to Miss Pentangle's Academy, Mildred disobeys orders and brings Tabby with her to Grim Cove. She also discovers a legendary treasure chest on Cat's Head Rock.

In The Worst Witch Saves the Day she once again saves the academy from the evil plots of Agatha Cackle who had sneaked into the school disguised as "Miss Granite". Although Agatha locks Mildred in a cupboard to ensure that she cannot interfere with Agatha's plans, Mildred escapes by turning herself into an ant and manages to warn the rest of the school. In The Worst Witch to the Rescue her holiday project, in the form of a spell to make animals talk, is stolen by the treacherous and sneaky Ethel Hallow, who also gets her banned from Miss Mould's art lessons after being falsely accused of turning her pot into five rattlesnakes. However, Miss Cackle and Miss Hardbroom soon learn that Ethel was lying after Mildred rescues her tortoise from a pine tree after Drusilla Paddock hid him there under Ethel's orders, the tortoise- whom Mildred names 'Einstein'- able to speak after Mildred used him as a test subject for her spell, allowing him to serve as a witness to Ethel's actions.

In The Worst Witch and the Wishing Star, Mildred's fourth year begins with her being named Lantern Monitor for part of the school, but her life is immediately complicated when a wish on a shooting star apparently leads to her finding a stray dog outside the castle. Despite the complications of his presence, Mildred swiftly becomes attached to the dog, whom she names 'Star', and teaches him to perform some tricks on her broom, but Star's existence is exposed to the rest of the school when Ethel's attempt to find out Mildred's secret results in the destruction of the costumes Form Five were going to use for a broomstick ballet display as part of an upcoming inter-school talent contest. However, Maud and Enid convince Miss Cackle to let Mildred and Star serve as the replacement act, with the resulting display being so successful that not only do they win the talent competition, but Mildred is allowed special dispensation to use Star as her broomstick companion while keeping Tabby as a more general pet.

Mildred Hubble in other media

In the 1986 TV movie, Mildred was played by Return to Oz star Fairuza Balk. It aired on both Central Independent Television and HBO.

In the 1998 ITV TV series, Mildred was played by Georgina Sherrington.^[1] She was also played by Sherrington in Weirdsister College. Mildred made a brief appearance at the beginning of the first episode of The New Worst Witch as a successful witch escorting her equally clumsy cousin Henrietta "Hettie" Hubble (played by Alice Connor), to Cackle's Academy.

In the 2017 BBC TV series, Mildred is portrayed by Bella Ramsey, who played Lyanna Mormont in Game of Thrones.^[2] This adaptation places great emphasis on the idea that Mildred is the first person in her family to manifest magic, thus attributing most of her problems at school to the fact that she has far more to catch up on compared to classmates who have been schooled in the rules of magic for years. It is revealed in the season two finale that actually Mildred's ancestors were magic, but her great-grandmother thirteen generations back sacrificed twelve generations of magic to reignite a founding stone.

See also

• List of The Worst Witch characters

References

External links

• Works by or about Mildred Hubble in libraries (WorldCat catalog)