| abstract | - Ruby is fixing up a radio in DOBS so that everyone can listen to The Witchy Hour hosted by Icy Stevens. The undefeated champions are Pentangle's, and Mildred cheers for them (even though they're the academy's rivals) because it "wouldn't be any fun" if nobody cheered for them. At the end of the program, Miss Drill shows up and Mildred accidentally turns her into a dog. (She's reciting the spell for turning someone into a sausage dog, and accidentally gets Miss Drill). Icy draws the name of the next academy to appear on the show and it's... Cackle's! It turns out Mildred and Jadu entered their school as a joke. Miss Hardbroom and Miss Cackle look over Pentangle's new brochure, right before they find out that they're about to be on a radio program. While Miss Cackle thinks it will be good for the Academy, Miss Hardbroom refuses to have anything to do with it. Unfortunately, before they can decide what's to be done, Miss Pentangle and her owl show up and goad Miss Cackle into agreeing to appear on the show. The show is to be hosted at Cackle's, and Miss Hardbroom says complainingly that her role will be "strictly non-participatory". Miss Cackle picks her team, Sybil, Ruby, Griselda and Ethel - "because she's a Hallow" according to Enid - and let's Mildred and Jadu sign on to be the coaches. They practice, and it seems like Griselda knows what she's doing. Ethel has a temper tantrum and says she doesn't want to practice things she already knows, and then trips and almost falls down while she's stomping away. "Pride comes before a fall," quips Griselda, and Ethel says that if she gets a single question wrong, she'll fill her hat with cold porridge and eat it. Icy Stevens arrives and the girls are all too star struck to say anything. Eventually Mildred and Jadu introduce themselves and show him to the staff room, where Miss Hardbroom has already told everyone to act like she's not there. The Pentangle's girls show up and start ordering everyone around. Meanwhile, Icy is entertaining everyone when he decides to ask Miss Hardbroom to join them. When he finds out she's her (apparently, he saw her give a lecture once and he's rather smitten) he starts gushing and drooling, and, in spite of herself she has a glass of wine. Meanwhile, Enid's had enough of the Pentangle's captain (Deidre Swoop) ordering her around and they get into a magic fight by the broomshed, tossing red balls of light back and forth. Mildred tries to break things up, and Deidre ends up turned into a chicken before the teachers can get there. Once Deidre is turned back, she can only make chicken noises, so Miss Pentangle demands to choose someone from Cackle's to take her place. She chooses Mildred, believing her to be the most gifted student in the school, and believing her to have carried out an elaborate plot to disable Pentangles' key player. Miss Pentangle offers Mildred a permanent transfer to her Academy if she does well in the quiz. The game starts and unfortunately for Cackle's Mildred does extremely well. It seems as though she's developed a photographic memory from reading the magic books, and she knows the answers to everything. During a brief intermission, Mildred's friends, led by Enid corner her and accuse her of having them on for the last three years, and actually being really, really smart. Mildred insists that she isn't and that it must be some kind of spell from the books, but they tell her that she'd better start getting some of the answers wrong. The game reconvenes, and after a moment of indecision, Mildred keeps answering the questions correctly. In the next phase, two girls from each team must make a shrinking potion. The Hallow sisters keep having Mildred bump into Ethel until Ethel is "forced to retaliate under the witches code". Icy steps in to stop her, and Ethel turns him into a frog. He hops away and Miss Crotchet goes scampering after him. Miss Hardbroom takes over the radio show and keeps asking questions. The final question goes to Ethel, but she doesn't know the answer. It then goes to Mildred, who answers correctly. Pentangles wins, but Miss Hardbroom calls it a draw, because they won due to a Cackle's pupil (Mildred). Mildred turns down her transfer to Pentangles and Crotchet catches Icy. The girls see him talking to Miss Hardbroom and joke about weather she turned him back with magic or "the old fashioned way". He starts gushing again, and asks her to join him on his show, and go on his private jet with him right that instant and all sorts of things. Miss Hardbroom replies: "Your hand is on my arm." Then she magics his chair so that he falls down. Meanwhile, Ethel's sitting in the corner eating porridge out of her hat.
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