Contents

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Saturday 1st January

  Sunday 2nd January

  Monday 3rd January

  Tuesday 4th January

  Wednesday 5th January

  Thursday 6th January

  Friday 7th January

  Saturday 8th January

  Sunday 9th January

  Monday 10th January

  Tuesday 11th January

  Wednesday 12th January

  Friday 14th January

  Saturday 15th January

  Sunday 16th January (School Trip Eve!)

  Monday 17th January (Today’s the day!)

  Tuesday 18th January

  Wednesday 19th January

  Thursday 20th January

  Friday 21st January

  About the Author

  Copyright

  Get better at all things WITCHY, including things I’m already quite good at, like looking after frogs and flying and basic levitation AND all the things I’m a bit VERY useless at like Potions.

  Master all the GO tactics (ask Blair to show me how to do the loop-the-loop properly).

  Be the best vice-captain of the Dodos since the time of Minerva Moon.

  Find out who Minerva Moon is was.

  Persuade Dad that we NEED a family dog.

  Don’t tell anyone (else) non-witchy about the WITCH THING…

  OK, OK, so I did tell Ash about the witchy thing because, once he’d seen me levitating a frog and then found a large, magical Finkelspark EGG under my bed, I really didn’t have much choice. Anyway, I can’t help being glad that he knows – now I can hang out with my best non-witch friend and my best witch schoolfriends at the same time (which is a huge relief because keeping them apart was very, very, VERY stressful).

  Stan is hopping up and down in front of me like he’s got ants in his pants.* I think he’s trying to remind me that I have a best friend FROG to share secrets with. It’s true – I can tell Stan everything. He wouldn’t tell anyone … even if he could talk.

  Wait … I suppose he could tell the other class frogs about all my DISASTERS?

  Except no … I can’t imagine it. My secrets are safe with Stan. It was very nice of Mr Muddy to let me take him home for the holidays because, strictly speaking, class frogs are meant to stay in school.

  “I might as well give you permission,” he’d said with a grin. “Unofficially, I’m well aware that frog’s been practically living at your house for weeks!”

  Stan and I are inseparable and, although it’s not always easy to tell, I like to think he’s as happy about that as I am.

  Me and Dad are just home from having tea at Ash’s house. Iranian New Year isn’t for ages, but Mrs Namdar had still prepared a feast of chicken and crusty golden rice and love cake. Given how terrible inventive Dad is at cooking, it’s very lucky that we live next door to the Namdars.

  Mr Namdar – who’s an engineer in the army and away a lot – was home for the holidays. He looks like Ash and is very smiley. He is also very inkwizzi inquisitive.

  First, he wanted to know how we were settling in Little Spellshire and I said I could never imagine living anywhere else, and Dad said it was very nice, but that he was having a hard time writing his book.

  “It’s called Understanding Little Spellshire’s Most Peculiar Microclimate,” he said.

  “Good luck understanding that,” replied Mr Namdar at the exact moment an unexpected lightning bolt struck the windowpane and everyone laughed (except Dad). Then Mr Namdar started INTERROGATING me about school.

  “But what sort of ‘arts’ do you learn at a School of Extraordinary Arts?” he kept asking. “Is it mostly drawing and painting?”

  I thought back to last term and making enchanted Winter Solstice masks with Mr Zicasso. “Um … there is quite a lot of painting,” I said.

  “Dancing?”

  I had a flashback of doing a witchy conga at the Halloween Ball and nodded. “Yes, we do lots of dancing.”

  “What about drama?”

  “Definitely!”

  Maybe we didn’t do the sort of acting lessons Mr Namdar was imagining, but there was always LOTS of drama at Extraordinary!

  * If frogs wore pants.

  Spent the day cloud-spotting with Dad. He loves clouds even more than he loves frogs or thunder-snow and nearly as much as he loves me. All the snow had melted and it was warm, so we lay on our backs and he pointed out a nimbostratus and a stratocumulus, and I pointed out a cloud shaped like a dragon and another one shaped like a toad. Stan didn’t point out anything but he seemed to have a good time.

  And now we’re going to order pizza because Dad forgot to buy any food for tea.

  Perfect Little Spellshire day.

  Can’t believe it’s the last day of the holidays and now I need to stop lazing around, eating fizzy skullsquigglers (although that is a Very Nice Thing to do), and wash and iron my school uniform. Ms Sparks always says, ‘Extraordinary witches must learn how to do everyday, useful, Ordinary skills,’ and Ms Sparks is the sort of headmistress who is usually right.*

  Oooops, my school pinafore is now very short and there’s a singe hole in the back of my cape. It looks like I’ve inherited Dad’s washing and ironing skills.

  Went over to Winnie’s so she could help me with some of my holiday homework that I hadn’t started finished. Amara and Puck and Fabi were already there and everyone was talking about going back to school.

  “It’s going to be the best term yet,” says Puck. “I CAN’T WAIT!”

  Odd. He’s not usually that enthusiastic about lessons.

  “Me neither,” says Winnie with a big smile. “Times tables!” She gives a dreamy sigh.

  “Er … I was talking about the school trip,” says Puck, looking at her like she’s a (friendly) alien.

  Of course he was! We’ve been talking about it all holiday – only two weeks to go and, even though we still don’t know where we’re going, we’re very excited.

  Winnie said the teachers would probably tell us EVERYTHING about the trip tomorrow so now I actually, literally can’t wait to go back to school!†

  * Also, I don’t know how to do any washing and ironing spells yet.

  † Extraordinary but true!

  The first thing Mr Muddy said when he saw me and Stan was that I could stay as frog monitor, but I was only halfway through saying thank you when Hunter started yelling, “SIR, SIR, TELL US ABOUT THE SCHOOL TRIP!”

  “Please tell us, Mr Muddy!” we all begged.

  “I know! I know!” Li Lightening was practically self-levitating with excitement. “Is it Ogre’s Causeway?”

  Mr Muddy shook his head.

  “Foggy Bottom?” suggested Polly Bucket.

  “Goblins’ Grotto?”

  “Dragon’s Crag?”

  “STOP!” Mr Muddy held up his hands to ward off our questions. “You are a terrible class for all talking at the same time!”

  “BUT, SIR, WHERE—”

  “Be patient, little witches. You’ll be told as soon as the decision has been made.”

  “Wait, what?” Blair did not look impressed. “You mean nobody knows where we’re going?”

  “Not yet. It’s a very tricky decision and not to be rushed. As Ms Sparks always says: ‘The trip must be right for the witches and the witches must be right for the trip’! So for now –” he grinned, flicked his wand, and timetables started raining down on to our desks – “let’s concentrate on double physics. Such fun!”

  Breaktime and we’re all eating fluffmallows and placing bets as to where we’re going on our trip. I’ve never heard of most of the places.

  “What’s Goblins’ Grotto?” I ask.

  Blair rolls her eyes. “It’s a grotto with goblins, duh.”

  Right. “What’s Foggy Bottom then?”

  “It’s a foggy—”

  “Never mind that,” interrupts Winnie, waving the new timetable in our faces.

  “We’ve got our first Geography class tomorrow!”

  I thought only Winnie would be more excited about Geography than Foggy Bottom, but everyone stops talking about the trip and starts discussing the new teacher, Dr Pellicano.

  “Has anyone met her yet?” asks Amara.

  None of us have even seen her.

  “Maybe she’s not here yet,” suggests Fabi. “My dad told me he’d heard she was on an expedition to the lair of the Abominable Snowman.”

  “The Abominable Snowman?” I giggle. “That’s not a real thing.”

  And now everyone’s laughing at me. SIGH.

  OK, so now I know that not only is the Abominable Snowman real, but he comes from a long line of VERY SHY Abominable Snowmen and has a wife and three mini-Abominables. According to Hunter, only a toadbrain wouldn’t have known that. So I probably shouldn’t have admitted that all I knew about Dr Pellicano was her name (because I read it in the school newsletter).

  “But she’s FAMOUS.” Izzi is shocked.

  “Classic Bea,” says Blair, waggling her eyebrows at her friends. “She knows less about the witch world than my two-year-old sister.”

  I go red. That might be true, but there’s no need for her to point it out. Classic Blair (looks like I’m not going to get on much better with her this term than last). But even my best friends seem a bit shocked that I don’t know about Dr Pellicano.

  “But she’s flown across the whole wide world,” says Amara in awe.

  “Lots* of people have done that!” I point out.

  “Not on a broomstick,” says Blair with a snort.

  It looks like Mr Smith has spent the holidays coming up with more inventive ways to TORTURE us in Maths. But I can tell he’s missed us. I know we’re his favourite class, even if some of us† can’t remember what the difference is between a parra parallelogram and a rom rhombus (far less spell them).

  Oh dear. Mr Smith said we were the worst class he’d EVER taught and (in his words) “wouldn’t know how to work together to solve a simple maths problem if our lives depended on it”. I think he was eggsa exaggerating.

  All this maths has made me hungry for lunch. I wonder if I’m witchy enough now to have developed a taste for witch sausages?

  EEEEEEUGH.

  NO! WITCH SAUSAGES ARE STILL DISGUSTING.

  There’s a ‘helpful’ message for us on the noticeboard:

  First GO match of the term and we won! We WON! WE WON!

  I scored SIX goals and pulled off a Stealthy Slither without falling off my broomstick, which surprised Hunter so much that he fell off and got stuck in a bush.

  “FOUL!” he shouted at the exact same time as Ms Celery boomed: “Good work, Bea!”

  I never thought I’d say this, but Ms Celery is turning out to be one of my favourite teachers.

  “How was your first day back, Bea?” asks Dad, rushing into the kitchen like a tornado’s chasing him.‡ Dragons! He has no idea how hard it is when he asks questions like this. There’s so much I want to tell him and I can’t.

  Our conversation went something like this:

  ME (aloud): Fine.

  (inside head): WILD! You have no idea!

  DAD: But what did you learn?

  ME (aloud): Oh, nothing much really … some useful geometry, a few experiments about moving forces in Physics and some new tactics in PE. Oh, and NOTHING about the school trip.

  (inside head): So much! Some useful geometry, how to levitate Fabi to the ceiling and back down again without dropping him AND I played GO, which is the best broomstick-flying sport in the universe. I scored seven goals, but only six of them went down the Great Chimney so one counted as a foul, but I pulled off a Boggle Dodge and next week Ms Celery is going to teach us the Skeleshaker. Oh, and Hunter fell off his broomstick into a bush! Oh, and NOTHING about the school trip.

  Now I come to think about it, I do have something I can tell Dad. “I don’t feel like the NEW GIRL any more,” I announce proudly.

  It’s true! I might know as much about Abominable Snowmen and other witch-world stuff as your average gerbil§ and, of course, I can’t do as much magic as the others can, but I’m catching up! It’s not like I could have levitated Fabi on my first day. I know where to go (usually) and I know (nearly) everyone’s names and I LOVE all the frogs and I’m used to the spiders and the mayhem.

  I belong at Extraordinary!

  * Well, a few.

  † ME.

  ‡ To be fair, it is VERY windy.

  § Or Blair’s two-year-old sister!

  Except for one rainy afternoon counting cars on the High Street when we were in Primary Three, we didn’t do Geography at my last school. I am SO excited about witch Geography!

  NOT excited about witch Geography any more…

  DR PELLICANO IS TERRIFYING.

  “Stop chattering!” was the first thing she said, literally appearing without warning in a puff of smoke. “You’re worse than a colony of boobies, kaaak-kaak-kaaak. Much worse! At least the booby finds better things to talk about than fluffmallows and fashion.”

  Eeeek! How long had she been listening to us? We looked at each other nervously.

  Dr Pellicano didn’t seem like a witch-world-famous adventurer. She was like an upside-down exclamation mark. She was very tall and very skinny and dressed all in black, with jet-black hair in a perfect round bun on the top of her head.

  “Dribbling dragons,” muttered Amara under her breath. “She’s strict.”

  “Pay attention!” barked the new teacher. “Which of you witches can tell me where boobies live?”

  Winnie was the only one brave enough to put up her hand. “Er … at the seaside?”

  “I was hoping for something more specific.”

  With an almighty TUT, Dr Pellicano flicked her wand and a map of South America appeared on the wall behind her.

  “Fascinating place, the Galápagos,” she said, jabbing at a cluster of little islands. “Wolf Volcano! Kicker Rock! The Santa Cruz lava tunnels! Ah, the adventures I had. Sadly, our geographical adventures will have to take place closer to home.”

  The map of the Galápagos disappeared, to be replaced by one of Great Britain.

  “We shall begin with your immediate landscape –” one spot on the map began to glow, Little Spellshire! – “and I shall teach you how to find your way round it because there’s nothing more annoying than a witch merrily flying about in the sky without a clue about the ground that lies beneath. Witches must respect the earth as well as the skies … and that respect starts with remembering to pick up our litter.”

  She shot a terrible glare at Hunter who froze (LITERALLY*) in the act of dropping an empty fluffmallow packet into Winnie’s schoolbag.

  I bet the Abominable Snowman was scared of Dr Pellicano.

  First assembly of term in the Great Hall and it’s the usual crush and scuffle in the Year Seven row to make sure that we’re sitting next to our friends.

  “Welcome back to Extraordinary!” Ms Sparks is on her feet. “I hope you all had a wonderful holiday and have come back full of magic beans, ready for all the hard work and fun that lies ahead. Whatever challenges this term has in store for you – be it mastering advanced transformations –” she looks over sympathetically at the Year Elevens – “or battling broomsticks on the GO pitch –” Ms Celery leaps to her feet and punches the air – “or even –” now Ms Sparks is looking at us – “setting off on your first Extraordinary school trip, I know you will all do your very best for yourselves AND for each other. Remember that many witch hats are often better than one!”

  There’s a little round of applause for this from the other teachers.

  “Now, talking of school trips, I’m sure the Year Sevens are keen to know where they’re going.”

  Keen? The suspense is KILLING us.

  “Well…” Ms Sparks pauses and looks at our row very carefully. “There’s one place that keeps coming to mind—”

  BANG!

  It was Mrs Slater, the school receptionist, crashing in through the doors on her broom and sending several witches flying.† Now she’s up on the stage, muttering in Ms Sparks’s ear, and even from here I can tell it’s angry muttering…

  “I see…” Ms Sparks sighs a disappointed sigh and a tiny halo of sparks starts to dance about her head (never a good sign). “Do any of you have anything you’d like to share with the rest of us?” She looks round the hall with the sort of teacher look that makes me feel guilty even when I haven’t done anything wrong.

  Wait, have I done something wrong? Everyone’s looking at everyone else – this is VERY STRESSFUL.

  Ms Sparks lets us suffer for a minute and then says, “The witch responsible for filling the mini-witch toilets with enchanted OCTOPUSES has precisely TEN SECONDS to own up before I turn him into a squid. Ten, nine, eight, seven…”

  Very slowly, Puck raises his hand.

  Sadly, that was the last we heard about the school trip. Ms Sparks spent the rest of assembly lecturing us on why it is rarely a good idea to do magic in toilets. Apparently, octopuses – even enchanted ones that pop like bubbles and disappear after a few hours – can be a nasty surprise when found in the bottom of the bowl.

 

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