Yes, week of Halloween. As my favorite holiday, it deserves a week in the very least! So for this week, every day I’m going to be posting something that reminds me of Halloween and the awesomeness that it brought to my childhood. Today I start with
Mildred Hubble (Who’s always in trouble) From the childhood favorite movie “The Worst Witch.”
THE WORST WITCH
This movie, created in the early 80’s, involved a young witch who just starts at her new magical boarding school, “Miss Cackle’s Academy.” While there she discovers she is far from the best student, has a penchant for over reacting, and is generally a mess. Though her odd, outcast status ends up saving the school in the end! And while it also involved some horrible green screen and CGI, it was captivating and launched my deserve to attend boarding school myself. That of course, never happened, and probably for the best.
It was based off the 1974 book by the same name written by Jill Murphy, and it actually spawned a TV series in the early 2000’s. Both are very good, though the movie is my go to.
Honestly, after having grown up watching this movie, it became clear that J.K. Rowling also watched it. Or read it. In some capacity she got inspiration from it! Let’s look at some of the parallels.
Mildred Hubble: Main character, always seems to find trouble, stinks at potions making. Has unruly brown hair that seems to refuse to stay in nice, plaited braids.
Potter: Main character, always seems to find trouble, not the best potions student. Always seems to have unruly dark brown hair that won’t do what Molly Weasley wants it to do!
Mildred Hubble: Has a teacher who is just out to get her! Miss Hardbroom is portrayed as a serious, critical professor who clearly has a favorite pupil, Ethel Hallow. She also teaches potions.
Harry Potter: Has a teacher who also seems to have a problem with him. Severus Snape is portrayed as serious, overly critical professor who clearly has a favorite pupil, Draco Malfoy. He also teaches potions.
Ethel Hallow: Speaking of favorite pupils, Ethel Hallow is the queen bee at Miss. Cackle’s. She is a stuck up snob with pale blonde hair, who believes she knows everything. When she isn’t going on about her superior wizarding family and excelling in broom flying, she is constantly trying to derail Mildred and get her expelled from school.
Draco Malfoy: The antagonist Harry Potter, he does all the same things I just mentioned for Ethel, including have pale blonde hair.
Maude Spellbody: The best friend to Mildred Hubble, Maude is there for all her adventures, whether she agrees with them or not. She is steadfastly loyal and smart, but struggles at potions as well. She also looses patience with Mildred’s clumsiness and forgetfulness and often lectures her on how to improve herself. Also, Ethel and her bully of a friend, Drucilla, both pick on her.
Hermione Granger & Ron Weasley: These two are Harry’s best friends. I grouped them together on this because they represent separately what Maude represents individually. Hermione is the super intelligent, no nonsense friend to Harry. She is often seen lecturing the boys (Harry and Ron) on how to be better at their studies and life in general. Ron on the other hand goes headfirst into most of Harry’s adventures, yet also seems to struggle with potions just as much as Harry. Both however are insanely loyal to Harry and go with him on all his adventures even if they don’t necessarily agree with it. Not to mention they also get harassed by Draco and his bully buds Crabbe and Goyle.
There are tons more similarities that I could go on for a while, but the point remains that The Worst Witch is an amazing story! Whether Rowling took inspiration from the series or not, it still goes to show that a story about magical students having adventures in magical places is a classic. If you haven’t seen this yet please go pick it up or rent it! It’s worth a watch.
The Geeky Teacher 
Very cool!!
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