Weronica the Vitch

Veronica was a witch and she hated black. Unfortunately, everything she owned was black: her dress was black; her shoes were black; her coat was black and her hat was black,too. And her hair? You guessed it, that was black, too. Even her bedroom was completely black: walls, furniture, floor and the bed linnen!

Seeing all that black had made her gloomey. It upset her so much that she always muddled up her Vs and Ws. Which is rather unfortunate, if you are a witch and called Veronica. At school everybody called her Weronica.

You can imagine how Veronica felt about going to school. She loathed school. It was bad enough that everybody laughed at her because she muddled up her Vs and Ws. On top of that, Veronica was bored doing all those dull things. Making potions should be fun, Veronica thought. They should be colourful and make people happy. They did not, though.

Her teachers did not like her very much either. One day, her potions teacher asked her, “Are you a witch or a pink, fluffy slipper?” Veronica did not reply immediately. She was daydreaming about owning a pair of pink, fluffy slippers. That day she had to stay behind two hours in detension, writing one hundred times: 'I am not supposed to daydream in potions class.'

The trouble was, her mum had been witch, so had her gran and her great-gran. This meant she could not get out of it to do something else. It was tradition in her family for a girl to become a witch.

Her mum was disappointed with her. All the women in the family had been top of their class. Veronica was at the bottom of hers. This was not because she was stupid. She just did not like the things she had to do at school: stick pins in dolls? She much rather would have played with the doll! Or how about that, make a potion not to heal someone, but to make them ill! The only thing Veronica was good at were the love potions.

The future looked glum to Veronica. She would have to go to witch school many more years. There would be endless teasing until she left school, and thousands more nasty potions and spells. No wonder she muddled up her Vs and Ws. Wouldn’t you?

Then one day, totally unexpected, everything changed. [...]