: When you get to the ► symbol in the text, start playing the video below and keep reading until you get to the lyrics for the girls to start singing.

: Ignore the ► symbol and just wait until you get to the lyrics before the video to start playing.

: You can start playing the song on your phone / computer if you have the song available on iTunes, Spotify, etc. You can follow and download the 'Black Magic: A Little Mix Musical' on Spotify (search for it and you'll find it) to have the soundtrack to this musical right on your phone.

Remember to stop and watch / listen to the song before continuing - the songs are part of the story.

When all is lost and love is tragic, cast a spell, it's called black magic...

Leigh-Anne spun around. 'Did you guys hear that?'

'Hear what?' Jade asked as she looked back over her shoulder. The alley they had been walking down for the past five minutes was deserted. Every now and then a stray cat would pounce out from an overstuffed trash can and scare the girls. Jesy's scream was the loudest.

'These cats are driving me insane! Whenever I've passed for school, there's never been this many. It might be a sign,' Jesy said as she tried to go back on herself. Perrie stopped her.

'Seriously guys, did you not hear that?' Leigh-Anne repeated.

Perrie looked around cautiously. 'Hear what?'

'I think somebody said something, but it was more like a whisper, and maybe a group of people saying it.'

An evident chill ran down Jesy's spine as her body violently shook at Leigh-Anne's words. 'Did you really have to tell me that?'

'Strange. I might have imagined it.'

'Please don't scare me like that,' said Jesy, now tightly sandwiched in between Leigh-Anne and Jade. 'We must be crazy going to a store at this time for crazy witchy stuff.'

'It was your idea to come to this place,' Jade reminded her. 'You sure it's open?'

'It's a witch store... of course it's open! They probably get their best sales at the witching hour or something.'

Perrie brushed against something wet. She bumped into Leigh-Anne, causing a domino effect on the girls. A shriek escaped her mouth. She looked at what it was. 'Oh, it was just a trash bag. Somebody didn't put it in properly.'

She laughed it off, though the other girls weren't so impressed.

The moon could be seen in the distance, its perfect orb-shape was fractured by the bridge that soon approached. The store was nearby; the only light had been from street lamps, but now an orange glow was in sight.

'Oh I've been here before,' Leigh-Anne said as they turned the corner and were now standing in front of the store. 'Well, I haven't been inside, but I've seen it. I always thought this was just a dusty old bookshop.'

There was one large window at the front of the store, and its display gave off the look of a bookshop. It was just one large bookcase filled with ancient hardbacks. Dust lay on the shelves with nothing else to indicate the store was anything different. It was bland, unwelcoming.

'We didn't come all this way for nothing,' Perrie said after the girls wasted a minute gawking at the door. When she realised the other girls weren't going to go in first, Perrie made the first move. She pushed the handle on the door, and with a loud creak, it opened.

The chime of the bell and the outpouring of heat from a nearby fireplace welcomed them. They filed inside with Jade closing the door. They had forgotten how cold they were and instantly wandered to the seats around the fireplace.

The store had more colour than the window display. Several shelves broke up the square room and glass displays were littered around. Beside the counter on the far end of the room was a cauldron; some kind of fog filtered out of from the top of it.

'I'm starting to have doubts,' Leigh-Anne whispered to the girls. As she said that, a woman popped up from behind the counter. The girls shrieked at her sudden appearance.

The woman laughed. 'Oh, my little witches, I did not mean to startle you. Please, have some passionflower potion to calm yourselves down.' She lifted a tray from the counter with four glasses on top. As she neared the girls, they could see that the glasses were filled with a milky-white substance.

'Oh, we're okay thank you,' Perrie told her. The pitch of her voice was higher than usual.

'Please, I insist, it's on the house,' the woman said kindly as she handed the girls the glasses. Her movements were erratic, like an excited child handing out their first homemade brew. Her fire-red hair was tied up on one side, while the other side lay flat against her shoulders. It was an interesting look and even Jesy had to take a mental picture to try it out on herself at one point.

'Have you had a busy day?' Jade asked, hoping the mundane topic of conversation would mean she'd be least likely to kill them. She took a sip of the drink, expecting to hate the taste, but she didn't. She looked at it closely, nodded her approval, then drank some more.

The woman set the tray down on the coffee table in front of the fireplace. Her dress flowed with every airy movement she made, and the fabric looked so thin, it was hard to imagine it weighed anything at all. It was black with jewel-encrusted hems, simple yet elegant.

'Oh no,' she said to them, her smile ineffective of causing any wrinkles on her face. 'I opened just for you girls. I knew you'd all love my passionflower potion.'

The girls all looked at each other, paused in mid-drink. They pulled the glasses from their lips.

'How did you know we were coming?' Jesy asked, narrowing her eyes.

The woman pointed to a nearby stand. It came up to Jade's waist, and sitting on top was a crystal ball. 'It always let's me know when I'm going to have a visitor. What it doesn't tell me in advance is what my visitors want. How can I help?'

'Well,' Perrie began, pulling out a list she copied from the spell book. 'This is silly but we want to cast a spell.'

'Why does that sound silly?' The woman asked with a serious look on her face.

'Because it's not real,' Jesy said bluntly.

The woman seemed offended as she scrunched her brow, but quickly laughed it off. 'Oh girls. I take it this is your first time. Don't panic, it's nothing to worry about. For the first time, it does seem like it's silly, but once you cast your first spell, it will change everything. What's the spell?'

'A love spell,' Leigh-Anne answered.

The woman giggled. 'Oh, I should have known. The last girls who came in wanted the same thing.'

'Did it work for them?' Perrie asked.

'It did. They got their men. I may know exactly the ingredients you need for it. Let me guess.' The woman walked around in deep thought as she chatted to herself. 'Catnip, for attraction. Cinnamon, for warmth of heart. Coriander, to flavour the feeling. Honey, to make him sweet. Thyme, for positive energy. Am I right?'

'Wow you really know your love spells, don't suppose you've cast them yourself,' Jade joked.

'If they worked for me, I'd have a husband.' The dry delivery of her confession left the girls feeling a little dejected. 'Love spells, when cast correctly, can be truly beautiful, releasing all those romantic feelings dormant in the victim of the spell, I mean, subject of the spell.'

'It's really just for fun,' Leigh-Anne told her.

The woman looked to the floor. 'Of course it is.' After what seemed like a melancholic minute, she urged them to a section of the shop where she kept the herbs. She handed Perrie everything she told them, including an apple from her own kitchen.

'We need the Coriander to be blessed,' Jesy remembered. The woman grabbed the Coriander leaves and placed them on her forehead. When she closed her eyes, the girls all looked at each other with one word in mind.

The woman placed the leaves in Perrie's hands. 'There, they're blessed. Anything else I can get you dears?'

'We also need a crystal ball and a small cauldron to brew the potion,' Perrie told her from the list. The woman ran behind the counter and pulled out a brown paper bag. She then opened a glass cabinet and grabbed a very small cauldron, then placed a crystal ball inside of it.

'Anything else?' She asked as she put them inside the bag. Perrie dropped the ingredients inside of it.

'No thanks,' Perrie told her. 'Unless you think that's everything we need.'

'As long as that is all the spell requires, that is all you need, but don't hesitate to come back. I will anticipate your return.'

The girls didn't necessarily like the tone of her voice at the end, but thanked her regardless, paid for the items, and left. As soon as they were out of earshot, since they worried she would strangely be able to hear long distances, they started to talk.

'I have never felt more uncomfortable in my life,' Jesy confessed, letting out a breath she'd been holding since she walked into the store.

'More so than when you met Hughie yesterday?' Jade asked.

'Don't be cheeky,' Jesy scolded her.

'I reckon she'd be a right laugh after a few drinks,' Perrie noted, trying to see the best side of the strange woman.

'A few drinks of potion, and here I thought we were just doing this for fun. It all of a sudden feels so serious.' Leigh-Anne was now starting to get worried.

'It will still be fun!' Jesy said, now thinking about Hughie and Rachael. 'We really have nothing to lose.'

After half an hour, the girls made it back to Leigh-Anne's house. She grabbed the wine from the fridge and took it upstairs as the other girls set the cauldron up in her bedroom. When Leigh-Anne entered, they had the book spread out on the floor as Jade, Jesy and Perrie sat around it. The cauldron sat next to Perrie with the bag of ingredients next to it.

'The book says to set out some candles around the room,' Perrie informed her.

'Now you tell me!' Leigh-Anne sighed as she handed her the red wine. She walked to her en-suite and grabbed a few white candles from a drawer. Jade stood up and helped her light the candles, then they set them out around various places of the room.

'We need to brew the potion before we say the spell,' Perrie said as the girls sat down, forming a circle around the book.

She poured the red wine into the cauldron as she read out the ingredients. Leigh-Anne dropped each ingredient in after Perrie mentioned them. 'Skin of an apple, blessed coriander and a pinch of catnip first. We each need to put in our own stick of cinnamon, sprig of thyme, and rose petals from our own roses.'

Jesy and Jade leaned over to add their ingredients, dropping them into the red liquid that seemed to bubble as each rose petal fell inside. 'How is it steaming?' Jade observed.

'I don't know,' Perrie confessed, staring at it in amazement. It was suddenly starting to feel like it wasn't just a game anymore.

► She asked, 'do you guys still want to go through with the spell?'

'Of course, we didn't all pay for this crap to back out now,' Jesy said. 'What do we do next?'

'We say the spell,' Perrie said. 'You guys ready?'

'Ready,' they all said in unison.

Perrie now had her reading glasses on as she bent over the book. She grabbed Jesy's and Leigh-Anne's hands, and the other girls did the same.

'All the girls on the block knocking at my door,' they all chanted. 'Wanna know what it is make the boys want more.'

Perrie began: 'Is your lover playing on your side? Said he loves you, but he ain't got time? Here's the answer. Come and get it, at a knocked down price...'

Throughout the spell, as the cauldron bubbled and spell book sparkled, a wind swept through the room. The mystical air surrounded the girls as they said the magical words, yet the pages in the book remained still. The girls kept a hold of each other's hand as a seductive sense of empowerment flowed from one to the next. In that moment, it was like they had joined in one body.

Once they said the final words, the wind died down. The girls' breaths were quick, like they had just stepped off a ride going two-hundred miles per hour. They gradually let go of each other's hands and laughed, the feeling euphoric.

'What just happened?' Leigh-Anne asked, though she already knew the answer. She looked at her hands, and in a second, a fireball appeared there. Before she could take it in, it disappeared, and she looked at the other girls. They were stunned for a second, then laughed.

'Oh my God!' Jade yelled in excitement. 'Whatever the hell that was, it worked!'

'Does that mean our boys love us again?' Jesy said as she frantically looked for her phone.

Perrie took her glasses off. 'No, we need to give them the potion. Remember, we have to get him on his knees and drink it.'

'How are we going to do that?' Leigh-Anne asked.

'This spell will still change people's perception of us, so we won't be pushed around anymore,' Perrie began, standing like a leader talking to her troops. 'When we walk into that school on Monday for our final week before Christmas break, we will have so much confidence that we will be able to face our fears head on. We won't be scared to take what we want, or who we want.'

'We've got this,' Jade agreed, standing up with her.

Jesy stood. 'This is our time to rise, no more being the bullied. The outcasts will get the guy, they'll just watch.'

'They'd better watch!' Leigh-Anne said, also standing, her voice clear and strong. 'On Monday we're taking the school, and these little girls will have the biggest voice.'

The girls giggled and cheered as they hugged and held hands. They felt their own power through each other, and now they were unstoppable.