The Grand High Witch summons Bruno to the stage and keeps him standing there as the last minute passes. Bruno, the boy tells the reader, is someone who is always eating and who the boy didn't care for much because he always boasted about his father's money and was cruel to animals. When one of the witches takes the chains off the door and opens it, the boy recognizes Bruno as another boy he has seen around the hotel. The witches hurry to put their wigs, gloves, and shoes back on, and The Grand High Witch puts her mask back on, becoming once again a very pretty young woman. As she planned, the witches now hear the boy pounding on the door and demanding his sweets. She promised him six more candy bars if he showed up at the ballroom the next day at 25 minutes past three. The day before, she gave a chocolate bar with one drop of the formula in it to a boy named Bruno Jenkins (using an alarm clock set at half past three). The Grand High Witch reveals that she has set up a demonstration of Formula 86 Delayed Action Mouse-Maker. One drop of this will turn children into a mouse the next day at 9am, though an overdose could turn the child into a mouse instantly, which The Grand High Witch warns against since it could lead to the witch being caught. After cooking all of these things together, the mixture will become a green liquid. Then, one needs to blend all of the ingredients in a mixer, add the yolk of a gruntle's egg, the claw of a crabcruncher, the beak of a blabbersnitch, the snout of a grobblesquirt, and the tongue of a catspringer. The recipe requires a witch to boil the wrong end of a telescope until it gets soft (to make the child small), to fry the tails of 45 brown mice, to simmer the mice in frog-juice for an hour, and to set a 24-hour alarm clock for 9am and then roast it until crisp and tender. With the mice dealt with, The Grand High Witch returns to the recipe.

It is the boy's mice, William and Mary! The Grand High Witch recognizes that these are real mice, not children transformed into mice, and she kicks both William and Mary off the platform and against the wall.

Then, just as The Grand High Witch prepares to tell the other witches how to make Formula 86 Delayed Action Mouse-Maker, there are screams of shock and appreciation from the audience as some of the women glimpse two small mice running across the room. The boy reminds the reader that he was still behind the folding screen this whole time, and that it was very lucky that he hadn't washed in days and that the witches were so distracted.

The grand high witch roald dahl