30 minutes after Parvati left the Potter/Patil classroom, Hogsmeade
After getting off the carriage from Hogwarts at Hogsmeade Parvati went to Tomes and Scrolls to see if they still had that book on floriography, which they did, and reserved it to pick up later. Next she visited the florist’s to find out how much it would cost to arrange for them to discreetly deliver some Arborvitae tomorrow, which led to the revelation that Arborvitae are conifers, and as such the florist didn’t normally keep them stocked but he would be able to arrange for their delivery for a not unreasonable, if high, fee.
Gladrags was next. On her last trip she had only been interested in robes and so hadn’t paid attention to anything else and apart from robes and Hogwarts uniforms the situation was truly dire. If anything the Magical World seemed to be even further behind in fashion, apart from robes, than anywhere else. Other than robes and Hogwarts uniforms there wasn’t that much to choose from either, dresses for girls and some underwear and that was it as far as she could see. And she didn’t know which was worse. The dresses were the sort that seemed to show up in old paintings that couldn’t be accurate. A corset with a floor length skirt and sleeves attached, some with rather large collars. Thankfully none of them had any ruffles at all and none of them looked like they had balloons hidden inside them like some of the paintings showed. And the selection of styles and colours was very limited. Checking the clothes revealed, as Parvati expected, that they lacked tags and likely sizes, meaning that if she guessed Hermione’s size wrong it likely wouldn’t matter as the dresses would be designed for a larger range of women.
If she bought them, they were really gowns and way too fancy for either Harry’s date with Hermione tomorrow, which was really a dinner between friends, or his date with her and her sister tonight, which now that she thought about it, was really a first date.
The panties in the underwear section were about what she had expected, but the bras, uuhh. It looked like that the Wizarding World had never heard of Alphabet Bras. And the limited selection of muggle manufacture, likely in attempt to get sales from the muggleborn, was heavily slanted towards the larger sizes that no schoolgirl should ever need.
With what she had talked about with Pad for non-school clothes for next year if everything went to plan this wouldn’t do, they weren’t right for day-to-day wear and didn’t show off the girl wearing them, she'd known that for the interesting and suggestive ideas they would have to buy from a muggle store before the year began, but it looked like they wouldn’t be able to get anything they wanted clothes-wise from wizarding stores next year and you couldn’t owl order muggle stores.
This gave Parvati an idea, one that she hoped would make Hermione see her in a better light. Her father would be upset at first when he saw how much money she would be spending this month, but when he saw what she would be spending it on she thought he would be happier. Now, onto the jeweller’s.
When they had visited their father over the Christmas Holidays after hearing their plans he’d arranged for Nalini, their second mother and his concubine, to give them The Talk. The Talk had covered more than just its normal subject matter, it had also for some reason covered a slightly related part of their culture that their parents correctly believed they hadn’t been introduced to before: Body Jewellery.
Parvati had thought she knew jewellery but she was wrong. The first thing Hoshma had shown and modelled for them had been something called panjas, rings and bracelets, each bracelet had two rings, worn on the index and ring fingers, attached to it by chains, they'd also been shown a version for their feet. There was nothing like that in the store, all the rings were promise, engagement and wedding rings with a smattering of showpiece rings for rich people to show off how rich they were, nothing that was or could be connected to a bracelet of which they stocked none.
Parvati had been shocked when Hoshma had shown them the necklaces, heavy things with lots of jewels on the front part in slightly different lengths so that you could wear several of them at once and people could still tell them apart on your naked chest. The only ones the jeweller had in stock were dainty little things that would be hard to make out and were short enough to fit inside a decent collar. They reminded her of the waist-chain they had been shown, that while somewhat embarrassing, both Padma and she had resolved to get their own as soon as possible because they liked the way it highlighted a woman's hips like racy underwear without her having to wear any.
Worst of all were the earrings, if Parvati thought she had been embarrassed by the waist-chain it was nothing compared to how she felt when Hoshma was done talking about piercings. They had both been well aware that your ears could be pierced but the other locations were eye openers. They'd seen jewellery for belly buttons before, but the thought that such jewellery could be held in place by a piercing was new, just where that piercing was had been surprising as Hoshma had put it on, instead of going through the knot of flesh inside the belly button it went through the bit of skin at the top.
That had been the piercing that had shocked them the least. Both their mother and Hoshma had had their nipples pierced when they knew they wouldn’t be having any more children and therefore wouldn’t be breast feeding again (Their mother sometime after they were born and Hoshma a couple of years ago). The revelation of those piercings however paled however beside Hoshma revealing and showing them her clitoral hood piercing and clitoris piercings. All the earrings in the store were of the clip-on variety and she wasn’t going to use them anywhere near her nipples or vagina, maybe on her belly-button, if she could find the right design.
There was no rule against students visiting Diagon Alley via Floo and nothing set up to stop them or monitor them. In fact there couldn’t be, Gringotts maintained only a single location in Diagon Ally. And as most students weren’t prepared to keep large amounts of gold of in their dorm rooms where it could be stolen, they required access to Diagon Alley and Gringotts so they had money to spend, otherwise the Hogsmeade visits were pointless. However if you where gone from Hogsmeade for too long it was noticed and they started looking for you and you got in trouble, normally a suspension of your Hogsmeade privileges. With her delay while examining the shops she had already been seen around Hogsmeade for a while and so for the purposes of visiting Diagon Alley she would be counted as part of the next group of students, who had yet to arrive, so she would have enough time.
Using the Floo in the Hogs Head instead of the Three Broomsticks to reduce the chances of being seen travelling to Diagon Alley and increase the time available to her, she Flooed to the Leaky Cauldron. A quick look in the stores in Diagon Alley revealed they were no better, so Parvati, armed with the full knowledge of how bad fashion was in the Wizarding World made an extra large withdrawal from the Gringotts account she had, she had a lot of books to buy and even more reading to do. Some of the money she had converted to pounds, there would be just enough time for her to visit a nearby muggle dress shop and buy three dresses suitable for the dates Harry was taking Hermione, her sister and her on over the next two nights.
The dresses she got were the simplest and most generic dresses they had in stock but were appropriate for the dates Harry was taking the girls on. She also purchased dresses a bit too big for their intended wearers, that way if she got the sizes wrong she could always use shrinking charms to make them smaller. Hermione got a periwinkle blue dress with white accents. For her sister and herself Padma had an immense stroke of luck, the store had a pair of identical blue dresses with sliver accents in about their size, the accent pieces were on the same side of the dresses but Padma thought she knew a spell to change that, if not all the books she would soon be buying on clothes design should fix that. It would be the perfect chance for Harry to get used to dealing with them while they were identical but while still allowing him an out so that he could tell them apart. Plus they needed practice for when they were seen in public with Harry and the ‘Left and Right Twins’ wasn’t something they had much practice with as it was almost a subset of the 'Can't tell them apart’ act, but hopefully they would look good on Harry’s arms at some point.
Thanks to Tommy King for his beta'ing, firelordeg, and Alex for typos busting and all the folks at the Caer Azkaban and Seel'vor fan fiction Yahoo groups for all the help I can't keep track of