Early Saturday Morning, Potter/Patil Private Classroom
All his years of living with the Dursleys had caused Harry to be an early riser so he was the first to arrive in their private classroom, followed by Padma sometime later. When Parvati arrived she found her sister sitting in Harry’s lap helping him advance his study of runes. Harry had noticed that the twins liked sitting in his lap and that he in turn liked them sitting there
“OK I’m going to have to leave for Hogsmeade soon, so, Harry, take off your robes so I can measure you properly.” Said Parvati.
After Padma had closed the book they were going over together and scooted out of his lap onto the bench next to him, Harry got up, turned so that he was facing both the twins and then took off his robes, causing both the girls to gasp in amazement for he was wearing very smart, Muggle semi-formal clothes.
“Harry,” Said Parvati, “Where did you get that?”
“Strangely enough, my aunt.” Said Harry. “She said that we all had to have one set of nice clothes in case of a special occasion or something and she didn’t want to be embarrassed by me if they couldn’t find someone to look after me so I got clothes that fit me properly just in case. She’s also the one that insisted that I had my own underwear because me wearing Dudley’s was ‘Filthy, disgusting, and not something that will be happening in my house.’”
“That’s good to hear, Harry, but I think that it’s too good for your date with Hermione tomorrow, so I’ll still need your measurements. But it is appropriate for your trip to Gringotts today.” Said Parvati, pulling a tape measure out of a pocket and taking off her own robes, which made sense as Harry had noticed that robes, which tended to billow, were not a good choice when you needed to do something delicate.
“Padma, Parvati,” Said Harry while Parvati was measuring him. “You two are free tonight, right?”
“Yes, of course we are, Harry, why would you think otherwise?” They coursed.
“Nothing, just making sure. See I figured that I should take my girlfriends on a date before I take my oldest female friend on one, even if it’s only to cheer her up, so after I’d made arrangements with the House-Elves for a private dinner between Hermione and I tomorrow I made arrangements for the three of us tonight.” Answered Harry.
Apparently this was the correct thing to say for it caused the twins to squeal and hug him. “Of course we’ll have dinner with you, Harry.” They said together. Harry guessed that this didn’t count as them finishing each other’s sentences. Maybe they didn’t realize what they were doing or they hadn’t actually tried to finish each other’s sentences.
Or maybe Harry was reading too much into the situation, Padma’s and Parvati’s reactions were pretty normal, apart from them speaking in plural before, so maybe they just said the same thing at the same time.
Having calmed down, Parvati started talking again. “Harry, I need to finish measuring you then I’ll head off to Hogsmeade and Padma can reward you for being a brilliant boyfriend to the two of us.” Before returning to measuring him.
“That’s nice to hear, Parvati, but my dinner with you and Padma isn’t going to be as nice as my one with Hermione. Thanks to you I’m going to have a present to give her, flowers and a nice dress for her and I’m not going to be able to arrange for those things tonight. I couldn’t use the Weasley Twins to get anything for the two of you, they might get suspicious and I can’t exactly ask you to get something for your own date with me.” Said a slightly upset Harry.
“Don’t worry about it, Harry, that you thought of it alone is enough. I will however be looking out for something or somethings for Pad and me to wear tonight.” Responded Parvati in an attempt to cheer Harry up.
“That’s another thing, Parvati, how am I going to pay you back for all of this?” Asked Harry.
“Don’t worry about it, Harry. Think of it as my contribution to making Hermione relax. Your actually taking her on a date while I’m buying the flowers, the nice dress she’s going to wear and the book, plus it’s not like I’ve got anything else to spend my allowance on, which is something that we should probably talk to you about before the summer.” Answered Parvati as she finished up.
“Why would we need to talk about your allowances?” Inquired Harry.
“Par, off you go to Hogsmeade, I’ll explain things to Harry.” Interjected Padma, guiding Harry back to the seat he had been sitting in before.
Sitting down across her boyfriends lap so that she was side on to him, whereas before she had her back to him she started talking. “Harry, if and when we become your concubines do you really expect that we would still be getting an allowance from our parents?”
This caused Harry to become upset again. “Sorry,” He said. “I should have...”
Placing her index finger on his lips to quite him, she resumed talking. “It’s not something you’re familiar with, Harry, I’d expect you to make mistakes and neither of those things is your fault. Now like I said, if and when we become your concubines we won’t be getting an allowance from our parents anymore and, as we would be your concubines, it would be your responsibility to give us one.”
“Oh, that sounds simple enough. How much of an allowance do your parents give you at the moment?” Asked Harry
“Three Galleons a week.” Was her answer. “But when we become your concubines we essentially become married women and the rules are different, our allowances are currently only there to allow us to buy treats for ourselves, things like our clothes are paid for by our parents, a married woman’s allowance is supposed to cover most of her clothes and a house if her husband has given her one or put her in charge of the family house, at least, until, in the case of clothes she gets a job.”
“OK, so how much should I give you once you become my concubine?” He inquired
“I don’t know, I’ll write to my mother and ask her how much father gives her and Nalini.” Was her reply. “And I think those relatives of yours have caused you to miss out on too much that you should know about being in a relationship.”
“What makes you say that, Padma?” Harry asked.
“Most men get nervous at the mention of women’s clothes, especially if it involves someone like Par. Women’s clothes have this culture surrounding them that demands a broader selection of styles and colours, this means that the clothes cost more and that boyfriends and husbands are dragged along so that their opinion can be asked of every outfit the woman tries on, which takes a long time during which he’s asked to comment on a lot of outfits that he can’t tell apart, Par and I will probably put you through it this summer when we buy our new wardrobes. I think Par’s going to have a lot of fun teasing Lavender and some other girls next year with how much she gets each month to spend on clothes, with no parents to tell her no.” Answered Padma.
“And you won’t have fun teasing the other girls? And why would you and Parvati need new wardrobes?” Inquired Harry.
“The reason we’ll need new wardrobes is that we won’t be little girls anymore but rather your concubines and we’ll be expected to dress as such, which means lots outfits that show how beautiful we are and how lucky you are to have us. I won’t be doing as much teasing or enjoying it as much as Par. Anyway the girls in Ravenclaw are more likely to be jealous to how much more money I'm going to have to spend on books then clothes and that is how I would go about teasing them, if I bother. Of course Lavender isn't going to think about, and the girls in Ravenclaw are unlikely to realize, just how much further our Allowances will have to stretch. I mean we will have pay for our underwear and sleepwear out of our Allowances than as well. And the sort of things we will be expected to to own along this lines are a lot more expensive then the ones we currently own." Responded Padma. “Now there is something else I think I should talk to you about, and this isn’t going to be fun for either of us...”
-/-/-/-/-
30 minutes later, 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 reserving 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.
The lowers in underwear 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 manufacturer, 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 the girl wearing them off, she'd known that for the interesting and suggestive ideas they would have to buy from a muggle store before the year begun but it looked like they wouldn’t be able to get anything they wanted clothes wise next year from wizarding stores and you couldn’t owl order muggle stores.
These 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 then just it’s normal subject matter, it had also for some reason a slightly related part of their culture their parents correctly believed they hadn’t been introduced to before: Body Jewelry.
Parvati had thought she knew jewelry but she was wrong. The first thing Hoshma had shown and modeled for them had been 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 ones 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 jeweler 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 jewelry for belly buttons before, but the thought that such jewelry could be held in place by a piercing was new, just were 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.
The stores in Diagon Alley were no better, so Parvati, armed with the full knowledge of now 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.
-/-/-/-/-
1 p.m., Potter/Patil Private Classroom
“You ready to go, Harry?” Asked Padma.
“Yeah, not sure what I’m going to say though.” Answered Harry.
“Probably not much, chances are that meeting face to face like this isn’t critical, it just allows things to be moved forward quicker and signing it in person is traditional, at least for someone’s first contract or a big contract and this is both. Plus it’s possible that you will be signing more than one contract today. There’s one for the actual delivery of the remains and their rendering it down into separate products, one or more contracts dealing with selling it and at least one contract for leasing a vault from Gringotts.” Responded Padma
“Thanks, Padma, you’re really making me feel better.” Replied Harry.
“Well chances are we will spend more time talking to the family lawyer than the goblins. While it’s not directly related to our business with them, your family lawyer needs to talk to you about what is going on with the Potter Trust, and that could affect the goblins. Plus we need to talk to him about us.” She said, that last part rather sheepishly.
“Thanks for trying to cheer me up, Padma, but somehow I don’t think it’s working. Now what’s this about ‘us’?” He inquired.
“I sort of did a Hermione.” She answered. “When I saw my father last I told him that I would write the contract for you to buy Parvati and me and it turns out that I’ve bitten off more than I can chew, I’ve already written to my father and got in contact with his lawyer, so today I can tell your family's lawyer what’s going on and to expect to receive letters from both my father’s lawyer and me. Plus we need to know how much money you can give father for the contract for Par and me, from what father’s said he’s planning on writing you into his Will and giving you more money than what you paid for us, but you still need to ‘buy’ us in the first place.”
“Padma, I thought you would be smarter than that. What caused you to do something so silly?” Asked Harry.
“Harry, this contract will define our future, I didn’t want anything to come up and surprise us, and by us I mean Par, you and me, later on. I think father let me go ahead with that so that I would learn my limits. You ready to go?” She said.
“Yes, here’s the Portkey.” He said, pulling said object out of his bag. Once they both had a firm hold on it he said “Coming” to activate it and they disappeared in the swirling colours of a Portkey.
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