something wicked cool this way comes [Open]

[ambered]

[For someone who hates to shop (and Petia is the only one who can really convince her otherwise), there are a suspicious number of parcels in her arms as she walks through Diagon Alley. Really, the thing to do would have been to bring a house elf, except - are some of those bags from Muggle shops? So the house elf is a definite no, then.

(Don't even bother looking at her like that. Muggles are better at thematic chocolate. Fight her.)

Now, at least, that Sainsbury's bag is well hidden among a parcel from her papa's own store, a bag of accessories from a little art charms shop, a small sack from Auturgy, and the kind of waxed paper bag that usually signifies pastry shop. One's got to bribe the boss with something, after all, if one's going to be slightly absent from the auror office for non-work purposes in the early afternoon.

She pauses in front of the kind of witch fashion shop that normally she'd speed-walk right past, tipping her head to one side at a confection of feathers, leather and shimmery webbing. It's a little on the short side, she thinks, but might be just the thing. Although:]

I mean, do I want to make the Daily Prophet social section, though?