Newspaper writers kept odd hours; Daily Prophet employees with jobs like Parvati's were usually up all night, readying the important morning edition, and only crashed into bed about dawn. Therefore, Parvati's lunchtime visit to Scrivenshaft's today was, for her, the equivalent of popping into a shop around breakfasttime to run needed errands before work. Everybody else in the shop had most likely been awake and working for hours already, whereas she had just finished her coffee and croissant at a diner down the street.
Scrivenshaft's wasn't exactly the sort of shop that bustled, but lunchtime, when people were on breaks from their jobs, was about as close as it seemed to get when Hogwarts students weren't present in the little town. Parvati just wanted to buy her new quills and move on, but she couldn't seem to find a free employee. This was frustrating in the extreme, particularly when she passed by the assistant manager and overheard his conversation, which had nothing to do with his job.
Though Parvati didn't know Eddie by sight and couldn't read him particularly well, the way he stared at the wall instead of his conversational partner was a dead giveaway. Frustrated at having spent far more time in the shop already than she'd planned to, Parvati decided that perhaps it was acceptable to be a little rude. In some ways she'd be doing the younger wizard a favour, right?
"Excuse me," she said, expertly hopping in when Palmer took a breath. She flourished a quill full of rainbow ink. She'd heard enough of the conversation to grasp the general topic and Palmer's feelings on it. Brightly, she said, "I'm working on my novel, it's a modern version of Romeo and Juliet. Romeo's a fish person and Juliet's a reverse werewolf. Does this ink sparkle? I need this ink to sparkle, because I really need the words to fully express my inner feelings about the impossibility of romance." It was the most absurd and youthful thing she could come up with on short notice, and she gazed wide-eyed at Palmer, a faint and friendly smile daring him to criticise her totally brilliant idea.