Padma Radhika Patil (afloatinglotus) wrote in reduxpitch, @ 2016-10-09 09:23:00 |
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Entry tags: | !challenge, !game plot, !thread, character: celia wood, character: draco malfoy, character: padma patil |
WHO: Padma, Draco, and OPEN
WHEN: Slightly backdated to the afternoon of the 8th
WHERE: Magical Costume Shop
WHAT: Padma is glowing. Literally.
RATING: TBD
WARNINGS: TBD
STATUS: Open/Ongoing
As far as holidays went, Halloween wasn't too bad. It was certainly better than Valentine's Day, which always left Padma annoyed and drove her deeper into her quiet places to avoid the constant shower of love and pink. Still, she wasn't usually inclined to participate in Halloween festivities. The annual feast at Hogwarts had always been great, but she hadn't really been expected to go out of her way to get into the spirit of the day. In her adult life, she had gracefully avoided several Halloween parties and had been quite fine with that, but things were a bit different now.
After being stranded on an island for a week (well, three days in the real world) and not having anyone notice, Padma was making a conscious effort to get involved in life before it slipped by. That all felt very dramatic to put into words, but it was how she felt. So, with a charity costume party and also a Potions Department costume contest coming up, Padma made her way down to a costume shop that had popped up in anticipation of the season.
Trouble was, she didn't know what she wanted to dress up as. There were queens and fairies and inappropriately cut medi-witch robes and none of it felt right.
She was standing in a section of period costumes, staring at a seventeenth century dress with a slight frown when a hunched witch approached her. "Can I help you find something, dear?" She asked in a voice that was surprisingly strong for her withered appearance.
"I'm trying to decide what to be," Padma replied, reaching out to feel the fabric of the dress.
The woman brightened and snatched Padma's hand away. "Oh, you don't want that one," she said happily and tugged on Padma's hand. As she led the younger woman away, she looked her up and down. "You would make a stunning Cleopatra," she said.
Padma frowned. "No, I don't think so," she said, trying once to extract her hand from the grip of the old woman and then giving up when it proved fruitless. She couldn't imagine putting herself on display like that.
The old woman looked momentarily disheartened but it seemed only to redouble her conviction to find Padma something to wear. "What do you do, dear?" She asked after having finally dragged Padma to a section that seemed devoted to historical figures.
The Cleopatra costume was on full display and Padma was quite glad she'd said no. it was well-made and highly detailed, but she imagined there would be far too much cleavage for her comfort. She pulled her eyes away from the jeweled gown. "Um, potion maker."
The old witch cackled with glee and clapped her hands. Then, holding up a finger, she dove head first into a rack of clothes, fully vanishing from sight. After a full thirty seconds, she emerged with a long-sleeved dress of heavy, dark material that was ripped and stained with a faintly green, glowing something. She thrust this at Padma with a look of triumph.
Padma accepted the dress with mild confusion. "I don't understand."
The old woman rolled her eyes. "You do know who Marie Curie is, don't you?"
Padma thought for a moment, her brow furrowing slightly. She knew the name, she was sure of it. "A Muggle scientist," she said slowly, "worked in chemistry and..." Oh, she couldn't remember the word.
"And radioactivity!" The old woman said happily, thrusting a finger at a large glowing stain down the front of the dress. She then handed a tub of cream at Padma and then pointed toward the dressing rooms. "Try it on," she said insistently. "The cream is the makeup, it'll complete the effect, go, go!"
Padma very nearly protested, but the little old lady just looked so happy that she didn't have the heart to, nor did she really have a reason to other than stubbornness and a desire to call this whole thing off because it was just too much. "Okay," she said kindly, "and thank you."
She gathered the dress and the makeup to herself and found a dressing room. She changed quickly and applied the makeup, which magically transformed her face and hands into ragged, faintly glowing zombie flesh. The effect was quite frightening and realistic, but she quite liked the effect when combined with the tattered gown. She looked exactly how she supposed an irradiated zombie from the early twentieth century was supposed to look.
She was just about to laugh out loud at the sheer ridiculousness of it when there was a blinding flash of light and she knew no more.