1945 hours, Room of Requirement


In the soft glow of lanterns, dust appeared to flood the space around Raine Almasy.  The Room of Requirement was in typical dissaray although it suited today's vain stipulations; long mirrors were propped up against trunks, books and chalky walls- reflecting the sixth year from various angles.

"Maurice?" she called out in a muffled voice, bent at the waist with her head in an open trunk. The cat hissed back and Raine laughed as she straightened with a bright red top hat in hand. "Don't worry, we'll find a bow tie for you-" she pulled on the hat. "- what do you think?"

Somewhere behind the towering heaps of crates and costumes, a door slammed close. Maurice blinked vacantly and slinked away; she watched the black tail disappear behind a bookcase before sauntering to the closest opening between a stack of tomes, peering down the makeshift walkway.

"Trishna?" Raine discerned the familiar figure of her Slytherin classmate, who had disappeared a while ago to fetch clothes from the dormitories.  "Brought anything interesting?"

Interesting was a rather mild way of describing Gigi's wardrobe.

"Interesting? Here?" Gigi leaned against a pile of crates, grinning. There was what looked like a cardboard box in her arms, with the top askew just enough to show a hint of black fabric.

She'd went and 'dyed' her hair with stripes of purple to match her necklace. Wasn't about to let Raine see that. Probably. Maybe. Least the Gryffie wasn't a housemate.

"Give you everything you want yet? Be a nice trick." She stuck her tongue out a little, then blinked. "Or did you get it stuck on silly hats? Hell if I'm touching those." Then she detached herself from the wall and strode over to Raine before setting the box down next to the chest. "Hope you like corsets."

Eying her classmate's recently dyed hair, she had to admit that there were few people more 'interesting' than Trishna when it came to swapping wardrobes. Raine's own contribution to their evening sat by one of the tilted mirrors- a small chest of silk blouses, cascading gowns and prim shoes.

"You can't not wear a silly hat when you see one," she replied with a wry laugh. "The same can't be said for corsets. I rather like breathing, you see~"

How anyone did anything in those contraptions was beyond imagination. Not to mention the resolute display of certain... assets. Governess McGregor would have had a few stern words to say about that. The Gryffindor tipped the top hat before pulling it off; she dropped nimbly to her knee and surveyed the cardboard box.

"A work of art." Raine extracted an especially dangerous looking corset, holding the leather contrivance within arm's lengths- at her query, she cast a teasing glance at Gigi. "You don this in public?"

"Doesn't mean it has to go on my head." Gigi gave the red tophat a bemused glare. Raine's presence dissipated a bit of her usual ire. Wasn't an exercise in proving things, for once. "Red's not my color."

Gigi stuck her hand inside the offending corset and wiggled her fingers. "Bigger on the inside. Or at least looks worse than it wears. And hey, you see my chest?" She hooked her thumb back to point at the offending assets. "Wear it in public all the time if I could swing it."

The toe of her shoes tapped against the box. "I even brought the easy ones for you. Not much green. But hey, got to stay interesting. Wouldn't do to let spaceboy get bored."

She pulled another corset out of the box, this one purple and high-collared. "Lots of black in here though. Leather's best in black."

Raine let loose a breezy laugh at the casual reference to their Astronomy professor as spaceboy. What did muggles call them? Astroturf? Astronuts?

Pushing the thought aside, she retrieved one of the 'easier' corsets her classmate had managed to find. Another purple one... really more indigo if you looked at it in the right light.

"Easy indeed-" the Gryffindor narrowed her gaze at Gigi, though she smiled. "- for a skeleton. But I'm not one to turn down a challenge." Which was a hard truth.

Setting the indigo affair on one of the trunks, she pulled off her top in a swift motion. "I'd be--fer be a--fle to bwea--the in this," her muffled voiced complained, and then: "Thank Merlin for charms," once she'd managed to figure out how to tighten the corset.

"Ah~" Raine gasped, material bonding tightly to chest and waist. "Finally. I think that's... that's right. Does it look right?" she turned away from the other girl to look at a mirror critically. To her disappointment, breathing wasn't a problem.

"Skeleton with a chest on them, more like," Gigi quipped, pulling a dark purple top hat from one of the chests, and fiddling with it as she waited for Raine. It seemed the lion hadn't worn many corsets, or at least not the actual kind.

"Bout right, though. Just need to tie yourself some sort of bow and walk about with your chest thrust out." She propped the hat atop her head and bowed. "Then trip them up if you catch them watching too long."

The hat came off her head with a twirl and she shook her hair out, her expression somewhat contemplative. Or at least as contemplative as Gigi got. "Think a black one would match better? Maybe one with spikes."

She did like the idea of spikes.

"I don't think they'd dare watch too long~"

Raine smirked as she began to undo the corset that, she could see now, was not a flattering shade even with the blonde locks. It came loose much more easily than it had been tightened, and went right back into the box while a black one was retrieved. Being stared at was not a problem but she had reservations about any 'thrusting'.

"These have spikes," the Gryffindor commented as she flicked her wand and the silken ribbons began to tug. Shiny metal spikes lined the side seams of the body in a manner that would threaten to puncture a hand eager to wrap round its waist. Was this a defensive mechanism?

Looking back to the mirror, she smiled approvingly at the reflection before turning around gracefully on one leg. Gigi was right. Black suited her better and the spikes did not (yet) hurt.

"My governess would hang me if I wore this in Oxford." Raine glanced at Trishna with a wry expression. "Rather old fashioned lot, Almasys. Hunting wolves is par for the course but Merlin forbid we wear corsets in polite company."

"Watching only counts if you get caught." The last bit of Gigi's sentence was muffled as she bent down to hunt for a different hat. Wouldn't be much of a Room of Requirement if it couldn't provide some hats.

And a few minutes of digging did turn up a proper black hat, even if it did lack spikes. Could always put those on later. Gigi plopped it onto her head at an appropriately rakish angle while she turned to grin at Raine. "No corsets? I thought there were plenty that fell into ridic old fashion time. Or do those need a fainting couch to match?"

For whatever reason the idea of Raine and a fainting couch made her smirk. Which quickly turned into a burst of sharp laughter.

Instinctively, she mirrored her classmate's grin and nodded once- in approval of the hat.

One of those rather dated things her mother instilled: bizarre headgear to boring British soirees. The muggles had a particular affair they attended for that, didn't they? Hascet, Ascet? Better not risk asking. Raine threw her head back into a laugh at mention of the fainting couch.

"Merlin!" she exclaimed in exaggerated imitation of a relative, holding a faint hand to nape as she collapsed against a collection of trunks. The Gryffindor straightened into a seated position, abruptly, and raised her eyebrows at Gigi. "I think we're disowned for fainting, or something dreadfully trite like that."

The very idea of her father - or worse, Aunt Ira - fainting was implausible.

"Although..." Raine leaned forward to catch her reflection in the mirror, fixing her hair to fall against one side. "I suppose mother's side must have a corset or two. I've never seen an Almasy in one," she looked at the other witch and smirked. "Besides myself. Don't suppose you have anything in house colours?"

"But not disowned for saying 'dreadfully trite'?" There was that smirk again, but then Gigi was rather fond of it. Plenty of practice using it on her brother.

She shook her head. "You look good in that corset, though." Better than Gigi did, but the flatness didn't help there. Then it was back to the box, and a few more moments of digging. This was followed by tossing a few pieces of red clothing out of it and behind her. "Not much for red. Couple pieces. Don't look good in it myself."

Might have been able to pull blue off, but not crimson. Didn't want to pull blue off.

Raine had been teased and prodded for her way of speaking before, it was something she inherited from mother that her sister did not. But she ignored the jab- wisely deciding that this particular Trishna was not the correct person with whom one made observations about maternal figures.

"If I knew how well these suited me, I would have taken them into town for winter break~" she took another twirl in front of the mirror, shaking her blonde locks out vainly. "One could wear stilts in London and they wouldn't stare." It was a city so flooded by eccentricities that to give any of them the time of your day would also mean wasting it away.

With a pensieve sort of grace, Raine caught whichever bits of red clothing her classmate tossed out but only considered them briefly. Red was her colour and it didn't matter how it looked so much as how it made her feel when wearing it.

"There's always that, isn't there?" she commented and held a dark red top against her chest to test it idly. "I can't bear to wear yellow unless its mustard, washes me out completely. Aunt Ira is lucky she's a Metamorphmagus. just imagine that-" Raine turned around to give Gigi a wistful look. "- changing looks like we change sweaters."

Gigi had continued shuffling through the clothes while Raine spoke, and smiled when she pulled out a shirt with bearing a figure wearing a small green dog with a zipper down the front.

But at the word 'Metamorphmagus', Gigi froze. Her face wrinkled up into a frown, and she pulled her shoulders in tight. It only lasted for a portion of a second, and then she smoothed her expression out, as if pretending that she hadn't reacted at all.

"Lucky?"