บท 125: Fully Prepared Muggle Clothing
The next day brought more dreary weather, with clouds hanging low over the castle and the wind whipping the black lake into choppy waves. The dark treetops in the Forbidden Forest swayed and rustled, while flower petals and grass clippings were scattered across the paths and lawns.
Under the light gray sky, owls swooped down, delivering newspapers and letters to the long tables of the various houses. They were so tired from the rough flight that they helped themselves to the students' cereal, pecking at the bowls with their beaks.
But despite the weather, there was a buzz of excitement among some of the Muggle Studies students, who were eagerly anticipating their own practical activities that day.
"What have you got there, Patricia?" asked a Gryffindor student sitting next to Patricia Stinson, struggling to swallow a mouthful of pumpkin pie as he craned his neck to see her pull a colorful magazine out of her parchment bag.
"Oh, it's finally here!" Stinson exclaimed, holding up the magazine. "My cheat sheet." She opened it to reveal a glossy spread of a woman adorned in gold jewelry and a sleek black evening gown.
Her friend peered over curiously. "Are you sure that's going to help?"
"Probably," Stinson replied, quickly flipping past a tall, cold-looking model wrapped almost entirely in denim. "I asked my grandma to buy me the latest issue."
The anticipation had been building for weeks, ever since the students who had already participated in the practical activities returned with tales of how fun and enlightening their trips had been. The class knew that they would soon have to choose Muggle outfits for themselves—a task that had become something of a competition.
Students who had done well on the clothing matching test had become minor celebrities, with some even earning extra pocket money by offering advice. Others had sought out students from the previous group to get tips and references. Photos of students clad in Muggle attire, often covered in cat and dog hair from the visit to the rescue center, had suddenly become valuable commodities, passed around among close friends.
Despite the Weasley twins' enthusiastic endorsement of Afro hairstyles as a surefire way to stand out ("The professor definitely won't forget you," Fred had said earnestly), not many students were eager to try that particular look.
While the Weasley brothers promoted their daring choices, Cedric Diggory had quietly become the go-to for most third-year students, offering to revise their outfit plans for free. His calm, kind demeanor had inadvertently disrupted the small market for Muggle fashion advice that had sprung up at Hogwarts.
There were also students like Stinson who had opted to adopt Muggle fashion directly. In addition to buying magazines, some had written to their parents, asking them to observe what Muggles were wearing and report back.
"'Everyone dresses differently, and there's no clear pattern. But I looked carefully for a long time, and they all have buttons...,'" Anthony overheard a student reading aloud from a letter, "'I also saw the kind of clothes you mentioned, the ones that stop at the waist. It seems like most Muggles wear these. Their robes usually only cover the waist, with some messy things underneath...'" She shook the letter, the parchment rustling, and complained, "This is no help at all."
Those students with Muggle-born roommates or friends had much less to worry about. They either shoved their assignments in front of their friends for help or begged to borrow some of their clothes for a closer look.
...
When students are so well prepared, as a professor, you should create opportunities for them to show off. Otherwise, there will definitely be many of them chattering in your ear, eager to display the extracurricular knowledge they've learned.
On the way to the Muggle town, students kept asking Professor Anthony for help in adding or subtracting details to their outfits for various reasons.
At first, he agreed one by one and chatted with the students. But after more than ten minutes of hearing, "I've heard that Muggles don't really wear purple ties with green belts," or "Can the pants legs be a little bigger, Professor? I think they're called bell-bottoms, right?" Anthony decisively collected some leaves that had been blown down by the wind from the roadside and transfigured them to resemble silver coins, like 10p pieces. In addition to the three pounds of pocket money, he also gave each person three leaves.
After the students wrote their names on the leaves as he requested, he told them that they could give the leaves to anyone except themselves, based on their appreciation of another person's outfit.
"You must give away the leaves before we reach the entrance of the town. If, by that time, you still have leaves left, not only will those leaves become invalid, but you will also lose one of the leaves given to you by others," Anthony laughed. "Yes, as so often happens in Muggle stories, this is magic with a time limit. So, ladies and gentlemen, let's begin!"
Students holding the silver leaves looked at each other blankly. Then, with almost no communication, a pair of friends standing together exchanged leaves in their hands and immediately completed the task. They looked at each other and laughed.
"Wait a minute, let me think about how to prevent you from simply exchanging leaves," Anthony had to interrupt them quickly. He could see how the event could become more about "finding a partner" than "finding an outfit you like."
One student, holding down his hat that was about to blow away, said loudly, "Make the last leaf given invalid!"
"Ingenious solution, one point for Ravenclaw. But it's not fair, is it?" Anthony said. "Sorry, I think this is a problem caused by my spontaneous design of the activity."
After discussing the principles of the plan with his classmates—realizing that as long as the balance of exchange is broken, there will inevitably be winners and losers—another student bit his lower lip, strode over to one of the people who had exchanged leaves, and gave one of his silver leaves to the other person.
"Huh? Why? I don't have any leaves," the Gryffindor boy blurted out, pinching the leaves in his hands at a loss and playing with them until they were wrinkled.
His friend quickly pushed him: "Shut up!"
At this time, cheers had already started. A few cheeky students shouted, "Because you look good, you daft git!"
The girl giving the leaves, with red cheeks, said calmly, "It's not because of anything. I just wanted to do Professor Anthony a favor and make this activity more interesting." Her friend squeezed her hand with all his strength. Even Anthony could see the white fingerprints.
"Thank you, one point for Hufflepuff," Anthony smiled at her and clapped his hands. "Alright, let's take a look at each other!"
To Anthony's satisfaction, no one came to him asking to change their clothes anymore.
Inevitably, though, student voting was quite subjective. The student who received the highest number of votes was the most popular student present. Compared to the first place, the second place, which was quite decent and would even fit in at a Muggle school, actually surprised Anthony the most. A few enthusiastic students even took the initiative to stuff a few leaves into his hood.
"I especially like your outfit," they said seriously. "It looks like an O.W.L.s certificate with an O on it."
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