Hello! I have no idea what shops they have over in England, and my modem's screwed up at the moment, so I can't like, do research or anything. So I'll just use the shops I like from Australia. Don't get too mad at me!

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It was Saturday, the day before The Weasley's were due to pick up Harry and Hermione from their homes. Fred and George were plotting in their rooms as usual, and Percy and Charlie had gone out to watch a local Quidditch game. This was also the day for Zoe and Ginny to do some Female Bonding and go shopping together.

Ginny was in her room, brushing rose blush onto her cheeks. Zoe entered and grinned, but it quickly faded when she saw the colour Ginny was applying.

"Ginny, do you have any sisters?" She asked. Ginny shook her head perplexedly. "Any older girl friend who wears makeup?"

"No...?"

"Listen, please don't take this the wrong way, but it looks to me like you're putting on the wrong colours for your skin tone and hair colour."

Ginny went red. "Well, it's not like anyone's been up to show me."

"Yeah. Hey, what's say I show you?"

Ginny smiled half-heartedly. "If you like."

"Ah-k." She said, waving her hand over the desk top, making the bottles and tubs disappear. She waved her arm over it again and a new collection of cosmetics appeared on Ginny's desk.

"Now." She said, smearing a pale foundation onto Ginny's skin. "You don't want it too dark. You'll look like this girl I knew who is completely stupid, wears foundation about ten times too dark, eyeliner really thick and she has this really, really ugly boyfriend."

"We wouldn't want that," Ginny said as a neutral eyeshadow was put on her. "The last thing we'd want is a really, really ugly boyfriend."

"I completely agree." Zoe said, missing the sarcasm, and put a mirror in front of Ginny.

Ginny looked at her reflection and was speechless. Zoe had done a great job. Often, she had looked in the mirror and fought the temptation to burst into tears. But today, today was the first time she had seen herself and liked what she saw. She was beautiful, for the first time.

"I'm... beautiful." She mumbled under her breath. "Thank you Zoe."

"We could do something about that hair." She said, then seeing the look on Ginny's face; "Oh, not like that. I mean... it's very normal."

Ginny flicked the ends of her red hair. "If you say so."

Zoe picked up a pair of scissors, then put them down again. "Too slow." Then she passed her hand over Ginny's hair. Suddenly, it was layered, and in corkscrew curls.

"Oh, that's lovely, thank you," Ginny said, looking at her new hair. Zoe grinned and pulled her up.

"I know you'd love to check yourself out all day, but we have shopping to do."

"Yes, checking myself out is very tempting..." Ginny said sarcastically. "Let's go."

She pulled a bakerboy's cap over her new curls and went out the door. She didn't have much muggle clothes, so she was looking forward to the day ahead. Zoe tossed over a purse.

"My gift to you. Happy birthday."

"But my birthday's in October," Ginny said, opening the purse. Inside, there was a roll of muggle money. "What on earth is with these little bits of paper..."

"It's two hundred pounds," Zoe said. "I imagine you don't have much muggle gear."

"No, I don't," Ginny said, trying to figure out the notes. "Is two hundred a lot?"

"I think it's about five or ten pounds to the galleon."

Ginny's jaw dropped. "That is a lot." She said. "I – I can't accept this."

She tried to hand it back to Zoe, but she refused it. "Then what will you shop with, huh?" Zoe grinned. "Sheer willpower?"

Ginny shrugged and stopped trying to get rid of the money. She wouldn't win.

Their first stop, once they got into London, was Suprè. Ginny walked in, apprehensive, and looked shocked when Zoe practically had a seizure over a red tartan skirt.

They had a lot of fun trying one the clothes in the store, even if they didn't buy half of them. Zoe ended up walking out of the shop with the red skirt, and a pink t-shirt with a large British flag on it. Ginny had a field day in there and bought a Chocoholic's Anonymous t-shirt, a low-cut black dressy top, and two new pairs of pants. One was very tight and sandblasted denim, the other was a pair of baggy whites.

"You're so good with... style, Zoe." Ginny said as they left. "I bet you have a million friends back home."

Zoe's eyes dropped. "Well, actually, I don't have that many. Girls never liked me when I was at school, so I mostly hung out with boys. Then they got older and sex-crazy, and I really didn't like being around people talking about girls in the way that they did. So I guess I was just a loner, unliked by girls, unliked by boys."

"Oh," Ginny said, embarrassed to have asked such a personal question. "That's a bit of a predicament."

"Mmm." Zoe said. Then she turned her head and looked into Just Jeans. "Ooh look, they have red sevens!" She said, pointing to a pair of jeans hanging on a rack. "We have to buy some!"

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Ginny and Zoe caught the knight bus home that afternoon, pockets lighter but hands fuller than when they had left. They walked in the front door and were greeted by Mrs. Weasley's smiling face.

"Good, you're back... did you have fun?" She said absently whilst magicking a knife to chop potatoes for her.

"Yeah mum, look at all this stuff I got!" Ginny said showing her mother her purchases.

"That's lovely dear... now can you get the house ready for Harry and Hermione tomorrow – oh look, here comes Hermione now!"

Hermione Granger walked in, hair just as bushy as ever, grinning broadly.

"Hello Ginny, Mrs. Weasley... sorry I'm early, but Mum and Dad had to go to a dentists' conference tomorrow and today was the only time they could drop me off."

"Oh, that's quite alright, dear," Mrs Weasley said. "Ron's upstairs. Ginny, Zoe, can you take her up there?"

"Thanks Mrs. Weasley," Hermione said as she was led away to Ron's room. "Is Zoe one of your friends, Ginny?"

"Kinda," Ginny said, as Charlie called Zoe back downstairs. "She's really Charlie's friend, but we hang out a lot."

They walked into Ron's room and saw him lying on his bed, reading. It was a big surprise to see him doing anything to do with a book, since he spent most of his time at Hogwarts daydreaming. But then Hermione solved the puzzle by pulling his reading material out of his hands and showing the copy of 'Martin Miggs, the Mad Muggle' comic to the other girls.

Expressions of comprehension dawned on their once confused faces, and Hermione grinned. Ron, apparently, had not noticed the absence of his comic, and kept on flicking his eyes from one hand to the other, as if there was still something there to read. Finally, he realised that his comic had mysteriously disappeared, and he shot up in bed, pulling his hands up into the defensive karate movement, one behind the other. Hermione flapped the comic in his face and laughed, putting it down on his Chudley Cannons bedspread.

"Hermiiiiiiioneeeeee..." he whined, stomping his fists onto his bed like a child, "I was reeeeaaading thaaaaaaaaaaat..."

"Ah, quit ya whining." Hermione said, flicking him in the centre of the forehead. The flick seemed to unsettle him, and he looked up at Hermione confusedly.

"HERMIONE!" He screeched. Hermione flinched and put her hands up, not knowing what to expect. Ron had never done this kind of thing before.

"What?"

"You're here!"

Hermione rolled her eyes. How could boys be so ignorant? Even for Ron, this was extreme.

"No, Ron, I'm a hologram."

"A what-a-gram?" Ron said.

'Oh, blast,' Hermione thought, 'he doesn't know...'

"It's what muggles use sometimes. It makes something look like it's there but it really isn't. It projects an image onto thin air, or it's something on a flat piece of paper that's been made to look three dimensional."

Ron still looked confused. "What?"

"Oh, never mind, do Muggle Studies, you'll find out."

Ron looked positively bored with the subject, but was too polite, or perhaps too afraid of what Hermione might do, to say anything. He simply smiled weakly and declined.

"Ah... I'm sure I'll do Muggle Studies... sometime..."

"Great! We can study together or something... do you know there's no other Gryffindors doing it except Seamus, Dean and me?"

"Oh bloody hell," Ron muttered under his breath as they tramped downstairs, "What on earth have I got myself into..."

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Well, that's the end of that chapter. I'm writing this up, but I'm only posting it after I've finished with my Home and Away fic, so I'd better go and do some of that or this'll never get posted. Or maybe... maybe I could take that off the net, and put this up first instead! Oh, I am abound with good ideas...