Prepping

In the Abbott family country-style chateau, the jovial French branch family members happy converse with their much paler, English cousins. All-day long children excitedly run about watching the elder members dress up for the presentation ball to be held later that evening. The younger girls can only watch in envy as their unmarried of age cousins or those already engaged dress up to the sickle.

The presentation ball is an important opportunity for both the males and females in polite wizarding society to find a marriage partner. The guests that would be in attendance would be from powerful if not old pureblood families across the old continent and from the British Isles. The pureblood families with longer lineages would seek similar marriage partners of equal standing for their children. However, not all ancient pureblood lineages were wealthy, and in those instances, they would seek wizarding families whose sons would inherit great wealth, or whose daughters would be granted a large dowry upon marriage. The same was applicable for the other side as lesser wizarding families would seek to marry their children into pureblood families with ancient lineages. Other's sought power or to forge new connections regardless, it would be the social event of the season.

It was late in the afternoon as the fading soon over horizon peered through the window into an elegantly furnished guestroom. The glistening orange light of the setting sun filled the room. A lovely light-haired girl with pale eyes gasped in awe and delight as she gaily twirled in her cream-colored gown before a full-length mirror. The glittering sun rays caused the silver embroidered patterns reminiscent of the Rocco and Baroque style of fashion to glitter exquisitely.

The tasteful embroidery continued up the gown to her incredibly curved waist that had been forged via a painfully tightened corset. The ball-gown sleeves were cut at a half-length rather than a full sleeve ending just past her elbows. There is a slight touch of ruffles added at the end of the sleeve for volume. As a light-haired girl remains an unmarried married maiden, the collar of her gown is slightly higher than that of married women. The gown collar ends at just below her collar bone.

Raising her light-colored eyes, Petunia Evans is unable to contain a grin of delight from appearing on her face. She turns to the side carefully studying the unbelievable vision of herself, before leaning in close again to study her reflection. Her skin was flawless, her lips blush-colored, her eyes and brows carefully lined with a hint of blush added to her face.

With a white-gloved hand, Petunia gently reaches up and touches her lightly curled hair that has been pulled back in a tasteful updo with pearl hairpin and a beautiful silver hairpin in the shape of a sapphire gem wyvern. The hairpin was a gift and symbol that she was a close friend to those being presented later that evening. Well, at least one of them, Rowan…

Feeling a bit child-like, Petunia Evans give one last twirl in the mirror, before she gently smoothed her gown one last time with white-gloved hands. She felt like she had fallen back in time, and in a sense, she had! Wizards seemed to be living an entire century in the past and as wonderful as that was, she finally got what Row and Lily complained about. It wasn't that wizarding society was bad as a whole, but patriarchy idealism still had a very strong hold on the views of women in some respects.

In other aspects, the wizarding world was strangely progressive considering the fact that there had been plenty of female Ministry of Magic. There were plenty of witches serving in the Ministry of Magic including Auror Corps, while there are barely if any female police officers in the normal (muggle world). There had been witches that were famous alchemists, seers, spell creators while similar positions were barely being opened in her own world. These witches were not only respected but seen as mentors equal to that of wizards. And unlike in her own world, both men and women played on quidditch teams except for a few exceptions. There was no difference between the two genders, the only real distinction was whether they were good quidditch players or not. It was a strange, baffling conundrum at times, but that is exactly what the world is at times.

Petunia knew that the normal (muggle) world was far from perfect, there was still plenty of sexism in the workplace. There were plenty of ideas about what a girl or boy ought to do or not. She knew that no one ever talked about their neighbor's boy, who had left for London. But rumor had it that he was seen out late at night sometimes in the company of other men. It certainly didn't help the reporting on the news about the loss of jobs, arrival of immigrants, the homeless population, and what seemed like the daily violence on the streets from protestors or hooligans or the talk about drugs and overdoses.

The world seemed infinitely terrifying at times and that's why their mum and dad didn't want them going out to the bigger towns and cities to go out with friends. The murders of women at night are frightening to hear about on the BBC even if they were all about call girls and rent boys. At least, that's what Angela Rippon said on the Nine O'clock News.

Petunia and her friends had seen the news about the Americans in April of just this year had been forced to pull out of Saigon and abandon Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos. They'd failed to stop the communist regime down there or so her dad complained. And it wasn't as though their neck of the woods was clear with the IRA (Provisional Irish Republican Army). She didn't know why Northern Ireland was so up in arms. It was right dangerous especially with all the IRA bombings that had killed and hurt plenty of innocent folks. It was just a tumultuous time to live in and she didn't always know what to make of that.

Shaking away such grim thoughts, Petunia turns to her side and winces slightly. She most certainly did not envy Lily nor witches at least not after today. Not that she didn't look lovely in her current attire, but if wearing a bra was a hassle, a corset was just a plain nightmare. Even now, despite starving herself all day, she felt that if she ate more than a bite of food, she'd suffocate from the tightness of the corset. That wasn't even discussing the dress bustle required underneath nor the skirt petticoats! No wonder in oil paintings, the painted women are always fanning themselves! It was because they were suffocating to death from the restricted corsets and overheating from the countless petticoats they were wearing!