Crescent Moons ; J.S. Potter

21. cocktail dresses.

Daisy's idea of a fun Saturday did not involve standing in her dorm room for nearly half an hour alone staring at a closet. Unfortunately, she seemed to have no choice at the moment.

Against her usual habits, Daisy had procrastinated thinking about the Slug Club dinner party until the afternoon of. Now, she had no choice but to choose a dress from the minimal options in her own closet.

On the bright side, she now knew that a cocktail dress code was: basically a semi-formal knee-length dress. She was not used to going to dinner parties so she had no idea what to expect. Usually, she would rely on Marlee and Gwen for help but they had gone down to breakfast after Daisy had insisted that she could do this on her own; she had quickly come to the realization that she couldn't.

She fell back onto her bed with a groan, landing on her back. Just then, the door opened. She was too frustrated to turn and look.

"You alright, Daisy?" asked Marlee's voice, Gwen chuckling in the background. "Why does it look like a dress store threw up in here?"

"Because ..." Daisy sat up and threw a bright pink dress off of her bed, "I HAVE NOTHING TO WEAR TO SLUGHORN'S STUPID PARTY!"

She let out a half-groan-half-cry of irritation. Gwen laughed even harder. Marlee looked deeply concerned.

"Stop freaking out, girl, I've got a bunch of dresses," said Marlee. "We'll have a little fashion show!"

"Alright, fine," said Daisy. "It needs to be knee-length and pretty."

"Ooh, what about this one?" asked Gwen, picking up the prettiest dress that Daisy owned. It was a calf-length, baby blue, sleeveless, satin dress with small white flowers sprinkled across it and small gems lining the straps. Daisy loved the dress and how she looked in it, but there was one reason why she had only worn it to family events.

"That's the forty-five Galleon dress that James bought me a few years ago, remember?" informed Daisy. "I can't wear that to a party where he'll be!"

"Why not?" asked Gwen. "The dress is gorgeous."

"Yeah, I know," said Daisy, sighing. "But it'll make him think I'm not mad at him anymore, which I definitely am."

"For the nicest person I've ever met, you sure are petty," said Gwen, shrugging and throwing the dress back onto the pile on the floor. Daisy laughed at the remark and opened up Marlee's closet while Gwen walked over to her own closet and opened it up as well.

It took them quite a while to pick out the knee-length dress that looked formal enough to wear. After fifteen minutes of sorting, they were left with three blue dresses, three pink dresses, and two purple dresses.

"I want to wear them all," sighed Daisy, looking at the eight dresses laid out in front of the three girls on the floor. "How am I supposed to choose?"

"Well, you've got to try all of them on," said Marlee. "And I'll make a dress bracket so we can pick out the final dress. You know how dress brackets work, right?"

"What's that?" asked Gwen. Marlee pulled out a chalkboard from her closet; it was the one they used to study together.

"There're eight dresses, which is the perfect number for a dress bracket. Daisy will try on two of them and then pick which one of the two she prefers. That one will continue onto the second round, where Daisy will pick either it or another dress that she picked. Then, the final two dresses will go head to head until Daisy finally picks one!"

She took a breath after she had finished. Daisy raised one of her eyebrows.

"Or Daisy could just pick a dress," suggested Gwen. Marlee shook her head and began drawing the bracket and the dresses on the chalkboard.