Strangely, Harry didn't feel any embarrassment at that at all. As nice as they were, he really would prefer to spend more time with Hermione. Maybe all the embarrassment before had been a good thing; he supposed it wasn't just clothes you could get used to.
Harry fished out his chequebook and Blood Quill from Ron's borrowed jeans and stuck them in the odd sleeve pocket on one side and put what was left of his pocket money in the other. Besides the entire pocket itself sliding around when he moved his arms, it seemed to work fine. His wand he stuck in one of the normal pockets.
Hermione was already at the register when he turned the corner. The oddly squirmy nervous feeling in his stomach had died down a bit too, mostly leaving the desire to smile in its place, something he didn't see the need to fight since she had one too.
"You look nice," she said, causing him to stop and look down at his clothes again as if they might've changed in the last minute. "You know you don't have to wear green if you don't like it," Hermione said as if unburdening herself of some great weight. "Just because I think it looks nice doesn't mean you have to wear it."
"But I do like it," Harry said honestly.
A little bit of color was fine, it was just having it as an all-over kind of thing that made it seem odd. Hermione seemed on the verge of saying something else but must have figured it'd be silly to press the issue in case he was being honest and ended up leaving it alone.
"I got her all written up here, and got her cheque, but didn't know what to do after that," the shop girl told Madam Malkin.
"Right. Now let's see if these goblins are as clever as they think they are," the older woman said as she pulled out a small silver serving dish and set it on the counter. "So I put that like this," she said as she walked through the new process. "And then I sign her cheque," Madam Malkin paused while she did just that. "And I set it on the tray and…"
Madam Malkin looked around a bit before she pulled out a small wooden-handle stamp with a metal bottom. With a firm hand she pressed down onto the cheque which disappeared in a small puff of smoke.
"Did I do it right?" the slightly wide-eyed shopkeeper asked, as if any of them had ever done this before.
"I think so," Harry said, remembering back when he had sealed his account and that bit of paper had done the same.
"Would we be able to get the cheque back if you didn't?" the curly-haired Marjorie asked curiously.
"Well I wouldn't want to walk all the way down there just to-," Madam Malkin started to say before another puff of smoke cut her off.
Two new pieces of paper had appeared on the tray.
"Let's see," Madam Malkin said as she scrutinized them both, looking back and forth between them as if to spot a difference. "This one's mine, I think, so this other must be yours," she said as she handed Hermione one of the bits of paper. She immediately tucked it into her little cheque ledger for later tallying, if she hadn't done so already.
"Well that was easy, wasn't it?" Madam Malkin said to Marjorie with a smile. "That's much better than walking down to the bank every day after we close up. They should have done this years ago."
She was as happy as a clam as she rung up his purchases and processed his check, though it could've been the amount of money she was making, which he took from the look on Hermione's face to be a lot more than hers was. Maybe it was a good thing they hadn't gone the reimbursement route after all. One weird thing though was that under remaining balance on his bank receipt it said, "A lot: See Overseer Barchoke, " which Harry had no intention of doing today at all.
Just as he was thinking about how he'd look carrying his bags around from place to place Hermione had a question. "When you said you'd 'call him,' what exactly did you mean?"
Somehow Harry knew what to do. He turned a bit to the side and looked where he imagined Dobby's head might stand and said, "Dobby!" and the little elf appeared with a pop! He was incredibly dirty. His entire head was almost black and most of the pillowcase he wore was too; it made his bulbous eyes seem to pop out even more.