parvati and padma patil were never really accepted at hogwarts.
when people would ask where the twins were from, they were never really ready to hear the answer - “britain”. they wanted to hear “indian” or “bangladeshi”- they wanted to know why their skin was not the white they were so used to.
parvati wanted to go to the yule ball but no one wanted to go with her; padma didn’t really want to go, knowing the reality that parvati never acknowledged.
parvati had bought beautiful dress robes in a gorgeous light blue color, not unlike hermione’s. when she tried it on and went to the common room to show it off, it was received by a surprisingly large number of raised eyebrows, and dean thomas actually asked her, “are those lavender’s?”
so parvati wrote back home, asking for a lehnga or a sari or something that she would feel more accepted in, something people expected to see.
it seemed so difficult to comprehend for her, when padma had already made peace with it: how could her identity be so closely related with that place, the place she had been to only twice in her life, where she didn’t even speak the language? the only thing associating her with her great-grandmother’s hometown was the colour of her skin, but even then, britain was her home. on her passport, it said britain, so why should anyone disagree?