Elyssa Greer came from a Pureblood family, a Pureblood descent of Serbians. She was the outcast of her family; the only Gryffindor after centuries of the Greer and Banović family being sorted into Slytherin. Ellie felt like an outcast before she was...
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When at long last the first day came to an end, Ellie along with the rest of the fifth-years were pounded with Homework, from the first lesson to the last. From now on, she would have to record her dreams in her dream diary for Professor Trelawney, which she thought sounded rather fun. Silly but fun. Her first Defence Against the Dark Arts class ended with Harry Potter having a go at Professor Umbridge, which she thought was extremely entertaining. She just wished he would speak that way with Professor Snape instead. However, the beginning of the lesson she had entered with Lavender and Parvarti as she had always, only to have a hand snake around her wrist.
It wasn't Nikolai as she had expected it to be, but it was the pale hand that belonged to Draco Malfoy. Ellie had stopped, puzzled, her blue eyes darting from his hand on her wrist and back up into his grey eyes. He looked bored, as usual, (that is if he wasn't smirking or laughing about bullying Gryffindors) and let go of her arm. Lavender and Parvarti had paused beside Ellie, giving Draco angry looks.
"What?" the redhead said impatiently at the Slytherin. He was already sitting in his seat alongside Pansy, who scoffed and rolled her eyes.
"Sit here," he told her carelessly. "Your boyfriend wants you to sit with us."
Ellie gave him a weird look the same time Lavender and Parvarti exchanged looks and spat out 'boyfriend?' The Gryffindor shot Malfoy an annoyed look; she hadn't had time to tell her friends yet; Malfoy only smirked in response.
"Thought you didn't take orders from King Nikolai," she teased, throwing down her bag before turning to her friends, offering them sweet smiles. "I'll catch up with you after class."
"Why is it that everyone keeps stealing you away?" Parvarti complained as Lavender dragged her away. Lavender was saying, "Ellie has more friends than just us!"
Ellie wanted to argue that these Slytherins were most certainly not her friends, but decided not to when she sat beside the Malfoy boy. She turned to him and frowned, "Where is Nikolai?"
"Sick apparently," he shrugged. "He's with Madam Pomfrey."
They didn't chat any further as they had been too busy staring at the page of their Defence Against the Dark Arts textbook, fighting to keep their eyes open. The class was almost as boring as History of Magic. The only other thing spoken between Ellie and Malfoy was Malfoy commenting on Ellie's neat handwriting after she had written down the course aims Professor Umbridge had instructed the class to copy off the blackboard. For some reason she felt responsible to explain that her mother had sat her down over the last few summers and had her practice her handwriting three hours a day, to which he responded that it must have been murder, and that his father sometimes did the same thing with him. Ellie nodded and grinned, claiming that it was murder.
They said nothing more after that and would surely go back to despising each other in no time. It was common knowledge that Malfoy and his group most of all liked to bully any Gryffindor, with or without Nikolai, but Ellie couldn't remember the last time he had gone out of his way to bully her as she passed him in the corridors or the courtyard or stalked past him in the library. He'd scoff or laugh at her but had never said anything. The first time he and his group said anything to her, which had at first started off with just Crabbe and Goyle, they called her 'Weasley' and teased her about things only an actual Weasley would be offended by. No matter how many times she had assured them in her first and second-year that she was not a Weasley, they still called her it for the fun of it. Ellie knew their parents knew each other, Malfoy probably had as well, but it made no difference.
Then Nikolai had joined his clique and pretty much taken control of almost anything; then came Pansy and Theodore who would often tag along. Nikolai was friends with all of the Slytherins, even during their first week, so Malfoy's goons should've taken it as a shock that Nikolai chose to hang out with them and them only.
Ellie had already decided to start on her homework as soon as she was in her dormitory, sprawled out on her stomach with her homework spread out in front of her. She begun with Snape's homework and then would start on Binn's. She barely got through the first paragraph when Lavender and Parvarti made their dramatic entrance into the dormitory; with their usual squeals and girlish giggles. The redhead looked up in annoyance after losing her concentration and forgetting what she was going to write.
"So, when were you going to tell us about this boyfriend of yours?" said Parvarti, exchanging a grin with Lavender before jumping back onto her bed. "Some girls were saying they saw you with Nikolai Orlov holding hands, and then during History of Magic . . . is it really him?"
"He is so dreamy," Lavender grinned with distant eyes. A sigh left her before she decided to take her own homework out of her bag. "I probably won't be able to get much done with someone like Orlov on my mind."
"So?" Parvarti demanded, snapping out of her trance to look at Ellie. "Is it true?"
"Yes, I - I suppose he is my boyfriend," Ellie stammered, unsure of whether she should tell them they were actually engaged and not together like any other simple Hogwarts student. They would surely think weirdly of her family having arranged the marriage between them; it was probably uncommon in families that weren't religious.
"You suppose?" Lavender scrunched her face. "Well, lucky you; we come back for a day and two nights and you've already got a boyfriend. A boyfriend who happens to be Nikolai Orlov. Was it sudden? I don't remember ever seeing you two speak to one another."
"Yes, it was sudden . . ." Ellie murmured slowly. She should've been excited just like any other girl would've been; it was Nikolai Orlov, the dreamiest boy in her year, a boy she had fantasized about along with all the other girls. He was handsome and he'd been sweet to her, but for some reason she wasn't looking forward to marrying him. Not yet, anyway. The ginger cleared her throat before reaching for her quill. "I'd rather just get my homework done."
Lavender and Parvarti were taking the news a whole lot better than Silas was. Silas was being ignorant and just . . . bad. Nikolai had joined them during their lunchtime and had tried getting to know Silas, he was being very kind to the Ravenclaw, but Silas was rude and ignored him most of the time. Ellie didn't know what had gotten into him. She tried figuring out if Nikolai had been one of the Slytherins to ever bully him . . . he had been, surely, but it was a long time ago and he was going out of his way to make it better. Silas was giving him the cold shoulder.
"Ellie, what's the matter?" Parvarti asked. "You're not usually mopey."
"Nothing," she replied, shaking her quill between her fingers. "Just worried about not getting all of this done in time."
