Arranged || Ominis Gaunt

1: No Rest For The Weary

Ellora Josephine Violet Selwyn is used to dealing with her mother's antics by now. At nearly seventeen years old, she's been subject to the demands and whims of the older woman her entire life. Today is no different. She stands off to the side in a beautiful lace-trimmed ballgown, white gloves on her hands and hair styled to perfection. The only caveat? Her dress is blue. Now, a blue dress does not a calamity make. Unless, of course, one is the only person in their family to be dressed in the color. Her mother, her father, her two elder brothers, and her three sisters all wear green. A deep, emerald green with black accents. While she is dressed in a soft grayish blue with white accents. Talk about not fitting in.

It's been this way ever since the year the young girl turned eleven. See, she had been sent to Hogwarts, as had all of her older siblings, and was sorted into a house, just as they had been. The house, however, was not the one expected of her. Slytherin was the house to be in. Slytherin is where pureblooded witches and wizards belong. Slytherin is the respected, revered, and righteous house that the Selwyn family has been sorted into for generations. Until Ellora. Ellora, as it turns out, is not a Slytherin. Ellora is a Ravenclaw. That day was the last day she was allowed to dress as her family does. It was the first day she donned a new color. A color that she would eventually come to despise. Blue.

"Couldn't we at least change the accents to black, mother?" Ellora questions quietly as her siblings enter the expansive ballroom, one by one, ahead of her. Her mother levels her with a severe frown.

"No, Ellora," She states simply. No explanation, no compromise. As usual. It doesn't ever stop the youngest Selwyn girl from trying none the less.

"But I don't match the rest of the family in the slightest," She complains, gesturing to her mother's own dark green gown. "I hardly look like I belong to the Selwyn family this way."

"As was intended, Ellora," Blanca Selwyn snaps, her patience with her youngest child wearing thin already. She watches her second son enter the ballroom, his intended bride on his arm. "Come the end of next year, you will no longer be a Selwyn. Best be prepared early for that day."

Ellora's face pales at the revelation. Surely that cannot mean what she thinks it means. Her mother produces a small, neatly-cut square of parchment then and hands it over to her daughter. On it, written in the sharp, pointy cursive handwriting of her mother, is a list of names.

Augustus Rosier
Eligor Yaxley
Enoch Parkinson
Edwin Parkinson
Cassius Avery
Amadeus Slughorn
Calton Malfoy
Benedict Carrow
Hadrian Greengrass

Ellora frowns at the list before looking back up at her mother.

"These are names of respectable matches your father and I both approve of," She states, as if she has simply given her daughter a list of groceries to pick up from the market. "By end of summer, you shall be promised. It is up to you to pick one."

Ellora frowns at the list once more. Augustus Rosier is four years her elder. While that is not a large gap in the grand scheme of things, she is still only sixteen. Plus he's well known as a bit of a player. Eligor Yaxley and the Parkinson twins are at least within a better age range, heading into their seventh year at Hogwarts in the fall. But Eligor is cruel in the most manipulative of ways and the twins don't do anything without one another. And that includes the women they court. 

Cassius Avery is in her year, though Ellora would be the first to admit she knows nothing about him other than that he's been courting a girl in year five who hails from the Travers family. She'd rather not get tangled up in that sort of drama. Amadeus Slughorn is two years older, and if rumors are true, spends his time equally among the company of men as he does women. Not something she cares much about, but also not a scandal she wants to deal with, either.