Make Me.

Book 4 - Chapter 18

"Right," Ellie's voice suddenly burst into the Fourth-Year Slytherin girl's dormitory, "whose bed are we sleeping in tonight?"

Ellie's splayed out fingers slammed the door to the wall as she entered the room. Pansy was already in bed, reading her nightly affirmations in her silk pyjamas, while Daphne was stood by her bed, brushing out her long golden locks.

"Dracula -"

"I said, whose bed are we sleeping in tonight?" Ellie repeated loudly, enunciating every word extra harshly. She grabbed the door and slammed it back in the other direction before taking off in a quick stride toward her trunk. Both Daphne and Pansy were staring, shocked, in her direction.

"Ellie -" Daphne said hesitantly, trying not to poke the raging vampire in her bedroom.

"Greengrass, get your ties out." Ellie threw her bag down onto the bed and Marshall bounced out of it with glee, did a little flip in the air, and landed, belly up, wagging his tail. Ellie was at her trunk, rifling around, pulling things out that didn't serve her and throwing them on the floor.

"My ties?"

"Yes. Your ties." said Ellie, eyes still wildly searching her trunk. She pulled on something, and like a clown doing a trick, a long bundle of silk green and silver ties came out and piled onto the floor like a snake. "Never mind. I have enough," she mumbled, looking down and counting them. Ties were flying through her fingers as Ellie untangled them.

Pansy, who still was in bed, had put her parchment down and was now wearing a Daphne level look of concern.

"Bloodsucker," she said carefully, "do you want to talk about anything?"

"Nothing's happened." Ellie looked up at Pansy, finally tearing her eyes off her trunk. "Do you know how to tie a square knot? I can teach you if you don't."

"What do I look like to you, a sailor?" Pansy said with a scrunch to her face.

"Ellie, why do you need all those ties?" Daphne asked, coming up from behind the frantic girl on the floor. She placed a gentle hand on Ellie's shoulder and at once, Ellie shot up from her knees into a standing position. Her eyes were wide and underneath them, the skin was almost black. Ellie dropped the ties and turned to face Daphne as her hands shot up to her white-and-red button up.

"Because I need sleep," she said simply, unbuttoning her shirt. The button up was discarded onto her bed along with her now crusty robes and schoolbag. Ellie bent over and untied her shoes, kicking those off as well, and then swivelled to face Pansy again. "So, the square knot?"

"No," said Pansy, shaking her head and quirking her brow. "I don't know the square knot."

"Right," Ellie mumbled to herself. She made a move to bend over and grab her ties while at the same time she went to un-zip her skirt and her body froze somewhere in the middle of those two motions. Eventually she did get stripped down to a t-shirt and undershorts and she picked the ties up and started fastening them to the posts of Pansy's bed.

"You're - you're going to strap yourself to the bed - in order to get some sleep?" Daphne asked, inching up behind her.

"Only my legs. You and Pansy are going to pin my arms down. Like this -" Ellie demonstrated her arms being pinned down to her sides for half a second before she set back to work on the makeshift shackles.

"Since when did Greengrass and I volunteer to hold you down?" Pansy asked, now sitting up taller in bed and watching her bedposts being turned into support beams.

"Since you decided to be my friends."

"You decided we'd be friends."

"Ah. . . okay - next one," Ellie mumbled, fumbling with the second bed post.