The eldest Griffith son -- and Nellie's father -- Gilbert has a nasty, infamous gambling addiction. Add in the family's general oddity (and fall from the lower rungs of UC over the last two generations) with her own, the young Miss Griffith has also made the bold move to let her estranged Uncle Samuel informally adopt her (some might see this as spurning her parents or just abandoning them outright). There's likely several spots here when her reputation would/could take a hit.

Gilbert Griffith, Father [b. 18XX]
Isabella Griffith (née Dunbar), Mother [b. 18XX]

Edmund Griffith, Grandfather [b. 18XX]
Dolores Griffith, Grandmother [b. 18XX]
Ebenezer Griffith, Uncle [b. 18XX]
Samuel Griffith, Uncle & of the new, informal guardian status '94 [b. 1851]
Agatha Griffith, Aunt [b. 1875]

General | Despite being quite tall enough already, Nell still shows signs of growing — with the promise of possibly (inappropriately) being almost as tall as her Uncle. Unkinder souls might call her frame coltish, but her mother is hopeful the thin young women will eventually start to fill out instead of up. Her hair is an almost caramel mixture of blonde and brown tones, with enough red highlights thrown in that it can go through a kaleidoscope of golden blondes, mousy browns and even faintly strawberry hues of both the latter throughout the day -- depending on how the light striking her head changes. Her hair usually hangs in dense waves just past her shoulders; unfortunately, despite how beautiful (and in fashion) her hair is, it is not only plagued with flyways but also cursed to form wretched knots within less than an hour of brushing. Her eyes are a dull kind of blue-green that mostly appears gray and her skin stubbornly resists tanning no matter how much sun she gets, but isn’t overly pale either. She has high cheekbones and the thin face that many of her kinsmen share, like her Uncle, which can make her look a touch older than she actually is.

Deportment | Without a proper female role model in her life, Eleanor has never had anyone to teach her the important aspects of behaving like a middle class lady (if anything, she's had to learn the bare minimum the hard way). Her typical posture is poor, with her shoulders slouched forward and head tilted down, eyes never meeting the gaze of others; she shuffles about, often scuffing her shoes (though she tries not to do it too much) and dragging her feet. When standing at rest, she often crosses her arms or puts her hands on her hips like an assertive young mister, though there is nothing assertive about this young lady. She fidgets near constantly, be it with her hands or a quill or whatever object is occupying her hands, and has the wretched habit of not just chewing on her fingernails but also her lips. She cannot even smile properly, according to some relatives of hers: instead of giving a demure little upturn of the lips, her smile is often a half-smirk, one corner of her mouth rising high over the other. When excited, she cannot seem to control her volume and, if she must go somewhere, she runs – hiking up her skirts and unabashedly darting past others with little warning at all. (If one could not guess already, she is failing her etiquette classes).

Fashion | Nell’s thin frame is only exacerbated by the fact she prefers clothes a touch too big and then likes to add layers on top of them; it follows an obvious trend of hers in which she hides herself. She likes comfortable, almost sensible boots and is known to even sneak trousers under her skirts. She has a blatant muggle style in choices of color and the plain fashion of her middle class clothes. She abhors elaborate dresses and corsets, simply seeking only to be comfortable in what she wears (because if she cannot find solace in her own home or peace in her own mind, it should not be too much to ask to be comfortable in her own skin). She is not particularly picky about colors and, if not for her own hobby in the arts, she likely would not have much sense of color matching either. Her hair is often in some form of loose bun or plait - "loose" in the sense that her hair will start coming fraying and freeing itself within short order of being pinned up; she has a preference for wearing her hair down (less hassle to fight with it, then), but can only dafely do so when at home or in her dorm room

Handiness | Left-handed

Scent | Fresh petrichor and cypress

Distinguishing Characteristics | Nothing, truly (though some might find her resemblance to her uncle striking in and of itself)

Face Claim | Saoirse Ronan

1878 The Start	After several years (and much gossip about the fact) of trying for children, Isabella and Gilbert Griffith welcome their only child into the world on All Hallows' Eve: a girl, who an unimpressed Gilbert allows his fragile wife to name Eleanor.
1883 A Weak Women	Little Nell finds her mother in hysterics in the front hall, on her knees as she gropes the walls; there’s tears and hiccupping nonsense streaming out of the lady of the house’s mouth — and then she starts to fit her head on the wall. Naturally, Nell rushes to her mother’s side, but it’s as if she isn’t even there: she tugs on her skirts, grabs at her shoulders, and even yanks on her honeyed hair but all Mama does is smack her head against the wall harder and harder still. There’s tears streaming down Nellie’s face as she wails for someone, anyone to come help. By the time the echoes of her panic draw the cleaning lady from the back of the house, it’s over: Isabella is asleep on the floor, a bruise forming on her forehead, and the young Miss Griffith’s huddled next to her, sobbing fitfully into her arms. It’s assumed that, in her hysterics, Isabella knocked herself unconscious (despite Nellie telling her father though soft sniffles that she just wanted Mama to stop, that she was so scared she’d hurt Mama when she collapsed after Nell took her hand – he shrugs it off, it's too early for the young girl to show magic, after all).
1884 An Absent Man	Isabella’s hysterics grow more common and she begins to spend all her time inside, where Gilbert can hide her breakdowns from the public eye. At first, Nell is excited to have her mother around all the time – but her tune quickly changes, as Mama is too tired to play or even read her books; no, all Isabella seems able to do is lie in bed and hide her sobbing behind the bathroom door. Things in the home only get worse when Father dismisses the cook and the cleaning lady. Suddenly, all the housework falls on Mama’s shoulders and, as the days pass, Mama seems to do less and less without breaking down mid-task; Nell does her best to take over and make her mother feel better (breakfast in bed, storytime, knitting together, gardening, truly anything) but, every night she goes to bed, she feels so… lonely. She feels useless and helpless all in one go (she wants to help, because if she is, maybe Mama will read her bedtime stories again and Father will spend more time with her before he goes to bed). She doesn’t have time to go out and play with other kids, between caring for Mama and the house, and Father is always working late… When she asks about getting a pet, she’s told that is a selfish request, because then Mama would have to take care of any beast the family brought into the house – no promises of caring for it herself sway her father (he calls her needy and attention-seeking when tears bubble up in her eyes).
1885 Halfblood	Between Isabella's fragile state of mind and Gilbert's absence, it almost goes unnoticed when their daughter starts displaying her magic; thankfully, Grandmother is visiting when a spoon stirs itself in the young girl’s tea as it sits on the table, Nell slouching against the floral arm as she turns the pages of a book. The way the seven-year-old violently starts when her grandmother starts clapping, congratulating her on her magic, spills tea everywhere; then she gets to show off some more, by summoning in a mad scramble to clean up.
1886-1889 Lost Between Places	Isabella, with Gilbert’s blessing, begins to send Eleanor off to “spend time with family” – said purportedly ‘short visits’ last anywhere from weeks to a month and Nell is rarely in the door before she’s being sent away again. She learns to live out of suitcases, each day spent wandering where she will spend the next. Most of the time, she’s sent to stay at the Griffith townhouse in a nicer area of Magical London, where her paternal grandparents live, though occasionally she is shipped off to the home of her mother’s relatives. Ashamedly, she prefers to be with Grandmother Dolores in the large townhouse – even though her aunt, a mere three years older than her, isn’t thrilled to have her around. Even though she loves her maternal grandparents, other relatives on her mother’s side of the family are… sharply critical; her time with them is often spent listening to how unladylike she is, how she needs to smarten up or else she might end up as another family embarrassment like her poor mother. She hears about how improper it is for her hands to be calloused, how she slouches too much, her poor attempts to dress herself, that she has bags under her eyes, and she needs to learn to tame the bird’s nest on her head. It chips away at her and she often spends nighttime wetting her pillow with tears, being crushed under the weight of the day’s onslaught of criticism, wanting to desperately go home… Though, honestly, after two years pass, Nellie isn’t sure she has a “home” anymore. By ten, she already knows things the Griffith family doesn't like to discuss aloud: about her father’s abuse of sleeping draughts, her mother’s spiraling sanity, and the fact that the entirety of the Griffith family lives above their means (well, save her Grandmother and Aunt Agatha). It’s obvious that her father’s late nights are not work-related, at least not most of the time, and that her mother is trapped in a horrible marriage with no say in her own life anymore. With the depressing reality of it all, Nell finds her escape in books, particularly the muggle ones about fantasy and folklore that her grandmother lets her borrow (yes, she is often called rude – by, unsurprisingly, those same relatives of her mother’s – for having her nose stuck in a book, but having the stories to bury herself in makes being stuck with those people more bearable). It’s around this time she becomes aware of a newcomer in the townhouse – or, rather, the return of somebody she’s never seen before: her uncle Samuel. He appears and disappears like a whim, a shadowy figure on the edge of her life – she hears little bits about him, curious in spite of knowing better (where has curiosity gotten her before?). She learns how he left the family to go to Europe, but now he’s back to fulfill his duty to the house of Griffith (all of this, of course, from Grandfather); Grandmother comments that he has a practice somewhere in the city, that it’s good to have him back. Agatha seems exceedingly pleased to have him back. At the end of the day, Nell decides it’s all of little importance to her, especially when she finally gets her letter to Hogwarts.
1891-1892 Third Year	Since she does so poorly with people, Nell chooses Care of Magical Creatures for her elective for third year – a class that will, hopefully, have more beasts than people. Within the first week, she’s in love with the whole thing – even if, unfortunately, there are still a lot more students in the class than she’d like. She’s so inspired, in fact, she starts to keep a separate journal dedicated solely to the magical beasts she meets in class and the things she notices about them. And, like any good book about magical creatures, she wants to fill it with sketches… her first few attempts at which are, of course, terrible. So, she joins the art class; which in turn, she adores as well, and does very well in. With so many creative outlets, she feels more… normal, than she ever has before (even though she may not know what her true “normal” is, this has to be close, yes?). She writes to her parents at the start of the new year, when the fog from the latter half of the year before fades; well, actually, she writes to her mother (she wants to reconnect with Mother so badly, to offer the older women something good in the darkness of her unhappy marriage). She asks apologies first and foremost, then questions about how her mother grew up and if she felt the things that Nell does: lonely, depressed, and anxious. The reply she gets back is written by her father: it tells her to pull herself up by her boot-straps, the family cannot afford anymore spineless women whose future resides in the mental ward of St. Mungo’s. Nell cries herself silently to sleep that night; for many nights following, she dreams of that day she found her mother in the front hall – but instead she sees herself in her mother's place, in the throes of a nervous breakdown as the student body of Hogwarts watches. Then, to her surprise, she starts receiving letters from an unlikely source: her Aunt Agatha, a sixth year; it’s a small note, telling Nell to ignore her father because Gilbert is just as useless as Grandfather Edmund. It sparks a series of correspondence between the formerly distant family members that leads to talking in the halls between classes and occasionally studying together; Agatha becomes Nell’s first real friend.
1892-1893 Fourth Year	As she applies herself to her studies, Nell finds less time for her art class; she drops the class with a heavy heart, but then Agatha suggests she join the art club. With her Aunt’s encouragement, Nell also decides to officially join the school’s book and creatures club too. When she returns to the townhouse for Winter Break, arm in arm with her eighth-year Aunt, she feels like she might be starting to build a home here at the townhouse. It feels like things are changing — and nothing bad for once. When Agatha graduates at the end of the year, Nell is one of the first in the family to congratulate her – and she even gets a hug from the older girl. (They’ve come so far, from the pre-teen that wanted nothing to do with the younger girl following her about, to the graduated young woman that likes to read with her, legs tangled between them as they sit on opposite ends of the sofa).
1893-1894 Fifth Year	Of course, this is when the other shoe must drop; as soon as the school year starts, a letter arrives from her father. It’s long-winded and sloppily written, but in short it tells Nellie that this will be her last year at school, because it is time for her to fulfill her duty as a daughter and look to marry. In a panic, she writes Agatha – she does not know what else to do, or who will listen to her. She realizes, as the words are scratched on paper, that this does not mean being sent to a finishing school, like other girls in her class – no, her father plans to go out and find her a match himself. She puts her fear to paper and sends it that day, before the mounting pressure in her chest sends her ducking inside a bathroom stall so as not to make a scene in the corridors. Until it was being threatened, she had not realized how much she loved Hogwarts and the protection it offered from the outside world and modern society at large. The thought of her father picking her husband and ending up just like her mother, trapped in an unhappy marriage, losing control of her life as her husband does as he pleases with the family finances (and who knows what else)? She gnawed both her thumbs and several fingernails down to the start of the nail bed by the time she’d calmed herself down enough to come out; she’d spent the rest of the day feeling like an exposed wound, sensitive and twitchy whenever someone looked at her funny. Agatha writes back quickly, a letter full of outrage for Nell’s situation and promises to try and find her a solution; thankfully, she doesn’t seem to tell Grandmother Dolores the news, which makes Nell feel less like a fool for writing – why did she write? She’s upsetting her Aunt when there’s nothing either of them can do about any of it; not to mention she might cause tension and strain in the family by talking out of turning… She ends up feeling like a troublemaker and, though she writes Agatha back, tries to soothe her Aunt’s ruffled feathers. To ignore the fact her world was quite literally coming to an end, she threw herself into her studies — as stress and anxiety makes her a restless sleeper, she makes a move to join the astronomy club; between all the clubs and classes she takes, she finds herself exhausted enough to sleep through the night. And, despite all her curricular activities, she is an exemplary student by the end of the semester, if even (somehow) she is more asocial than ever before.
Summer '94-Present Sixth Year	When she returns to the townhouse for the summer, she’s surprised to find her Uncle Samuel has taken up a more permanent residency there, having sold off his laboratory and moved in. She skirts around him in the house, hesitant and unsure of this new piece on the board, often sticking close to Agatha in his presence. In the same week she learns from Agatha of Uncle Samuel’s new job, the offer comes from the man himself. It is definitely out of the blue, to say nonetheless, though Agatha thinks it would be wise to take it… As the most estranged of her family, a man that flitted in and out of the peripherals of her life for years, it just confuses her why Samuel Griffith would want to help her; she just doesn’t understand what this is all about… He’s single, childfree – a likely candidate for a confirmed bachelor (just like her other uncle, Ebenezer, contentedly is). So… why does he want to take in an unwanted child? To adopt her, formally? It's not like they're very close... She wavers in indecision, because a part of her actually wants to accept; Agatha has a point in that he seems to be serious. And she had always longed to belong somewhere, with someone… But then there’s that guilt welling up again, because she did love her parents – even, as painful as it is to admit to herself, they might not love her like they ought to… And this felt like betraying them. They gave her food, clothes, and a roof over her head. That should be enough… God, why wasn’t that enough? What kind of daughter was she, to be so easily swayed? (...in the end, she has a time limit – and she wants to finish schooling like Agatha, wants to enjoy the freedom Hogwarts gives her for a while longer – so she does something selfish and rash… Maybe, if her father hadn’t made such demands upon her after being an insubstantial wisp in the background of her life, her decision would have been different).

"I had two longings and one was fighting the other; I wanted to be loved and I wanted to be always alone." - Jean Rhys
The Worn, Turbulent Mediator (INFP-T)
True Neutral || The Skeptic (6w5) || Melancholic

TRIVIA

• Boggart: A rapidly shifty creature that changes from one person to another in her family, though it does mainly star her father's outrage
  
• Patronus: Eurasian badger
  
• Pet(s): None (privately longs for a furry companion, such as a cat or kneazle-hybrid)
  
• Amortentia: Unknown thankfully
  
• Electives: COMC, Alchemy (to her father's outrage)
  
• Clubs: Book, Art, Astronomy and Creatures

ACADEMIC RECORD

Class	OWL	NEWT
Astronomy	A	DROPPED
Charms	E	—
Defense Against the Dark Arts	E	—
Herbology	E	—
History of Magic	A	DROPPED
Potions	E	—
Transfiguration	E	—
Care of Magical Creatures	O	—
Alchemy	N/A	—

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