Disclaimer: I do not own Descendants.
It was the most humiliating day of Evie's life.
It wasn't supposed to be. Humiliation had never factored into any of her dreams and plans for how this day would go. Going to Hogwarts was supposed to be wonderful. It was there, her mother had told her, that she would meet a Prince who would marry her and undertake taking care of her family so that they no longer had to slave to make ends meet in the potion shop that kept a roof over their heads and (most of the time) food on their table.
Hogwarts represented her way out of the near desperation that had defined her home life from her earliest memories. She had been told over and over again that everything about their future depended on what she garnered from her time within those walls (and the academics of the situation were not the subject of those lectures). She had a responsibility to correct the disastrous fall of their family fortunes. She had known no other options.
Her mother had been the head of a Kingdom once - recognized as Queen in her own right despite the fact that she had married the title. She had been exiled for trying to retain her position instead of handing it over to the blood heir as if she had merely been a place holder, and Evie had suffered for the lowering of their position each and every day of her life.
Evie had never known what it was like to be included in what her mother would term the "proper" social circles. She had never even seen the land that her mother had once ruled. She had never attended balls or high teas or done anything other than learned seemingly endless lessons about a life from which she was chronically excluded.
Hogwarts, though, Hogwarts was neutral ground. Everyone's children were eligible for Hogwarts no matter their parentage or social standing or how dire their financial situation might be. Evie was not excluded simply because of her mother's fall from grace (no one was). Hogwarts was the only chance that any of the children of the exiled had to make a difference in their lives. It was their way out. Sometimes, it frustrated her that some of the others didn't seem to understand the importance of that.
At Hogwarts, the brokerings of international relationships were maintained from generation to the next and while their parents were the ones who had instituted the concept of the exiled on the Isle, their children could override the decision as they came of age - if they were so inclined. That was essential to all of their futures - to Evie's future. It had been Evie's purpose for as long as she was old enough to understand what a purpose was to make sure that that inclination on the part of the younger generation stayed favorable.
Step one was to go to Hogwarts. That was a given. Step two was something that she thought would be equally a matter of course.
She was to be a Hufflepuff.
She had always known that. That princes wanted pretty girls that would be loyal to them was something that had been drilled into her head before she even knew how to talk. Hufflepuff indicated loyalty. It would open doors that knowledge of her family background would have slammed closed. She would have the traits of her house as a shield against a world that was inclined to be suspicious.
That she would be leaving her friends behind in her affiliation was something that she understood as well. Mal wanted to join Jay in Slytherin and spend her days causing trouble for the descendants of the ones that had left them to suffer for their parents' decisions, but Evie knew her place and purpose (and it wasn't to waste her time on something as unhelpful to her future as revenge).
She would find a way to make black and yellow work for her (even though the fashion minded section of her brain was appalled by the way the color combination would work with her skin tone). She would make it through the two years of what were sure to be Mal's and Jay's snide comments on her placement until Carlos was old enough to arrive (where he, of course, would not join her because they all knew that that boy was Ravenclaw bound). He, however, would not hold her Hufflepuff standing against her.
Mal ditched her the instant that the train pulled out of the station, but she chose to not let it bother her. It was expected. She and Jay went off to cause trouble on the ride. Evie could not be a part of that. She had a job to do.
It had started the instant that she stepped onto the platform and she was accomplishing it by smiling and being gracious and scrupulously polite to each and every person that she encountered on the train - beloved by subjects was a way to sway a decision in her favor between herself and girls who might bring more political clout to a match.
Actual matches might not come about at the age of eleven, but the foundations for them most certainly did.
It turned out that she wasted all of her time and effort.
All of her hopes and dreams and plans and work were all eradicated - shattered in the instant that the sorting hat was placed upon her head. She had barely had time to take a breath before it was shouting out the house that would help to ease her way - only it didn't.
It took her a moment to realize that the expected word had not been the spoken word. A disgusting looking bit of fabric shaped vaguely like headwear had just destroyed her world. Only years of training in decorum kept her from bursting into tears there in front of everyone.
She had never been so humiliated, and the clapping students in the bronze and blue ties just sat there looking at her expectantly as if nothing at all was wrong.
