Charity pursed her lips. "I don't think anyone can make you go, but it's in your best interests to," she warned. Boys could do almost nothing without a good Hogwarts education. They had to work to keep their place in the world unless they were filthy rich, and no one here was. Charity had to go, too, because what if Uncle Evander was only planning to keep her until she seventeen then she had to have a way to support herself! (But he wouldn't, would he? Charity hated to think so, but it was still a very real possibility. She couldn't expect Uncle Evander to fund a whole debut and season for her, and she wouldn't ask him to, she'd decided.)

"I'm only eight, so I have two years before I can go," she replied morosely. Two years before she could buy a wand, and two years before she could get sorted. Charity still knew very little about the house system beyond the names of each of the four. Uncle Evander had been a Hufflepuff, and Uncle Alfred a Gryffindor. She wondered what their defining characteristics were.

---