Chapter Text
Lans are always sorted into Ravenclaw.
Lan Zhan has been worrying about this intensely all the way from Cloud Recesses, because if the Sorting Hat does not put him into Ravenclaw, that means he is letting down the Lan Clan, and disappointing his ancestors, and it means he won’t be in the same House as Lan Huan Er-ge, which will be Bad.
But Lan Zhan has a very strong feeling that he isn’t a Ravenclaw, even though all Lans since what appears to be the dawn of time have been sorted into Ravenclaw.
In his silent heart Lan Zhan wants to be in his mother’s House, and he has a strong suspicion that the Sorting Hat will agree that this is where he belongs. He thinks that Lan Qiren may even think that it’s where he belongs, in all honesty, because on more than one occasion he has heard his Senior muttering that “Lan Wangji is too much his mother’s son - not like Lan Xichen, who is a good boy and proper Lan”.
Lan Zhan tries. He tries with everything in him to live up to the Lan Clan rules; he has memorised them diligently, and he is obedient to a fault.
...Right up until he isn’t, at which point wild qilin could not drag him away from doing whatever it is that he’s convinced himself is right. He is, Lan Qiren has opined on more than one occasion, as stubborn as a mule.
When his mother died, Lan Zhan knelt outside her house day after day, week after week, ignoring every word of reproof and punishment, patiently waiting for her to return. Veela were not like humans, he reasoned; his mother was only half human, after all. She could come back, somehow. She didn’t want to leave him, he knew that, because she had told him so again and again.
She never came back.
“Are you all right, Didi?” Lan Huan is watching him with knowing eyes. Lan Huan is glad to be returning to School, Lan Zhan knows; he has spent the holiday scribbling long notes to his sworn brothers Nie Mingjue and Meng Yao and laughing over their replies, when he isn’t practicing his flying or working out new spells on the xiao. Lan Zhan nods wordlessly. He is not sick, and there is nothing to be done about his worries, so “all right” will have to suffice.
“You know…” says Lan Huan, carefully. “It doesn’t matter which House you’re sorted into.
Lan Zhan blinks. “Lans are always in Ravenclaw,” he says.
“Someone has to be the first, for everything that happens in the world,” says Lan Huan, watching him. Lan Qiren is down at the other end of the boat; if he were here he would certainly have a thing or two to say about the superiority of Ravenclaw, and about having pride in one’s noble Lan heritage - but he isn’t here. “Nie Mingjue is in Gryffindor, and Meng Yao is in Slytherin, and they are the best people I know. Ravenclaw is just one House. You don’t have to belong to it, if it doesn’t fit, Didi. You will still be Lan Zhan, and my brother, if you are in Slytherin, or Hufflepuff - or Gryffindor, like Mamma.”
“Mn,” says Lan Zhan.
He does not smile, but his shoulders relax a little as he stares out over the Li River, oblivious to the beautiful vista of mountains and greenery and darting cormorants, thinking about his mother’s laughing face.
* * *
The first time Lan Zhan sees Wei Ying, he is the centre of a laughing knot of children jostling and elbowing one another on the docks. Lan Zhan hangs back; he has never liked noise or crowds, but there is something about the boy with the red ribbon that catches his eye and holds it.
“...and then he ate it!” the boy with the red ribbon whoops, and the boy in the violet robe punches his arm.
“You said it was a raisin! I was five!”
“Did you really eat a rabbit poop?” asks a small boy in red robes, his eyes huge.
“I spat it straight out,” says the boy in violet, scowling. “Obviously.”
Lan Zhan frowns. This does not seem like very appropriate behaviour, and he can already hear Lan Qiren’s disapproving words, but - but the boy’s whole face lights up when he laughs, and his whole body is doubled up and shaking, and there’s something about his unselfconscious delight that reminds Lan Zhan of his mother’s laughter. He can’t drag his eyes away.
“Who are they?” he asks Lan Huan, as they pass the little knot of Juniors.
Lan Huan glances back; his eyes have been scouring the crowds of children pouring up the hill from the docks, searching for his two particular friends, but he spares a moment to skim the little group that has caught Lan Zhan’s interest.
“Yunmeng Jiang, and Qishan Wen, and...I don’t know. Wen Qing is very clever, I know that - you’d think she’d be in Ravenclaw with us, for how often she’s in the library buried in books. Oh - Jiang Yanli is in Hufflepuff - she’s nice, but I don’t know the others. Looks like that’s her little brother, though, at a guess.”
“Hufflepuff,” says Lan Zhan, thoughtfully.
* * *
When the leathery hat calls out his name, Lan Zhan straightens his back and walks towards it, frowning hard. It settles over his head like a warm hand, rubbing against his hair and clinging uncomfortably to his skin, and he can feel the press and whisper of its magic insinuating its way right inside his head. It makes him shudder, but he sits straight and endures it, because this is what one must do.
“What have we here?” says a jolly, inhuman croak that he does not hear with his ears. “Another little Lan for Ravenclaw? But no - you’re Bai Mei’s boy, aren’t you? Interesting. Veela heritage...your magic tastes piquant, you know - something quite out of the way.” There is something thoroughly disconcerting about the half-obscene relish with which the hat communicates this idea - a sense of lips being smacked in lingering appreciation. “Hmm. Well, you’re certainly bright enough, and you’ve got a flair for innovation...you wouldn’t do badly in Ravenclaw, if you wanted to join your brother, but I don’t think it’s where you belong, do you? Not really.”
“Mn,” thinks Lan Zhan. The boy with the red ribbon went into Gryffindor.
“Yes, you’re headstrong enough, and you’ve got pluck and courage in abundance, my boy, and a reckless streak as wide as the Li River. I think you’re a Gryffindor - but what do YOU think, little Veela?”
“Yes,” says Lan Zhan with all his heart, thinking of his mother. “Gryffindor.”
“Gryffindor!” announces the hat, in a voice that rings through the Great Hall, and cheers ring out from the long Gryffindor Table. Lan Zhan meets his brother’s eyes as he steps away from the hat, and Lan Huan is smiling, although Lan Qiren’s face is puckered up into an expression of disapproval on the High Table.
Nie Mingjue waves in welcome. The boy with the red ribbon is applauding and beaming at him as though he’s done something special. Lan Zhan dares to hope that it will all be all right.
* * *
Gryffindor. Gryffindor. Gryffindor. Of course his mother will be proud if he’s in Hufflepuff, and he wants her to be proud of him, quite desperately, but she already has Jiang Yanli in her own old House, and Jiang Cheng yearns for his father’s approval like a flower yearns for sunlight. Gryffindor. It has to be Gryffindor. “Achieve the Impossible” is their motto, and Jiang Cheng will be Sect Leader one day.
It wouldn’t have been so bad if Wei Wuxian had gone into Ravenclaw, as Jiang Cheng had half expected - but he didn’t. So it has to be Gryffindor.
Gryffindor.
The hat lowers itself onto his head and its inhuman magic ripples out over him like a blanket.
“Hufflepuff!” its voice rings out immediately, gleeful and certain, and Jiang Cheng’s heart drops into his shoes.
* * *
“Well, you’re a pretty little puzzle, my boy,” says the hat. Its voice echoes oddly inside his head, and it sounds thoroughly stymied. “Not Ravenclaw, I think, although you’re not a simpleton by any means. And not Gryffindor, because you’re not going to throw yourself into danger for the sake of it like that lot. But...hmm. Slytherin or Hufflepuff? Slytherin or Hufflepuff? You’ve the kind of labyrinthine mind that would excel in Slytherin, you know. But you don’t particularly enjoy all that jockeying for power for its own sake, now do you? And the things you’d be scheming for are the things that Hufflepuffs take for granted, because that’s what makes you happy, isn’t it? You’re actually not that bothered about impressing anyone else, or bickering over the pecking order - you just want to relax with your friends and take it easy. And you’re good at friendships - you’d fit right in, at least on the face of it. Hmm. Slytherin or Hufflepuff?”
“Hufflepuff,” thinks Nie Huaisang, quite definitely.
“Hufflepuff!” declares the Sorting Hat, at the top of its nonexistant lungs.
* * *
“What? Hufflepuff? Wens do not get sorted into Hufflepuff!” snarls Wen Xu.
“They do now,” says Wen Qing lightly, watching her little brother make his way hesitantly over to the cheering Hufflepuff table, where they welcome him like he’s just won the Quidditch World Cup. He is going to be surrounded by friends before he knows it. The hat had barely touched his head before it sang out his destination; she wonders whether it even bothered to speak to him.
When it had been her turn, the year before, she had had to be her most persuasive to convince it not to sort her into Ravenclaw. She had agreed with its reasoning, but pointed out that she could continue to be brilliant in Slytherin just as easily as anywhere else, and if she didn’t want to lose face with her family she needed to be in Slytherin, where All Wens Go. The hat had evidently concluded that having such a keen awareness of family politics and the need for compromise to get what you want was in fact a sufficiently Slytherin quality that she was probably right.
“You know he’s never been quite the same since that incident with the dementor…” she says, shrugging with feigned nonchalance and digging her nails into the palms of her hands as Wen Xu sneers.
“True,” he says. “He’s sickly, isn’t he? Won’t make old bones - I wouldn’t be surprised if one of the creatures in the Forbidden Forest gets him before the end of First Term. Wouldn’t want him embarrasing Slytherin.”
“Certainly not,” agrees Wen Qing, smiling mildly. “Now it can be Hufflepuff’s problem. Would you like another dumpling?”
* * *