Hermione Granger And The City of Sorrowful Angels

Hermione looked around the room, wide-eyed. "Oh..." she said quietly. "I'm here..."

Principal Delgadillo smiled. "Yes, you are."

Hermione blinked, then shook her head, blushing slightly as she became aware of the situation. "I'm sorry, ma'am," she said, grasping the principal's hand and shaking it. "It's very nice to meet you."

"And you, Miss Granger. We've been looking forward to your stay here." She walked behind her desk, a single slab of slate balanced upon four slender pieces of bamboo, and gestured towards a chair in front of it. "Please sit down. Can I get you anything?" She made a brief gesture to a tea set on the desk. "Tea?"

"Oh, tea would be wonderful, thank you." Hermione sat down, still looking around the room. "This...this isn't what I expected..."

The older woman smiled, lifting up the small lacquer teapot and pouring a fragant tea into two small cups. "I imagine that you will be saying that several times in the future," she said. She handed Hermione one of the cups. "Santo Domingo is very different from Hogwarts."

Hermione nodded and took a sip of the tea. She then blushed slightly. "I'm sorry, ma'am, but I was...I wasn't able to decide on which classes I would take here."

Delgadillo smiled and waved dismissively. "We weren't expecting you to, Miss Granger." With a faint flick of her wand, a panel opened in the desktop, and she pulled out a thin envelope. "After some discussion with your professors and a study of your preliminary N.E.W.T.s results, we were able to determine which courses would be best suited to your talents." She handed the envelope to Hermione.

"Um...thank you," Hermione said, looking at the envelope with faint trepidation.

"Before that, however, you must get settled in. Most of our students are from the general area, and are either driven to school or take the Floo network each morning and afternoon, but we do have a few small dormitories -- for international students as well as the occasional all-night study session." She traced her finger over a sigil glowing on the desk and the door behind Hermione slid open.

"Yes, Mrs. Delgadillo?" a girl asked. Hermione turned around to get a look at the first student. She was tall, bronze, and blonde, the type of Californian girl Hermione believed only existed in movies, and never in real life. She wore a pale pink miniskirt and white button shirt with tall sandals to match.

"Miss Granger, I would like you to meet Sarah Lindblom, one of our finest seniors here at Santo Domingo's. Sarah, this is Hermione Granger, our exchange student from Hogwarts."

Sarah looked Hermione up and down and smiled. "Hi," she said cheerfully.

"Hi," Hermione replied back, suddenly quiet.

"Sarah will be your guide on your first day. She'll show you around the campus, introduce you to some of the students, and answer any questions you may have. You can leave your luggage here -- I'll have it sent to your dormitory room." Principal Delgadillo stood up and held out her hand again. "Welcome, again, to Santo Domingo's. I'm sure you'll have a wonderful time."

Hermione smiled weakly and shook her hand. "Thanks..." She turned towards Sarah.

Sarah looked her over again, and shrugged. "Right, then, let's check out the campus." She turned and walked towards the door. Hermione swallowed nervously, and followed her.

"So where are you from?" Sarah asked as they walked down the bright and airy hallway, Sarah occasionally nodding or smiling at students who strolled by.

"Oxford," Hermione said, looking out towards the large grassy area in the center of the campus, where a small group of students were in the process of examining something that looked like a mix between a werewolf and a bad sci-fi alien.

"Oh, yeah, where the school is. I went there, with my cousin Tori, on a summer magic retreat...learned so much! Shame about the weather, though." Sarah turned a corner sharply. Hermione stopped and backed up in order to catch up with her. "Over here, as you can see, we have the quad. It's where a lot of our Magical Creature labs are held." Sarah stopped, and Hermione nearly ran into her. "We tend to have two types of Magical Creatures courses -- theory and labs. The theory classes are held in a classroom, of course, and the labs are held in the quad. We have one of the best Endangered Magical Creatures program in the world -- our Thunderbird revitalization program has rivaled the Californian Condor program at the L.A. Zoo."

Hermione pointed out the window. "And what's that?" she asked, pointing at the creature.

Sarah glanced over. "A Chupacabra." At Hermione's blank stare, she continued. "Goat-sucker. Standard in South and Latin America and the Caribbean. Slowly migrating up towards the Southwestern states. Pretty standard study for sophmores here..."

"Oh..." Hermione looked at the chupacabra again, then realized that Sarah had kept walking. She ran to catch up with her.

"The main part of the school is built in a large square around the quad, and broken up into wings. This is the Charms and Potions wing, the wing where Principal Delgadillo's office is has the Transfiguration classes in it, the wing right ahead of us," she pointed to a turn ahead, "Is the Magical Creatures and Dark Arts Defenses wing, and the final wing is the library, the Divination, History, and Arithmancy wing, and a few classrooms for non-magical studies."

Hermione frowned. "Non-magical studies?"

"Languages, Cultural, that sort of thing. Plus we have to meet up to the standards of the Los Angeles County School System, so we take a lot of non-magical subjects as well. English, Math, you know..."

"I see..." Hermione said. She paused. "Where's the Muggle Studies?"

Sarah stopped dead in her tracks. A group of young students, barley eleven by the looks of it, stopped as well, some of them staring at her in horror and others laughing.

"What?" Hermione asked, taking a few steps back.

Sarah shook her head. "I knew that England was a bit backwards, but, really!"

"What?" Hermione said.

Sarah grasped her arm tightly and pulled her down the hall, pass the laughing children. "Here in America," she said in a low voice. "We don't use the word..." She dropped to a whisper. "Muggle."

Hermione stared at her. "What?"

"It's offensive to the non-magical. We're all part of the same race, so why call someone who can't practice magic something as offensive as that?"

"But my parents -- they're Mu--" Sarah's eyes grew wide and Hermione bit off the end of that word. "They're not a wizarding family, and they don't have any problems with that word."

"Probably because no one knows better," Sarah said sharply. "Look, when you go back to Britain, you can say whatever you want, but, over here, it's Non-magical people, all right?"

Hermione frowned, then slowly nodded. There was a moment's tension between them, and then Sarah clapped her hands together, smiling sharply. "I'll show you to your dorm, okay?"

Hermione followed Sarah down the hallway guiltily, afraid of saying another word for the sheer terror of offending someone else. As they walked, Hermione saw a sign on a door, and stopped in front of it. "Sarah?" she asked timidly. "Can we see the library before we go to the dorm?"

Sarah stopped, looked at the library, and then nodded, straightening up and brushing aside a lock of perfect blonde hair. "Of course." She opened the library door and gestured inside.

Hermione walked into the library and gaped. Instead of the wizarding library she had expected, all cobwebs and dusty tomes, it was a bright, cheerful place, with a large mural breezily moving in the background. Potion books were liberally blended with non-magical herb guides, charms texts with self-improvement books, and, much to Hermione's amazement, there were a number of computers, all apparently connected and ready to spread magical knowledge onto the Internet.

"You have web access?" Hermione asked.

Sarah nodded. "Have since '93," she said smugly. "It's a much faster form of communication than seagulls...with it, we can contact wizards and witches all over the world. A group of students are even attempting to cast long-distance spells with their international groups..."

Hermione nodded distractedly. "And anyone can use them?" she asked.

"Any student. I imagine you already have an account set up -- you'll have to ask the librarian about your login and password."

Hermione grinned. "It'll be great to email my parents instead of sending them an owl every week..." She looked away from the computers and towards the books. "And you have Mu--" She caught herself. "Non-magical texts with magical texts?"

"Of course," Sarah replied. "We believe in a more...holistic approach to magic. Often, a non-magical text on a particular herb will list properties that aren't mentioned in magical texts."

"Like willow bark," Hermione said. "How it can be turned into aspirin."

"Precisely." Sarah looked at Hermione in surprise. "What were your best subjects at Hogwarts?"

"Arithmancy, then Charms, then Potions," she replied quickly.

"You'll probably be in the Chaotician Arithmancy class, then. And Charms Theory is always popular for seniors. You might be in Medicinal Potions, or you might be in Synthetics And Potion-making -- it depends on what your Potions professor thought."

Hermione bit her lip. "And if my Potions professor didn't think..." She paused. "Much of me?"

Sarah didn't even pause in her walk back towards the door. "Beauty Potions. If you're lucky." She stopped, and turned back to Hermione. "Coming?"

Hermione stared at her for a few seconds, then ran to catch up with her.