Our American Cousin

III

Roommates, Exposition, and The New Mexico School of Magic, Medicine, Mysticism and Music.

Sara followed Ron, Hermione, and Harry up to the common room. Sara groaned slightly as she climbed the steps. The rich English food seemed to be doing a number on her system. Despite the fact that the food had been good, Sara had the feeling that it wouldn't take long for her to start missing the salsa Mrs. Fernandez handed out in little jam jars. She also had the feeling that a crash diet would be involved for her to get back in top racing condition when she returned home.

"Moldywarts" Hermione said to the fat lady in the portrait. "That's the password for this week, so no one forget it," she announced to the gathered Gryffindors. Several mumbled at the blatant mocking of He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named, but Hermione simply strolled in and began helping the first years find their rooms. Sara balked a little at the medieval common room.

"Why do I get the feeling I'm going to have to sneak into London to check my e-mail?"

"What's e-mail?" Ron asked honestly. Sara opened her mouth to explain and quickly closed it, again having no idea where to start. Most American wizards lived heavily intermingled with regular people, and had rather gleefully accepted things like computers and television into their homes. And while most technology still didn't work in high magic areas like Hogwarts, most wizarding schools now had a null magic room for things like computers. Fortunately for Sara, Hermione came to the rescue.

"I'll explain later, Ron."

"So where do I get to crash?" Sara asked.

"You're with us." Two rather giggly seventh years grabbed her arms and Sara found herself being dragged up the stairs to the girls' dormitory. They soon introduced themselves as Parvati and Lavender.

"I'm surprised Dumbledore allowed exchange students this year," Harry commented behind the three retreating feminine backsides. Ron and Hermione could only nod in agreement. There had been many empty seats at every table, but no one mentioned it. Some had left school to join Voldemort. Others had been pulled from school by their parents. And several others had been lost before the start of school, some even before the end of last year. There would be a memorial service the next night for those, according to a notice on the common room message board. Harry had been honestly surprised to find Hogwarts still standing. As he had laid on the floor of his room on Privet Drive, he had dark dreams of Hogwarts in rubble and open war in the streets. Harry wasn't even sure that it wasn't absolute insanity to allow the school to continue under the circumstances.

Sara found her luggage at the base of a large four-poster bed. The two other girls in the room began unpacking and decorating with a practiced ease. Sara, while having gone to many interesting places in her short life, had never had to deal with boarding school. The fact that she was beginning to feel like she was in a medieval fairy tale was not helping.

"You can use that wardrobe there," the overly perky brunette with too much eyeshadow pointed out.

"Thanks." Sara began to unpack. "Um," she began "Dare I ask what happened to your last roommate?" Sara had heard whispers about people dying the previous year, and hoped she wasn't hitting a nerve, but at the same time she didn't really want to be moving into a dead girl's bed. Her people were kind of superstitious about such thing.

"Oh, that was Hermione's bed."

"When she was made Head Girl she got her own room."

"Ah. I see. Good to know."

"So, tell us about your school!" One of the girls bounced on her bed.

"Where do you live?"

"It sounds so exotic."

"Yeah, what are American wizards like?"

"I bet they're all really handsome." Sara got the sinking feeling that she would be spending the year bunked with two girls that weren't exactly at the top of their class. But Sara, if nothing else, had practice turning people's failings to her own advantage.

"In no particular order, American wizards are no more or less handsome than British ones, I don't actually live in San Juanquisto-that's just the closest dick shit little town where we can pick up our mail, I actually live off the side of a dirt road in the middle of the desert, and I go to NewMexMagic."

"What?"

"Where?" Sara took another breath.

"Sorry-I attended, and have since age 5," Sara now took a deep breath, "The New Mexico School of Magic, Medicine, Mysticism, and Music."

"Music?" one of the Bobbsey twins asked incredulously. Sara sighed. From the overheard bits of dinner conversation these two girls were the top gossips-she figured if she explained it to them, the rest of the school would know in about a day and so they wouldn't ask.

"Ok I'll explain the NewMexMagic if you promise to tell everyone in the school, because it's kind of a long story and I don't really want to repeat it." One of the girls giggled.

"That's no problem-we can make sure the entire school knows whatever you want."

"Somehow I guessed that." Sara gave a thin smile. "To start at the beginning, my school was founded by a quadtarous-same as yours."

"A what?

"What's a quadtarous?" Sara blinked a few times. How could they not know their school was founded by a quadtarous?

"Quadtarous: Four wizards that work closely together." That was a more than grossly simplified answer but Sara felt no need to make up for holes in Hogwarts curriculum.

"Oh."

"Ok-three of our founders came to the Americas about three centuries back when they were young. For all I know they might have even gone to Hogwarts. One was a bard. Leslie Songturner."

"Like a 'wandering minstrel' bard?"

"Like a 'raising vast armies of the undead with a song' bard."

"Ah."

"He was the old-school type of bard that knew that music had strong magic in it. He was annoyed that there were no knights to follow around, and that no one was particularly interested in his type of magic anymore, so he decided to try his luck in the new world. Our second founder was Heather Moss, an herb witch (medi-witch now) who was a friend of our bard and decided to tag along to make sure he didn't get himself killed. Story has it he was kind of a flake and a little accident prone. In the new world they met up with Alistair Goodspeed who was basically a combat wizard. Brilliant military stagiest and on the run. Apparently he skipped out of Russia with a stack of assassins on his tail. Mooned the czar or something." The girls giggled. Actually, Alistair Goodspeed was a mercenary who had slept with the Czar's favorite mistress, gotten her pregnant, and skipped town. The students of NewMexMagic didn't like to admit it however, because it lacked dignity. "Leslie decided to follow Alistair around writing songs about his not so heroic deeds, and Heather followed both of them around patching them up. You still with me?" The two girls nodded. "Good. Now, the three of them were in the Southwest when they ran into the Spanish Inquisition, and nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition." The two girls gave her blank looks as Sara realized that while Monty Python might have hit the States, nothing more recent than Gilbert and Sullivan had filtered into the wizarding world. She sighed.

"There was a court of the Inquisition in the Americas, thank you Spain. At any rate they decided they needed a place to hide, and wound up in a cave that was used by a very powerful shaman called Manuelito Nez. Well, after the three of them got their collective asses handed to them by said shaman, the four of them formed a Quadtarous and stared bumming around the Americas together for about a century. While they were at it, they kept on running into these homeschooled wizards that for whatever reason couldn't go to school back in the old country or the east, and who rather desperately needed training. By this time Manuelito realized that there was no way his people were ever going to be completely free of the influence of the white folk, but there were possibly a small handful of said white folk worth teaching. So the four settled down and started a school." Actually NewMexMagic had been started as a school for magical mercenaries, and on some level still was, but that wasn't spread around outside of a small circle.

"Wow."

"Our founders just thought a school would be a good idea."

"Well it's not quite the same as when our founders started it. The music department has turned into an entire fine and performing arts school. The old herb wing is now one of the best wizarding pre-med programs on the continent. I mean-we have students who stay into their twenties to do training. Where you have Defense Against the Dark Arts, we have Military History, Science, Strategy, Combat Magic, Tactics, and Hand to Hand Training." Sara had cringed at the Hogwarts course catalog, having been used to a far more diversified program.

"That sounds soooooooo cool. So what were you sorted into?"

"Ummm...We're not sorted-we just sort of gravitate."

"So where did you gravitate?" Sara pretended not to hear the question as she tapped at her now dead digital watch.

"Look I don't want to be rude, but I haven't slept in about twenty-four hours, and seeing as how I don't know where to get a cup of coffee in this place I'm not going to be a happy camper in the morning. Not to mention the fact that I'm really not used to food that rich. Spicy-yes, rich-no."

"Oh. Well, good night then."

"Good night." Parvati and Lavender headed down to the common room to start spreading the word about Hogwarts's newest weirdo. Sara closed the drapes around her bed, encasing herself in darkness. Taking out her wand, Sara muttered "Temporo." She sighed as she felt herself surrounded by blessed warmth. A quick flick of her wrist raised the temperature to a comfortable 85. "Evaperose!" Sara watched as water beaded onto the curtains as it was sucked out of the air, leaving desert dryness. She knew that she should be trying to acclimate, but after a very long day she just felt too tired to bother.