fandomhigh | BWI Airport Portalocity Lounge, Saturday morning

Malia had never been out of California before. Or Beacon County, for that matter. She'd barely been out of Beacon Hills proper, and that was mostly as a coyote hunting for food.

So this was new and exciting! Or, you know, new at least. She was going to school. One that didn't, as far as she could tell, require her to learn math. So right there it had one up over BHHS. It also didn't have Scott or Stiles, which was not a point in its favor, but in the end, she'd decided that not having to struggle through eleventh grade math beat out getting to have the few people she knew around, especially when Scott agreed he could try to teach her control over the internet.

So here she was. Her ears still felt stuffed full of cotton from the plane, and the whole airport smelled like cleaning fluid and anxiety, and she was managing to claw tiny holes in the upholstery with claws that didn't want to stay hidden away like they were supposed to, but hey. At least she was having an adventure?

[IT'S NEWBIE SHUTTLE TIME! Up early-ish because work has been dumb this week and I might be slow.]

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"I'm from Derry," Clare said. "In Northern Ireland?"

It was a good thing she clarified there, because Malia definitely didn't know where Derry was.

"Oh," she said, bobbing her head in a little nod. "Are there, like, fairies there?"

"Oh, well, I applied," Clare said. "President Bill Clinton came to visit our city on account of the Troubles being over and all and so me and my friends, we wrote to Chelsea Clinton but never did she write us back, which was really quite rude, but while we were looking up where she lived, I came across the school and I thought maybe I should just try out America myself and maybe figure out what was keeping Chelsea so busy that she couldn't write us back?"

That. That was a lot of information, Clare.

"Me, too," said Sakaki with a small nod. "I...I think. School's a little different, where I'm from."

Figuring the whole thing out with her placement had been a...little confusing.

Well, no. Sakaki had understood it fine, but then the other girls got involved and the whole thing became inexplicably more...complicated.

Okay. So maybe a moment was not exactly enough.

"Hm?" Distractedly, Sakaki's head turned back to Harry well before her eyes did, and, even after she looked at him again and blinked, they returned to the owl.

Then back to Harry, with a bewilderment that spoke volumes to how she could be expected to talk to a boy when there was Hedwig.

But she realized that she was probably coming across as rude and would try her best to focus on people.

"Oh," she said. "S-sakaki..."

There was was a beat, almost as if nudge herself to say more and to not look back at the owl.

"What's yours?"

Well, you were certainly not going to miss the bus, painted as a giant chocolate bunny as it was.

Anakin was going to have some Words with Nina and Prompto later.

He got up from his chair--activating the whoopie cushion--and stomped down the steps.

"FANDOM HIGH!" he roared.

Enjoy your seats, kids. They were individually, custom painted and all had little baskets of Easter candy in them because paying attention to a calendar was for other, non-Nina-and-Prompto people.

"This school sounds pretty different from where I'm from, too," Malia said. "That's why I wanted to come."

"That's the ugliest bus I've ever seen," Malia told him. "The whole school doesn't look like that, does it?"

"Probably not," Anakin said, "but I've left it unsupervised for an hour to come get you, so I can't make any guarantees."

"Not unless you talk to Orla for too long," Clare said. "She's not altogether right in the head."

Malia nodded slowly and climbed onto the bus.

"Try not to crash," she advised. "Some of these kids seem kinda fragile."

". . . She turns people into fairies?"

Look, it wasn't the weirdest thing that Malia, a werecoyote most recently from a mental institution where she spent time with banshees and lost her viriginity to a guy possessed by an evil kitsune, had ever heard of.

"Did you get a special work training scholarship, too?"

Sakaki definitely would have never come all this way of it weren't such an incredible, once-in-a-lifetime, too-good-too-refuse opportunity!

". . . I applied and I got in. I think it might be a little cheaper than keeping me in Eichen House."

Her dad hadn't even mentioned money when she told him she wanted to go, after all.

Oh good, a teacher who roared. Harry looked like he was trying to get by without being noticed, aside from eyeing the bus like he didn't trust it at all.

Which he probably shouldn't.

And it still wasn't the weirdest bus he'd ever been on.

"Trees and lacrosse." Harry didn't really know what lacrosse was. "Sounds brilliant."

He was trying to be supportive.

And coming from 1996, Harry didn't see a single weird thing in any of that. Well, he did, but the timeline seemed pretty solid.

"So you're here for Chelsea Clinton."

"Harry," he said. "..Do you just want to hang out with Hedwig?"

"I have never seen anyone quite this excited about Easter," Clare told him, "and I went to Catholic school all my life."

“I guess. What’s it like where you’re from?”

"Och, no, it's her aunt who might be a witch on account of telling her aunt to drop dead at a wedding and the aunt obliging her," Clare said. "Orla's just peculiar and still believes in fairies despite not being ten any more."

Clare nodded. "I looked on a map and the White House doesn't seem that far away!"

American geography: not a priority at Our Lady Immaculate.

“That’s. . . something only ten year olds do?” Malia had never been a human ten year old. “But killer witches are totally a thing.”

There was no judgment in her tone at all. Or irony. She was actually trying to work out what was normal where Clare was concerned.

"I've only crashed once," Anakin said, "and in my defense, there was a giant goat demon in the way."

"Oh, good, another Harry Potter," Anakin said.

So helpful, that Anakin.

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BWI Airport Portalocity Lounge, Saturday morning

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