A/N: I'm running out of time, so this is getting posted unedited. This was written for the Universal Day of Culture event on the Golden Snitch forum. More information about that is at the end of the story.
Also, since the challenge was to write about someone encountering our own culture, I want to clarify: My profile says I'm in Japan, but while I'm living in Japan, I'm American. Hence this story about Hermione finding herself in southern Indiana. As someone who grew up in southern Indiana and then moved to central Indiana for college, I really tried to emphasize some of what makes southern Indiana unique from the rest of the state (because, believe me, they're not the same).
It had never been a secret that her mother had family in the United States, but they hadn't been a branch of the family tree that Hermione had bothered to think about much. She'd never met anyone from this part of the family as a child. There had been too many miles between them, and her mother's own relationship with the relatives was distant enough that no one could be bothered to make the effort to visit.
That had never bothered Hermione, who was satisfied with visiting both sets of grandparents a couple of times a year and who had never given much thought to her lack of siblings or cousins. She did have an uncle on her dad's side, but he was unmarried and a workaholic. She couldn't claim to be particularly close with him either.
Her relationship with her grandparents had become a bit more difficult to navigate once she'd started Hogwarts and needed to keep secrets, but it hadn't been too difficult because it was something that needed to be dealt with so infrequently.
It had only taken a few minutes of being at her mum's distant cousin's house in Indiana before she'd realized that she wouldn't have gotten off so lucky if she'd been dealing with this part of the family.
These relatives were louder than any of those she'd grown up with. Part of that was due to the children everywhere. Hermione thought the children also might have been at least part of the reason why the adults had all of their conversations in what felt like, to Hermione, a near yell.
She'd had enough experiences with the Weasleys to know that these differences had at least as much to do with the differences in family size as they did differences in culture. Still, it had been jarring for her to realize that she was related to people who were so boisterous. She'd never known it before.
Her previous experiences with these relatives mostly consisted of cards every now and then, including one she could still remember receiving when her great aunt and uncle had heard she'd gotten into an "elite" boarding school.
It had had a picture of a leg in a brightly coloured cast on the front, and when opened, had read "BREAK A LEG." She'd been horrified by it at eleven, finding it in poor taste. Though she understood the meaning of the phrase, she hadn't swallowed the card well.
That same great aunt and uncle had passed away years ago, so she hadn't gotten to meet them, though she was far more at ease about the card than she'd been then.
There were plenty of other relatives to meet. So many that Hermione couldn't remember any of their names. They all blended into one giant blur.
She'd tried hard to connect, but that was made even harder by the fact that she couldn't overcome the oddness of it all. They spoke in a dialect that she would have expected to hear in the American South, not Indiana. When she'd said as much to a cousin, she'd been met with a sigh and a reminder that the airport she'd landed at had been in Kentucky.
Though she'd known as much, she still managed to be surprised each time she met someone new and they spoke to her. She'd been so prepared for the typical American accent she heard on TV, but she hadn't heard much of that.
There were other small things she hadn't prepared for, like being asked if she wanted a coke, saying yes, and then being very confused when she was offered a variety of brand names, only one of which was actually Coke. The same cousin had smirked she'd had to explain that "coke" meant any type of soda. Hermione still hadn't quite figured out the reason for that.
Needless to say, there was more culture shock than she'd been expecting after watching American TV shows and movies during her childhood.
The fish fry was just another thing that she hadn't realized was an American tradition, at least in this part of America.
The whole family was gathered on a large, open piece of land that one cousin or another owned. They'd been asked to bring along a dish or two, but that didn't mean that plenty of cooking wasn't happening when they arrived.
There was more fish than Hermione had ever seen before in her life, and at least half the adults stood around giant fryers. She'd watched for a while as they prepared the fish, breaded it, and dunked it in the hot oil. Everything was so methodical and well practiced. They were hardly paying attention to what they were doing as they laughed with each other and drank their beers.
"Why don't we have this at home?" Hermione found herself asking out loud.
"Don't ask me," the cousin beside her replied.
As if realizing something, she turned to Hermione with eyes narrowed.
"You do have cookouts in England, don't you? It's not really the summer if you don't have some kind of cookout."
Hermione shrugged, feeling self-conscious.
"Plenty of people do," she said as her blush intensified, "but we never really have."
The simple truth of the matter was that both she and her parents had always had natural inclinations to stay indoors. It had never occurred to her that she was missing something by not eating outdoors, though she wasn't sure that it would have felt the same if she had had them with her family back home.
Her cousin hummed in acknowledgment. This particular cousin was two years younger than Hermione, and she'd stayed all but glued to her side since she'd arrived. It didn't pass Hermione's notice that the girl seemed fascinated to be hanging out with someone from England, and she had quickly taken to the role of cultural translator for Hermione.
One of the men around the fryer shouted that the fish was ready, and her cousin bolted, yelling something about everyone fending for themselves. It didn't take long for it to be clear that the same sentiment was shared by much of the family.
This was one of the things the Weasleys had prepared her for, and Hermione hurried after her relatives, excited to finally try the fish she'd been watching them prepare for more than an hour.
A/N: The Golden Snitch info: Haley, Mahoutokoro, Mizu.
Bonus prompts used: (phrase) break a leg; (word) culture; (dialogue) "Why don't we have this at home?"
Points: 20