AN: So this'll be the end of first year because first year was only for introducing characters. 2nd will have much more Marauders and other characters and actual plot rather than Serena just dipping around.
In which they go to all the classes
Rachel got up first the next morning, a fact that didn't surprise Serena in the slightest. She was also the only one who applied makeup (albeit light). As the others woke up, Rachel and Sydney did each other's hair (Rachel's in a French braid and Sydney's in a normal braid that was then twisted into some sort of bun). They asked to do Liz's as well, but she flat out refused.
So they turned on Serena, who had already pulled her hair into a simple ponytail.
"Please, Serena, Liz never lets us do hers," Rachel begged. Serena tried desperately to avoid looking at Sydney's puppy dog eyes. She had never liked putting her hair up in anything intricate, but if she left it down the strands got into her eyes. Low ponytails were the only way to go.
"Aw darn, it's breakfast time. We'd better go get our timetables," Liz sighed dramatically, grabbing Serena and pulling her out of the room.
"We've got half an hour," Rachel complained as they left out the portrait hole.
"Do you remember how to get to the great hall, because I sure don't," Liz pointed out as they started their trek. After wandering for thirty minutes in what should have been a no more than ten minute trip, they finally arrived at the great hall. It was mostly full, and the food was already out but it seemed to have just appeared.
They sat down just in time for Professor Flitwick to give them their time tables, along with a bemused look and a light comment about how first years should be provided with maps.
Monday there would be Herbology with Gryffindor and then Transfiguration with Slytherin, afterwards Defense Against the Dark Arts with Hufflepuffs.
Tuesday would consist of Defense Against the Dark Arts with Hufflepuff and then Charms with Gryffindor followed by History of Magic with the Slytherins
Wednesday started off with double Potions with Hufflepuff, followed by Transfiguration with Gryffindor, and then Astronomy at midnight.
Thursday would start with Herbology with Gryffindor, then History of Magic with Slytherin, and a free afternoon.
Friday simply had Charms with Gryffindor and then flying lessons in the afternoon.
Serena finished breakfast quickly, and walked in the general direction she figured the greenhouses may be in. The others were still eating when she left, but she got no real reaction other than a few "see you in class" type comments flung over shoulders. The greenhouses were surprisingly easy to find, given the size of the grounds, so she spent her time peering into the different windows and seeing if she could spot anything she recognized.
She wasn't a big Herbology buff, so she didn't know much, but she did see a few things because her father really loved Herbology. One that she recognized immediately was the Venomous Tentacula. A few of those plants were placed strategically in the garden at her house by her father partially as protection from pesky garden gnomes.
Mostly he thought it made life more exciting.
Gryffindors.
Finally other people started arriving. The Ravenclaws came first, of course, because they were actually excited for classes. Most of the Gryffindors slid in right before the bell, but Serena noticed that the Potter and Black boys were missing when the greenhouse doors finally opened.
In front of the class stood a plump witch who looked to be somewhere in her thirties. She had dirt sprinkled all over, especially caked under her nails, and wore a patch-hat that sat atop her flyaway hair. Despite that, she had a jovial look about her, like she was almost always happy about something.
"Good morning, class!" She chirped, walking outside the greenhouse rather than telling them to come in. "I am Professor Sprout, head of Hufflepuff house and your Herbology teacher. Since today is the first class, I'll give you an overview of the curriculum and-"
"Hey professor!" A voice called suddenly.
"Sorry we're late!" A second added. Everyone turned to see two Gryffindor boys, Potter and Black, grinning merrily as they came to a stop at the back of the crowd of first years.
"We got lost," the first one, James Potter, shrugged.
Professor Sprout raised an eyebrow, but merely smiled.
"I'll let you two off on account of it being the first day, but try not to be late to any other classes. Some teachers aren't as lenient as I am. Now, as I was saying, I'm Professor Sprout…"
After introductions and the usual welcome to *insert class here* speech, Professor Sprout took attendance before leading them around to all the greenhouses. She told them all what number each was, what year students used it, and some of the plants inside each. She ended at the one first years used, that they had met at in the beginning, and they finally went inside.
Once inside Professor Sprout pointed out some plants they would be studying and informing the students that they would actually be learning some magic in this class as a way to repel some of the more dangerous plants.
Potter and Black were playing catch with a bouncing bulb in the back.
The bulb was winning.
One student, Remus Lupin, started scolding them about distracting others during class. That is, until the bulb jumped out of James' hand and smacked the messy-haired boy right in the snoz. He tried not to laugh, but several other students weren't so thoughtful.
Professor Sprout was about to really give them an earful, probably about damaging her plants, but just then the bell rang and all of the students streamed out before she could get a word in edgewise.
"Hi Sear!" A voice said suddenly, almost causing Serena to drop all of her books. She managed to catch all but one, but another person reached out and caught it at the last second. Serena looked up; it was Alice.
"Oh… hi, Alice," Serena answered, slightly surprised. Alice hadn't talked to her all lesson, and as far as Serena could tell hadn't even waved or so much as glanced over, so Serena thought that maybe Abigail had already turned her.
A little ways away, Serena saw Abigail glaring darkly at her while two other Gryffindor girls (a blond that she didn't know and red-headed Lily Evans) looked between the two as if not sure what to make of the exchange.
Of course. Alice was a Gryffindor after all, and while that didn't necessitate loyalty, it did mean she was bold enough to do what she wanted instead of what Abigail wanted her to do.
"Just wanted to say hi, and we should sit together in class sometime. I'd better hurry if I want to get to History of Magic. Bye!" She ran off and joined Lily Evans, the blond with blue eyes, and Abigail as they walked to class.
The transfiguration room was an actual room, as opposed to the greenhouse Herbology was held in. It had three rows of tables that two people each could sit at each. Serena sat in the middle front desk; no one else would really want to sit in the front (McGonagall was notorious for being terrifying and picking out everything she saw wrong with something a student was doing so no one wanted to be directly in her line of sight). As the other students walked in, most of them paired off with someone else in their class and took a seat. Finally, one student walked in right before the bell rung and slid into the seat next to Serena. He was a Slytherin, which kind of surprised her. He was a scrawny boy, maybe an inch taller than her and with even skinnier limbs, with insanely curly brown hair and murky brown eyes.
"What's with the cat?" He whispered almost immediately. Serena spared a glance at the cat with spectacle markings sitting on the professor's desk. She had actually been wondering that as well, but so far she didn't have any reasonable explanation.
"I have no idea. I'd say it's her pet, but Professor McGonagall doesn't seem like the type of person to leave an animal wandering around her classroom unless there's a reason."
"Maybe she'll turn it into something! You know, like a demonstration," he said, and they both turned to stare intently at said feline.
Much to their surprise as everyone else's, it jumped off of the desk and halfway through the air it turned into Professor McGonagall.
"Correct…" She said, looking at the boy expectantly.
"Janie," he said, eyes wide.
"Very well, let us begin," she said curtly, and the rest of the lesson continued in much the same matter. Blunt and straight to the point about everything.
First she declared that anyone seen messing off in her class would be immediately punished, then she told them all that transfiguration was more than waving your wand and saying a few words. To demonstrate she gave everyone a matchstick, and told them to try turning it into a needle after giving them the correct words, motions, and a demonstration.
It was much harder than McGonagall made it look.
Serena looked around the classroom right before the bell rang and realized, with a surge of pride, that hers was one of the more needle-like. Of course, it was just a little silvery and somewhat pointed on one end, but still.
Lunch was after that, and she thought it would be a boring endeavor.
It wasn't.
Lunch started out normal enough, with everyone sitting at their respective tables and some of the older students milling about to talk to their friends in other houses. No one so much as glanced at the two black-haired Gryffindor first years who seemed to be waiting for something, nor the sandy-haired boy who apparently knew something was going to happen but didn't know what.
But then, suddenly, the Slytherin table was encased in a cloud of horrible-smelling greenish smoke and all the Ravenclaws on the side nearest to their table jumped up and ran away with the Slytherins.
It would have been hard to locate the perpetrators had they not loudly announced that they were the ones to rig the table.
James and Sirius were high-fiving and laughing loudest of all, but Remus didn't seem pleased. In fact, he looked kind of scandalized. They didn't even stop grinning when Professor McGonagall, definitely the scariest human being currently residing in the castle, came over with her signature disappointed scowl to give them detention.
Defense against the dark arts was possibly Serena's least favorite class.
Not to get her wrong; she enjoyed learning defense and attack spells (she wasn't particularly good at them though), and the Hufflepuffs were all very nice, it was just that the professor was… well, he didn't seem to actually know anything.
The first day in his class, Serena tried to listen. She really did, but she just didn't know how Professor Montie could talk so much and yet tell them absolutely nothing.
Grace, who sat beside her, didn't seem to listen either. But for some reason she seemed to think the Professor was the smartest person ever. Probably because he was good looking.
Serena resisted the urge to point out the fact that the professor was at least fifteen years older than her, and since Grace was only eleven it was kind of weird for her to even be thinking about that.
Of course, she would later find out that only a handful of other girls felt that way. Liz being one of them.
The next time she came to that class, the very next morning, Serena came prepared with several books on defense for her to read while Montie continued to blather on about everything and yet nothing at the same time.
Charms with Professor Flitwick, her head of house, was rather enjoyable. Especially when she was the first to get her feather into the air. That was also the first time since the first lunch she actually noticed the boys that she had already decided would be best to avoid. James Potter and Sirius Black had apparently converted Remus Lupin to their side, because he was still hanging out with them despite his rule-following demeanor, and they suddenly had a small, chubby, adorable-in-a-pitiful-kind-of-way boy named Peter Pettegrew following them around.
Sirius and James were the second and third to get their feathers up, and by the end of the class they managed to be so proficient in the hovering charm that they could swordfight with their feathers.
History of magic was dull even for Serena, who was the type of person that researched school subjects outside of class for fun. Having it with the Slytherins made it a bit more fun; they had made a game of seeing how many things a single person could throw through Professor Bins, he was a ghost after all, before he noticed. Janie was the one who had started this trend, the questionable kid, when he had accidentally thrown his pencil across the room (he said it was an accident at least) and it had sailed directly through Bins' head. The entire class had sat at attention for a moment (an anomaly to be sure) before it became absolutely clear that Bins hadn't even noticed.
Janie took that as a challenge.
The other students took Janie's challenge as a personal number to beat.
The record was 354 by the end of the year (it, sadly, was not Janie but actually a Ravenclaw who did it), and the only reason they stopped was because they ran out of things to throw.
Potions was an interesting class, and Professor Slughorn was a nice guy, but he seemed to care much more about who was related to someone famous than actually teaching the rest of the class. Sadly, or not, Serena fell into the not-important section while two brothers from Hufflepuff got immediate status because one of their parents was apparently a quidditch star.
Astronomy was fun; the first class Professor VanSink briefly explained the curriculum before merely pointing out and naming various constellations.
Flying was not her forte. Serena had never been a physical person, and maybe some people found it easy to ride a flying stick at high speeds, but she didn't. She wasn't super bad at it- not like Peter, poor kid- nor was she terrified of it like a small Gryffindor named Ryan Hopping. Really, she was a completely average flier. She didn't go too fast, didn't go too high, really just puttered around avoiding the four Gryffindor boys that had banded together to make everyone else miserable. Rather, James and Sirius were aiming for that. Remus still looked to disagree with them, and Peter just egged them on from the ground.
They had been tossing stink bombs from their brooms the whole lesson, and it was no surprise when they were escorted grinning off the field, waving cheerily at Remus and Peter as they went.
Cows and rule breaking
The first Saturday of the month, Serena sat on the window ledge reading a book long after the others had gone to bed. It was one of her magical creatures books; after all, she figured that if she could talk to them she should learn something about them just in case. Wouldn't want to say something that could offend a dragon.
She had just finished the section on mooncalves when she glanced outside.
Was that a flicker of silver in the woods?
She looked up, noting the full moon. What would speaking to a mooncalf be like? They were apparently really shy, could she even find one? Actually, did any live on Hogwarts grounds?
This was a dumb idea. A really, really dumb idea.
She felt herself standing up and ghosting towards the door anyway.
No, no, she didn't even know if she would be able to find one, much less talk to it!
Regardless, she walked down the stairs and exited the porthole.
She was going to get caught. She was so going to get caught.
Serena stalked down the halls, keeping to the shadows and never lighting her wand. Good thing she had an acceptable memory, or else she wouldn't be able to do this.
Curse her good memory.
Just as she was getting close to the exit, a light appeared from ahead of her and a muttering voice she recognized as the Slytherin prefect Lucius Malfoy.
I'M GOING TO BE EXPELLED! PLEASE DON'T LET ME BE EXPELLED!
"Pleasepleasepleaseplease" Serena muttered under her breath, not noticing that she was even doing it.
In her panic, she stumbled back into a suit of armor. It didn't fall apart. No, it did something much more terrifying.
It grabbed her.
Serena, currently in shock, didn't scream or even struggle as the armor dropped straight into the floor through the pedestal it was standing on and landed at the end of a very long tunnel.
It then proceeded to let her go, and look just as it did before it moved.
Serena looked around in shock, looking up and noting that the ceiling had closed behind the armor. Then, looking back at the armor, she grinned in pure relief.
"Thank you!" She whispered, and got a nod in reply. She started walking down the tunnel and when she glanced back it was just in time to see a sliver of light disappear as the suit of armor returned to its spot.
The tunnel ended in another dead end.
She wondered why on earth there would be some random tunnel with two dead ends right under the school, and her first erratic thought was that maybe the suit of armor was evil and periodically dropped terrified first-years into it to starve.
Letting out an irritated huff, she crumpled up that thought and threw it away.
If that was right, where were the skeletons?
"This is a magic castle, there has to be a way to open this wall…" She mused, running her hands all over the wall. "Maybe…" She tried pushing all the different bricks. "No…" She muttered, instead tapping them with her wand. Nothing. She tried several other things, wasting about ten minutes until there was suddenly a reaction.
As she jerked her wand in a lightning shape, she had been trying different wand motions for about five minutes, the wall started glowing a soft blue. But not all of it- the bricks seemed to have formed words that she hadn't seen before.
What do you say?
"Umm," it couldn't possibly mean what she thought it did, could it? "Thank you?"
There was a soft grinding sound like the wall in diagon alley and the wall opened up in a similar way. Serena stepped out, looking around in interest. Directly to her left was the front door- exactly where she had been heading before.
Now she noticed that it was closed, and opening it would have been both very stupid and very hard.
That she had found the secret passage- the secret passage found her?- was either very lucky or very unlucky, because if she hadn't and somehow she got to the front door she would be heading back to the common room by now.
As it was, she wasn't sure how to open the thing up from the outside (pure terror, perhaps?) so she figured she might as well look around a bit.
The grounds looked very different at night, but not in a creepy kind of way. With the full moon's light illuminating the whole area it was easy to see; the lake seemed to emit a sort of light on its own, making the water a shimmery blue and seemingly a lot clearer than in the daytime. If she squinted, Serena could swear she saw a mermaid… merman… merperson swimming around.
Then there was the tree beside the lake, whose leaves looked to be absorbing the moon's light and using it to shine a dull green. It was absolutely beautiful.
Serena's arms fell to her sides as she admired the view.
THUD!
At the sound, Serena almost fell backwards into the lake before darting behind the slightly glimmering tree. Looking back to where he sound came from, she saw a book.
Her book.
The book that she had apparently carried all the way from her dorm room, through the passage, and out here without realizing it. Taking a glance around, Serena decided that it would be a waste to just head back inside when she had her book, light, the possibility of seeing a mooncalf, and this beautiful view.
So she settled down with her back against the tree and found that she could read almost as well as in the daylight.
It was perfect. The soft green glow of the leaves, the luminescent quality of the lake, the grass was so soft, and this tree was at just the right angle for leaning against-
A shadow fell across her.
"Oi! What are ya doin' out here? It's past curfew!" A booming voice asked, causing Serena to drop her book as she hurried to her feet.
It didn't make her feel any better because the man was still about three times her size.
"I-I'm sorry, I was just reading my book inside and I wondered if Hogwarts had any mooncalves and I wanted to see one because I really like animals so I snuck out here because they only come out on full moons! But I didn't see any and everything out here is really pretty at night so I guess I just sat down and started reading instead!" She said all in one breath, clutching Magical Creatures and Where to Find Them to her chest.
Oh yes, definitely going to be expelled.
Hagrid, for it had taken her a moment to recognize him in the suddenly much less pretty and much more eerie light, took a moment to process those words before grinning.
"Mooncalves, eh? They're awful shy, but we do got a colony here. I know how ta find 'em!" He said, very excited. It wasn't often that he met someone who even knew what mooncalves were, much less went looking for them in the middle of the full moon! This was a girl after his own heart, and he completely forgot about the little issue of it being after curfew as he led Serena (who had to almost flat-out run to keep up) into a little path through the forbidden forest.
"So wha's your name?" He asked in a low grumble Serena thought must've been him trying to whisper.
"Serena Wendal; I'm a first year," she whispered back as they passed through the first of the trees. The rumors about there being werewolves and other monsters in the forest didn't even occur to her as they continued on. She was finally going to see a mooncalf! What would it be like to talk to them? How did they speak? Like a cow? Like a horse? Something completely and totally different?
They didn't go very far in, stopping a few feet away from the edge of a clearing.
In that clearing stood, or rather danced, two strange blue beings. They looked a bit like cows, but their four legs were long and spindly and ended in huge feet. On their heads sat huge eyes, the bigger one looked alight with happiness, but the other looked weary.
"It's the full moon! It's the full moon!" The happy one sang.
"You don't think there are any werewolves out there, do you?" The other one asked.
"We should go back," Hagrid said, pulling her back. She blinked in surprise, not having noticed herself drifting forward before, and then felt a pang of disappointment. She couldn't talk to the mooncalves and still keep her secret; not while Hagrid was with her. "An' you need ta get ta bed," he added as an afterthought as they exited the forest.
"Yes sir," she said a bit guiltily. "I won't do this again."
"Ya better no'," he said, though the glint in his beady eyes may have meant he was joking, "if I catch yah again I'm gonna hafta report yah ta yer head of house… it's a good thing I was awake tonight. Usually I'm asleep by now," he added. She wasn't sure if he was honestly musing on his sleeping schedule or if he was hinting that she could, in fact, come back and he wouldn't get after her.
"Well, good night then," she smiled. Either way, she was probably going to come back during the full moons. She looked like a goody-two-shoes most of the time, but she did have a tiny rebellious streak in her.
Besides, she still wanted to talk to the mooncalves.
For the rest of the year, nothing really changed. Serena would hang out with Alice and Grace sometimes, as well as having a few good talks with Matt. Hagrid turned into her best friend; he would have her over for tea and rock cakes and tell her about different types of exotic and dangerous animals. She continued to further avoid the four troublesome Gryffindors, though she still got hit by some of their pranks (no one escaped completely unscathed by them; even they got in the way of their own pranks sometimes, or purposely pranked each other). She also continued to get along with her roommates (she had found out that while Liz was pretty smart, but she was also crap at riddles and almost always had to get help through the door).
She made several more forays into the forbidden forest, some with Hagrid some not, and continued to read under that tree when the full moon was out, but despite that everyone was under the impression she was a quiet goodie-two-shoes.
All in all, Serena counted it as a good year.
AN: How many of you thought I was gonna have her be attacked by Remus?