We got to know our new classmate better and better over the days and weeks. Peter was the one who got her to open up and tell us her story. He unendingly asked her questions and listened in rapt attention to everything she said.
She transferred to Hogwarts because she wanted to get away from home. Her mother had died the previous summer and within weeks following the death of his wife of thirty years, her father was married to a woman he had previously, unbeknownst to everyone, had an affair with during the marriage. Her sister Kara and their best friend Miranda had already graduated and left home, so there wasn't anything keeping her at her house.
She told us she really liked it here, but missed her friends, Mexican food, going to rock concerts in San Francisco with her fellow "flower-children", being able to roam around in the world outside of school (theirs was not a live-in institution) and her mustang named Cassidy. Peter thought she had a horse until we explained to him that it was a type of car.
During the evenings, in between Peter's incessant questions, she was just as bad as Sirius and James when it came to planning crass pranks and raucous behavior (Although I highly doubted she was as crude about her own bodily functions as we were up in our bedroom-- the surprise ambushes of farting in each other's faces, slipping dirty socks into each other's clean towels or the dreaded regurgitating toilet gag. Poor Peter, he was always so easy to get—he never remembered to check with an anti-jinx before he took his morning dump. Somehow, I just couldn't imagine such things taking place in the girl's dorm). But, as we would learn, she wasn't opposed to making disgusting things happen to others if they deserved it.
She was beyond cool and had fascinating stuff like the Sandy Scope and the two-way mirrors. When she showed us how the mirrors worked, James and Sirius made a solemn vow to recreate a pair for themselves (we, in turn, astounded her with the Marauders map). She even had an invisibility cloak!
And she knew stuff we didn't—like things about girls and sex, about schoolwork (she taught Peter to use anachronisms to recall memorized potion ingredients, our favorite being "Snivellus Eats Shit And Likes It" for the Snake eye, Eel brains, Spleen of toad, Agapanthus seeds, Liverwort extract and Italian parsley roots for the Draught of Beauty. Peter had never done better on his potions tests and frankly, neither did I), but especially she knew how to cast more exciting charms, jinxes and hexes than we'd ever dreamed of.
Like one day, soon after her public humiliation of Snape, she taught us "Protego Textilium". It was when Severus had attempted to hex her behind her back and it rebounded on himself that she told us how to put shield charms on our robes. We had been startled when she'd lurched forward suddenly and smelled singed material. We whirled around only to see Snape behind us in the corridor with all manner of beetles, centipedes and flies crawling out of his robes, covering his face and hands. He pointed his wand at himself and spat out "Finite" in the utmost fury. He stamped his foot, turned on his heal and strode off to the dungeons.
"The charms don't last long, maybe an hour or two, and one good hex finishes them off. But I was ready. Sandy told me he was up to something and I knew he would try after class." She demonstrated by reapplying the shield to her robes and then she showed us how to do the charm on our own. "But watch out," she warned, "It won't help if you get hit in the head."
Which, unfortunately, happened to Sirius a few weeks later, but Madam Pomfrey was able to restore his skin and hair to its natural color and texture. In retaliation, Serena-Rose conjured a large, phallic sex toy and jinxed it to float behind Snape, pointing at his bum while he stood brewing at his cauldron in Potions. He kept looking around in consternation at our snickering classmates, but never detected the cause. Serena-Rose vanished it herself when Slughorn began making his rounds among the tables to check on our work.
There was also the time when that fat Slytherin cow Carrie Heneveld insulted Serena-Rose, asking her, "Is it true that American hillbillies like you are all inbred and have sex with sheep?" A quick flick of her wand, a "Mucosus Deluge" and a second later, that awful girl had snot gushing from her overly large nose, loads of thick slime oozing down her front.
But I think the cleverest one had to be the day she bested more than a half dozen Slytherins that were attacking her. When we were leaving the Great Hall after breakfast, Snape and some of his cronies like Theodore Nott, that Avery guy, Paul Parkinson and a few other fourth and fifth years I didn't know the names of tried to incur some nasty wrath against Serena-Rose, probably for that first "sheets" confrontation (some people around school were now calling him Severus Sheets) and the botched bug hex of the previous week
As we were heading for the doors, a dead snake shot from somewhere at the Slytherin table and wound tightly around her ankles. She pitched forward and fell to the floor with a resounding thud, making malicious laughter explode in our ears. We picked her up, glared over at the instigators and untangled her feet. There were caustic comments made about lassoing farm animals and lewd bestial sex acts. We held our breaths as we waited to see what she'd do knowing she was more than capable.
She cocked her head at the snake in calm contemplation then tossed it back to them. She surveyed each one in turn and casually remarked, "Looks like one of you has had his limp prick cursed, seems it's shriveled up and fallen off. Thought you might want that back. It might not be too late to reattach it."
She wiped at her hands, miming brushing off filth, and took out her wand. Completely relaxed, she silently twirled it in her fingers and ended with a decisive swish toward the floor. The malevolent group looked at one another, checking to see if she'd hexed them in any way. When nothing appeared to have happened, they burst out laughing and jeering at her again. Then, one by one, their haughty expressions of superiority turned to something like anxiety. Suddenly the benches were scraped back and there was a mad, mass dash to the entrance hall.
"What the hell?" James exclaimed at their peculiar behavior, staring after the Slytherins that were frantically pushing aside people in the crowd.
"Let's just say, I wouldn't go into any of the closest public bathrooms if I were you." Serena-Rose said smoothly, blowing on her wand's tip before tucking it away.
"Aldebaran! What did you do?" Sirius asked eagerly.
"Chymen Purgify Expulsora". She answered like it was obvious.
"I'm almost afraid to ask, but what's that?" I questioned, my admiration for her knowledge growing.
"They're supposed to be simple healing spells, really. Swirl and flick up and you induce vomiting. Or do the flick down and all stomach contents head south. And since I didn't want to see projectile puke this early in the morning…." She gestured encouragingly with palms up, inviting us to draw our own conclusions and mental pictures.
"Fuckin' wicked!" "Bloody brilliant!" James and Sirius swore at the same time. Peter looked as if he was going to fall to his knees at her feet declaring his undying devotion, kiss her boots, and hail her as the supreme priestess of the sun and moon and goddess of the wind.
"All the chicks where I come from know about those two. They're abused a lot," and seeing our confused looks she explained, "for dieting purposes."
I was terribly impressed. "I doubt they'll be messing with you again in a hurry."
"No, probably not," she said thoughtfully. "And they won't be leaving their toilets for quite awhile either, that is if they made it that far…." We all howled with laughter (Sirius's bark again being the loudest of us all). With a glint in her forest-green eyes she added, "I'm afraid I was rather forceful on my downward flick."