Before
Late 1877	Mariana Tulip Hall has resigned herself to spinsterhood when she meets a mysterious and, in her eyes, beautiful gentleman on a trip to France. It is just her luck that he is a vampire, and that their courtship would be frowned upon by her traditional parents. Instead, she finds herself seduced by his hedonistic lifestyle. She even draws him a handful of times.
February, 1878	Their trysts end, however, when he expresses interest in another. She's hurt, but expected it to happen eventually. She returns to England by Floo within days.
March, 1878	All is peaceful until Mariana misses her monthlies. She is kept in confinement until...
A Beginning
September, 1878	A ghostly pale and seemingly half-dead babe is born. The midwife recognizes the child for what she is, and does not discourage Mariana from holding and even naming the girl. Seraphina Rose, she chooses.
January, 1879	After being given enough time to recuperate and ensure her daughter's health, Mariana and little Seraphina are disowned and put to the streets. For safety, the young mother uses her meager savings to move promptly to Hogsmeade, taking residence in a small shack. She takes to street peddling to put food on the table.
1879 — 1889	Seraphina is a typical child growing up in the slums of Hogsmeade. Her first act of magic is largely unremarkable, just like every other kid in the slums, but to her mother, it’s everything. Mariana teaches her daughter everything she can, from reading to the fundamentals of French. She by no means achieves fluency, but she can at least converse for a few minutes.
April, 1890	Suddenly, abruptly, the happy, if penniless, life she leads comes to a dark and twisted end as her mother is murdered in the street for the last of her keepsakes from home. The murderer is unknown to Sera, and while she is witness, she is little help to the incredibly cursory investigation. Her mother becomes just another dead witch in the slums, and she becomes just another homeless orphan. A bastard and a half-breed at that. She takes her mother’s meager savings (set aside for her education), her mother’s sketchbook, and a spare dress from the shack before the constables can empty it out themselves, and sets herself up in an alley. She spends as little as possible.
July, 1890	A regal owl finds her alley in the slums one morning, an Important looking letter in its beak. She is accepted to Hogwarts School for Witchcraft and Wizardry, on the scholarship for impoverished youth. She barely has enough money left to cover the uniform requirements and her food supply for July and August. It takes begging a friendly older kid in the slums, the youngest in her family and less than a year Sera’s senior, for her last year’s books to get them. She only gets them on the promise that her parents never find out.
An Education
September 1890	Barely nourished and sporting slightly outdated books, Sera arrives at Hogwarts and is sorted into Hufflepuff. One early night, as her dorm-mates write letters home to their families, Sera finds herself crying in the hall outside the common room, where Professor Darrow comes upon her. A conversation later and he knows why — she has no home, and no one to write to, and will probably find herself in a workhouse following the school year. There is an initial, vague promise of help, which Sera doesn’t expect to come to anything. No one wants to help the vampire bastard. Not really.
1891	Her grades just barely scrape by enough to muster the full academic scholarship. And surprise, surprise, Professor Darrow actually follows through on his promise! Apparently, her mother was a Hufflepuff, too — something Sera didn’t even know. He gets her a position as a maid with a middle class family, work she’d never hope to hold without the professor’s sponsorship. It’s just for summertime, but it covers her school-things for second year. Sometimes she even gets the chance to study.
1892	Sera’s back at Hogwarts on the scholarship fund, better nourished and feeling better about herself. But she still doesn’t think most people care about her — and unfortunately, she’s right. Some people, even, would rather see her dead. But right now, she’s just a kid, trying to become an adult.