Quinn is the embodiment of "work hard, play hard," and has neatly compartmentalized her life into those two categories. During her leisure time, she's a social butterfly with a tendency to clown and a biting, sarcastic sense of humour that might be mistaken for something more caustic than she intends. Working hours see unwavering studiousness. She's extremely disciplined with little time for hijinks, and can seem a little too blunt if she feels her time is being deliberately wasted.

Quinn takes serious things seriously (e.g. there would never untimely jokes about dead parents), but pretty much everything else is fair game and she approaches most situations lightly. She thinks that joking around helps lighten the mood when academic and professional pressure is building, and that it dispels some of the tension that can arise while performing her duties as Prefect. Those not familiar with Quinn's modus operandi might think she's a bit of an ass.

She's also something of a clown; she jokes on the journals, she jokes in person, and she enjoys making people laugh if she isn't using humour to distract peers from something more serious. However, this behaviour never occurs in the library.

While Quinn has no qualms about missing a party if she knows work should take priority, her free time is spent as intensely as her work hours. She's an extremely high-energy person who finds sitting around with a cup of tea more 'infuriating' than 'relaxing,' preferring to party or play sports.

WORK/LIFE BALANCE: Quinn's ultimate goal is to become an 'emergency healer,' the equivalent of a first responder in magical communities. She thrives under pressure and enjoys helping others in a very tangible, material sort of way. Her entire presence at Gooseberry is motivated by this goal: her classes were chosen specifically to help her become a healer, she joined minimal extracurriculars so that she could study more, and she tries to dazzle the staff sufficiently for exceptional reference letters.

Quinn keeps to a strict routine for both school and exercise, insisting that it's because she's here on an academic scholarship and would like to stay that way; but deep down, she is actually fiercely competitive toward those she feels are truly a threat to her success. She would never treat perceived rivals poorly, cause them grief, or sabotage their efforts — she just tries really, really hard to do better than them. She runs every morning (or skates if the lake is frozen enough, which is her preference), adds strength three times a week, and divides all hours between breakfast and dinner between studying in the library and working on her senior project in the Artificing shed.

A pragmatic nature means she enjoys nothing less than somebody wasting her time when keeping to her schedule. There are sensible ways to do things, logical ways to do things. If you're going to stand there and waffle about whether you should go on exchange or stay at Gooseberry because you're dating your ~soulmate,~ Quinn will matter-of-factly tell you to go on exchange because high school relationships rarely last. She's not trying to be heartless, she's just not going to sit there for four hours while you cry your heart out about something that will probably be forgotten in a year, anyway.

This attitude extends to her extremely low tolerance for bullshit. If she's working (either on schoolwork or in a Prefect capacity), Quinn won't take the time to talk back, actively call somebody wrong, or play 20 questions. What she will do is give that person A Look that communicates "You're wasting my time and I don't appreciate it, so tell the truth and we can get on with our lives." Quinn has been known to look expectantly at somebody, observe "This isn't my problem," and walk the other way down the hall.

TEMPER: Quinn is... selective when it comes to getting angry. Most people's shenanigans aren't enough to cause her ire; she might seem exasperated at some antics (especially when they fall within the purview of her Prefect duties) but she won't shout at anybody who acts like an idiot. Instead, she tries to deal with those situations quickly and efficiently: her tone is plainly "you should know better, and this is wasting my time," with a dash of "why do we even have to go over this."

Friends who know her well enough can get under her skin, though, and that's when she actually gets angry. Angry Quinn is a deal less articulate than regular Quinn (read: she swears like a sailor). She's challenging, she's antagonistic, and she tries to simultaneously push and pull people away while she's trying to figure out what she should do. This is especially evident when she feels like she's the one at fault, but it also happens when she's under the impression that somebody else is pushing her away unjustly. Her tolerance for staying mad is shortlived, because she can't go more than a couple of days before declaring "This is bullshit" and deciding that things have to be resolved then and there, regardless of the other party's current situation or opinion on the matter — this usually leads to Quinn laying everything out for them (delivered so frankly that her tone may be mistaken for indifference) before they have a chance to even say "hello."

MO' PROBLEMS: When she hasn't figured out how to deal with a personal dilemma yet, she prefers to stew and deflects any need to talk about the issue on a personal level with a style of exaggerated humour that others might think borders on caustic — and it probably does. She hopes these attempts serve to distract others' attention from her own emotions (because then she doesn't have to deal with figuring feelings out before she's ready), and sometimes it helps her work through the issues themselves. This occurs most often in journals and is very... distinctive.

Quinn is resourceful when presented with a non-personal problem and has proven plenty of times that she's never afraid of being put on the spot. She's good at fixing problems with a very toolset — whether it's a broken desk in the library during cram time, or a pre-party wardrobe disaster, her level head, practical nature and reasonably wide array of knowledge (which she insists anybody can benefit from if they just studied more) is a definite asset in times of crisis. If you give Quinn a room of potential fixes, however, her success is... questionable. She falters at demands to think creativity and fails to think outside of the box on most occasions.

Quinn is not a girl made for creative pursuits. Her stick figures look like her pen exploded; her pumpkin carvings are massacres. She works hard at succeeding in important things in her life (academics and athletics), and it's a bit of a sore spot that she can't seem to make anything remotely close to art when she needs to.

PREFECT STRATEGY: While Quinn's approach to being a Prefect is certainly informed by a strong sense of what is 'right' and what is 'wrong,' she also knows that Azurcrest students are unlikely to take a firm 'no' very well, and has remarked that every time a Prefect tells an Azurcrest not to do something, three illicit parties are held in their honour. She has a cardinal rule when dealing with her own house's fun-loving tendencies: "don't ruin a good thing."

Don't break the rules every time you want to, don't flaunt when you do, and be smart about it. When students start to get publicly riled up about breaking rules, she tries to divert their attention to a related but staff-approved activity, or to provide something (like the Buddy System sign-up sheet) to help them stay on the right track. Her mission as a Prefect is to teach the younger students, particularly her housemates, how to party responsibly: how to choose their battles, look good to the staff, and avoid getting caught when there's no other option but a bash.

HYPOCRISY: She still breaks the rules. She organizes Grotto parties, or she finds one-time-only loopholes to throw victory parties in honour of the Quidditch team. Such celebrations are a big part of how she handles her intense work schedule, but they might also be her downfall. Her partytime stamina is endless. She will dance, drink, and smoke all night long, and she crosses the line between 'teasing' and 'flirtation' either with ease or ignorance.

ATHLETICS & VIOLENCE: Quinn is a rabid fan of every athletic endeavour she can find. Growing up in Hamilton saw Quinn playing hockey all winter, every winter; in fact, the 4 a.m. wakeup call for weekly practice helped form some of her diligent study habits. While not always visibly competitive in her regular life, Quinn is bloodthirsty when it comes to sports. The most points she's ever lost for Azurcrest were for screaming obscenities from the sidelines of the Quidditch pitch, and she never quite learned how to balance her hormonally-charged passions for violent sports with being a real individual with responsibilities. She was in serious leagues for most of her childhood, and she left that structure at a very inconvenient time — play styles became more violent as the level got higher and players got older, but she didn't stick around long enough to learn how to do any of this responsibly. She's got the power and the hostility and the dedication, but none of the discipline, perspective, or understanding that would balance it out.

As for being a Quidditch reserve, she'll say "Oh yeah, it's great, I still feel like part of a team~" but she's still pretty sour about becoming what she sees as a glorified bench-warmer. While she wears a smile and throws victory parties, her congratulations are always delivered in the form of "You guys did so well" and "The team is doing really well." There is no "us." She never brings this up with Etta or the rest of the team—the emotions only take the form of drunken confessions—because she's not about to tell the Captain that they've done something wrong. She respects Etta as a friend and an athlete, and thinks it's inappropriate to question a coach's decision.

Mother: Flora (Flo) Stewart Cunningham. 44 years old. Muggleborn. Runs an early education homeschool/daycare for local wizardly children out of their house intermittently, a couple of years on and a couple of years off. Currently in the latter phase, helping out at her husband's store.

Flo is the straight (wo)man of the Cunningham household, with a dry sense of humour and a nose-to-the-grindstone work ethic. She takes everything her husband and daughter get up to, like the annual Most Important Snoopy Dance of the Year, in stride. She's the resident hockey expert and was a terrifying intense hockey mom when Quinn played in organized leagues. Every Monday she owls her daughter the past week's newspaper sports sections.

Father: Gordon (Gord) Cunningham. 44 years old. Halfblood. Proprietor of Cast On, Charm Off, a yarn store in downtown Hamilton that sells yarn spun from animals of a magical nature; every yarn is purported to have special properties.

Gord is a clown who takes very few things seriously and revels in lovingly embarrassing his wife and daughter in front of friends and family. Without his support and constant reminders to calm down, Flo probably would have burned out from work years ago, and Quinn wouldn't have made it as far as Gooseberry. He loves trashy reality shows (ex. The Bachelorette) and celebrity gossip, which he owls Quinn about every regularly despite her neither understanding nor caring to follow either topic.

Quinn refers to her parents by their first names, and is an only child.

FAMILY HISTORY (GORD, MEET FLOW): Gord Cunningham and Flo Stewart met on the first day of kindergarten at Coote's School for Magical Cultivation.* At first they despised each other on account of one being "icky" and the other having "cooties," although the record of which child had which condition has since been lost. They eventually warmed up to one another; Flo initially leaned on Gord for his knowledge of how to get by in the wizarding world, and Gord eventually leaned back onto the much better student when his grades were falling due to an acute case of Being a Kid.

Neither child was from a particularly affluent or influential family. Both families had been in Hamilton for a couple generations, and both were more or less working-class. Gord grew up in a small pocket of concealed magical families on the escarpment, and for the most part, his relatives worked in hospitality and service positions around Hamilton. Flo grew up living the No-Maj life in downtown Hamilton and came from a family that tended to find employment either in the ubiquitous steel mills, or as elementary school educators.

Gord and Flo both remained at Coote's for their entire educations. As familiarity grew to friendship, and friendship grew closer, sometime in their high school tenure they went steady; soon after graduation, they were engaged. The high school sweethearts wasted no time in getting married (due in part to the staunch Protestant beliefs of both sets of parents).

THE INFAMOUS HONEYMOON: Gord and Flo sold their possessions shortly before their honeymoon. They used the cash to buy a very old and even more unreliable Volkswagen RV and set off on a road trip across Canada meant to take two weeks. Their cross-Canada road trip took three months — and then they added on five months of the United States — and more for Central and South America — and the list grew. They left home for their honeymoon at 18, and returned home at 23 after a whirlwind ‘round-the-world tour of self-discovery, busking, and sleeping under the stars. Malaria sold separately.

CHILDHOOD: Quinn was born two years later and proceeded to experience a warm and loving, if often embarrassing, upbringing. Her parents re-integrated with Canadian society reasonably well, and their "Discoverymoon" stories were guaranteed hits at parties (as long as they censored discoveries of a sexual or hallucinogenic nature around family). She grew up in a small townhouse downtown that was decorated with tchotchkes from their adventures, most of which she had no idea the origin of. (She would often ask and receive the answer "Fertility statue," whether it looked more like a woman with pendulous breasts, or just seemed to be a gourd.) Long, embarrassing stories about parents on vacation were reserved for when her friends were over for dinner.

For much of Quinn's childhood, Gord worked for a tailor and Flo worked toward her ECE certifications, eventually opening a daycare/homeschool when Quinn was four years old. Although neither spent more than a few months living in the 1960s, both parents take being a "child of the sixties" as a duty (although they are often facetious about it). Gord sewed much of their clothing, and Quinn's parents enjoyed employing the barter system whenever they could, whether for goods or services. Their backyard has always been an extremely functional vegetable garden, and they have been known to discreetly raise other plants from time to time. For recreational use only, of course.

EARLY SCHOOL: Quinn attended the daycare until she entered Coote's in the first grade. Her progress at school was rapid — she was an incredibly bright child who loved to learn, and constantly pestered teachers for extra homework. She has since learned not to ask that in front of the entire class, and now phrases it as requests for "extra credit assignments." She was consistently at the top of her class, and made a few good friends along the way. When at home, she was either working on homework or "volunteering" to help her mother with the daycare duties; she realized early that she enjoyed taking care of other people, but it would be a few years until that manifested into her current goal of becoming an emergency healer.

Quinn grew up with one foot each in nomaj and promaj (or whatever) Hamilton, and is equally comfortable in either world — both worlds, after all, have awesome sports. She learned to skate as soon as she could more or less hold herself standing, and has played hockey since the following year. Quodpot came next, with Quinn joining a less-explosive local league when she was nine.

One of Quinn's Coote's professors took her aside after school one day to tell her about this school, Gooseberry High. Quinn had recently come to realize that she had A Dream, and it was to be a healer — this school had courses beyond what Coote's could offer that might help her out, and he quietly hoped that the more diverse and more ‘creative' slant to the school could push her to think outside of her very comfortable box a little bit more.

HOCKEY: She played AAA-level minor league hockey until she left for Gooseberry. AAA is the highest minor league level of play — kids who remain at this level throughout high school often secure athletics-based university scholarships, and those with professional dreams might get picked up by leagues in Europe. This was been Quinn's plan: keep playing hockey, get scholarship, become doctor; or, keep playing hockey; play in Europe, see the world, become healer. And she probably would have had a good chance if she'd stayed in Hamilton (and learned to control her more physical impulses on the ice). But the prospect of Gooseberry was too enticing, because she knew that the quality of the education she received would be much higher. The decision to stay in Coote's and keep playing hockey would have been the decision to potentially handicap her actual ability to achieve her fundamental goal of becoming a healer, so she went to Gooseberry.

Quinn's parents supported her enthusiasm for her Gooseberry application and explained to family that she should be allowed to Find Her Own Path, Just As They Did; despite extreme discomfort with the price tag that came with the 'prestigious alternative school' label. Quinn was extremely proud of herself to be accepted on academic merits, as well as a little bewildered as to why her parents seemed even happier than her. They had read the scholarship letter.

FRESHMAN YEAR+: Quinn completely threw herself into her first year at Gooseberry. She worked hard at her classes, worked hard at making friends, and might have worked hardest at getting on the Quidditch team (for which she had trained all summer). To everybody's surprise she made it on as a beater... and that was the last year she was a full member of the team. The Captain agreed she was a talented player and an asset on the field, but she had been involved in so many "accidental" broken noses and bones that she would be a liability to the team in the long-term. Instead of kicking her off of the team she was bumped down to reserve, and has been there since.

Quinn was pretty sour about being made a reserve, but after a few months, she decided that it probably was the best move — or at least that's what she tells people. She can still practice with the team and keep sharp, but now she had more time to dedicate to schoolwork! Really guys, it's great! (She refuses to listen to anybody who says that maybe she's a little too savage on the pitch, and acts like it's part of a ha-ha, hi-larious joke.) She's actually still quite resentful about the whole "reserve" situation. Gooseberry's Quidditch league was a big part of Quinn making her decision to leave Hamilton, because it wouldn't be all bad if she could still participate in a sport, and maybe she could even get picked up by a professional Quidditch team instead of a hockey after! She spends a year on that team and everything's great until she's knocked down to reserve. So she has no real hockey team, no real Quidditch team, and she's not willing to admit that it's her fault that she got bumped down to reserve because she's blind to the fact that she still has a lot to learn about sportsmanship in general.

SOPHOMORE+/PREFECT: Quinn was extremely pleased to be made a prefect for her sophomore year, and immediately took her duties seriously. Maybe a bit too seriously. She was a little insufferable at first, insisting that everything should be done to the letter of the law in all capacities. This began to create tension between her and her friends, mostly because they said she had become "stupid annoying." She tried not to let it get to her, but she had driven away most of her friends by mid-January. Quinn's schoolwork began to suffer. After two months of dropping grades and loneliness, a particularly nasty letter left in her locker helped her realize how far she'd gone; which is to say, way too far. She slowly started writing letters to the closer friends she had lost, asking for forgiveness and maybe also some hang-outs; as they made up, her marks began to climb back up. In fact, once Quinn realized how much better she was with friends around, she became both much more easy-going socially, and a better student — their support helped her through hard times, and she began forming regular study groups for her classes. (This has been a Very Special Episode of "The Life of Quinn.")

She softened up by the end of the year, and in her junior year she was much closer to her current disposition: she will dock points but she isn't out on a mission to vengeance. As of junior year, she also became more ready to reward the good behaviour. Now she considers herself a fairly well-balanced prefect.

Quinn dated Rafael Ramirez from Sophomore to Junior year and she's convinced everything would have kept being peachy for a while if it weren't for dat wascaly wabbit his older brother, Ricardo. Ricardo decided early on that he didn't like her (because, she maintains, he's an asshole) and needled their relationship until it was more than either she or Rafael wanted to handle. So they broke up. She's convinced that most of the school has drunk some kind of Ricardo Kool-Aid because he's still lauded left and right by the student body; she mostly gets her jollies by referring to him as "King Ricardo," "The King Prick," or "Prickardo" to close friends.

SENIOR: Her senior year is sure to be a busy one: she's extremely serious about her end goal of emergency healing, and is convinced that having top grades, a stellar activity record, and strong references will not be enough. As such, she's dedicating much of her time to her senior project, which is detailed below.

* Coote's School for Magical Cultivation, formerly known as The Cootes School for Witches and Wizards, is a K-12 public wizardry school based out of Dundas, Ontario, that serves magical communities in Ontario, Quebec, and Manitoba. There is no boarding system, and non-local students floo in and out each day. Local students commute via a Knight-Bus-style school bus.

Coote's is not a famous school, however, in the early 1970s it became notable in the administration's efforts to rebrand the school befitting an age of discovery and learning (read: togetherness and cooperation). Its new strategy was to combine magical and No-Maj curricula so that students would be equipped with the tools to learn and function in both societies, as the administration were adamant that the future would be fellowship. (No, seriously: the motto went from "Think, Learn, Grow" to "Our Fellowship is the Future.") Classes are shuffled around yearly into topics like "The Science of Life," which has units combining Herbology with Biology, and Chemistry with Potions. This is not to say that the education is world-class, and many families prefer to send their children to schools which "express a more precise and consistent vision" than Coote's. Regardless, it is a publicly-funded school popular for families who can't afford the more common North American boarding-style educations. French classes are mandatory in every year.