NAME: Winnifred Harrison Gould. She hates the nickname “Winnie,” but has kind of resigned herself to it. At least it’s better than “Fred.”
AGE: 15; 21st June ’81.
HOUSE/YEAR: Ravenclaw/11th.
SOCIAL STATUS: The Goulds have done very well for themselves, to the point that they could probably retire now and still raise their children if they so desired. However, they do not spend extravagantly, and Walter Gould still works in the same advertising firm in which he was hired for his first real job. Her mother, Embla Gould, was an executive at an investment firm, but retired to raise her two children. They are respectably wealthy, but by no means flashy, and she is the fifth in her family to attend Hogwarts: both of her parents and her older brother and sister are alumni.
SEXUALITY: Heterosexual.

APPEARANCE: Winnifred is often told “you’d be a very pretty girl if you’d just smile once in a while!” and to some extent, this is true. Her features are often screwed up in an expression of long-suffering patience just about to snap, surprise, or a dryly amused (and perhaps unpleasant) smirk. When a smile does happen to cross her face, it’s almost like looking at a different person. She isn’t a terribly remarkable looking girl otherwise. Her skin is a light brown colour, eyes several shades darker. Unfortunately, perhaps, her face is dominated by her nose and if she were more self conscious than she is, it would be the sort of broad, overshadowing feature that would drive her to despair. She has shoulder length brown hair that she straightens, although in its natural state, it’s pleasantly curly. She is of average height and weight for a girl her age, and though she actually has a decent figure, she hides it beneath modest, nondescript clothing.

PERSONALITY: Winnifred is wry. That is the best way to describe her in one word. She’s not exactly the shy and retiring sort, but she’s not the loudest person. In person, she doesn’t normally talk unless she feels as though she’s got something to contribute to the conversation, and even then, most of what she says has a double-edged meaning. She’s not sarcastic, exactly, but you can get an idea from the way she speaks what her worldview is.

And that worldview? Wry. Winnifred finds most of it amusing and sort of sad, all at the same time. With all of the wisdom of a fifteen year old, she’s decided to resign herself to appreciating the absurdities that life has to offer. Some of this cynicism comes from a father in advertising and a mother in investments, and some of it is all her own observation. She does have a good sense of humour about things, though, despite the frowns of concern that often cross her features. Yes, things are ridiculous, yes the world is depressing—so why not have a good chuckle at its expense?

This detachment has reached a completely Zen level (she’s also a Buddhist, as of last year, much to the chagrin of her staunchly Lutheran parents). She doesn’t get angry, she just raises an eyebrow and figures out a way to get around the obstacle, if at all possible. Viciously, if necessary (for all that she touts Buddhist ideals, she’s not very good at them—she picks and chooses tenets that she likes, and ignores the rest). Winnifred doesn’t worry about anything, because it will all work its way out eventually, if she’s got any say in things. She’s not quite competent enough, yet, to be able to worry without cause, but she hopes to one day achieve such a state.

While she could be mistaken for ambitious, she isn’t actually. Yes, she has grand plans for her life, and one day aspires to be the CEO of her own company, but this is more for the inherent pleasure in puzzles figured out and problems solved than any real desire for material wealth. She has little appreciation for money as only a girl who was raised without any lack of it can have: she doesn’t think about it one way or another, really, because it was always there. Still, her “ambitions,” as it were, seem a little at odds with the rest of her laidback, calm personality, at a first glance. Although she carries several inherent contradictions within her personality, most of them are reconcilable when you get to know her.

She is very patient and tries to plan for the long run, but she’s not above making snap decisions if she has to, she just prefers the complexity of things that take a long time to unfold. There’s a certain pleasure in it. It’s for that reason that she keeps a very ugly, scrappy looking bonsai tree on the window of her dorm room: again, her aspirations are checked by her current abilities, though she’s sure that with time, she can rectify her own mistakes. She can wait. She’s got her whole life.

While she doesn’t suffer fools gladly, per se, she suffers them easily enough, treating annoying people like mayflies: they’ll be gone soon. She enjoys socializing because she finds people interesting, but there’s a certain coolness to her demeanour and an arid dryness to her humour that don’t make her the easiest person to get to know intimately. There’s the unfortunate side effects to her calm: she’s slightly detached from her emotions; there are very few lows, but no dizzying highs, to use a metaphor. She’s complacent and content, but not necessarily happy. Either way, it suffices for her: she’s amused and satisfied, and that’s what matters.

She was almost put into Slytherin, but seemed more suited to Ravenclaw instead. She is fond of nice things despite her avowed preference for simple, Spartan living; it’s telling that although her bedroom at home is furnished with simple but rather pricy furniture, and her clothes are definitely well-made. She enjoys “classy” things and detests tackiness, and is definitely nowhere near as nice a person or as altruistic of one as she pretends to be. She’s too cool (not in the popularity sense, in the temperament sense) for that.

DEFINING CHARACTERISTICS: She’s the girl who doesn’t smile and often has her eyebrows raised, and also that girl who’s into business and Buddhism, do those things even go together? She has a really odd sense of humour.
LIKES: Economics, Buddhism, Zen, The Prince, Hobbes’ Leviathan, bonsai trees, post-punk, business ethics, Monty Python, meditation, museums, tabbouleh, yellow legal pads, maths, numbers
DISLIKES: When people get really emotional on you, punk, community-run businesses, geometry, the glass ceiling, hummus, tackiness, the sciences, dirt under the fingernails, Sunday Church services
INSIDE SCOOP:

01. For all of her talk about karma and ethics, she’s got very few scruples when it comes to “figuring out a puzzle,” i.e. some problem of business or her personal life that needs to be solved.
02. She’s very fond of plants, but she hasn’t got a green thumb. It’s amazing that her bonsai has lasted as long as it has, even in its current mutilated form (her hand slipped while she was trimming it). Her lack of skill with plants is one of the few regrets of her life.
03. She occasionally daydreams about becoming a complete hermit for a few years—moving out to the country and seeing no one and growing her own food. Unfortunately, this will never happen; she realises she’d starve to death.
04. Whenever something actually does upset her, which has happened exactly twice in her entire time at Hogwarts, she goes up to the Astronomy Tower at night and screams.
05. She enjoys painting, but no one has ever seen a finished product. Whether they ARE even finished is even her parents’ best guess. The canvases vanish.

HISTORY: Walter Gould grew up in the affluent suburb of Shincliffe in the City of Durham, and never really left it. Oh, sure, he went to school—his parents paid a pretty penny to get him into Hogwarts when they realized that they couldn’t afford Eton—and later on, took his PhD in Business Studies at the University of Warwick, where he would meet his future wife, Embla Harrison, MPhil, Economics, who had been two years below him at Hogwarts. The two moved in together shortly after they finished their respective degrees, although they did not marry until their futures became more stable. For Walter, that meant moving up in the ranks of his advertising agency until he became an indispensable part—a partner, even—and for Embla, a steady, comfortable job at a small investment firm.

Once Embla became pregnant with her first child, however, the family was comfortable enough for her to retire and become a stay-at-home mother, which was what she wanted even while working towards her post-graduate degree. She gave birth to a son, Walter Gould Jr., in 1976, and a daughter, Willa Gould, in 1977. Both Gould children were intended for Hogwarts almost as soon as they exited the womb. Their last child and the baby of the family was born in 1981.

Winnifred Gould was named after her grandmother, much to her later dismay. Called “Winnie” as a child, a nickname that she despised, she was the coddled and spoiled youngest child. She was not capricious in her desires; mostly, she just wanted things like her own garden and a continuously stocked bookshelf. She was an odd child; unlike her older sister and brother, she had very little interest in sports, and very rarely cried or threw any tantrums. Her mother used to joke that they could hardly tell when Winnie and her best friend were in the house, because she couldn’t hear them at all.

She attended Durham School from the age of three until age eleven, making good marks the entire time. Her teachers had only complimentary things to say about her schoolwork, although her lack of interest in her classmates was a constant concern, something mentioned in notes home consistently. Winnifred always shrugged it off whenever anyone asked her about it, and she had her parents wrapped around her fingers enough so that eventually, they just let her be.

Throughout her childhood, Winnifred calmly went about trying to find her way. She tried various experiments, including six months of vegetarianism when she was ten. On her eleventh birthday, Winnifred was sent away to Hogwarts, and placed into Ravenclaw. It suited her well, though she didn’t exactly enjoy her roommates, she found her own ways of dealing with them, like occasionally “misplacing” some of Luna Lovegood’s things when the girl became particularly aggravating. In general, though, she rather enjoyed Hogwarts, particularly its business courses.

Midway through her fourth year, Winnifred decided that she was going to convert to Buddhism, distressing her staunchly Lutheran parents, but eventually they came around, although they’re hoping it’s just another one of her phrases, like vegetarianism and her extremely brief flirtation with Islam at age twelve. She’s not as deeply invested in it as she should be, and mostly, she’s just taken bits about it that she likes and adapted them to suit her own needs, although she does read about it when she’s got the time. In her fifth year currently, Winnifred is looking into universities already. While she’d like to attend Oxford or Cambridge, she’s also being realistic about her possibilities, and is also open to attending her parents’ alma mater, Warwick.