Details[]
Full Name:
Quentin Brithael Trimble
Nicknames:
Quent, Trimble
Date of Birth:
November 11, 1966 (Armistice Day)
Family Motto:
Emitte lucem et veritatem. (Send out light and truth.)
Blood status:
Pureblooded.
Wand:
12" elder, runespoor fang core
Work[]
Profession:
Head of the Regulators for the Ministry of Magic in London, currently acting as an field researcher.
Professionally, his current work focuses on ghosts, portraits and binding magics. He is also doing personal research on the history of the unforgivable curses and how those have changed and been controlled over time.
Books written:
Practical Defensive Magic and Its Use Against the Dark Arts (1989) --- standard DADA text at Hogwarts
The Dark Arts Outsmarted (1996) --- Small run, out of print.
Appearance[]
5'11" tall; He has ruddy hair that is considered brown by some, auburn by others. The state of his hair varies, depending on the level of field work he's been doing. Typically, he's a rather furry individual who grows hair extremely quickly and often looks somewhat fuzzy around the edges because of it. Due to the paleness of his skin, Quent often deliberately cultivates facial hair to minimize sunburn. His skin is spattered with freckles, not only on his face but consistently everywhere on the rest of his body due to his sunbathing habits.
Quentin's eyes are green and are often obscured by glasses when he needs to see things up close (is farsighted). He walks with a slight limp in his right leg due to a calf injury sustained by shrapnel during the second war. Some of it is still embedded, both in his leg and in his skull, as he was in a muggle area at the time and couldn't receive proper medical treatment. If one digs under all of his hair, there is a deep scar just over his right ear. He is Cornish and has a strong accent which he's been unable to shake and is his strongest failing when it comes to language learning. While he speaks rudimentary dialects from the places that he's been, he does so with a Cornish accent that often leads to great confusion and merriment when he tries to have serious conversations with native speakers. Raised the son of a deaf mother, he is fluent in sign language and that often comes out in his movements and mannerisms. He tends to enuciate very clearly (though still with the accent) and be extremely expressive with his hands and mouth. People often register this on a subconscious level and think he looks "really odd" without knowing quite why.
Personality[]
Quentin is clever- it's probably his strongest trait. While he's Slytherin, it's not a house that people instantly take him for- typically, he's mistaken for one of the others. He is a man of action, quick and decisive action. Because of the speed at which he operates, people often assume that he hasn't thought his actions through. This isn't the case. It's not that he hasn't thought it through- it's that he's so used to having to make split-second decisions that he runs through a train of thought in seconds. He doesn't, however, think less of others for taking their time to think things through. He simply recognizes that there are many moments in life when a man cannot hesitate and he has rarely, in his professional life, had the time to stop and spend hours of thought on any decision.
For all of this, he's oddly concentrated. He is content to spend hours digging through a book searching for the secrets that it holds. While he's happiest actively pursuing a mystery, the research leading up to the pursuit is often as exciting for him as the actual chase. He can be extremely manipulative in how he uses this information as well- in his writings, he has always deliberately withheld information or interpreted it creatively to promote a certain way of thinking or teaching a subject. While he doesn't appear on surface glance to be as removed or secretive as some of his fellow housemates, Quentin hides his secrets in the open. By appearing to be casual in what he tells people, he is able to avoid telling them those things that he feels need to remain hidden.
He also likes to write in the bath. Oh, and be naked. In fact, he's gloriously happy when naked and has no shame about nudity whatsoever.
Background[]
After graduation, Trimble accepted a gift from his father that enabled him to devote himself to further studies of the Dark Arts. He decided to travel to Iraq and Egypt to examine medieval Arabic magic and Islamic alchemy, an area that had been largely ignored by his professors at school. While he didn't divulge much of the information that he obtained, this led to the writing of a textbook of magical theory over that period of years.
At 23, he returned to London to find a publisher for his textbook. While he found one, the book, upon its completion was heavily edited. A modified edition of this edited book was chosen by Dumbledore for teaching at Hogwarts some time later. Still, while Trimble's name is on the book, he's never considered it his due to the heavy amounts of editing done to it. In fact, he's rather embarrassed by it.
During this period, Trimble also went on the lecture circuit to raise money for a trip to India. He spent longer than he intended lecturing and teaching, not only because he determined to pay his father back but also because he met, and became engaged to, a pureblood named Natalie Yarbrough. The engagement ended 6 months after it occurred (and a year and a half after the relationship commenced) because she refused to go to India with him, instead suggesting that he stay in London and take up "something respectable". While they both were in love, Quentin simply wasn't able to give up what he felt to be his life's work for any woman.
He recovered quite happily, however, in Calcutta and Mumbai, spending more time in the former. Throwing himself into his work with a passion there, he wrote another book, The Dark Arts Outsmarted, a clever piece about his adventures in the East that combined practical application with magical theory. While his detractors attempted to argue that the book was just another Lockhart ripoff, the truth is that Quentin rarely inserted himself into his own writing, simply describing his entire journey through the eyes of people around him. The book had an extremely small run, however, and was not reprinted so few wizards have read it. Fewer still own a copy of it. The money from the book was enough to finance a brief stay in Pakistan, then back to traveling through Nepal for a longer period.
He returned to London again in 1997, right before the death of Albus Dumbledore. It shook him but not because of the man's dying. What shook him was that the Ministry confiscated his passport and said that he was going to work for them.
Quentin's initial response to this was to tell them where, exactly, they could put his passport. However, after a furious discussion with his mother, he realized that it hadn't been the most tactful decision he could have made. He wasn't interested in taking a side in the war- he felt that the Death Eaters were too crazy and he'd hated Dumbledore with a passion. What he wanted was for things to remain as they were and neither side seemed to Quent to present that as an option. After some careful thinking, he went back to the Ministry and asked, in an unprecedented move, to join the Regulators.