Mirielle Quinn
From Incantatem
Contents |
Basic Information
Name: Mirielle Quinn
Alias: Lamia Von Maur
Age: 122
Appears: 23
Spouse: Vladimir Everett Quinn
Offspring: Darien Marcus Quinn (deceased)
Position: Ambassador of the Ministry of Magic to the VRR
Race: Vampire (formerly human)
Turned: Around 1897
History
Childhood Until Durmstrang
Mirielle was born the third child of Estella and Ciprian Von Maur, and was the result of her parents' last attempt for a boy. Ciprian loved his two daughters, but desperately wanted a boy to carry on the family name. After Mirielle however, he decided that his wife was not capable of producing a boy, for whatever reason, and stopped trying for more children.
Her relationship with her parents was fairly normal, although slightly strained. Rowena, her beautiful eldest sister, was gifted with a very tiny waist and a buxom chest. Although her head was fairly empty, Rowena's place in the family was as: 'the beautiful one.' Lucretia, her second eldest sister, was already proving to be very intelligent, and long before Mirielle was born, Lucretia had already been labeled: 'the smart one.' This left very little room for Mirielle, and she found herself labeled as: 'the weird one.' Her parents weren't entirely incorrect. While Lucretia loved to read and study languages, and Rowena fancied trying on dresses and arranging place settings, Mirielle took pleasure in reading. Mirielle read from an extremely early age, and would hide herself from the rest of the family four hours just so that she could read undisturbed. Her quiet nature lead her parents to believe that there might be something wrong with her, but as she grew, their worries faded.
Mirielle came from a magical and pureblooded family, although they were not rich. The family was well off, but not enough to live off of their savings. Ciprian held a steady job at the Romanian Ministry of Magic to provide for them. Each daughter was given a fairly decent musical education. Lucretia was given violin lessons, Rowena was given piano lessons, and Mirielle learned the harp. Each also recieved voice lessons until they were sent to Durmstrang.
Rowena was the first to be sent to Durmstrang, and both Lucretia and Mirielle were intensely jealous. Lucretia and Mirielle both had a fondness for learning, and became close during the years while their elder sister was away. Rowena was four years older than Mirielle, and three years older than Lucretia, so it was some time before either of them were sent to Durmstrang.
Durmstrang Years
First Year
Mirielle's first year at Durmstrang was a living hell. Rowena and Lucretia had already found their places on the social ladder and while Lucretia still loved her sister and all of her quirks, the rest of the school used them as an excuse to make her life miserable. In essence, she was the girls' punching bag. Mirielle blamed this on the fact that her waist was somewhat bigger than the other girls', mainly because she didn't have a friend in her year who could lace her corset for her. What it really was, was that Mirielle was a rather quiet girl and still found more solace in reading, although she soon discovered a new love entirely: the Dark Arts.
It wasn't anything like she wanted to hurt anyone or cause desctruction, chaos, or anything along those lines. Rather, she was fascinated with the fact that other schools did not teach the subject and even went as far as to forbid their usage altogether. It made the subject oddly exciting, and the fact that she had a natural ability for it also fueled her desire to learn more.
She spent her free time reading her text book and taking notes until she was done with her first year text book and requested Lucretia's second year text book. Lucretia let her have it when she wasn't using it or in class, and soon Mirielle had completed that one as well. By the end of her first year, she had completed the entire cirriculum for the Dark Arts, much to her Professor's surprise. She didn't have much troubles actually performing any of the spells, although she required some help for individual spells. Her Professor was always willing to help her, even if it meant devoting extra hours to her education. Because of her frequent visits, they developed a friendship based on the common interest of Dark Arts. In the halls, when she was being bullied or otherwise humiliated by her female classmates, it was her Dark Arts Professor who would often step in. It was his knowledge and his acts of heroism that made her grow to admire him.
Second Year
Mirielle's second year passed by much the same as the first save a few differences. Having exhausted her Dark Arts cirriculum already, Mirielle turned to the school library, and made it her project to clear that out. However, the library had much more books in it than the seven she'd studied over her first year, so it took her much longer to cover it. She didn't like to spend her time in the library because there were usually others and because she didn't want to restrict herself to the library's hours. Often to make up for the fact that she was spending so much time on the Dark Arts, she would sacrifice sleeping time to work on her actual school work. Strangely enough, operating on three or so hours of sleep was not too hard for her day to day, although on weekends when she did not have regular classes she often slept in for twelve hours or more.
The other students were beginning to suspect she was crazy. Mirielle, although she desperately wanted to be a part of their group and be accepted, was more aloof about her oddities than nice, which just dug herself deeper into the dark hole of seclusion. She begin to spend a great deal of her time in a walk in closet which was, for the most part, unused. As she learned more of the Dark Arts, she practiced them in the closet. When she left the closet, she sealed it off with a powerful locking charm of her own device, which much to some of her classmates' annoyance, no one could crack. She kept all of her most treasured things there as well as many project she was currently working on, under the assumption that no one could get in there, which was nearly a correct assumption.
Her Dark Arts Professor continued to help her, and by now her other professors were noticing Mirielle's obvious incilination towards the Dark Arts. Some of them didn't mind, as they had students of their own with inclinations towards their own subjects, and certainly Mirielle needed something to do with her life (because with a waist like that, she would find it hard to score a husband during her season). Others, particularly her History of Magic Professor, were quite miffed. Mirielle, although she paid special attention to the Dark Arts that went above and beyond her normal studies, did not shirk her duties in other classes. Quite the contrary, Mirielle was recieving wonderful grades in all of her classes, and after the Dark Arts, her best class was History of Magic. This was also due to personal undertaking, however. Mirielle had discovered, although the rest of the school and staff already knew (she was simply out of the loop), that her Dark Arts teacher was, in fact, a vampire. Not just any vampire either, but a vampire who boasted having already been in more than one major war (although in another country) and started a major business. In other words, he was an interesting vampire.
So she did a bit of snooping out of curiosity. It wasn't anything she was really dedicated to, but if she didn't feel like pouring her soul into the Dark Arts at that moment, she went and tried to find all of the books that had his name in them. There were a few really suspicious ones, like Everett Quinn, V. Everett Quinn, E. Vladimir Quinn, or even just E.V.Q, but she never got up the courage to ask him if any of these people were him, and soon the project was forgotten.
The summer after her second year, Mirielle decided to read ahead in her cirriculum for the year to come, so that she could devote more library time to the Dark Arts. She asked all of her professors before hand what she had to buy, giving a silly excuse for the reason she could not wait for the list that came shortly before the school year and bought everything before hand so that by the time September rolled around she would be ready. Another plus was that she could avoid her loud and brash family, who were suffering a different sort of crisis that year. Rowena had fallen in love (or just fooled around with, it was hard to tell) with a man that Mirielle didn't meet until much later. Either way, she went and got herself pregnant, and the family promptly disowned her to save their reputation.
Third Year
By the time third year rolled around, Rowena had disappeared as if she'd never existed, something that troubled Mirielle but only because she knew this meant that her parents could easily do the same for her in the future, especially because she was convinced that they loved her more. However, Rowena's absence also meant something else: the Von Maurs had room for another daughter. So, much to Mirielle's disappointment, she became the new 'pretty one.' Although her eyes weren't as blue as Rowena's and Rowena had naturally curly hair that Mirielle lacked, her parents realized that Mirielle could still pass as fairly attractive. Mirielle's pale skin, sky blue eyes, and thin stature were far from unattractive. Her waist didn't tuck in very well, but that was alright. Waists were made for bending anyways, and so over the summer, they began to tighten Mirielle's corset. Mirielle, who was just starting to grow into a young woman, showed promise of filling out into a form as long as they forced a decent waist upon her, was not interested in having a teeny waist anymore. She was bent on studying for the upcoming year, which her parents saw as ridiculous. After all, Mirielle wasn't the smart one - she was the pretty one. The pretty one who was going to get married, bring them out of debt, and return honor and respect to the Von Maur name... indirectly because she was a girl and would be taking her husband's name.
They held small luncheon parties and dinner galas for her, all of which she shunned and ran back to her studies. Mirielle was starting to annoy her parents, particularly her mother who would have killed for such treatment from her own parents. When they finally sent Mirielle back to school along with Lucretia who'd just observed the entire situation calmly from a distance, everyone was relieved. Mirielle because she was away from the frivelous life her parents were trying to force on her, Lucretia because Mirielle would stop whining, and her parents because Mirielle was turning out to be a rather horrid 'pretty one.' Her parents set her off with the promise that she was ugly and would continue to be if she didn't get some one to tighten her corset for her.
Mirielle then became even more self conscious than she had been before. Mirielle hardly saw her older sister at school and still didn't have enough friends to have anyone in her own age group tie her corset for her, so she tried to devise roping spells to help her. Most of them failed, and still she wasn't able to tighten it to the degree she thought was proper without putting herself in danger of tying it so hard that she couldn't breathe all together. What was worse, was that although she had noticed boys the year before, she now found that she wanted to look better for their benefit, and agonized over her appearance.
Still, her studies were the most important thing to her, and even though her parents had interfered over the summer, she was still able to stay months ahead of where her classes were and devote a lot of time strictly to her Dark Arts research. She found that she was starting to enjoy the presence of her Dark Arts teacher. Infact, she enjoyed it so much, she would make silly excuses to stay in his classroom, like asking for help with lessons she'd mastered two years ago or insisting that she study the Dark Arts books from the library in his Dark Arts classroom (although this only worked if there wasn't another class there). It took a few months of this sort of behavior to realize that she had a rather strong crush on her Dark Arts teacher, of all people, and that on top of that - she'd had this crush since last year.
At first, she was horribly embarassed. After all, he was probably a (long-time) married man. However, from questioning the other girls in a tactful way, she found that not only was he not married, but most of them also had pretty serious crushes on him. After all, despite his age, he was attractive. Even his voice had a lovely tone to it, while all of the boys their age had voices that were in transition and had a horrible habit of breaking every few words.
With this new information, she felt better about her feelings, although she still wasn't really planning on acting on them. After all, Professor Quinn probably saw her as a child or at the very least, a student. He'd never dated his students before, so why would she be an exception? Still, she couldn't help but linger in his classroom and hang on every word he said - even during long lectures on subject material she already knew. She found herself scribbling his name on all of her papers, and of course her own with his last name. He was slowly starting to fill her thoughts, and the only way to combat it was to further study the Dark Arts. The library was running low on books she hadn't read by mid year and by the end of it, she had finished everything concerning Dark Arts, even remotely, in it.
Fourth Year
It was at the begining of her fourth year that Mirielle's life became considerably more complicated. As the 'pretty one', and the sole savior of the family, Mirielle's family began to search for her other half, or at least whoever could pull them back into a comfortable living style. Mirielle was forced to meet with anyone from age 14 to age 60 and treat them all as possible candidates for marriage. Mirielle despised the idea of marriage to all of them, deeming none of them worthy for various reasons. Her parents were fed up with her for not liking ANY of their choices. The main problem was, in Mirielle's mind, all of them paled in comparison to her Dark Arts Professor. She tried desperately to get him out of her head, and even considered mailing him, but didn't know where he was staying for the summer, sincerely doubting that he regularly spent the entire year at Durmstrang, and therefore gave up on the idea entirely.
By the time she returned to Durmstrang, again having already finished off that year's cirriculum, she had to restrain herself from running into his office that night. She felt like she had been absent from a good friend from far too long, and almost felt depressed to the point of tears when she couldn't talk to him the first day. After the first day of class she asked to see him later that day privately, insisting that it was incredibly important and could not wait. Because they were friends, he immediately set aside time to talk to her. She spilled everything about her summer of having to meet with people who wanted her for superficial reasons and not for love, and how she was sure she would be miserable for the rest of her life and he was the only one she could talk to. Professor Quinn listened quietly, surprised at her emotional outburst, and told her the options she had, in his eyes, which were to either obey her parents and be miserable or disobey them and elope. Mirielle listened solemnly and came to one conclusion: her future was doomed. She left his office feeling just as depressed, if not more so, than when she had entered in it in the first place.
What was even worse, was that most of the girls from last year had gotten over their crush on him (although they still thought he was attractive) and had moved on to other boys. Lucretia was especially getting a fair amount of attention (because even though she wasn't considered the pretty one, she actually looked very similar to Mirielle except for more severe features). Mirielle hoped every night that her crush for her Dark Arts Professor would fade into nothingness, but by day she would continue to linger in his office and swoon on the inside when he said "Miss Von Maur." She wished he would, for once, call her by her first name just so she could hear the way he said it. It was thoughts like those that clued her into the fact that her crush was steadily falling into an infatuation.
Meanwhile, she continued to dive futher and further into the Dark Arts, now dedicating herself to her book, which was to be titled: The Dark, Dastardly, and Dangerous. It would contain basic theory on dark magic, some spells, and other experiments concerning the Dark Arts, and it would be her life's work. She had her professor assist her continuously because she knew he was still more knowledgable than her and also because she enjoyed his company. However, having run out of new material, Mirielle also resorted to breaking into Professor Quinn's office to "borrow" his Dark Magic books in his personal library. He eventually confronted her about this, once he realized that some one had broken all of the charms on his door and book cases, but was more impressed that she had done that in the first place than angry. He continued to turn a blind eye to her 'stealing' and upped the difficulty of the charms he placed, more as a test for her than to keep her out.
Mirielle's fourth year was torturous for her as she tried to decide what to do with her seemingly misplaced affections that would never be returned. Still, she managed to pass with her usual great marks, even though now she was staying up very late to work on her book. Professor Quinn would send her out of his room after it got too late with a simple: "Good night, Miss Von Maur," and she never contested him. Instead, she'd go back to her closet and continue there until her eyes finally gave out and she succumbed to sleep.
Fifth Year
The summer before Mirielle's fifth year was just as agonizing as the one before it, with a few slight differences. Mirielle's parents had narrowed her selections down to one man - a boy her age that went to her school named Andre Borislav. She was forced to spend time with him, and immediately discovered that he was not the sort of man she wanted to marry. Andre loved anatomy, and aspired to be a healer when he grew up, although Mirielle did not think he had the intelligence to do so. He said that if he could not be a healer, he wanted to be an undertaker of sorts, or perhaps some one that worked closely with magical creatures. Unlike Mirielle however, his taste in professions had nothing to do with the learning behind them. He confessed to her that he had killed many small animals - cats, dogs, birds, even insects, and that when he did, he experienced a strange sense of euphoria that he could not describe to her. He also made it clear that if she told anyone this fact, that he would make her a part of that euphoria, and that the only reason he was telling her was because she would eventually belong to him anyways.
Needless to say, she knew immediately what his personality tendencies were leading him to, and in the back of her mind also knew that if she were to marry him, she would be very likely to die within the first few years of their life together. Still, her parents - her mother especially - failed to see anything more than a charming, yet quiet, young man who came from an extremely wealthy background and would provide them with everything they wanted with a smile on his face. Her father thought that Andre would be easy to manipulate until he grew too old to care, unlike an older man who would possibly have enough intelligence to think for himself and not give the bride's family much money at all.
Mirielle tried to resign herself to her fate. Her infatuation with Professor Quinn only seemed to intensify with time, to the point where Mirielle found herself worrying about him when she wasn't there. Was he alright? If another war sparked up somewhere, would she return the following year to see that he had left to join it? Was he thinking of her right now? So many thoughts crossed through her head about him in a day that she began to question whether or not her crush was healthy and sought the advice of Lucretia (omitting names of course), who only laughed at her and told her that she was simply in love.
However, Mirielle did not find this fact to be simple at all. How could she be in love with some one that she really knew hardly anything about? Sure, Professor Quinn and her talked about things that went outside the normal student/teacher relationship, but aside from the small facts she'd found about him in her second year, she knew nothing of his history.
But it was also this realization that made her decide to try and win him. After all, if it was not uncommon for a young woman to marry a 60 year old man, then why not her to a vampire who was over a hundred years old? Sure, she was his student, but she would only be so for a few more years. If she weren't, then their marriage would likely be socially acceptable.
So she went into her fifth year not only armed with the knowledge of that year's cirriculum, but also with the new hope of attracting Profesor Quinn. Having never really tried to attract men before, Mirielle's first attempts at doing so were pitiful and went by completely unnoticed by Professor Quinn. She'd clean his office, leave him small gifts, and other things that were entirely non-confrontational. When she realized these attempts were failing, she pushed even harder to spend more time with him while they worked on her book. She dropped larger hints, giving him more up-front gifts instead of shying away and was even as bold to give him chocolate on holidays - which was pretty blunt with her intentions. As soon as Professor Quinn started to catch on to her intentions, he seemed a bit nervous and started acting very professional around her - something she took as a win. Even though she didn't want him to feel nervous, she knew that meant he was at least reacting to her, and maybe even that he was trying to resist her because a part of him was attracted to her. Soon, he started to try and refuse her gifts but after a small verbal tussle Professor Quinn would give in and take the gifts anyways. Towards the end of the year, she even started insisting that he call her Mirielle in private, but he always just shook his head and called her Miss Von Maur. Despite this, she started to call him by his first name when they were alone - Vladimir - and eventually shortened that to a very affectionate 'Vlad,' despite his protests.
Sixth Year
The summer of her sixth year, Mirielle and her parents got into a fight over her status with Andre. Now that Mirielle was in her season and eligible for marriage, they wanted her to start the courting process with Andre as immediately as possible. Mirielle protested, even resorting to ripping one of her nicer dresses so that she could not attend a dinner party and be presentable (thus cancelling the dinner party, because even reparo couldn't fix what she did to the garment). Luckily for her, in doing so, she prevented an engagement party and convinced her parents that she was serious about her dislike of Andre. Before sending her back off to Durmstrang, they decided to give Mirielle a chance to find some one else, but refused to tell her how until it happened.
Needless to say, Mirielle didn't care about this anymore. She saw that summer a turning point in her efforts. If she didn't capture Professor Quinn's heart by the end of the year, she would almost certainly be married to Andre no matter what she did to protest it. She needed to pull out all of the stops now if she wanted to win him, which would require desperate measures.
Really, Mirielle was a 'nice girl.' She wasn't the type anyone would expect to go and get herself into trouble, like Rowena. She would never do anything even remotely 'bad.' However, desperate times called for desperate measures, and even though she knew that Vlad was not the type to submit to her just because she was putting out (and would probably tell her to stop, for her own good), she also knew that this would prove to him that she was serious about pursuing him. She started out slowly, because she knew that jumping him would only turn him away from her and give him the wrong idea. She would leave the laces on her boots loose so that she would have to lift her skirt slightly and tie them in his class. She would take down her hair at night when she came to see him. Mirielle knew that all of these little things would all add up in Vlad's mind, so that when she executed her final plan, it wouldn't be completely out of the blue.
She cornered him one night when they were supposed to be working on her book, which despite her ulterior motives was still doing well as far as research, and when he wasn't expecting it, suddenly cupped his face with her hand and kissed him deeply. Much to her pleasure and surprise, Vlad returned the kiss. However, when they parted, he still insisted that they could not be together. His reasons were predictable: she was his student, he wasn't looking for a relationship, she could find some one else better, and there would be scandal. How could she tell him that she'd loved him for what seemed like ages before this moment and that she would lose him if he didn't act now? She didn't want him marrying her out of pity like she knew he would if he knew of her situation with Andre. In her mind, either he would do it because he loved her, or it would simply not happen and she would have to accept that it never would. However, now that he had responded to her advances, she needed to find out the truth of how he felt about her - even if it was a truth he would not normally tell.
Which was why she decided to poison him - with veritaserum of course. She had it all very cleverly planned. Mirielle would pull the 'being teased by students' routine and make him feel somewhat guilty about how her 'new tea recipe' had been treated. Not wanting to offend her, he would take at least a sip of it and the veritaserum she had spiked it with. Then, although he would be furious with her (and yet slightly amused and impressed, because that's how he viewed her antics against him), she would be able to extract the information she needed to find out whether her relationship with him was something worth pursuing or not. Although it was certainly worth the effort to her, she didn't know if she was really angering him or just making a bad impression on him when she did the things she did, so she needed to know before she progressed and really brought out the 'big guns' for her plans.
She questioned him relentlessly - down to whether he found her to be attractive and questioning some of his motives when he kissed her or returned her advances. All of the answers she had were in her favor and told her she should go on, and yet she could not bring herself to ask him if he truly loved her, for fear of hearing the wrong answer.
Newlywed Life
Starting a Family
Death of Darien/Her Relationship
Years of Complete Estrangement
Awkward Ministry Years
Renewed Relationship
Important Note
Specific events in this history are subject to chance as they are roleplayed out on the site in past threads, but for the most part this is pretty much how it's going down. :)
Sydney's Greeting
lolz! Hi! -Sydney edit: still here!!!
