Born to a wizarding family, Gretchen is the tenth of ten children. She has three older maternal half siblings, four older paternal half siblings, and two older full siblings, as a result of her parents being each other's second spouses. Gretchen is cheerful but tends to stay towards the back of things, as she believes others always have a chance to do things better than she does. She always tries her best to be the best, but that isn't always possible and she understands that, especially with nine older siblings.

Gretchen loses focus on conversations very easily, mostly due to her constant need to be doing something. She's a very touchy sort of person, and gives pretty good hugs as a result.

Gretchen has her father's eyes, chin, and nose, but most of her other features resemble her mother's, or even sometimes her grandparents' features. Her eyes and hair are dark, but her skin is fair.

Gretchen's childhood was pretty average for a wizarding child. She did things like go to school, make friends, talk about what her older siblings said about Hogwarts and pout about not getting to go. Her favorite brother was August, her half-brother seven years older than she was.

Her first incident of accidental magic happened when she was five and a half. She looked up at a spider, while she was reading a book about butterflies, and accidentally turned it into a butterfly because she was so scared.

Gretchen always wanted to be admitted into Hogwarts early, but this never happened, since it was against school rules. Still, she had a true hope that she'd be the first seven-year-old Hogwarts student, even writing stories about how she'd be sorted into her favorite house, which changed with each letter a sibling sent home.