Heather Ruby is of average height and build for her age, with shoulder-length brown hair and pale blue eyes. She wears glasses and is legally blind (still has vision, but very impaired vision), using a white cane while out in public.

Heather is the only known muggle-born in her family, with the rest of them being muggles who have no clue about the Wizarding World. She is an only child who lives with her parents. Heather was born American, with her family emigrating to England just weeks before her 11th birthday.

Heather attended a School for the Blind from kindergarten through 3rd Grade, where she learned to use a guidance cane and learned how to read braille. She learned a form of passive echolocation by listening carefully to her surrounds, and also a way of active echolocation made by clicking her tongue. (It's a real thing. Look it up; it's pretty cool!) For the remainder of her elementary school years (4th and 5th grade), Heather asked to attend a public school in an attempt to learn how "normal" students functioned. She stopped using the echolocation clicking once she transferred to public school to avoid seeming weird in front of the other students.

Her first exposure to magic came at a very young age from her babysitter, family friend, and neighborhood “resident crazy person,” Grandpa Bob. No one ever knew his real name, and rumors among the neighborhood kids claimed he was secretly a werewolf due to his garden of aconite flowers and sightings of a large dog roaming the local park during full moons. Unknown to everyone, he was indeed a werewolf and a skilled brewer of Wolf’s Bane potion. While babysitting Heather, he would show her simple magic tricks and wizard toys, being a toymaker by trade. When she became old enough to start asking questions, he passed them off as stage magician's tricks.

Heather herself only showed small signs of magic while growing up, such as making things vanish and reappear, or levitating her favorite toys. Her parents mistook the signs as simply having misplaced items or her imagination. As for her parents, they were from an American family going back several generations, and both parents were avid fans of Lord of the Rings' realm of Middle-Earth, decorating their home to resemble a hobbit hole and going to every convention they could find. Heather enjoyed this lifestyle as a younger child but that attitude changed as she grew older. She began to see her parents' love of Middle-Earth as an embarrassment and sought to distance herself from all things magic-related, including stopping her visits to Grandpa Bob, asking that they find her a more “normal” babysitter.

During a family trip to Worcestershire, a place J. R. R. Tolkien claimed as home, her parents decided that they liked England so much, that they would move there. One year later, they did just that, much to Heather’s annoyance, given that her 11th birthday was fast approaching.

It was a genuine shock the day she got her letter from Hogwarts, with her thinking the whole thing was a prank, and her parents excited, but very confused. Bad enough that Heather had to adjust to an entirely new country, but now she had to learn magic too?! 

Grandpa Bob unexpectedly showed up later that night, explaining that he had been visiting family and decided to check up on them and wish Heather a happy birthday. On Heather accusing him of sending the Hogwarts letter as a birthday prank, he denied it and proceeded to explain to her and her parents about the Wizarding World. He offered to take them to Diagon Alley for Heather to buy her school supplies, which she reluctantly agreed too. While her parents are thrilled about the news, Heather remains unconvinced that this isn’t all some overly complicated prank--or else she’s losing her mind from the stress of moving to a new country. After all, there's no such thing as real magic. Right?