cooper is very comfortable in his own skin, even when people try to make fun of how short he is, he doesn't let it bother him. he's not particularly athletic but he is a healthy eater. with eyes like ice and ash-blond hair, coop is all about his natural colors. he would never think to change his hair color or his eye color simply because he enjoys the way he looks. his general expressions tend to amount to boredom, curiosity, blank, or rolling of one's eyes. when not in uniform, cooper likes to wear casual clothes. mostly hoodies, jeans, and beanies.

intro: at first glance cooper ray seems to have it all together. he's smart, sassy, and is very good at telling adults their mistakes. he's not your average happy child with a shield of innocence and bliss. no. cooper has seen things and isn't oblivious to life and its problems. with the way he talks he seems to know everything.

but really he's just a child who has a ton of hidden emotions and is very empathetic. he's very good at catching on to other people's emotions and is very socially aware, despite his own social struggles.

sensitive: despite the mask he wears almost constantly, cooper is actually very emotionally sensitive. despite his blatant use of cuss words and sarcasm and being a master of brushing things off in public, things actually really get to him, and he will oftentimes cry himself to sleep because of things people have said, or any other emotion that might be bothering the peers around him.

he has this habit of taking on the emotions of others and putting them on himself. but when this happens he has to excuse himself because crying in front of others is a weakness and will attract the bullies again. and he is not ohkay with that. emotions are a weakness and so he hates the emotions he has and will do whatever he can to hide and/or squelch them.

intelligent: prodigy, some people call it. cooper wouldn't call it that. why isn't everyone like him? why do people do stupid things. it baffles cooper to no end as to why other people are the way that they are. why would you smoke cigarettes when it's obviously harmful to you? why would someone jump from a plane, even with a parachute, when you can't guarantee that you'll come back alive? stupid people are stupid.

but that's not all, while his test scores are near perfect, his homework tends to sit in a corner. homework is useless and is only there so stupid kids can actually learn things.

computers, art and creativity, academics and problem solving, and cooking (even though he hates cooking for others) are his niches. he's very good at what he does for an 11-year-old and surpasses most kids his age. he's terrible at making or producing music (trust him, he's tried), and athletics makes him want to throw up. he just doesn't have the energy (or the motivation) to really care about athletics and does very badly in PE.

cooper is also very inquisitive. he loves learning new things, even though he tries desperately to make people think he doesn't care. when interested in something he'll often forget his mask and continue to ask question after question after question.

independent: while he hates being alone he sucks it up because he has this funny notion that he has to be independent. and he's strong in his belief that he has to surpass this fear of being alone because the underlying issue is that he's terrified of being abandoned or discarded. he's not very good at making any friends, to the point where he accidentally (or purposefully) pushes kids his own age away through the use of sarcasm, sassy behavior, and thinking that he deserves better and smarter friends.

besides, he's able to take care of himself anyway. he can defend and stand up for himself now (at least against kids his own age), he walks home, cooks for himself when he's hungry, and can sit and play videogames for hours on end until his sister gets home from work. of course, he has online friends, but other than that, he has come to the conclusion that he can take care of himself and doesn't need anyone telling him what to do.

insecure: cautious and alert it's not easy to sneak up on cooper, but it probably has to do with how he was bullied in his early childhood because he was very good at school and "made them look bad," and his mother's death was used against him during this time. this was before he could stand up for himself. now it's more apparent that he gets into school fights than he gets bullied.

despite his own independence, for an eleven-year-old, cooper struggles with school big time. not because he doesn't know how to do the work, but because he mostly just stopped caring. He knew all the primary school answers anyway. he should be at a high reading level. but he's not because he can't seem to get his act together. hopefully, something new, like the wizarding world, will spark an interest in him. especially since he's so eager to learn.

cooper was born and raised in london, england. what a natural place to start. his mother was a witch known as emerie addison and his father was squib known as richard ray. he knew about her magical abilities, as they met in the wizarding world, and yet she still followed him to give up her magical power to be with him. she hid the witch side of her family for years from their friends, neighbors, and coworkers. keeping her magically inclined abilities in check because she loved him more than she loved magic. so she gave up magic in exchange for a muggle life.

they lived in a small community of muggles and worked their job diligently, becoming the owners of a small floral shop. a job that emerie absolutely loved. she worked hard at being the face of their shop, while richard worked on the business side. they learned a lot about the muggle world through richard's research back before they went to pose as muggles.

they soon bore a daughter who learned quickly and loved doing it. she was an overachiever and strong in academics. a very calm and emotionally controlled child, but she didn't have access to magic the way her mother did. this left emerie partly disappointed and partly relieved. wondering if she would ever have magical kids. but they kept their magical side a secret from her, hoping that she would live a normal magicless life.

they tried for a second child. they really did. it took about 15 years, but they finally had a second child. this child was much less emotionally controlled. he would scream for hours on end during the night when he was very young and grew to struggle with his emotions as he became a young boy. kids would bully and make fun of him for being so smart in class and for being the "teacher's pet."

when he was five years old, he, emerie, and richard were in a car crash. he survived, his parents did not. he came out with very few injuries and was hospitalized for a few days to make sure he was alright, while his mother and father never returned. cooper saw the car coming at them from the side, and before he could scream to alert his parents, he just happened to appear on the side of the road with his parents were still in the car. they never saw it coming and death was immediate.

it was during this time where the magic started to show. small things would happen around him during his fearful fits. not all the time and they were very small, but it was during this time that his sister, claudia, learned of the wizarding world. as the only closest living relative, it was up to claudia to take care of her little brother.

desperate for something to make sense, claudia went searching through their mother's things again. just searching for anything. it was cooper who found it. their mother's journal, hidden with magic that only cooper could find. claudia spent a lot of time reading it from then on. not entirely believing it, but finding truth and understanding about cooper throughout it.

one day, claudia took him to the park and ended up talking to this woman who just happened to be their neighbor. claudia was giving a list of her frustrations and letting it slip that her brother was magical. she was scared, at first, thinking she sounded crazy or something. but the woman didn't turn her away. instead, calling herself a witch, she helped to shed some light on the wizarding world. claudia didn't want to believe it, but as things happened around him she began to understand and came to the conclusion that she'd like to help him learn.

so she worked to help him control his emotions. giving him incentives in the process. he learned that crying was unacceptable, and that joy was earned. he learned quickly under claudia's teachings, as he felt safe with her, and his fits of fear began to slow. instead, she fed him the curiosities of his heart. she taught him more about school and gave him extensive knowledge about the muggle world. she then asked her neighbor to help teach him more about the wizarding world, and she agreed.

he grew intelligent in school, but being bullied only brought him pain. he began to care less for homework or even his classes altogether. he became apathetic and sarcastic. the complete opposite of what she'd seen from him before. regretfully she wanted to learn more about the wizarding world to be able to teach him about it, but didn't have access to much of the information and, while helpful, the neighbor didn't share much past helping her to maintain him.

so when she finally got ahold of cooper's hogwarts letter, she couldn't help but get excited about it. he was going to learn about where he comes from. when he got to hogwarts, he was sorted into ravenclaw house.

during the car crash that killed his mother, cooper was able to teleport himself from the car before the crash.