[hider=First Draft] Name: Major William "Billy" Coopers
Gender: Male
Age: 44
Nationality: United States of America 
Appearance: (I can't find a good picture). His pale skin is slightly wrinkled with age, and boasts a history of wear and tear evident all over his body. His brown hair is greying, worn at a moderate length on his head and in a thick beard on his face. His eyes are brown and wide, his nose broken and healed in less than perfect fashion. He is of a moderate height, just touching six feet, but is broad shouldered and well muscled still, keeping in shape despite the relative physical ease of field officer's duty. He wears trousers always, never liking robes one bit, and dresses in placid and muted colors, never trying to be ostentatious. His hands are large and calloused, used to hard work and mechanical fiddling, and his gait is confident and long. He is usually smiling, and his wide expressive mouth reveals a magically-completed set of teeth in excellent condition.

Job title and description: Major, United Wizarding States 1st Infantry. Currently embedded in the United Kingdom Ministry to train aurors in large-scale combat operations

Ambition: Bill is a patriot. He loves the stars and stripes, and wants to live up to the ideal of America as it was founded. He wants to live a happy and successful life, but also takes pride in his job, eager to help fight the good fight against tyranny and oppression, wanting to preserve democracy and peace any way he can. Apart from his enduring loyalty to his country, he wants to live a happy affluent life, one full of friends and family, and to make a better life for his wife and children back in Massachusetts

Wand: 10 Inch, Oak with Chupacabra spine core.
Hogwarts House: Salem Wizard Academy does not have a house system, it having taken queues more from the modern Prussian magical institutions rather than what was perceived as the conservative British ones, but if he were to be sorted into a house it would most likely be Hufflepuff. He is loyal, steadfast, and not afraid of hard work, though he has more than a few Grypheindor traits in him.

Strengths: Bill has spent twenty six years in the armed forces, enlisting as soon as he graduated and never finding need for a change in occupation. As such, he is an excellent soldier. He is familiar with command, is an excellent combatant (his skills dulled slightly after five years of sitting behind a desk as a Major), and has picked up the intuitive and strange skills a soldier is forced to learn. He can field strip a rifle, and make basic repair enchantments to just about any piece of standard equipment, and could puzzle out unfamiliar gear given some time and a set of tools. He knows how to hide his presence from scrying or covert assault. He has excellent control over appiration, and uses it frequently. He is a great shot, though by no means a sharpshooter. He is calm and collected in most every situation, and remembers the infantry adages to great effect. He is physically fit, quick on the draw and particularly gifted at support charms. His best magical subjects, in order, are: DADA, Charms, Transfiguration, Divination. Since the magical world of the United States is significantly more integrated than that of magical Britain, he would be considered an expert at muggle studies, though he is by no means as well versed as some of his colleagues in, for example, the diplomatic service.

Weaknesses: Major Coopers is a man who cuts the gordian knot. Not that he looks for unorthodox solutions, but that he is straightforward to a fault. He is brash, and wants to get the job done decisively and with minimal losses. In his youth he was reckless, and though years of command has stopped his impulsive tendencies he is quick to anger and always eager to be doing something, regardless of productivity. He is not particularly book smart, having achieved only middling grades in school, and while his practical experience in the field is voluminous, he is not one for knowing esoteric details or doing particularly intellectual work outside a command tent. He is sometimes brash, and slightly too proud of his heritage and too unimpressed by dissenting opinions for his own good, and has been known to make unfortunate enemies unintentionally. His worst magical subjects, in order, are: Herbology, Potions, History of Magic, Care of Magical Creatures, Magical Theory.

Personality: Bill is fun loving first and foremost. He loves to talk and watch quiddich (despite the relative disinterest most Americans hold for the sport), to drink and read and eat good food. He makes firm friendships, and is loyal and steadfast in them. He is highly patriotic, and holds the national values of the United States as he perceives them as his core values: Liberty, Equality and a host of others. He has what he would call a healthy distrust of authority, which occasionally conflicts with (and always loses to) his sense of duty and belonging in the armed forces. He is brash, generally impolite, and set with a bevy of mannerisms and habits that would seem strange, if not offensively bizarre, to most British wizards. Despite his best efforts he finds himself to be chauvenistic, and occasionally makes an inadvertent slight, a habit he has been trying to break for decades now. Outside of danger situations he is impulsive, rash and carefree, though during life-or-death operations he is cool, patient and highly cautious, and in either situation is loathe to put anyone in danger.

Family: A wife, Louise, and a son James, both residing in Boston with his son currently attending Salem.

Appearance of her boggart: The death of friends family and country, more generally of tyranny and bigotry.

Biography/ Notable Achievementss: He was too young to serve in Vietnam, but was deployed almost continuously throughout the Cold War on behalf of the United States, serving large amounts of time in Berlin as a garrison, fighting guerrillas and dissidents throughout the world in operations he would rather not talk about, and helping to guarantee homeland security. Perhaps his most prominent action was his only full scale combat command, in which he and his regiment covertly aided the Afganistan forces during the Soviet Invasion, winning a fairly heroic wizarding siege near Jalalabad, for which he received one of his most prized possessions, his Distinguished Service Cross. [/hider]