Name: Dorian Artwood

House: Hufflepuff

Physical Appearance: Dorian couldn’t tell you himself, but he’s actually a very handsome man. His hair is raven black and is always wild. It hangs below his brow and often dangles in front of his eyes. He keeps it in this style, but makes exceptions when he must dress nicely and look polite. He then tempers to have someone mess with it, often they gel it to one side to give him a very gentlemanlike appearance. However, for some of the girls that like to toy with it without him having too much of a bicker about how it looks, he is often subjected to having it straightened, curled, and changed to different colors. Color curses are always temporary for his hair and within a day’s time his hair is always back to its dark, usual complexion.

Dorian’s skin is always a white, pale color. He could spend hours in a tanning bed and come out red as a tomato but will never be a shade darker. This isn’t the cause of magic but simply due to a melanin deficiency in his skin. Yet, when he steps out into the cold, the tip of his nose is always the first to change colors, soon followed by a blush on his cheeks and a bright red tint on his ears. His pale color is quite a burden when it comes to being embarrassed. He blushes easily and can do nothing in his power to hide it.

Dorian’s figure is neither tall nor short. He stands a proper five foot, eight and hasn’t a bit of fat on him. His metabolism is mostly at fault for being so in shape. Though Dorian does enjoy running and gets a workout going about the castle, he is hardly what one would call an athlete. Thankfully, his metabolism takes care of any fat that he may acquire from the sweets he eats, and he isn’t shy about indulging in them, either.

Dressing outside of his robes is entirely dependant on his mother or his friends. Often, his outfit consists of a comfortable dress shirt, some loose fitting jeans, and a suit coat that he is fond of merely for its silken interior. He can usually be seen wearing his sunglasses, which is the only thing he gives any attention to as far as an outfit goes. It’s left up to those that pick out his clothes for him to decide what he wears. If a special occasion is call for, nonetheless, he can be observed in a charming sweater vest with a dress shirt underneath it and a pair of black pants. His shoes are nearly always sneakers. There’s no real purpose behind this other than the fact that he finds them delightfully comfortable and they fit his feet quite nicely. What you never catch Dorian wearing is gloves. He refuses to put them on, even in the bone-chilling cold. Touch is his way of seeing. Putting on gloves is like putting a blindfold onto a normal person. Other than that, his style is casual and he isn’t a bit picky about what he wears so long as it’s comfortable.

What makes Dorian stand out among anyone else are his eyes. Because he had no real damage done to his optic nerves other than a birth defect, the muscles in his eyes are strong. Whereas most blind people have their eyes askew in some manner, his eyes are quite together and he can turn them this way and that without any difficulty. Though, for the sake of tradition, he nearly always has his sunglasses on. It was just what he was taught as a child and he thinks it’s quite normal. Getting past the shades, one can be taken aback at what they see. His eyes are most certainly a cloudy blue, but they’re complexion is so dazzlingly bright that people often find themselves staring deeply inside of them. They seem to see beyond what another person thinks that they see. Sadly, few people get this opportunity. Dorian feels exposed if his sunglasses fall off. It’d be as if someone stepped into a lecture hall in their underwear. Seeing his eyes is an intimate connection and he is certain that not just anyone gets the opportunity.

Personality: Dorian is hardly the kind of person his namesake makes him out to be. He is anything but vain. (After all, how can one be vain when one cannot see oneself?) He has been saved from the immoral act of judging others by how they look. Rather, he sees a person for the way they speak and how they act towards him. However, he is very wary of who he trusts. One should never judge a book by its cover, and one should never judge a book by what it says. Words also are deceptive. Someone can say one thing and be thinking something completely different from that. He has learned this the hard way many times and is finally acknowledging that words mean as little as a pretty face.

Nonetheless, those that do earn his trust earn a loyal and caring friend. He’s the kind of person who becomes emotionally attached to others. If a friend of his is hurt, he feels their pain, as well. In many ways, this makes him an adoring person. And yet, it is a great downfall that he cannot shake. His sympathy pains are strong enough that he feels little ill for anyone he dislikes. He finds he cannot defend himself because of this, because he knows that words hurt him so to insult another is doing them the same injury. For years this has plagued him and is likely to plague him still through life.

To who is credited for this emotional insight? All the blame falls upon Dorian’s only parent and mother. He cares dearly for her. In fact, no matter how much fun he has at Hogwarts, he gets wretchedly homesick. He longs for his mother’s touch, for her voice, for her embrace. He is in every bit a mother’s boy. Whenever he obtains a treat such as a chocolate frog, he wraps it with care and sends it to his mother back home along with a letter to comfort her that all is well with him and he wishes the holiday would come sooner to be with her again.

All the same, he is an adventurous person. Homesickness or no, he cannot deny his innate desire to explore. Growing up blind meant that he was under a protective and watchful eye at all times. He couldn’t go to one end of the yard without being scolded and herded back towards the house. At school, he’s often found exploring the castle. It’s led to him getting lost a few times and certainly having a professor or two shake their finger at him, but he loves to find new places.

His curiosity to learn more about his surroundings has led him to develop a particular adaptation to his sightlessness. Many people believe the blind cannot see. That’s hardly the case. To the blind, their imagination becomes their eyes. Whenever Dorian goes anywhere in the castle or comes across something he doesn’t recognize, he uses his hands to feel out the object and draws a mental picture in his head. In this manner, he sees without truly seeing. So don’t worry about him giving you faulty directions. Dorian can tell you how to get to one end of the castle to the next with only two words: left and right.

Sadly, Dorian’s adventure is limited only outward. Inside, he is very tender and fragile. He smiles, laughs, and jokes just like anyone else, but if one mentions his father he crumbles. The spot is sore for him and it’s the loss of this man that has made getting close to Dorian so difficult. If one does not love, one does not lose. Though he’s not bad-looking and quite charming, his terror of love makes a relationship impossible. Girls try to find their way into his heart, but each time he has withdrawn. No matter how hard he fights the will to not love, he wishes terribly that he could feel it. His friends have all found sweethearts to kiss and whisper to, while they giggle and tease back. Listening to others enjoy this pleasure, while he himself is left behind, has given him a powerful lonely feeling. Because of his terror at being left alone and his grief when loneliness befalls him, he is often a clingy person to the point where some of his friends have found it overbearing.

There is one gift that Dorian has that he prides himself in. He has an incredible imagination. Though he can’t ever see what a beach looks like, or the ruins of ancient Rome, he reads about them in his storybooks and takes in every word. He makes pictures in his head of valiant fights and noble knights rescuing damsels and fighting off dragons. (Though, as a child he always wondered why they used those silly swords instead of magic. This soon became clear once he entered Hogwarts, much to his embarrassment at not realizing the obvious explanation.) He loves to read and does so feverishly, spending long hours in the library and chatting anxiously to his friends, making sure to tell them every single detail of the wizard duel.

Unfortunately, Dorian’s blindness can give off the impression that he’s dull. He is quite the contrary and is incredibly bright and intelligent. That may be so, but one needs to see if they are to master spells such as levitation and morphing one item to another. For such things Dorian is hardly a star pupil. Yet, where one door closes another opens. What he lacks in appearance spells, he makes up for with potions. A nose comes in handy when you mix two vials together to create something incredibly new. In this manner, he has saved himself the ridicule of being hopeless at magic.

One final note must be included. Dorian suppresses nearly any horrible emotion he feels. If he’s terribly depressed, he bites his lip and holds his tears back. The same must be said for his anger. Past experiences have made him petrified of releasing his emotions, especially when it comes to rage. To protect others and himself, he keeps them caged inside his heart. But one must wonder, how long can such powerful feelings be locked up tight before they break free of their cage?

Character Background: To understand Dorian’s past, one must go way back, before he was even thought of. Kristine Delmore was a beautiful girl, the pride of her mother and father and the talk of her small town. With her chestnut hair and dazzling blue eyes, she was always connected to such words as “pretty” and “divine”. Her father was a university professor and understood the necessity of a good education. He wanted his daughter to have the very best. At a young age, she was sent off to boarding school in Ireland. It was quite different than her home in England. The hills coveted her heart instantly and she always found the morning mists both haunting and mystifying.

Years went by and Kristine had grown into a lovely young woman. It was on a chill spring day that she ventured out on her own onto the hillside. She wandered for hours, aimlessly gazing at the budding flowers and the chattering birds. For some reason, she kept going. Something drew her steadily into the heart of the forest, farther than she had ever been. In the distance, she heard her friends calling her name; searching for her. She bid them no heed and continued on her way, leaving the sing song of birds and her friends’ calls behind her.

The dark forest soon became a labyrinth of unfriendly trees and dark shadows. They surrounded her with a foreboding aura, bidding her to turn back from whence she came. Where had she come? She turned this way and that, but her curiosity had led her beyond what sense of direction she possessed. Hopeless, she sat upon a stump and huddled together, listening for any sign of help, but all was still.

She found herself in the forest long after the sun had set. At midnight she remained there, still huddled with fear in the light of the moon. She was just beginning to decide that she should find her way back when the sound of hooves came to her ears. Just as soon as she had heard them, she saw a silhouette of a horseman coming along a very thing path, the very one she’d considered following just moments before. The dark steed stopped before her. The rider didn’t dismount, but simply gazed down at her with a curious eye. The wind happened to brush the tree branches aside and, in a brief spark of moonlight, she saw the figure’s appearance.

The first thing she noticed was his dark hair. It was long, but not wild. It had been gelled back and gave the man a look of royalty. His eyes were the next thing that caught her attention. They were as dark as his hair but were deep: seeing something beyond what she could see. His face was not unhandsome; in fact his features were very strong and chiseled. At his side was a solid black cat that looked down at her from the saddle with blazing yellow eyes. The rider appeared as if right from a storybook, yet the meeting was still as modern as the times allowed and it was nothing short of awkward.

Kristine stumbled over her words, trying in vain to explain how she’d come about being lost in the forest. After a long few minutes of talking and several of silence afterwards, the figure finally released a deep, warm laugh. He smiled at her and his white teeth flashed in the darkness. Instantly, she blushed and turned her face away. The man introduced himself as Lawrence Artwood; his feline friend was Aristotle, or Ares for short. He was going to the village where the all girl’s school Kristine attended just happened to reside. In an instant, Lawrence had Kristine in the saddle with him and emerged from the forest to take her back to her dormitory.

Their relationship hardly ended there. One look at Kristine’s beauty had Lawrence hooked and he was constantly coming to the school for her. Over the months of their being together, Kristine began to notice peculiar things about Lawrence. He seemed to make things appear for her like magic and everything seemed perfect when he was around—too perfect. Such minor things were put out of her mind, however, by her infatuation for him. However, Lawrence could not hide things from Kristine for long.

Lawrence had taken Kristine to a local pub. With Ares lapping some milk and Kristine stealing sips from Lawrence’s whiskey the three were soon laughing and having a marvelous time. It ended poorly. A man approached Lawrence, giving him a slap on the back and addressing him with a drunken slur, “How ye keepin’, ye ole wizard? Fancy yer outta Hogwartz, aintcha?” Lawrence had trouble swallowing down his mouthful of whiskey after that. Kristine looked at him in astonishment, then turned her eyes back towards this drunken stranger. What on earth was Hogwartz? (She’d dismissed “wizard” as some kind of inside joke: a nickname between them.) Lawrence had no time to answer, for the man, whose name turned out to be Beans, let his eyes fall upon Kristine. “Well ah’ll be damn’d! Yer fixin’ up with a muggle? Can’t blame ye, though. She’s mighty pretty, that one. Whatcher parents gunna say ter it? Can’t be no good with them bringin’ muggle folk home.”

Kristine inquired what a muggle was. Before Lawrence could stop him, Beans slurred out, “Blimey hell in a basket o’ lamb! She ain’t known what a muggle is? Well, miss, it’s what we call non-magical folk. Y’know, normal people. Certainly ole Lawrence has explained it ter ya?”

After releasing themselves from Beans, Lawrence and Kristine left the pub behind. On the walk back to the school, Lawrence spilled everything to the young woman, this beautiful flower he’d come to love. A wizard… She thought he was joking. That is, until he produced form his pocket a long… stick. A stick. Truly? Did he expect her to believe such a thing? He muttered one word, “Orchideos” and from the tip sprouted a bouquet of roses of every color. These had handed to her with a look of pain, begging her not to abuse this secret. He wasn’t the only one hiding things, however. Kristine confessed that night that she loved him and he spoke the same for her.

The rest of the story, I’m afraid, is a bit of a bore and something that one can guess on the ending. Lawrence brought Kristine home to his parents. They were wary, at first, to have a muggle with their son, but they were a new, pioneer kind of people. After having Kristine over for dinner, Lawrence’s mother was smitten with her and professed her to be the most charming muggle she had ever known! Kristine brought Lawrence to meet her parents, as well. They took the whole thing with shock. Kristine’s father had wanted her to marry rich, not a wizard. Time, however, soothed their ill feelings.

That spring, under a full moon, they were wed. You can guess what came afterwards. Dear little Dorian arrived at a minute past midnight on a chilly winter morning. Surprisingly, it was neither Lawrence nor Kristine who were the most affectionate and adoring to the small boy, but Ares. The black cat curled right into the crib with him, licking at his fingers and that patch of black hair, while putting up with tiny hands clutching at his fur. The Artwood family was at peace and couldn’t be happier with their new addition, even when his blindness was diagnosed.

I would like to tell you that Lawrence’s unfortunate end came from a valiant battle with a werewolf or wrestling with a troll in an effort to save Kristine and Dorian. He died fighting, but it was an enemy no spell could cure him of. He developed prostate cancer and, with medicines being unfamiliar with the disease, passed away after a year of fending it off. Kristine mourned to have her husband gone, but in his time with her and Dorian he had eased the pain of his passing. He had left them well-off and in the safe, financial hands of his parents. He had watched his son take his first steps, say his first words, and attend his first day of school, but he wouldn’t see his expression when he first discovered magic.

Dorian’s memory of his father is shady. When Lawrence died, Dorian was only three. He remembers only feeling his father’s itchy beard on his face and his deep, warm laugh. His mother was sure to describe everything to her son of Lawrence’s valiant life and how marvelous his father was. Though he didn’t know him very well or for very long, the stories his mother and grandparents told him made him feel as if his father was still there beside him and that he’d never died.

Dorian, from the moment of his birth, was never discouraged to use magic. Even his Delmore grandparents would praise him when his fork full of beans happened to neatly place the beans back into the serving dish rather than his mouth. In one instance, however, magic grew frightening for him.

It had been any ordinary day at school. Dorian, well aware that his special skills were secret, was very good at not using magic in the presence of his muggle peers. On this particular day at recess that rule would find itself breaking. An older boy, your everyday bully, began to tease Dorian about his blindness. He took away a ball Dorian had been playing with and threw it above the roof. “Go find it!” The boy mocked. Hurt and angry, Dorian felt tears falling out of his eyes. He released a sharp scream and suddenly heard an echo of his yell by the very bully that had picked on him. The boy was sent flying into the air and landed right beside the ball… on the top of the three-story school building.

It took a good deal of explaining and just plain BS to get Dorian out of the mess he’d caused for himself. Kristine wasn’t harsh with him, but her disappointment made Dorian resolve to put his emotions in check. If he kept himself under control, it wouldn’t happen again. He would be a good boy for his mother and for his grandparents and for Ares and for his father. He’d be a good boy!

The Hogwarts letter arrived with the same reaction it gets with every child. Dorian was a giddy, bouncing, excited child. He hardly needed to run his fingers over it to feel if the letter was in Braille. His mother read it to him… and reread it fifty times after. His grandparents eagerly totted him off to get his things. They took him to get fitted for his robe, to get a wand, his books, and loaded him with plenty of treats for the train ride to Hogwarts. They wanted to buy him an owl, as well, but he promptly refused. Much like a guide dog, Ares had become his eyes and he didn’t want to part with the old black cat.

Off he went to his first day at Hogwarts. Since then, it has been a repetitive series of events. He attends school until the Christmas holiday. Every year he returns home to his adoring mother and grandparents. Then its back to school for the rest of the year until summer takes him home again. Then school again in the fall.

Now it’s his sixth year at Hogwarts. Ares is still at his side, sleeping on his lap on the train ride to school. (At twenty, what else does a cat have to do but sleep?) Meanwhile, Dorian can’t help but wonder if this year might be different. If this year, changes are in store for him with challenges that will test his faith, his friendship, and his courage.

Other: Dorian's best friend and pet at Hogwarts is an old cat, Ares.

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