Entering Alone

[Dylan Cooper]

His fingers twiddling together, his eyes flicked the crowd nervously and he decided that, perhaps, he had managed to miss her. It was the smallest flicker of hope, but it was present none-the-less and he was determined to hold onto his misplaced hope and see it through. Barely noticing the addition of the young girl he’d previously served in Ollivander’s, his mind was largely occupied by the noticeable absence of the woman he loved. His eyes desperately scanning the crowd, he felt everything slowly slipping away as his mind forced him to go into overdrive and take in what everyone in the now crowded group was saying. Not doing, mind; that would consume too much energy when his eyes were already so focused on the crowd now dancing busily to the Weird Sisters.

His preoccupied mind flashing over both the greeting cast out by the young Ravenclaw girl and the small question from Tommy, he managed to catch the words directed toward the group by his own Shadow Warrior. With her confirmation, though he knew they were not the closest of acquaintances, he also now knew that he would not find D’rorah by looking through the crowd. She had not been seen for at least five days, nor heard of, and his mind set into panic mode.

Missing the hopeful look directed toward him by Susan, his darting eyes surveyed the small collection of students around himself. “I’ve got to go…” he said quickly, moving away from the group and heading, as fast as he could, back toward the entrance. Paying little regard to whoever got in his way, he cast aside numerous amounts of younger students, older students, and students of the same year in search of his goal.

[Susan Matthews]

Susan watched helplessly as Dylan moved into a sense of panic. Her suggestion of dancing did not faze him, nor anyone else in the group for that matter. Slightly annoyed at the fact that no one paid her any attention, she almost didn’t hear it when Dylan excused himself from their group. His sharp movements to leave the punch table were the impetus to catch her immediate attention. As she watched Dylan shuffle through the now cluttered ball room, all thoughts of dancing left her mind. Her eyes followed Dylan, and she couldn’t begin to recall the reason for wanting to dance in the first place.

“Actually,” Susan spoke generally, “I’ve got to go too,” she told the group as she dismissed herself from the accumulation of students to follow Dylan. She did not wait for a response from any of those around her, for it would not have mattered any way. Susan did her best to push through the crowd with enough force to catch up with Dylan, but found it no good. She managed to rudely push her way past many unfamiliar faces until it seemed her aching feet were finally at their breaking point. She stopped briefly to untie the black ribbons around her ankles and to remove her shoes.

Susan now moved swiftly between her classmates, barefoot, ruining her previous illusion of grace. She tried to determine where Dylan might be headed, in case she lost sight of him, as it now seemed would be most probable. Finally pushing past an extremely large person blocking the threshold of the ball room, Susan was lead into the Hogwarts Foyer. Her hair was severely disarrayed, and her make was smeared slightly. She held her shoes by the ribbons in one hand and she spun in place for a moment, searching for Dylan. “Dylan, wait!” She called out to him as she ran to catch up with him.