Avenger of Blood by ElrondsScribe

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Chapter 3

Cedric's birthday! I skipped over it completely in the first edition.

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It was during that week of liberation that Cedric's eighteenth birthday came up. He tried very hard to not draw attention to it, and he would have succeeded were it not for the Ducks - Connie Moreau in particular. She was a very pretty (and very flirtatious) girl with long brown hair whose sharp tongue, quick temper, and killer punches had earned her the nickname "Velvet Hammer" among her teammates. She was the only girl Duck aside from Julie, and for some reason the two did not get along particularly well.

Cedric had met Connie shortly after his arrival, and she had flirted shamelessly, despite the fact that her very steady boyfriend, Guy, had been standing right beside her. It had made Cedric feel very awkward. What made it worse was that poor Guy seemed to be used to it, as he was not the least bit unfriendly to Cedric.

On that occasion Charlie, another of the Ducks, had asked Cedric what his birthday was; and it seemed that Connie had kept the date in mind. On September 22, which was the day before his birthday, she came breezing into the house and announced to anyone who was listening that Cedric's eighteenth birthday was the next day.

At once there was a great hustle and bustle about the house and Cedric was chased into his bedroom (he protested this very much, but no one listened to him). He tried to explain to anyone who was listening (which ended up being the walls) that people in wizarding society came of age at seventeen, and as he had already come of age there was no need to go to so much trouble.

The next day he came out of his room to find that nothing short of a feast had been laid on the table in the big dining room, and that a Great Many People were waiting for him. All the Ducks were there - Charlie Conway, Adam Banks, Guy Germaine, Jesse Hall, Les Averman, Luis Mendoza, Ken Wu, Dean Portman, Fulton Reed, Greg Goldberg, Russ Tyler, Julie Gaffney and Connie Moreau. Quite a few Elves were also there - Daeron of course, his best friend Celeborn with Galadriel his wife; Celebrian their daughter and her husband Elrond; Daeron's other best friend Maglor with his wife Failawende, and two of his six brothers, twins Amrod and Amras.

"HAPPY EIGHTEENTH BIRTHDAY, CEDRIC!" they all shouted when they saw him, and they cheered and whistled and applauded and jumped up and down (Cedric wasn't sure how you managed jumping up and down while sitting in a chair, but two of the Ducks were certainly doing it).

Cedric flushed to the roots of his hair. "Oh. Uh, thanks!" he stuttered, glancing around for an empty chair. The only one available was at the head of the table.

"Come and sit down!" cried Daeron merrily.

"Sit down?" Cedric's flush deepened. "Sit - there?" he pointed to the chair.

"Where else?" asked Celeborn, who was one of Daeron's best friends as well as being one of the oldest, wisest, and toughest Elves alive.

Cedric walked over to the chair and sat down. "What now?" he asked in rather a small voice. He had never had so many people celebrate his birthday at one time before, not even at Hogwarts, where he had been fairly popular in Hufflepuff.

"WE EAT!" roared Dean Portman, who was easily the biggest and most well-built of all the Ducks.

Everybody dug in, and the meal was sumptuous. There were platters of bacon, bowls of scrambled eggs, pans of steaming gooey cinnamon rolls, and endless pitchers of pumpkin juice. Cedric ate and ate until he thought he would burst if he took one more bite, and watched in amazement as the Ducks plowed through mountains of food without stopping. The Elves just laughed at them.

"Who did the cooking?" asked Goldberg as he was eating. "This is good!"

"We did!" said the redheaded twins in unison. They reminded Cedric a little of Fred and George Weasley, what with their red hair, their adventurous and fun-loving personalities, and the fact that you never saw one without the other. But unlike with the Weasley twins, Amras' hair was just a shade lighter than Amrod's, and Amrod never seemed quite happy unless Amras was within eyesight. Cedric suspected there was a reason for this that he did not want to know.

After breakfast was over (basically after everyone stopped eating, which was a good long time), the Ducks all said it was time for gifts.

"Gifts?" said Cedric, amazed.

"What, don't you get gifts on your birthday in England?" joked Jesse Hall.

("Smart aleck!" said Julie, who had a bit of an ongoing banter-rivalry with Jesse.)

"It's not that," Cedric protested. "It's just - you really didn't have to - "

"Cedric!" Charlie Conway's voice was uncharacteristically sharp - he was known for being unusually kind. "We know we didn't have to, but we did it anyway, because we like you and we want to celebrate your birthday! Just accept it and say thank you!"

"Oh. Okay," said Cedric. "Thank you!"

Now satisfied, the Ducks herded Cedric out of the dining room and into the great room. In the middle of the floor were piled a number of presents - only four, Cedric noted with some relief. There were two flat oblong gifts, a rather large upright something, and a very long brown parcel whose shape he knew very well.

"Open them!" said Guy Germaine. "The two flat ones are from us Ducks."

'The two flat ones' turned out to be books - a copy each of Quidditch Through the Ages and A Short History of Quodpot.

"We noticed Daeron didn't have anything for sports players," grinned Jesse.

The long parcel had a card attached to it, and turned out to be exactly what it had looked like - a broom, and a Cleansweep Eleven at that. The card on it simply said "From Glorfindel and Miriel." Cedric was sure that it was really Glorfindel's gift, as Miriel his wife was an exceptionally skilled needle-worker (so much so that she had been nicknamed "The Broidress.")

The last gift was a cage with a tawny owl inside it - a solid looking female who allowed Cedric to pet her without fuss and only flew as far as the windowsill nearby when he let her out. Daeron, who had followed the young people into the room, admitted to having bought it for him, and said that she answered to the name of Tessa.

Of course, Cedric had to try out his new broom, and for once he was allowed to go outside and fly above the house to his heart's content. When he was finally tired of flying and came inside, it was time for lunch, and it was then that Celebrian vanished into the kitchen and reappeared bearing in great pride a very large coconut cake with white icing and the words "Happy Birthday Cedric" on top in icing which changed colors.

"The twins were loath to let me into their precious kitchen long enough to bake this for you," she grumbled as she set it on the table.

"We're not accustomed to letting a woman invade and occupy our kitchen," complained Amrod.

"You know that sounds really sexist, right?" Connie let them know. "Like a woman shouldn't be able to cook or something."

Celeborn tutted. Amras shot him a dirty look.

"Sexism has nothing to do with it," said Daeron. "Noldor men do most of the cooking, and their women do the baking, and there is an end of the matter. And it is technically my kitchen anyway." The last statement was directed at Amrod and Amras.

"Not as long as you give us the reins for the day," said Amras.

"See Cedric, Mommy and Daddy are always fighting," said Dwayne in an annoying high-pitched "little kid" voice.

"Insolent duckling," said Celeborn who was actually very fond of the Ducks. Dwayne knew this perfectly well, and flashed the Elf a cheeky grin.

"Because it's my birthday," said Cedric. "Would you please not fight?" The Elves could get into rather vicious quarrels about their version of racism in five seconds flat.

"You ask it as a birthday favor. . ." said Amrod grudgingly.

"So we will try to behave. . ." said Amras.

"For now," finished Amrod.

"Thank you!" said Cedric with a relieved smile.

"Are we gonna eat that cake or what?" asked Goldberg.

"We have to sing happy birthday first!" shouted Fulton. "Ready, guys? One, two three - "

And before Cedric had time to register that everybody was going to sing, the room was drowned in a deafening chorus, every line of which was punctuated with a little blast of fireworks from Ken Wu's wand. "HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO YOU!" (bang) "HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO YOU!" (bang) "HAPPY BIRTHDAY DEAR CEDRIC!" (bang) "HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO YOU!"

Celebrian's coconut cake was delicious, and apparently Cedric was not the only one who thought so, for she got lots of compliments from around the table (some of them uttered around mouthfuls of cake). Cedric only managed to snag two pieces before the whole thing was utterly demolished.

"You guys!" howled Les Averman. "Did Cedric even get any?"

"Yeah, I had some," Cedric assured him.

Averman rolled his eyes. "Like what, one piece?"

"No, I had more than one!"

"He had two," Maglor put in helpfully.

"Time for games!" announced Daeron from the other end of the table.

There was a bit of volleyball outside behind the house, played Muggle-style, and to his great surprise Cedric loved it. The Ducks were horrible at it, but their hilarious antics made the game more than worth playing, just for the laughs. After Cedric got tired of volleyball (about an hour later), the young people went back inside and had a few rounds of supervised recreational duelling. Connie wanted to duel with Julie, but Julie wasn't having any of it, and Daeron intervened before things got too serious. Maglor matched all the partners after that.

Not everyone had had a chance to duel when Amrod/Amras (it wasn't always possible to tell which was which) came in to say that it was time for dinner, whereupon they all stampeded into the dining room to eat again. Cedric, being by this time very tired, fell asleep at the table with his head on his arms, and had to be prodded awake and sent to bed by the ever-helpful Charlie.

It was undoubtedly one of the noisiest, happiest, most tiring birthdays that Cedric Diggory had ever had in his life. And yet it was not enough to keep a hint of loneliness from tainting his dreams: he was a long way from home, among relative strangers, and he was not likely to see anyone he knew again for a very long time.