ON HOLD - Caramel [G.W.]

fifteen.

Sorry about how long this took. I'll try and update more regularly and let you guys know if there's gonna be things that make it so I can't.

Harry was still ignoring Orion, and it was becoming a drag for both of them. Normally, when something was up, Harry would go to Orion for advice or just for someone to talk to. But obviously, he wasn't going anywhere near Orion and was bottling things up. From the looks of it, he'd gotten a little snappy because of it. Orion was just generally upset, Harry is one of the last people he'd ever wanted to upset or hide things from, and yet he'd managed to do both.

"So you're abandoning me for the Gryffindor twerps?" Cedric teased, lightly bumping his shoulder against Orion's.

"Oh shut up." Orion smiled and laughed a bit. "We invited you, you just would rather be doing homework." he lightly prodded at Cedric's now prominent ribs.

He'd missed a full two weeks of school, apparently he got sick again after getting over dragon pox. As a result, Cedric had lost a considerable amount of weight from being sick and looked a bit deathly. It didn't keep the girls (and some boys) from flocking him though, if anything it made it worse. Something about boys that looked on the brink of death had always set the Hogwarts students off. It was why everyone was secretly in love with Theodore Nott and very openly in love with Bradley Chambers.

"Oh I don't see why you guys have to go to Oliver's birthday party." Cedric complained, though it was empty, he was still to weak to do anything close to partying.

"Oh hush, you can pop round any time you want." he smiled at Cedric and lightly hit his arm. "I'll see you later, my dad wants to talk to me." Orion waved at Cedric as he ran off.

The door was open when Orion got there, so he made his way in and shut the double doors behind him. He definitely was not expecting for Remus to be sat against his desk, a whole cake in his hand as he smiled down at his son. The cake was different from the one Orion was given on his own birthday. While it still held the trick candle at the top, the cake was Gryffindor colours instead of it's usual pale shade of yellow.

"You brought me The Birthday Man.." he whispered fondly as he nodded to the candle.

Sirius had started The Birthday Man tradition by accidentally putting a charmed Zonko's candle on the cake rather than a regular one. One year old Orion had been absolutely enthralled by the little dancing man and Remus and Sirius found it too endearing not to give him one for every birthday. They even started doing it for other people's birthdays as well. The cake was all Remus, the man did love his chocolate.

It took a lot not to get jealous of the sentimental value of the cake. It'd been five years now since Orion had been able to get his own special cake with his own Birthday man. He'd always been at school for his birthday and after Halloween of 1981, the proximity of his birthday to Sirius' had been hard for the both of them. Now Orion just ignored his birthday, which had been hard and involved hexing the twins into not turning it into some whole big thing. The 5th of November for Orion was always spent alone, usually holed up in his dorm room with Cedric kicked out.

Orion wasn't sure when he started crying, he just knew he was from way his chest ached and his eyes and throat burned. Mostly from the way Remus now had his son clutched to his chest as he rocked him like he were a small child. Though, in all fairness Remus found it hard not seeing Orion as a child anymore, boarding school made it hard to allow yourself closure with your child grown up.

"Oh dear.. Oh I'm sorry, I should've known the candle was too much." Remus frowned and pulled out his wand to switch the candles. The Birthday Man was replaced with a plain red and gold striped candle. "Here, you keep it." he smiled softly and held the joke candle out to his son.