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It doesn’t do you any favours, socially speaking, to walk around with a young corvid perched on your shoulder, sleeping on your desk, or in a safe portion of your bag. Especially at Hexley Hall - infamous across the Ever Realm for its unchecked levels of bullying.
But the thing is? Life at Hexley Hall already sucked for Cedric. Most children have a best friend, or at least a friend of some description. But Cedric had no one. He had always thought that having some company would lessen the sting of being perpetually taunted with his failures.
It had been a few months ago, at least, when Cedric had stood in the corridor, soaked in muddy water, a bruise on his arm, and convinced himself that it was finally time to conjure up a cure for his loneliness.
The laughter and callus voices had long since faded, so it was entirely silent as Cedric walked, with waterlogged footsteps, to the library. Normally the Shusher berated him upon entrance - but not this time, he was careful this time. Cedric pushed the door slowly, resting it closed behind him, and headed directly to the transmutation section.
He remembered hearing about a spell… that could create life from stone. In his lesson, they learnt about it being used to bring statues to life. Perhaps he could have a statue friend? Statues were strong; they would be able to protect him.
The library was empty save for the dust and cobwebs, and after about half an hour, Cedric located the correct tome. It was bound in thick, purple leather. Cedric wrinkled his nose - he really disliked the colour purple. Green was more his thing.
Still, Cedric opened the cover and ran his finger down the index until he found the spell he was looking for. Flipping to that page, he saw that it didn’t look too complicated at all. The only materials needed were your wand, a drop of blood, and the stone of your choosing. The book did not specify what shape the stone should be, only that the creature created would be the one that fit best.
But there were no stones in the Hexley Hall library. Cedric hid the book in his uniform robes, and left for gardens.
It had been raining all night, and the grass was covered in droplets of water. Cedric saw a statue a little way away - it was a statue of a faun, lounging by a waterfall. A faun would make an excellent friend, with those intimidating horns they had.
Cedric ran over to the statue, but halfway there, his foot must have caught something, as his face hit the grass, and the spell book was cast forward. He grimaced - that book would be in no fit condition to return.
Sitting up, Cedric found the object that caused him to trip. It was a rock, no bigger than the palm of his hand, vaguely oval shaped but thicker at one end. Like an egg. It was a dusty blue colour and mottled with little black spots. Very appealing.
The young sorcerer glanced between the faun and the rock. Surely, the faun would make a better friend than whatever the spell turned a common rock into. But at the same time, Cedric felt something pulling him towards the rock. He tried to place it on the grass, and leave it - but the palm of his hand stung with absence.
That made his decision.
Cedric placed the stone in front of him, and opened the book to his side. Following the instructions, he removed the pin from his robe and used it to prick his thumb. It hurt, but not as much as getting pushed down the stairs by Grimtrix. He let the small drop of blood fall onto the stone, in the wet conditions, the crimson diffused over it’s surface, combining with the stone’s blue colouration to create a light purple tone.
Cedric wiped his thumb on the grass, then took out his wand. He practised the motion a few times, took a deep breath, and said the words “ by power of earth and and fire’s glow, stone to flesh, let it be so, from solid rock to living grace, awaken now, take form, take face. ”
A brilliant lilac light glimmered over the stone, twinkling this way and that like a cosmos of shooting stars. It was so beautiful, in fact, that Cedric may have changed his opinion on the colour purple.
To Cedric’s disappointment, when the light faded, the rock looked more or less the same. However, when he went to pick it up, the rock felt fragile and light, as if it were made of the thinnest glass in the world. And that was when Cedric realised: this was no longer a rock. This was an egg.
“But what kind of egg?” he whispered to himself.
“ Isn’t that Goodwyn’s son? ” the voice of one of his teacher’s called, “ what are you doing here? You should be in lessons! ”
“I just… dropped my wand at lunch,” Cedric lied, holding his wand in the air, “I’ve found it now!” He tucked the egg into his interior pocket.
In the following weeks, although the egg did not protect Cedric, it gave him a valuable reason to protect himself. He didn’t exactly know why, but he felt that if anything bad happened to this egg, it would change the course of his life forever.
Then, one day in his room, a crack appeared on the egg’s surface, and another and another. Cedric leaned over it, holding his breath until a hideous, bald creature poked its beak through the shell - a baby bird.
Cedric cleaned the bird and put it somewhere warm. Then he watched it.
He watched the bird every night (when he probably should have been doing his homework) and fed it worms by crushing them up in a mortar and pestle. He noticed how thin, frondlike feathers grew from its skin until it had a cloud-like black coat. The bird was no longer hideous at this point - in contrast, it was gut wrenchingly adorable.
At this point, the bird (which Cedric had identified as a raven and named Wormwood) could walk a little on its own, which could lead to endless mischief in the cluttered sorcerer’s tower of Enchancia, so he decided it would be best to take it into school with him each day. To keep it safe.
And from that day on, it just became a fact of life at Hexley Hall that Goodwyn’s son had a pet raven. And though the teachers complained, Cedric didn’t listen. This was his friend - his best friend - and he could never be alone again; a fact he was reminded of every time Wormwood woke him up with squawking, or bit on his ear to keep him focused in class, or (later in his life) dived with force at Grimtrix and persisted until the horrid sorcerer ran crying with his arms shielding his face.
The raven was an angry little ball of fluff, really, but Cedric couldn’t imagine it any other way.
