The news about the Dementors came on the thirtieth.
His father arrived home from work with the Prophet and with the look he had when something at the Ministry had moved in a direction he considered significant — not alarmed, not celebratory, the contained assessment of someone who had been watching a situation for months and had just seen it resolve in a way that was better than expected but not without reservations.
'They're recalling them,' his father said, setting the paper on the kitchen table. 'The Dementors. Back to Azkaban. Effective the first of January.'
His mother read the headline. 'All of them?'
'The Hogsmeade perimeter,' his father said. 'And the two positions they'd established near Diagon Alley. The Ministry is citing successful containment of the security risk as the official position.' He paused. 'Which means they haven't found Pettigrew and they've decided the Dementors are causing more problems than they're solving.'
Ron looked at the paper. The accompanying article was careful — the Ministry careful of something that was true but inconvenient, the language of institutions managing the gap between what they had promised and what had been delivered. Pettigrew: still at large. Auror patrols: to be maintained at reduced levels. Security assessment: ongoing.
'They're giving up,' Ginny said, from the doorway.
'They're adjusting,' his father said, with the diplomatic precision of someone who worked for the Ministry and had a particular relationship with its limitations. 'The threat is real. They're not abandoning it. They're changing the method.'
'Pettigrew has been loose since September,' Ginny said. 'Four months. No confirmed sighting.'
His father did not argue with this. He picked up his tea.
Ron looked at the paper and thought about Pettigrew. He knew, with the specific certainty of someone who had read the story, where Pettigrew was going and what he was going to do when he got there, and neither of those things was preventable by Auror patrols in Hogsmeade. Pettigrew was heading for a graveyard in Little Hangleton and a cauldron and a rebirth, and the timeline for that was not this year.
What the Dementor recall meant, practically, was that the castle would be less oppressive from January onward. Harry would stop reliving the night his parents died every time he went near a perimeter guard. The first years who had spent their first months at Hogwarts in the shadow of something cold and ancient and hungry would have that weight lifted.
This was good. He would take it.
'The Auror patrols,' he said to his father. 'Reduced — but still there. Through the spring?'
'Through the academic year at minimum,' his father said. 'The threat assessment doesn't change just because the containment method does. Pettigrew is still out there. That means the situation that produced Pettigrew is still — potentially — active.' He said this carefully, in the way he said things he believed to be true but did not want to alarm his children with unnecessarily.
Ron nodded and went back to the paper.
He photographed the front page of the Prophet before his mother could use it to light the fire.