He said goodbye to his teachers over the past 3 weeks.
Kiggundu came with the finished Snitch which was exactly right,
He picked up the staff now with the charm Ginny made tied to it, his bag and trunk and took the portkey home.
The Burrow had the warmth of a house that was full of people who were glad to be in it. He arrived in the garden at four in the afternoon and Ginny was the first person he saw, sitting on the back step reading.
She looked up.
'You're different,' she said.
'Almost four weeks,' he said.
'Not that,' she said. 'You're more settled. Like something clicked into place.'
He thought about the stone room and the wolf and the eleven minutes.
'Something did,' he said.
She looked at the staff.
'What's that?' she said.
'A staff,' he said. 'From a craftsman in the magical district.'
'Can I?' she said, reaching.
'Better not,' he said. 'Not yet. It needs to settle to me first.'
She pulled her hand back. 'Good trip?'
'Very good,' he said.
'Mum's inside,' she said. 'She's been listening for the portkey for two hours.'
He went inside, and Molly was at the kitchen table and was on her feet before he fully cleared the doorway, and the hug had the quality of someone who had been holding the worry for three weeks and was now putting it down.
'You're alright,' she said. Not a question. Confirming.
'I'm alright,' he said. 'Better than alright.'
She looked at him and something in her settled.
His father arrived from the Ministry at six with the quality of someone who had been pretending not to count the days, and Ron gave him the brass compass which Arthur held in both hands and turned over several times with the expression he had for Muggle objects applied to magical ones, which was delight squared.
After dinner, when the washing up was done and the kitchen was quiet, he got the album from the trunk.
'I want to show you something,' he said.
He put it on the kitchen table and opened it to the first page.
His mother sat down. His father sat down. Ginny, passing through, stopped and leaned over his shoulder.
The September platform. Arthur looked at it for a long moment. 'That's your mother,' he said, with the quality of someone recognising something true.
They went through it slowly — not his prompting, theirs. His mother turned each page with the care she used for things she intended to look at properly. Ginny was quiet in the way she was quiet when something had caught her whole attention.
The Egypt section produced a particular stillness. His father looked at the roof photograph for a long time. 'You were happy there,' Arthur said. 'Yes,' Ron said.
His mother stopped on the photograph of herself at the kitchen table reading his letter.
She was quiet for a long moment.
'When did you take this?' she said.
'March visit,' he said. 'You didn't know.'
She looked at the photograph of herself and her expression was the expression in the photograph, and he understood that some things completed themselves in the seeing.
'Ron,' she said, and did not finish the sentence, and did not need to.
The Uganda section they looked at with the particular attention of people encountering somewhere entirely new. The Fwooper produced exclamations. The Nundu produced silence.
'Who is this?' his mother asked, of Ssemakula in the doorway.
'My teacher there,' he said. 'He taught me something important.'
She looked at the photograph. Then at him.
The last photograph — the valley, the staff, and the Ugandan light.
'That's you,' his father said, in the voice he used when he was seeing something he hadn't expected and hadn't quite caught up to yet.
'Yes,' Ron said.
Arthur put his hand on Ron's shoulder and left it there for a moment longer than usual.
They sat at the kitchen table in the July evening with the album open between them, and outside the Burrow was doing what it always did, and he was home.