The Harry-and-Ginny question had not been a question for some time.
There was only a direction and a pace, and the pace was, in early August, extremely slow in the specific way of two people who had not yet acknowledged they were moving in the same direction.
He had watched it since Christmas — the quality of Harry in rooms where Ginny was present, the recalibration that happened when she said something sharp or funny, the way his attention moved to her without appearing to intend to. He had watched Ginny since Easter, when the studiedly neutral expression had replaced the younger, more transparent quality she'd carried since second year, the one that had given way as she got older and more fully herself to something considerably more interesting and harder to read.
He was not going to do anything about this.
He was going to create conditions and stay out of the trajectory.
On the third evening after Harry arrived, he ensured that Harry was in the garden at the same time as Ginny, who was working on the woodcarving she did in the evenings. He remained in the kitchen with the Arithmancy text, where he could hear the conversation without being part of it.
He heard Harry say: 'What is it going to be?'
He heard Ginny say: 'A heron. Eventually.' A pause. 'You can watch if you want. Just don't say anything about the wood.'
'What do I say about the wood?'
'Nothing. That's what I said.'
A silence. Then Harry, with the quality of someone who had received a clear instruction and intended to follow it: nothing.
Ron went back to the Arithmancy.
The conversation that developed had nothing to do with him. He heard the texture of it without attending to the content — the ease that came from somewhere unexpected, two people who were both unusual in complementary ways discovering that the complementarity fit. He had been watching for it since January, had run the calculation in his head, had arrived at the same answer every time.
He made a brief note in his pocket notebook. Not about Harry and Ginny specifically. About the principle: that the right conditions, created without force, produced the right outcomes with a reliability that made forcing seem not just unnecessary but actively counterproductive.
He filed this alongside the others and returned to the page.