The dinner had not been planned so much as accumulated.
It had started with Sirius, who had mentioned to Ron in a letter at the end of June that Harry's birthday was the thirty-first of July and that he had not previously had a birthday worth the name. It had continued with Ron, who had mentioned to Neville in a separate letter that Harry's birthday fell the day after Neville's own. It had been completed by Neville, who had mentioned this coincidence to his grandmother in a tone that was not quite asking anything, and by Augusta Longbottom, who had written to Sirius the following week with the quality of a woman who had seen an obvious gap and intended to fill it.
By the time anyone had formally proposed a dinner, the dinner already existed. The private room at the Leaky Cauldron had been booked, the guest list had been determined through a brief series of owls, and the only thing that remained was for Ron to find out about it, which he did when Sirius's letter arrived on the twenty-eighth with the details and a postscript that said: 'I believe you're responsible for starting this. Credit where due.'
He wrote back: 'I mentioned a coincidence. Other people had the idea.'
Sirius's reply came the same afternoon. 'Same thing.'
He thought about gifts for three days.
Harry was the easier problem in some ways and the harder one in others. Easy because Ron knew him — knew the texture of what Harry noticed and what he didn't, what moved him and what he received with the polite blankness of someone who had never been taught how to want things for himself. Hard because the things Harry actually needed were not things that could be wrapped.
He settled on two things. The first was a compact field guide to non-verbal casting — not a textbook, but a practitioner's volume, thin and well-worn in the edition he'd found, written by a duelling instructor from the 1950s who had evidently believed that the shortest path between two points was a sentence with no unnecessary words. It was the kind of book that rewarded attention rather than demanding it. Harry would read it the way he read things that had practical application, which was differently from the way Hermione read, but not worse.
The second was a photograph. He had developed it the morning Harry arrived at the Burrow — not staged, not announced. Harry at the garden gate, just through it, with the Burrow behind him and the expression he had at the Burrow that was the nearest available equivalent to coming home. Ron had taken it from the kitchen window. Harry hadn't known. The light had been the right light.
He had the photograph framed in a simple dark wood frame from the Muggle shop in the village, the kind that did not perform itself. He wrote on the back: 'July 30th, 1994. You looked like you knew where you were.'
For Neville the calculation was different. He had known since the Herbology lesson in third year — the specific way Neville had explained the root trimming, the animated quality that appeared only when the subject was botanical, the thing that had been confirmed when Neville mentioned his grandfather had taught him most of what he knew and then said, with the particular certainty of someone who had quietly made up their own mind: 'Gran thinks Herbology isn't serious enough. She's wrong.'
He had written to a specialist botanical supplier in June, which had required three letters and a deposit, and had arranged for a propagation of Gillyweed from a verified Hebridean stock — not the standard nursery variety, but the Highland strain, which grew slower and produced a more potent and longer-lasting effect when correctly cultivated. It came in a sealed propagation case with a care sheet written in the supplier's own hand. He had added his own notes in the margins, based on what he'd learned from Baraka's Herbology classes at Uagadou about cold-climate aquatic species management. Neville would ignore the supplier's sheet, which was standard, and read the margin notes with attention, which was also standard.
He wrapped both gifts the night before in brown paper, without ribbon, which was the correct decision for both recipients.