The tutor arrived on the second of August.
Her name was Miriam Okafor, and she had been recommended by Professor Babbling in a letter that described her as 'the most rigorous private examiner I know, and the least interested in telling students what they want to hear. She will give you an accurate picture.' She was a short, precise woman in her late forties who had examined for the Wizarding Examinations Authority for eleven years before leaving to do private assessment work, and who arrived at the Burrow with a leather satchel, a set of testing instruments that clicked and hummed when she opened the case, and the expression of someone who had no particular interest in being impressive and expected the same in return.
Ron's mother offered her tea. She accepted it, drank half, and said: 'Shall we begin.'
They worked through the morning and into the afternoon, in the sitting room with the furniture moved back, then in the garden for the practical components, then back inside for the theoretical. His mother appeared twice in the doorway and was waved off both times, gently but unambiguously, by Okafor's raised hand. In the kitchen, a low rhythmic sound of movement indicated Biscuit and Pip at their work — the two house elves who had come with the Borrow remodel, quiet and efficient about it, leaving trays and not lingering.
The assessment took six hours.
Afterward, Okafor sat at the kitchen table with a cup of tea she actually finished and a set of notes written in a hand so small it required a magnifying charm to read at comfortable distance. Ron sat across from her with his pocket notebook open.
'Transfiguration,' she said. 'Low fifth year. Your theoretical understanding is solid and your precision on standard object transformations is good. What you lack is fluency under pressure — you think about each step, which is appropriate at your level but will cost you in examination conditions and in any situation where thinking becomes a luxury. The instinct is not there yet. That is a matter of repetition and nothing else.'
He wrote it down.
'Charms. Low fifth year, similar picture. Your range is wider than expected for your age, which is notable, and your wandwork is clean. Same limiting factor — you perform well when you have time and not quite as well when you don't. I suspect you know this.'
He did.
'Defence Against the Dark Arts. High fifth year. This is your strongest area of formal magic and it is not close. Your practical performance is significantly above standard. I will note for your own planning that the examination for NEWT Defence has a duelling component and a casting-under-duress component that neither of us can fully replicate in a garden in Devon. You will want structured duelling practice before you sit the papers.'
'I know,' he said.
She looked at him briefly. 'I believe you do. Potions. High fifth year. Your methodology is exemplary. You understand the chemistry as well as the magic, which is unusual and useful. I will also tell you — because I think you would prefer to know — that the NEWT Potions examination rewards intuition as much as method. There are elements of the higher-level practical that require a practitioner to read a potion in progress and respond to what they find rather than to what the instructions predict. Your rote knowledge is excellent. Your intuition will need work, and that kind of work is not accomplished by studying harder. It is accomplished by brewing more, making mistakes, and learning to trust what your senses are telling you.'
He wrote: intuition — brew more — trust the process.
'Herbology. Low fifth year, unremarkable in either direction. Astronomy, fourth year — understandable given what else you appear to have been studying, and catchable before OWLs if you apply yourself to it this term. History of Magic, purely theoretical, you could pass the NEWT examination now if required.'
'Good for something,' he said.
She looked at him with the particular expression of an examiner who had heard every variation of self-deprecating academic commentary and was not going to reward it with acknowledgement.
'Care of Magical Creatures. Low fifth year. Ancient Runes — mid sixth year, with specific areas approaching mastery, which is remarkable at your age and I say that with precision rather than flattery. Arithmancy, mid sixth year.' She paused. 'Professor Babbling did not mention you were this far ahead in either subject.'
'She may not have known the full extent,' Ron said.
Okafor considered this. 'Healing — theoretical knowledge is thorough through OWL and NEWT level both. You will need supervised practicals, which you cannot obtain through private study. I would contact Madam Pomfrey at Hogwarts.'
'I've written to her already,' he said.
She made a small note. 'Duelling as a formal discipline. Your practical magic in defence is, as I said, high fifth year. As a formal discipline with its own examination structure — non-verbal casting, point shooting, the codified engagement rules — you could pass OWLs now. You would not yet sit a NEWT paper with confidence. The gap is practice, not knowledge. Wizarding Law, theoretical, passable at NEWT level. Muggle Studies, passable at NEWT level without revision.'
She closed her notebook.
'Overall,' she said. 'You are operating two years above your age cohort in your strongest subjects and comfortably ahead in most of the rest. Your weakest area relative to your own standard is Astronomy, and your most significant development need is the gap between your theoretical understanding and your performance under pressure. You know a great deal. You do not yet perform consistently at the level of what you know. That gap closes through practice and through the specific kind of pressure that only real situations provide.'
She drank the last of her tea.
'Any questions?'
'One,' he said. 'The intuition problem in Potions. How do you develop it if you can't study your way to it?'
She looked at him. 'You brew things that aren't in a book. You experiment. You make something from what you have and try to understand why it went wrong, or why it went right. You treat it as a craft rather than a science.' A pause. 'I suspect you know this already and were asking to confirm it.'
'Partly,' he said.
'The other part?'
'I wanted to hear someone else say it.'
She closed her satchel and stood. 'That is a reasonable thing to want.' She picked up her coat. 'You have considerable ability. I would suggest the more valuable question is not how far ahead you are, but how much of what you're capable of is still undeveloped.'
She said goodbye to his mother with professional warmth and was gone.
Ron sat at the kitchen table for a while with his notebook open and the list in front of him. Pip appeared at his elbow to collect Okafor's cup without being asked, with the quiet efficiency Ron had come to consider simply part of the household's weather.
His mother came in, looked at the list, and looked at him.
'Well?' she said.
'I have work to do,' he said.
She considered this.
'Dinner in an hour,' she said, and went back to the stove.