The compartment they found was six seats and a door that locked properly, which he had learned in third year to consider a requirement rather than a preference. Hermione took the window seat as she always did, because she liked to watch the city give way to countryside and had never found a reason to pretend otherwise. Ginny took the seat beside her. Neville settled in opposite with the ease of someone who had been arriving at this specific configuration for three years and had stopped thinking about it. Luna took the corner seat and immediately produced a copy of the Quibbler, which she read upside down with the focused attention she gave everything.
Harry was the last one in. He closed the door behind him, sat down, and exhaled with the specific quality of someone who had been through a lot of goodbyes and was glad to be on the other side of this one.
'She cried,' Harry said.
'She always cries,' Ron said. 'She's also already written your name on the Christmas invite list. These things coexist.'
Harry looked at him. The expression he had increasingly in Ron's company — the one that was still slightly surprised by the specific quality of being known accurately and was in the process of deciding it was alright. 'Yeah,' he said. 'I know.'
The train moved. Ron watched London resolve into suburbs resolve into the first real stretches of green, and thought about the year with the specific clarity of someone who had been thinking about it since June and had, by now, though it into something with the shape of a plan.
The Tournament. The tasks. The graveyard at the end of it, if nothing changed.
He intended for things to change.
He had the preparation. What he needed now was the year itself — the information that could only come from watching, from proximity, from the specific data that theory could gesture at but not supply. Crouch Junior would be at Hogwarts. Had been there since before the term started, in all likelihood, maintaining the performance with the discipline of someone who had been Imperioused back into function and had nothing left to lose.
Ron had spent August working through the Moody duelling memories until he knew the real man's patterns as well as he knew his own — the specific economy of a Senior Auror's spellwork, the way he moved, the way he assessed a room, the particular attention he gave exits.
He would see Crouch Junior's version in a few hours.
He would start looking for the gaps.
Hermione, across the compartment, had a book open on her knee but was looking at the window with the quality she had when she was thinking rather than reading — the specific unfocused attention of someone whose mind was elsewhere and had not decided to pretend otherwise. He had noticed this more in the last few months: the moments when she stopped performing engagement with whatever was in front of her and simply went somewhere.
He didn't ask about it. He would know when she was ready to say it.