They found him at half past two.
The compartment door slid open in the specific way of things that had been opened without knocking, and Malfoy filled the frame in the configuration Ron had seen on the Hogwarts Express in third year and had been routing around ever since — Crabbe and Goyle taking up the available space behind him, the performance of casual power that he had apparently decided this occasion required.
Ron had been watching the corridor. He had known this was coming in the approximate way he knew most things about Draco Malfoy — not specific foreknowledge, but the specific pattern-recognition of someone who had been paying attention to a person for two years and understood their responses to changed circumstances. The circumstances had changed. Voldemort was back. Malfoy Senior was a Death Eater. The specific dynamic of a boy who had spent four years operating from the assumption that power was on his side had shifted overnight into something that would, if not managed, manifest as exactly this: the performance of certainty over the specific anxiety of its absence.
Malfoy looked at Harry first. Then at the compartment generally. Then his eyes settled on Ron with the quality they had had since the train in third year — the wariness underneath the contempt, more visible now than it had been then, the specific look of someone who had received the orange hair and the forest and the wand raised without a spell and the compartment door closing itself and had filed all of it in the category of things that needed managing.
'Potter,' Malfoy said, with the tone of someone who had rehearsed something. 'Enjoy the year. Because next year — when the Dark Lord has finished with you — you and your little friends are all going to — '
He had heard enough.
Three Stunners, non-verbal, in sequence — Harry, Hermione, Ginny, Neville and Luna had all seen the wand come up and had all had the presence of mind to understand what he was doing and not to move. Malfoy, Crabbe and Goyle dropped in the corridor with the specific simultaneous quality of three people who had not seen it coming and were now horizontal.
The compartment was quiet.
He looked at the three of them on the floor. He thought about leaving them there, which was the simple solution and had the advantage of not being illegal. Then he thought about the specific quality of Draco Malfoy spending the next three months in a house with a Death Eater father who had just been confirmed in his master's service, and the person Malfoy would be when he arrived at school in September if nothing interrupted that trajectory.
He made the Portkey.
It was the specific kind of illegal that was technically a Ministry violation and practically untraceable if done correctly — a piece of rope from his bag, a non-verbal activation sequence, keyed to the specific coordinates of the clearing near the Quidditch World Cup campsite in Dartmoor where the Death Eater march had passed through. Far enough from any populated area that waking up there would be inconvenient rather than dangerous. Close enough to a Muggle road that if they had the sense to walk they would find civilization within two hours.
He activated it after placing it in Malfoy's hand.
The three of them disappeared with the specific pop of an activated Portkey.
He closed the compartment door and sat down.
Hermione was looking at him.
'That was illegal,' she said.
'Yes,' he said.
'Manufacturing an unlicensed Portkey is a Ministry violation.'
'Yes.'
'The Stunners were probably justifiable under defensive magic provisions. The Portkey was not.'
'No,' he agreed.
She looked at him for a moment with the expression she had when she was deciding which version of the available responses was the most appropriate. Then she said: 'Where did you send them.'
'Dartmoor,' he replied.
'There's nothing there.'
'There is a Muggle road approximately ninety minutes' walk north,' he said. 'They have wands. They'll be fine.'
She pressed her lips together. The expression she had when she was managing a response she had decided not to give in full. 'Don't do that again without telling me first,' she said.
'Noted,' he said.
Harry, from the seat across from them, was looking at the space where Malfoy had been with the quality of someone who had watched something happen and was still processing the speed of it. 'Dartmoor,' he said.
'Dartmoor,' Ron confirmed.
Harry looked at him. 'Right,' he said. He looked out the window. 'Do you think they'll walk?'
'Malfoy will make Crabbe and Goyle walk,' Ron said. 'He won't want to admit he can't manage himself. '
Ginny, from her seat beside Harry, said: 'The orange hair was better.'
'Different occasion,' Ron said. 'Different requirement.'
Luna, from her corner, had not looked up from the Quibbler during any of this. She turned a page. 'The Dartmoor pixies will find them interesting,' she said. 'They haven't seen wizards since 1987.'
The compartment resumed its journey south.
They arrived at the platform around four. King's Cross at the end of June — the school year completed, the platform full with the particular mix of families arriving and students dispersing, the Hogwarts Express doing its final work of the year by producing its passengers one last time onto the London morning.
His parents were there. His mother with the quality she always had at this platform — the specific warmth of someone who had been counting the days and was now in the moment she had been counting toward. His father with his particular brand of quiet delight, the expression he had when all the things he valued were in the same place simultaneously.
Sirius was there, with Amelia, which Ron had expected. They had the quality of people who had been through something significant together and were in the aftermath of it — not diminished, but changed, the specific quality of two people for whom the night of the third task had confirmed something about what they were to each other and who were living with the confirmation.
Harry came off the train and saw Sirius.
Susan went to see Amelia.
Hermione said her goodbyes and went through the barrier.
He stood back and let the reunions happen.
There was a conversation he needed to have, but it was not this one. This one was for the people who had been waiting and the people who had returned. His was later.
He found his mother at the edge of the crowd.
She hugged him with the calibrated version — present, firm, not the kind that required extraction. She held him for slightly longer than usual, which told him that the year had cost her something in the way that years with this much in them cost the people who watched them from the outside.
'Home for a few days,' he said, into her shoulder.
'Good,' she said.
'And then I'll need to talk to you and Dad about the summer.'
She pulled back and looked at him with the specific assessing quality of Molly Weasley in full information-gathering mode. 'The summer,' she said.
'Yes,' he said. 'There are some things that need explaining. I'd rather do it properly at home than in a train station.'
She looked at him for a moment. Then she nodded, with the quality of someone who had been building toward this conversation since second year and had decided to receive it when it arrived. 'Tomorrow,' she said. ' After dinner .'
'Tomorrow,' he confirmed.