He raised the Bellatrix vault question with Sirius on the nineteenth.
They were in the Wulfhall's sitting room — the one with the oversized fireplace that had become the informal gathering space in the evenings, the specific room that accumulated people in the way that rooms designed for gathering accumulated people. Sirius had the quality he had been developing across the month at the Wulfhall — the specific settled quality of someone who had been given the space and the company to rebuild into something more than the sum of what Azkaban had cost him.
'Bellatrix's vault,' Ron said.
Sirius looked at him. 'What about it?'
'Can you access it? As head of the Black family — the vault is registered under the family trust, technically, as a secondary holding. There should be a clause in the Black family vault structure that gives the senior family member access to secondary holdings under specific conditions.'
Sirius looked at him for a long moment. 'I know about the clause,' he said. 'I also know that Bellatrix's solicitors filed a separation instrument in 1980 that removed her vault from the family trust structure. The clause doesn't apply.' A pause. 'I checked this in March, when I first got my legal situation sorted. I thought it might be useful.'
Ron held this. 'You checked in March.'
'I know what's in that vault, Ron,' Sirius said. 'Or I know enough to have suspicions. Bella was Voldemort's most devoted servant and she had things — heirlooms, objects — that she would have given to him without question.' He looked at the fire. 'The separation instrument was deliberate. She wanted that vault outside the family structure so that when the time came, no one could claim access to it through me.'
Ron thought about the Gringotts plan he had been developing since June. The separation instrument changed the approach — not the destination, but the method of getting there. He filed the adjustment.
'Alright,' he said. 'Different approach then.'
'Different approach,' Sirius agreed. 'What are you thinking?'
'Not yet,' Ron said. 'I need to work through the mechanics first. But the vault needs to be accessed before September — what's in it can't stay there.'
Sirius looked at him with the quality he had used since the night of the third task — the look of someone who had adjusted his picture of Ron Weasley several times and had arrived at a version he was no longer surprised by but was consistently interested in. 'The Horcrux,' he said.
'Yes,' Ron said.
'Do you need help?'
'Not for the getting in,' Ron said. 'For what comes after — yes. I'll ask when I have the plan.'
Sirius looked at the fire. 'Be careful,' he said. It was not a general instruction. It was the specific statement of someone who had decided that a particular person mattered and was communicating this in the only register currently available.
'Yes,' Ron said. 'That's the plan.'