Dawlish arrived on Monday of the following week with the quality of someone who had been briefed extensively and had drawn the correct conclusions from the briefing.
He was a career Auror — the Ministry had sent his file to McGonagall before his arrival, and the file was available to the prefects as a matter of the new transparency protocols Amelia Bones had apparently installed when she made the arrest, which Ron interpreted as Amelia being precise about the conditions under which Ministry staff operated in Hogwarts going forward. He had read the file. Dawlish was forty-three, had passed his Auror qualification with a Distinction, had spent twelve years in field work and six in the specialist operations unit before a temporary transfer to the Minister's office that the file described as completed and that he suspected had been the specific kind of transfer you took when you were between your own better judgment and the instructions of someone you worked for and had needed time to resolve the conflict.
He was not cruel. This was evident from his first Defense class, which had the specific quality of someone who had decided, in the planning of it, that the primary objective was to not make the situation worse. The class covered Shielding Charms — practical, relevant, correctly taught. He demonstrated the standard Shield with the economy of someone for whom it was entirely automatic, described the theory without condescension, and let the students practice without the specific pedagogical approach of hovering over them with a gradebook in hand and a sense that failure was being documented.
He was adequate. He was not inspiring. He taught Defense the way a competent professional who was not a teacher taught things they knew well — correctly but without the specific quality of someone who found the subject alive rather than functional. Lupin had found it alive. Dawlish found it serviceable.
But he did not harm anyone.
Ron noted this and did not expect more from it. He attended the classes with the attention he gave anything that had information to offer and found that the information was the information of a working Auror rather than an academic — which was, in its own way, different from what the curriculum usually provided and had some value.
It was in the third week of Dawlish's tenure that the Auror came to find him.
He was at the east window table on a Saturday morning when Dawlish appeared at the library entrance, looked around the room, identified him, and walked over with the quality of someone who had been deciding whether to do this for some time and had decided.
He sat down.
Ron waited.
'I want to say something,' Dawlish said, in the direct voice of someone who was going to say a specific thing and had decided the preamble was not useful. 'What you did with Umbridge — the documentation, the method, the way it was handled. That was professional-grade work. I've seen Auror arrests with less preparation behind them.'
Ron looked at him.
'I'm not here to tell you to be more careful,' Dawlish said. 'I'm here because I read my predecessor's file and I read the documentation from Madam Pomfrey and I wanted to meet the student who produced it and say, directly: well done.'
He paused, apparently having delivered the thing he had come to deliver and now waiting to see how it was received.
'Thank you,' Ron said.
Dawlish nodded. He appeared satisfied with this as a response. Then he said, with the quality of someone deciding to extend the conversation beyond the purpose of the visit: 'The group you're running. The Defense practice. I've heard things about it.'
'It's registered with the school,' Ron said. 'Session plans filed with McGonagall three days in advance.'
'I know,' Dawlish said. 'I read them.' He looked at Ron with the specific assessment of a career Auror who had been looking at people carefully for twenty years. 'What I heard is that the quality is above what the session plans describe.'
Ron held his gaze.
'I have no objection to that,' Dawlish said. 'I want to be clear: I am not here to reproduce the situation I replaced. Whatever Umbridge was looking for in those sessions, I am not looking for it.' He paused. 'What I am prepared to offer, if it's useful, is that some of the material I'd cover in NEWT-level Auror assessment has practical overlap with what you're working toward. I would be willing to have a conversation about it.' Another pause. 'Not officially. Not as course material. Just a conversation.'
Ron looked at him for a long moment.
'Wednesday,' he said. 'Here. Seven in the morning.'
Dawlish nodded. He stood. Then, at the edge of the table, he said: 'The Quibbler's coverage was accurate. For what it's worth.' He looked at Ron once more. 'You chose the right approach.'
He left.
Ron went back to the ward theory notes and thought about what Dawlish was and wasn't offering, which was specific: not involvement, not authority, not anything that complicated the existing structure. Simply the knowledge of a career Auror made available in a conversation, which was the kind of resource that was genuinely useful and carried no cost he hadn't already assessed.
He added Wednesday morning to his calendar.
The conversation ran two hours and covered ground that was not in the OWL or NEWT curriculum and was better for being outside it — the specific practical knowledge of field conditions, the things that went wrong in the gap between theory and application that the curriculum acknowledged in principle and did not address in practice. Dawlish talked about these things with the quality of someone for whom they were simply the job rather than dramatic material, which was the correct register and the most useful one.
He listened, and asked three questions, and noted the answers in the dark-covered notebook in the section that was neither timeline nor correspondence but the third kind.
The Wednesday sessions continued through October. They did not, after the first one, require much from him in the way of conversation — Dawlish arrived with specific material and delivered it and answered questions and left, which was the arrangement that suited them both. He was in the school for the term's duration and had apparently decided that this was the contribution he could make to the situation that was not above his operational mandate and was not below his professional judgment.
He was, on balance, the right person to have sent.