The career orientation sessions were in the second week of March.
McGonagall ran them in her office, one student at a time, with the specific organised efficiency of someone who took the sessions seriously as a professional obligation and as a genuine interest. He had seen the list on the noticeboard — alphabetical, one slot per student per afternoon, twenty minutes each — and had put his name down for the Thursday slot without particular expectation.
The other students came out of the sessions with the specific qualities of their conversations. Lavender had the quality of someone whose plan had been confirmed. Dean had the quality of someone who had been given more options than he had been aware of. Seamus had the quality of someone who had been given a piece of direct advice by McGonagall and was still processing the directness of it.
He went in at four-fifteen.
McGonagall had the folder on her desk — the record, the O.W.L. projections, the standard materials. She looked at him across the desk with the expression she had developed for him across five years, which was the expression of someone who was aware that the standard framing of the session was not, in this specific case, the most relevant one.
'Mr Weasley,' she said. 'I will give you the options. I think you know most of them already, but the process requires that I give them formally.'
'I understand,' he said.
She gave them. The Auror programme — she said it with the flat acknowledgment of someone who knew this was technically appropriate and also largely beside the point. Curse-breaking. Healing, if he wanted the training. The Ministry's various departments, for which she listed the ones that matched his documented abilities with the specific care of someone who took matching seriously. Research. Academia, if the inclination was there.
He took notes. Not because he was undecided about the individual options — he had opinions about most of them — but because the notes were useful and because the act of writing things down communicated that he was treating the session with the respect it deserved.
'You could,' McGonagall said, with the specific precision of someone who had been considering how to say a thing and had arrived at it, 'do most of these. That is not a common thing to be able to say to a student. It is worth noting.'
'I know,' he said. 'That's part of the problem.'
She looked at him. 'The war,' she said.
'The war,' he agreed. 'I don't know what the landscape looks like after. I have thoughts about what I want to contribute. I don't know yet what form that contribution takes.'
She was quiet for a moment. 'That is,' she said, 'a more considered answer than I receive from most fifth-years.'
'I'll make the decision after,' he said. 'When the shape of after is visible.'
She looked at him for a moment with the specific expression she reserved for him — the one that had been arriving since second year and had, by now, fully formed, the expression of someone who had watched something develop from a distance and had, gradually, stopped being surprised by it. 'I think,' she said, 'that is the correct approach.'
She made a note in the folder.
He left with the notes and walked back to the dormitory and thought about what came after and found that the shape of it was genuinely unclear, which was not an uncomfortable thing so much as an honest one. He had been building toward a specific set of events for four years. The events were almost done. What came next was a question he had not yet had the space to sit with properly.
He would sit with it after.
In the same session, in the days that followed, he heard:
Harry had walked out of McGonagall's office with the quality of someone who had received a piece of thinking he needed and was now doing it properly. Ron found him that evening on the common room sofa, alone, which was the position he used when he was working something through.
'Auror,' Harry said, without preamble.
'Probably,' Ron said.
'She said I'd be accepted immediately. The practical scores alone.' He paused. 'I'd be good at it.'
'Yes,' Ron said. 'You would.'
Harry looked at the fire. 'I've been thinking about the defence group,' he said. 'About what it's been like. Running the sessions.'
Ron waited.
'It's been — ' Harry stopped. Tried again. 'It's been one of the better things this year. Teaching them. Watching them get it.' He looked at Ron. 'I didn't expect that.'
'I know,' Ron said.
Harry was quiet for a moment. 'If Hogwarts is home,' he said slowly, finding the shape of the thought as he said it. 'If I actually — if it's actually that. Why not be here?'
'The Defence position has a curse,' Ron said.
Harry looked at him.
'Which we are going to break,' Ron said, 'as part of the general project of ending this.' A pause. 'After which the position is available.'
Harry looked back at the fire. Something in his expression settled — not decisively, not the decision made, but the idea placed in a position where it could be considered properly. 'Defence professor,' he said.
'You'd be extraordinary at it,' Ron said.
Harry said nothing for a moment. Then: 'Yeah,' he said. 'I think I might be.'
Hermione came to him on the Friday, which was two days after her own session, which meant she had spent two days sitting with it before she was ready to talk about it. This was consistent.
'Ministry,' she said.
'Which department?' he said.
'That,' she said, 'is the part I'm still deciding.' She had the quality she had when a problem was interesting rather than frustrating — the specific alertness of someone who had found something worth the full attention. 'Magical Law. Creature Rights. The DMLE, possibly, though the overlap with Auror work makes it—' She stopped. Looked at him. 'What do you think?'
'I think,' he said carefully, 'that the Ministry is going to need people who are better than it has been. After.' He looked at her. 'I think you could be the version of Hermione Granger who changes what the Ministry is, rather than the version who works within what it currently is.'
She looked at him for a moment. The sideways look — the full-picture one.
'That's not a department,' she said.
'No,' he said. 'It isn't.'
She considered this with the specific focus she gave things that had arrived at the correct level of complexity. Then she nodded, once, and went back to her notes with the quality of someone who had received information she intended to use.
Neville had come to him before the session, which was the Neville version of the same conversation — arriving with the question already half-formed rather than waiting for the institutional occasion to produce it.
'Herbology professor,' Neville said. 'I've been thinking about it since January.'
'Yes,' Ron said. 'That's right.'
Neville looked at him. 'You already knew.'
'I thought so,' Ron said. 'The way you are in the greenhouses. The way you were with the forest planting when we were at Grawp's clearing.' He looked at him steadily. 'You're a teacher, Neville. You're already one. You've been teaching the first-years in the greenhouse since October — I've seen you.'
Neville was quiet. 'I wrote to my parents,' he said. 'Before the session. To ask what they thought.'
'What did they say?'
He took the letter out. He didn't read it aloud. He just held it for a moment with the quality of someone who had received something they intended to keep. 'My dad said: that sounds like you. That's all. Just: that sounds like you.'
Ron looked at him. 'It does,' he said.
Neville folded the letter and put it away and had the expression of someone who had arrived at the thing they were going to be, and who found, on arrival, that it fit.