Snape came to Dumbledore on the evening of the twenty-fourth.
He knew about it the following morning, when Dumbledore sent Fawkes to the dormitory window at six-fifteen with a note in the specific brief handwriting that meant the information was urgent rather than formal: My office. Before breakfast.
He dressed and went.
Dumbledore was at his desk. He had the quality he had in the very early mornings when he had not slept — not tired, not diminished, but the quality of someone who had been thinking through the night and had arrived, by morning, at a complete picture. He looked at Ron across the desk and said, without preamble: 'Severus brought news last night.'
'The prophecy,' Ron said.
'Yes.' Dumbledore looked at him. 'Voldemort has been unable to lure Harry to the Department of Mysteries through the usual mechanism. The visions — the connection through the scar — have not produced the response he required. He has concluded that a direct approach is necessary.'
Ron was quiet for a moment. 'He's going himself.'
'Yes.'
'When.'
'Tonight,' Dumbledore said. 'Severus believes tonight. The inner circle has been assembled. The specific Death Eaters who were not captured at Azkaban, and several others who were never publicly identified. Severus estimates twelve in total, including Voldemort.'
Ron looked at the window. The early morning had the quality of a day that had not yet become itself — the specific potential of the hour before the castle woke. He thought about everything that had been built since September of first year, the specific accumulation of five years of preparation, and felt it settle into the form of this particular morning with the specific quality of a thing arriving at its occasion.
He looked at Dumbledore.
Dumbledore looked at him.
Neither of them said anything for a moment. The thing between them in those seconds was not words — it was the specific recognition of two people who had been working toward the same point from different positions and had arrived at it simultaneously.
'The Order,' Ron said.
'I will have them assembled by this afternoon,' Dumbledore said. 'Moody. Tonks. The Weasleys. Kingsley. Several others.'
'Harry needs to know,' Ron said.
'Yes,' Dumbledore said. 'Tell him this morning. He will want to prepare.'
Ron stood to go.
'Mr Weasley,' Dumbledore said.
He stopped.
'Before tonight,' Dumbledore said, with the specific careful quality of someone saying a thing they had been waiting for the correct moment to say, 'I want you to know that I have watched what you have built across five years with the attention it deserved. Every piece of it.' He paused. 'Whatever happens tonight — whatever the shape of after — I have made decisions about the future of this school and this world in which you are central. Not peripheral. Central.' He looked at Ron steadily. 'You should know that.'
Ron held his gaze for a moment.
'I know,' he said. 'Thank you.'
He went to wake Harry.
Before leaving the castle, he stopped at the Room of Requirements.
He had sent Sable to find the core members of the Defense Association twenty minutes earlier — not all forty-three, but the inner seventeen, the ones who could apparate, the ones who had been training since October with the specific intent that had made those sessions what they were. They arrived in the Room within twelve minutes of the summons, in ones and twos, with the quality they had developed across the year: alert, not panicked, present.
He stood at the front of the room and looked at them.
'Tonight is the night,' he said. No preamble. These were not people who needed preamble. 'We are going to the Ministry. Dumbledore, myself, Harry, and the Order. What I need from you is here.'
He held their gaze around the room. Neville, who would be going with him. The rest: Susan Bones, whose aunt had prepared for this. Cedric, who had the quality of someone who had been ready for months. The others.
'I need the castle protected tonight,' he said. 'Not from an attack — I don't expect one here. But I need someone responsible watching every corridor, every entrance. I need the first-years and second-years looked after if they wake up frightened. I need the wards monitored — Hermione has the specific frequency for the external ward perimeter, she'll show you before we leave.' He paused. 'I need you to hold Hogwarts tonight if needed. Can you do that?'
The room had the specific quality it had developed across months of working together — not excitement, not bravado, but the settled attentiveness of people who had been given a task they took seriously and were already building the plan for executing it.
'Yes,' Susan said. Flat, certain, the voice of Amelia Bones's niece.
'Yes,' said Cedric.
Around the room: yes.
He nodded once. 'Hermione will brief you on the ward monitoring before we go. If anything happens that is beyond what you can handle, send a patronus to McGonagall immediately. She has her own instructions.'
He looked at them for a moment longer — forty-three students across the year, seventeen in this room, a year of Tuesday and Thursday evenings and Saturday sessions and the specific accumulation of everything they had built together — and thought: they are ready. I made them ready. This is what ready looks like.
'Hold the castle, protect the students.' he said. 'We'll be back.'