The dress robes were a shared discovery.
He had known, approximately, what she would choose — had run the calculation in his head since February and arrived at a consistent answer. He had not known what he wanted for himself, only the general shape of it: not the traditional style, which was a statement he wasn't interested in making, and not purely Muggle, which was a different statement. Something in between. Something that was a considered choice rather than a default.
They were passing Madam Malkin's when Hermione stopped.
The window had a display that had been changed recently — a gown on the left, a set of dress robes on the right, both in the blue-purple range that shifted in the afternoon light. The gown was the first thing he registered, and registered correctly: floaty, the bodice worked with detail, the skirt full and the colour the exact periwinkle he had seen in a very different context that he was not going to mention.
She was looking at it with the expression of someone who had not known what they wanted until they saw it.
'Go in,' he said.
'I was going to,' she said.
Inside, while Hermione was taken to the back with the gown for a fitting, he looked at the robes on the right and understood what they were. Black dress coat, deep purple lapels and waistcoat and tie, white shirt. The coat's lining — visible only in movement, in the swing of the longer back — was a dark purple floral on black ground, the kind of detail that was there if you were looking and invisible if you weren't. He asked the tailor about the design. The tailor told him it had been commissioned by a client who had changed their plans, and was currently available.
He looked at it for a long moment.
'That one,' he said. 'Have it fitted properly. I'll come back in an hour.'
He was back at Flourish and Blotts when Harry and Ginny came through the door together, in the particular configuration of two people who are not touching but are managing their proximate space with unusual care, both of them slightly flushed in a way that had nothing to do with the temperature.
He looked at them.
Harry looked at him with the expression of someone who knew they were caught and had decided the correct response was dignity.
'Congratulations,' Ron said.
Ginny said, 'It's very recent.'
'This morning?' Hermione said, from beside him.
'This morning,' Harry confirmed.
Hermione looked at Ron. Her expression was the expression of someone sitting on a very precise observation, deciding whether the moment was right.
'Don't,' Ron said.
She pressed her lips together.
They went back to Malkin's, all four of them, and stood in the fitting area while the tailor finished the adjustments. Harry and Ginny both went beetroot at approximately the same moment when the periwinkle gown and the black-and-purple robes were presented together, side by side.
'Oh,' Harry said.
'It was not planned,' Ron said. 'It is, however, correct.'
Ginny was looking at the two of them with an expression he didn't quite have a category for. Something warm and complicated. She turned back to the racks and found something in a deep green that worked with what Harry was wearing, in a way that suggested she had been thinking about this longer than the morning.
He took a photograph in the shop, with the tailor's permission — all four of them, the gowns and robes visible in the background, Hermione's expression still doing the thing it did when she was containing a precise observation. Harry and Ginny still slightly pink.
He did not caption it.
He knew what it was.
He spoke to Harry that evening, on the back step, which had become their place for conversations that required space.
'Sirius,' Harry said, before Ron could ask the question.
'Yes,' Ron said.
'We talked. He talked about — about choosing things. When he was young and then when he wasn't. What he wished he'd done differently.' A pause. 'He didn't say anything about Ginny specifically. He didn't have to.'
'And Lupin?'
'Similar. Different words.' Harry looked at the garden. 'He said the thing that makes things complicated is usually the thing that makes them worth it. Which is the kind of thing Lupin says that sounds like a Hufflepuff motto until you think about it.'
Ron said nothing. He had a gift for this — the specific silence that was not absence but permission to continue.
'I thought she wouldn't — I thought she had moved on,' Harry said. 'She had. She'd become someone who didn't need me to see her. And then I saw her anyway.'
'Yes,' Ron said.
'That's it,' Harry said. 'That's the whole thing.'
'Yes,' Ron said.
Harry looked at him sideways. 'Did you know?'
Ron thought about the carving in the garden. The heron. The conversation he had not been part of.
'I knew the direction,' he said. 'I didn't know the morning. That part was yours.'
Harry nodded slowly.
'Ginny,' Ron said. 'I want to say one thing.'
'I know,' Harry said.
'Just the one,' Ron said.
'I know,' Harry said. 'I will.'
Ron accepted this.
They sat in the garden for a while, in the August quality of the last things before something changed, and the frogs were still at the pond and the summer was still itself, and he took no photograph of this, because there were things the lens was not for.
Ginny found him the next morning at the dueling posts.
She was not subtle about why she was there, which was one of the things he had always appreciated about her. She stood at the edge of the posts with her arms folded and watched him work through a sequence for a minute, and then said: 'I knew since January.'
He cancelled the non-verbal and looked at her.
'The carving,' she said. 'The garden at night. I didn't go looking for it.' A pause. 'I wasn't ready in January.'
'No,' he said.
'I am now,' she said. Not with the quality of someone asking for permission. With the quality of someone stating a fact she had verified from multiple angles.
'I know,' he said.
She looked at him with the expression she had when she was assessing whether an answer was complete.
'The speech,' she said.
'Harry did it,' Ron said. 'Last night. He volunteered.'
Her expression did something brief and specific that was not quite surprise and not quite not.
'Good,' she said.
She uncrossed her arms.
'Teach me the non-verbal,' she said. 'The binding hex. How you did it at the Cup.'
He looked at her. He thought about this for approximately one second.
'Stand here,' he said, and pointed to the first post.