Malfoy arrived at half past one.
This was, Ron reflected, a gap in the preparation.
He had spent a year avoiding Draco Malfoy mostly by accident - always moving directly from class to the room of requirements to the kitchen or great hall or common room. Never in public for long.
He was glad for this as he was someone who understood that certain encounters produced noise he didn't have time for. It had worked, mostly. He had managed an entire year with barely a nodded acknowledgement in passing and nothing further, which was the correct amount of Draco Malfoy for his purposes.
The train, evidently, had different ideas.
The compartment door slid open. Crabbe and Goyle occupied the frame in the specific way they always occupied frames — too much of them for the available space, arranged in the attitude of people who had been told they were intimidating and had decided to commit to the brief. Malfoy stepped in between them with the ease of someone who had been performing this entrance since he was eleven and considered it one of his better bits.
'Weasley,' he said, with the tone he reserved for Ron specifically — the one that was supposed to land as contempt but had always had something else underneath it, something that required the contempt as cover. His eyes moved to Harry, then Hermione, then back. 'Potter. And the Mudblood, naturally. All in one carriage. Like someone's idea of a — '
Ron raised his hand.
He had not decided to do it.
That was the precise and honest account of what happened: he had not formed an intention, had not reached for his wand, had not done any of the things that normally preceded deliberate magic.
His hand came up with the instinct of someone whose patience had simply finished, and the magic came with it — clean, direct, with none of the roughness of accidental casting.
Malfoy's mouth continued moving and produced no sound.
The compartment door swung closed with the firm authority of something that had made a decision. The lock engaged.
Through the glass panel they could see Malfoy's face go through the specific sequence of someone who had expected a reaction and received something entirely outside their available categories. His mouth was still moving. Nothing was coming out. He put his hand to his throat. He looked at Crabbe. Crabbe looked back with the expression of someone who had been in Draco Malfoy's orbit long enough to understand that the correct response in novel situations was to wait for instruction, and who was currently receiving none.
Then Malfoy looked through the glass panel at Ron.
Ron looked back. He did not do anything further. He simply met Malfoy's eyes with the quality he had when he was not performing anything — the flat attention of someone who had assessed the situation and reached a verdict and was not particularly interested in the appeal.
Malfoy left.
Not quickly — quickly would have been an acknowledgement. He left at a pace that was clearly intended to be deliberate and was slightly too fast to be convincing, Crabbe and Goyle shuffling after him in the specific formation of people who were retreating and had not been told they were retreating.
Ron lowered his hand.
The silence in the compartment lasted approximately four seconds.
'You didn't use your wand,' Harry said.
'No,' Ron said.
'The door locked itself.'
'Yes.'
Hermione was looking at him with the expression that had been looking at him since second year — the model-updating one, the one that added a new data point and immediately began reorganising around it. Her book had closed at some point during the last sixty seconds. She had not noticed.
'How long have you been able to do that?' she said.
'I'm not entirely sure that was intentional,' he said, which was true, and which Hermione received with the precision of someone noting that not intentional and not able to do it again were meaningfully different statements.
Harry looked at Hermione. Hermione looked at Harry. Something moved between them that had the quality of a conversation that had been in preparation for some time and had been waiting for the right moment to arrive.
'We want to train,' Harry said. 'Properly. Like you've been training.'
Ron looked at him. Then at Hermione, who was looking back with the specific quality of someone who had thought about this carefully and was presenting it as a request rather than an argument because she had judged that more effective.
He thought about the year ahead. The tasks. The graveyard. What it would cost them if he said no.
'Alright,' he said.
Harry started to say something.
'But I need you to understand what alright means,' Ron said. 'It means an hour minimum every day on top of your coursework. It means the things I ask you to practice are not optional because they feel boring or basic. It means there will be nights it is genuinely unpleasant.' He looked at them both steadily. 'What I've been building for two years is not a curriculum designed for someone who has other commitments. It will need to be adapted. That adaptation will have a cost.'
A beat.
'We understand,' Hermione said.
'Harry,' Ron said.
Harry met his eyes. He had the expression he had when he was not saying the easier thing because he had decided the honest thing was worth more. 'I understand,' he said.
Ron nodded once.
Luna looked up from the Quibbler, which she had been reading throughout the entirety of the preceding events with the equanimity of someone who had decided the world was strange and had made her peace with it.
'Can I also train?' she said pleasantly.
Ginny, beside her, looked at Ron with the expression of someone who was not going to ask but was also not going to pretend she didn't want to know the answer.
He looked at the four of them. At the compartment window, where the countryside was properly itself now, green and unhurried and indifferent to everything that was going to happen in the next twelve months.
'We'll discuss the details when we're back at school,' he said. 'But yes. All of you, if you want it.'
Luna returned to the Quibbler. Ginny's expression did something brief and real that she converted quickly into the neutral focus of someone who had not been waiting for that answer at all.
Ron looked at the window.
The year had begun.