October had the quality of a month finding its pace. The coursework deepened — Arithmancy into the second unit, which required a different kind of attention than the first; Runes into the transitional corpus analysis he was writing for Babbling; the training sessions with Harry, Hermione, Ginny and Luna progressing from footwork into the first non-verbal casting drills, which were exactly as difficult as he had told them they would be.
Harry's problem was impatience — not with the process, but with himself. He expected things to transfer from verbal to non-verbal quickly, because his verbal casting was strong and he had done difficult magic before. Non-verbal was a different skill. Ron told him this plainly on the third week when Harry had tried the same silencing charm twelve times with decreasing success and was beginning to set his jaw in the specific way that meant he was about to revert to brute force.
'You're fighting it,' Ron said.
'I'm trying,' Harry said.
'Those aren't the same thing. The verbal component isn't just a word — it's the moment your intention organizes itself clearly enough to direct the magic. Non-verbal is learning to do that organization silently. If you fight your way through it you'll produce an inconsistent result every time. You need to find the quiet first and work from there.'
Harry looked at him.
'Close your eyes,' Ron said. 'Not for the charm. Just — close them for thirty seconds and do nothing.'
Harry looked like he wanted to argue. He closed his eyes.
After thirty seconds Ron said, quietly: 'Now.'
The silencing charm landed clean.
Harry opened his eyes and looked at the practice dummy, which was producing no sound and would have been if the charm had failed. He looked at Ron.
'The quiet first,' Ron said.
Hermione, who had witnessed this, was looking at Ron with the expression she had when she had updated her model and was running the implications. She said nothing then. Later, walking back to Gryffindor Tower, she fell into step beside him and said: 'You're teaching yourself while you teach us.'
'Some of it,' he said.
'The articulation forces the clarity.'
'Yes.' He looked at her sideways. 'You always had the quiet. That's why your non-verbal work is coming fastest.'
She was quiet for a moment. The corridor was mostly empty at this hour — the specific late-evening emptiness of a castle settling into the end of a day.
'The pendant,' she said, not quite non-sequitur. 'I've been wearing it every day.'
'I noticed,' he said. He had noticed. He had been careful not to appear to notice.
She looked at him. He looked ahead at the corridor.
'Good,' she said, finally, and that was the end of it and also not the end of it at all.