The wand weighing ceremony was on the Thursday of the first week, in a classroom off the entrance hall. He was not a champion and had no official reason to be present. He went anyway, with Hermione, which required no particular justification beyond the fact that Harry was inside and they were not in the habit of being far from Harry when things that mattered were happening.
They waited in the corridor outside.
The door was not fully closed — the gap was perhaps two inches, insufficient for observation but sufficient for sound, and the sound was enough.
He listened to Ollivander examine each wand with the patient attention of someone taking detailed notes rather than simply overhearing. Fleur's rosewood. Krum's hornbeam. And then Harry's holly and phoenix feather, which Ollivander held for longer than the others, and the specific quality of what he said — I thought about this one for some time after — which landed with the weight of something that contained more than it expressed.
He heard, between the wand examinations, the sound of a Quick Quotes Quill. The scratch of it was distinctive — faster than a human writer, with the specific rhythm of something that was filling in context around the stated facts rather than simply recording them.
A journalist, then. He was still half expecting Skeeter. What he heard, when a voice he didn't recognize asked a question about the age line, was not her? The voice was younger, the question more straightforward, the general register of someone who was covering an event rather than constructing a narrative.
Pemberton had acted on the arrangement.
He noted this and said nothing to Hermione, who had also been listening and had the expression of someone similarly noting things.
The ceremony concluded. He moved back from the door before it opened, with the ease of someone who had been elsewhere the whole time and had simply arrived at this point in the corridor by coincidence.
The champions emerged.
The journalist who followed was not Skeeter. He was a man of perhaps thirty, with a Dicta Quill tucked behind his ear that had the look of something used professionally rather than as a prop, and the slightly harried quality of someone working a significant assignment on a short timeline. His name, Ron knew from Pemberton's letter, was Marcus Clearwater — no relation to Percy's former girlfriend, coincidentally — and he had been covering international magical events for the Prophet for six years.
Ron stepped forward.
'Mr Clearwater,' he said.
Clearwater stopped. He looked at Ron with the assessment of a journalist encountering an unexpected variable. 'You're not one of the champions.'
'No,' Ron said. 'My name's Ron Weasley. I'm Harry's — ' he considered the word — 'manager is probably closest. I spoke with your editor in October about exclusive access at key points in the Tournament.'
Clearwater's expression recalibrated. 'Pemberton mentioned someone would be in touch.'
'This is me being in touch,' Ron said. 'I wanted to introduce myself before the Tournament begins properly. First access point is after the first task — I'll arrange a twenty-minute conversation between you and Harry, somewhere private, the afternoon of the day. Not a press conference.' He looked at Clearwater directly. 'In exchange, the coverage is accurate. Not flattering — accurate. Harry doesn't need flattery and it doesn't serve either of you.'
Clearwater looked at him for a moment with the quality of a journalist encountering someone who understood how the exchange was supposed to work. 'Accurate I can do,' he said. 'Flattery's boring anyway.'
'Good,' Ron said. He produced a card — the Four Emblems card, with its five emblems, the fifth visible only to those who looked — and handed it to Clearwater. 'The Floo address on the back reaches me directly.'
Clearwater took the card, looked at it once, and tucked it into his pocket. He gave Ron the specific nod of a professional acknowledging a professional arrangement, and moved on.
Hermione looked at Ron.
'You arranged the reporter,' she said. Not a question.
'In October,' he said.
'While also planning the training and the Witness notes.'
'The planning runs in parallel,' he said.
She held his gaze for a moment. Then she looked down the corridor to where Harry was waiting and started walking, and Ron fell in beside her, and neither of them said anything further about it.
Malfoy was in the corridor.
He had been there when they arrived and had apparently decided to remain, which was a choice Ron had catalogued alongside other data points about Draco Malfoy's understanding of situations and his tendency to misread them. He had two of his usual entourage and a camera — not Clearwater's equipment, a different one, the kind that produced moving images with whatever framing the holder chose.
Whatever he intended to do with it, he had not finished deciding, because the moment Ron appeared in the corridor the calculus shifted.
Malfoy looked at Ron. Something moved through his expression — not fear, not quite, but the specific awareness of someone who had been recalibrating Ron Weasley since the train in September and had not yet arrived at a stable model.
'Weasley,' he said. The contempt in it was more constructed than it usually was.
'Malfoy,' Ron said, pleasantly. He kept walking.
Malfoy's hex came from the left.
He had not finished casting it before Ron's Shield was in place — non-verbal, no drama, the kind of block that was there before anyone had consciously decided it needed to be, which the point of the drilling was. The hex hit the shield and dispersed. The camera caught none of it at a useful angle.
Hermione had not flinched.
Harry, three steps ahead, had turned at the sound of the attempted cast and was now looking at Malfoy with the expression he had when something had required restraint and he was exercising it.
Ron did not stop walking. He spoke over his shoulder.
'The wand weighing is finished,' he said. 'You can go.'
A beat. Then Malfoy went — not quickly, but with the specific management of someone deciding that the situation had not developed as intended and withdrawing from it with whatever dignity remained available. Crabbe and Goyle shuffled after him.
They walked to Transfiguration in the specific silence of people who had processed something and agreed it did not require further comment.
At half past four that afternoon, Draco Malfoy was found in the third floor corridor by a group of second-years who had the presence of mind to fetch a prefect rather than attempt anything themselves, which showed good judgement given the circumstances.
The circumstances were that Malfoy appeared to have been hit, simultaneously, by a Full Body-Bind, a Jelly-Legs Jinx, a Bat-Bogey Hex of considerable quality, and something that had turned his hair a very specific shade of bright orange that Madam Pomfrey later confirmed was deeply embedded in the follicles and would require approximately three weeks of daily treatment to fully reverse.
No one had seen anything. The second-years reported the corridor had been empty when they found him.
Ron, when asked by Hermione that evening with the specific directness she used when she had already reached a conclusion, said: 'I have no idea what you're talking about.'
Hermione looked at him.
'The orange is a nice touch,' she said.
'I'll pass that along,' he said, 'if I ever find out who did it.'
Her expression did the thing it did when she was choosing to be satisfied with an answer she knew was incomplete. She returned to her book. The starflower pendant caught the lamplight as she turned the page.