Harry and Hermione came back to the Burrow that afternoon and stayed.
Two weeks. The last two weeks of summer, before the Hogwarts Express on September first.
The quality of those weeks was the quality that good endings had — not dramatic, not defined by any single thing, but full of the accumulation of ordinary moments that became significant in retrospect. Morning in the garden, Pip moving through the rows with the focused efficiency of someone who had opinions about the optimal time for harvesting certain herbs. His mother's owl order business generating its third consistent week of orders, which she tracked with the quiet satisfaction of someone watching a thing she'd built do what it was built to do. His father's evening tinkering in the shed that had always been his retreat and was now more spacious and better equipped and still smelled the same.
Hermione discovered the pensieve on the second day.
She had been in his room — he had shown her the trunk, the compartments, the organizational system, because she had asked and because he had learned that Hermione's curiosity was healthier when given legitimate channels than when redirected — and she had opened the fourth compartment and seen it.
She looked at it for a long moment.
Then she looked at the vials. The forty-three vials organized by subject and year, each labeled in his careful handwriting.
Then she looked at him.
"These are memory lectures," she said.
"Expert demonstrations," he said. "Years one through five. Charms, Potions, Transfiguration, Defense."
"You can review them from the inside," she said, working through the implications in real time. "With full sensory clarity. As many times as you need."
"Yes."
"That's —" she paused, organizing her response "— that's an extraordinarily efficient learning tool."
"I thought so," he said.
She looked at the pensieve with the expression of someone who had been presented with an approach to a problem they'd been thinking about and found it better than what they'd been considering.
"Can I —" she started.
"Yes," he said.
She spent two hours with the fifth year Charms demonstrations that afternoon, emerging with the slightly dazed quality of someone who had been somewhere very absorbing and was recalibrating to the present. She sat at his desk for a few minutes without saying anything, which he recognized as Hermione processing at full capacity.
"The technique in the fourth demonstration," she said finally. "The way she breaks the spell construction into components before reassembling it. That's not in any of the textbooks."
"No," he said.
"That's significantly more efficient than the standard approach."
"Yes," he said.
She looked at him. "How long have you had this?"
"Since early July," he said. "I've been working through them alongside the curriculum texts."
She was quiet for a moment. "Ron. You could — by the time we sit our O.W.L.s —"
"That's the idea," he said.
She looked at the pensieve again. Then at him. Then at the vials. Then she appeared to make a decision and stood up with the specific energy of someone who had found a direction and intended to move in it.
"I need to make a list," she said.
"There's parchment on the desk," he said.
She sat back down and made a list.
The healing and duelling texts were discovered on the third day.
He had them on the bookshelves in the third compartment, organized alongside the curriculum books and the elective theory — the Healing fundamentals texts he'd been working through since June, the Duelling theory he'd started before Egypt and continued in Egypt in the mornings alongside Arithmancy.
Hermione found them the way she found everything — by reading the spines while looking for something else and being constitutionally unable to not register what she'd seen.
She pulled the first Healing text and looked at the cover and then at him.
"You're studying Healing," she said.
"Theory," he said. "Field medicine priority. The kind that keeps someone alive until a professional arrives."
She looked at the stack. There were six texts. She appeared to be counting them. "And Duelling."
"Theory and some practical," he said. "I've been using the practice room in the mornings."
She put the Healing text back. Took it out again. "These are advanced," she said. "The fourth one —" she pulled it "— this is N.E.W.T. level reading."
"I'm working up to it," he said. "Currently on the second."
She looked at the second text. At him. At the second text again.
"McGonagall said you could sit Ministry O.W.L.s for Healing," she said.
"She did," he confirmed.
"And you're working toward that."
"Eventually," he said. "Not this year. The theory needs to be solid before the practical work matters."
She was quiet for a long moment. He watched the Hermione calculation proceeding — the assembly of information into a picture that was more complete than the one she'd had twenty seconds ago.
"You've been planning all of this since the Chamber," she said.
"Most of it," he agreed.
She looked at him with the expression that was becoming familiar — the one that was still updating its model of who he was, that had been updating since the hospital wing in June, that was still finding new data points and incorporating them.
"Ron," she said. "What happened to you in that tunnel?"
He met her eyes steadily. "Lockhart's memory charm backfired," he said. "The cognitive effect appears to be permanent. I'm using it."
She looked at him for a long moment.
"That's not a complete answer," she said.
"No," he agreed.
She appeared to consider pushing. She appeared to consider not pushing. She looked at the Healing texts and at the Duelling texts and at the pensieve through the open fourth compartment, and she appeared to make a decision about what the available evidence suggested and what she was going to do with it.
"Alright," she said finally. "For now."
For now was Hermione's version of I am tabling this and will return to it when I have more information, which was not the same as letting it go and he knew that. He also knew that when she returned to it, he would have to have a better answer than the one he'd given today, and that the answer he gave her would matter more than the one he'd given anyone else because Hermione was the kind of person who understood things fully or not at all and who would not be satisfied with a partial truth indefinitely.
He would need to think carefully about what he could tell her, and when, and how much.
For now, she put the Healing text back, straightened the shelf with the automatic tidying reflex she applied to book collections, and said: "Show me the language enchantments."