The language enchantments arrived on the twenty-sixth by owl from a different specialist magical linguist in Edinburgh than he had used in August — Professor Babbling's contact, the one who worked with living languages only and required four weeks' notice for complex tonal systems. Ron had placed the order in November, which was the kind of administrative thoroughness the linguist appeared to appreciate, judging by the promptness of the reply.
He had taken French, German, and Arabic in the last week of July — three in a week, the rule's maximum, each one three days apart. Mandarin, Sanskrit, and Spanish had followed across the last weeks of August, one every three days. Six acquired languages going into December, plus English from both lives and Malayalam from his first life — eight languages total, each present not as vocabulary but as structure, the bones of thought in eight different registers. Lingua in Diagon Alley had carried all six without difficulty. The new order — Japanese, Hindi, Korean — was different. Lingua's stock ran to the major European languages and the most commonly requested others; Japanese was available but Hindi and Korean were not, and Professor Babbling, when he had asked, had directed him to the specialist in Edinburgh who covered the full range of Asian languages with the additional care that tonal and inflectional systems required. He had written to confirm the summer enchantments he got from Lingua had settled properly, which the linguist had appreciated, and placed the new order in November.
The order now was for three more: Japanese, Hindi, and Korean. The linguist had flagged Hindi as requiring additional settling time — 'inflectional tonal register, not pitch-tonal, closer to Sanskrit than it appears, please allow seventy-two hours between this and any subsequent enchantment' — and had sent the three vials with a note reminding him of the spacing rule: one enchantment every three days, no more than three in a week.
He took Japanese on the morning of the twenty-sixth.
Hindi on the twenty-ninth, which was the earliest the three-day rule permitted.
Korean he saved for just before leaving for the train — the first was the earliest he could take it without violating the spacing, and there was something fitting about beginning the New Year with a new language settling in alongside everything else the month intended to bring.
By evening of the twenty-sixth, Japanese had arrived the way the languages arrived — not as vocabulary but as structure, the grammar of it becoming present, the rhythm of sentences finding their shape, the mind discovering four new rooms had been furnished overnight. He sat at the kitchen table after dinner and wrote the same sentence in nine languages — the eight from before, plus Japanese — and looked at the nine versions and felt the particular satisfaction of range.
Ginny looked over his shoulder at the page.
'What does it say?' she said.
'The same thing nine times,' he said.
'What thing?'
He showed her. She read it. She looked at him.
'That's,' she said, 'unexpectedly philosophical for a Tuesday.'
'It's Wednesday,' he said.
'Even more so,' she said, and went back to her book.
He folded the page and kept it.
The news about the Dementors came on the thirtieth.
His father arrived home from work with the Prophet and with the look he had when something at the Ministry had moved in a direction he considered significant — not alarmed, not celebratory, the contained assessment of someone who had been watching a situation for months and had just seen it resolve in a way that was better than expected but not without reservations.
'They're recalling them,' his father said, setting the paper on the kitchen table. 'The Dementors. Back to Azkaban. Effective the first of January.'
His mother read the headline. 'All of them?'
'The Hogsmeade perimeter,' his father said. 'And the two positions they'd established near Diagon Alley. The Ministry is citing successful containment of the security risk as the official position.' He paused. 'Which means they haven't found Pettigrew and they've decided the Dementors are causing more problems than they're solving.'
Ron looked at the paper. The accompanying article was careful — the Ministry careful of something that was true but inconvenient, the language of institutions managing the gap between what they had promised and what had been delivered. Pettigrew: still at large. Auror patrols: to be maintained at reduced levels. Security assessment: ongoing.
'They're giving up,' Ginny said, from the doorway.
'They're adjusting,' his father said, with the diplomatic precision of someone who worked for the Ministry and had a particular relationship with its limitations. 'The threat is real. They're not abandoning it. They're changing the method.'
'Pettigrew has been loose since September,' Ginny said. 'Four months. No confirmed sighting.'
His father did not argue with this. He picked up his tea.
Ron looked at the paper and thought about Pettigrew. He knew, with the specific certainty of someone who had read the story, where Pettigrew was going and what he was going to do when he got there, and neither of those things was preventable by Auror patrols in Hogsmeade. Pettigrew was heading for a graveyard in Little Hangleton and a cauldron and a rebirth, and the timeline for that was not this year.
What the Dementor recall meant, practically, was that the castle would be less oppressive from January onward. Harry would stop reliving the night his parents died every time he went near a perimeter guard. The first years who had spent their first months at Hogwarts in the shadow of something cold and ancient and hungry would have that weight lifted.
This was good. He would take it.
'The Auror patrols,' he said to his father. 'Reduced — but still there. Through the spring?'
'Through the academic year at minimum,' his father said. 'The threat assessment doesn't change just because the containment method does. Pettigrew is still out there. That means the situation that produced Pettigrew is still — potentially — active.' He said this carefully, in the way he said things he believed to be true but did not want to alarm his children with unnecessarily.
Ron nodded and went back to the paper.
He photographed the front page of the Prophet before his mother could use it to light the fire.