The evening of the third task had the quality that the evening of the first task had not had — not the specific nervous energy of something approaching, but the specific weight of something already in motion. The first task had been preparation meeting occasion. This was something else. He had been building toward this night since his arrival in the second year, and the building was done, and what remained was the night itself.
He found Harry at the edge of the grounds before the task, in the specific window between the family visit and the champions being taken to the maze entrance. His mother had been there — she had come with Bill, Sirius and Amelia, the particular quality of a mother who had decided that her presence was what she had to give and was giving it fully. She had hugged Harry with the specific warmth she gave Harry at train stations, the warmth that was not performance but the real thing, the acknowledgement that this boy was hers in the way that mattered regardless of biology.
Harry had the quality he had before the first task — the settled purposefulness of someone who had done the preparation and was now in the thing itself. But there was something additional in it tonight. Not fear. Something more like the specific gravity of someone who knew, at some level, that the night ahead was not the same category of night as the ones before it.
'The maze,' Ron said, standing beside him.
'Yes,' Harry said.
'The Disillusionment first. Don't engage what you can pass. The Reducto if the path requires it — southeast walls in the outer section, northwest in the middle, the structural pattern we mapped.' He paused. 'The Cup is the objective. Everything else is in service of that.'
Harry nodded. He had the sequence. He had been running it for three weeks.
'Ron,' Harry said.
'Yes.'
'You said the hardest night of my life.' He looked at the maze, the tall hedges dark in the June evening. 'Is there anything else you can tell me?'
Ron looked at him. He thought about the graveyard and Pettigrew and the specific terrible sequence of what was coming, which he had been living with in his head since second year and which was now hours away from being real rather than anticipated.
'You are going to be very frightened,' he said. 'You are going to be hurt. There are going to be moments when you think it's over.' He held Harry's gaze. 'It's not over. Whatever happens in that maze and whatever happens after it — keep going. Do not stop moving until you are back here.'
Harry looked at him for a moment. Something in his expression had the quality it had in the back garden — the trust that cost something, freely given.
'Okay,' he said.
They stood there for a moment in the June evening, the maze behind Harry and the castle behind Ron, and then the marshals were calling and Harry turned and went, and Ron watched him go with the specific quality of someone who has prepared for a thing and must now let the thing happen.
He had positioned himself carefully.
Not in the main stands — in the section to the left of the judges' table, which gave him a clear line to both the maze entrance and the area where the staff were positioned. Hermione was beside him. Sirius and Amelia were two rows back, having arrived through the official channels with the ease of people whose presence at a Tournament final was entirely appropriate. He had arranged this in May, when the seating assignments were released — a brief note to Sirius explaining that the third task was the occasion and that proximity to both the maze entrance and the staff section would be useful.
Sirius had understood immediately.
Amelia had asked one precise question by return: How certain are you?
He had written back: Certain enough to act on it when the moment arrives
She had written back: Then I'll be there.
He watched the staff section from the corner of his attention.
Moody was there. The man who wore Moody's face and checked his flask with the wrong hand was there, in the staff position he had occupied at every event, with the eye moving in its continuous assessment and the posture of someone who was performing vigilance rather than practicing it. Ron had been watching the gap between the performance and the practice for nine months. He knew it the way he knew the Corkscrew's drop rate — precisely, from repetition, without needing to think about it.
He knew what the man was doing.
He was steering the maze. Not openly — not in any way that would be visible to the judges or the staff around him. But the eye moved differently when the champions were inside the maze from the way it moved when they were visible. It moved with the quality of someone monitoring a situation they were managing rather than observing. Twice in the first twenty minutes he saw the eye angle toward a point inside the maze perimeter and hold for a moment before moving on, the specific quality of a check rather than a scan.
He was directing obstacles. Clearing paths. Steering the maze's interior toward a specific outcome.
Ron noted each instance and said nothing.
The maze was doing what mazes did — providing no information to the stands. The crowd had the specific quality of an audience watching something they could not see, sustained by occasional sounds from inside the hedges and the red sparks that appeared when a champion sent up the signal for extraction. No red sparks appeared. All three champions were still in.
Hermione, beside him, had her hand through his arm in the specific way she had at the second task — present, holding, communicating without words. He held the warmth of it and kept his attention on the staff section.
At forty-three minutes, the false Moody's eye angled toward the maze interior and held for longer than any previous check — perhaps six seconds, sustained and deliberate. Then it released. The posture shifted fractionally, settling into something that was not quite satisfaction but was adjacent to it.
Harry was near the Cup.
Ron looked at the maze entrance.
At forty-seven minutes, the crowd noise changed. Not louder — different, the specific quality of a crowd that had been waiting for information and had received something, and was processing what it meant. He looked at the maze entrance. The hedges were still. The air above the maze perimeter was still.
Then the Cup's light — the blue-white glow he had been watching for — pulsed once from inside the maze.
And went out.
The maze was dark where the Cup had been.
He looked at the staff section. The false Moody had turned from the maze, which was the wrong response — the correct response to a champion reaching the Cup was to watch the maze entrance for their emergence. He was already moving, with the specific economy of someone going somewhere he had planned to go, toward the area at the edge of the grounds where the extraction procedures were staged.
He was going to Disapparate.
He was going to find Voldemort.
Ron stood up.