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Ron woke in the chill of dawn, in the moment of stillness before the rising of the sun. It was dim in the tent, and he looked to where Hermione and Harry were still rolled up in their blankets on either side of him. None of them had wanted to go to their separate rooms last night, and he had fallen asleep with them, in the messy lounge area of their tent, in a tangle of friendship and exhaustion.
He wriggled out of his sleeping bag and blankets as quietly as he could. He wouldn't be able to go back to sleep, even though his eyes were itchy and his back was aching like he was still carrying that locket, stooped over and shuffling through grey dreams. He took down a cup and opened the tea. Everything was the same as he had left it, though he sniffed quietly over the brand of tea. A Muggle blend, but he supposed Harry and Hermione would be more familiar with shopping in Muggle shops. He tapped the cup as it brewed and immediately felt it change in some indefinable way.
Shuffling footfalls behind him made him turn, and he smiled to see Harry, rumpled and blinking, glasses crooked. "Tea?" he asked.
"Yes," Harry said, stifling a yawn.
"I didn't mean to wake you," Ron said.
"Make one for Hermione," Harry said. "She was stirring too."
Ron bought the tea back to the nest of blankets, mattresses and warming charms they'd built in the living room. It reminded him of the reassuring little blanket forts he'd built as a child, or even the tiny gap between some trees in a little spinney behind the house that had become his favourite place. He had loved to run across the grass to that small grove and the shelter it offered under its branches.
Hermione was visible only as a mass of hair poking out from the covers, but she lifted herself up on her elbows as Ron approached with the tea.
"Thanks," she said, taking it from him as she wriggled around to sit up properly. She sniffed at it. "No one makes tea like you."
Harry accepted his tea with a smile. "It's true," he said. "Tea tastes completely different when you make it, even though I've watched you and you don't seem to do anything particularly different."
The thought of his little refuge in the spinney at home came to Ron again. That small stand of trees and the imagined castle he'd built for himself there was uppermost in his mind, though he wasn't sure he could explain his thoughts. Even after all they'd been through, a tiny part of him worried about the vulnerability, the pain of being misunderstood. He knew he had to try, though. He owed it to Harry and Hermione, and he had to trust them to listen for what he meant, no matter how poorly he wrapped it up.
"When I was young," he started, cradling his tea in his hands and enjoying the warmth and security that came with it, "I had a special little place in a spinney, just in the field next door to the Burrow. I used to go there when it got too noisy, or when I needed to escape from Fred and George."
Hermione looked like she wanted to say something, but then she just made an encouraging noise and took a mouthful of her tea instead. Ron was grateful. He would never get the story out if she interrupted, and, even though it wasn't important, he needed the practice.
"Over time, I had some of my favourite things there. A little cup and plate for feasting. A cushion and a blanket. And every time I went there, I got into the habit of stopping, as I stepped between the trees, and I would imagine that I was closing a curtain against the outside world.
One day, when I was running away from one or other of Fred and George's pranks, they were chasing me. I guess they thought they hadn't extracted the maximum fun from my panic yet. But I dived between the trees and imagined the curtains yanked shut behind me, and that I was safe. I watched Fred and George run out from the house, and I knew I was visible - the gap wasn't that small - and I remember being upset that not only would they find me, but they would jeer at my little castle, and mock me, and make it small and pathetic."
"What happened?" asked Harry.
"They ran straight past," said Ron. "They couldn't see me. I was safe." He took a mouthful of his tea, and waited for their response. He wasn't quite sure what he wanted from them, or even why he'd told the story, but it had just felt right.
"You must have warded it somehow," said Hermione.
"Is that how you make the tea, too?" asked Harry.
Ron shrugged, a little uncomfortable, but pushing through it. "Yeah, I guess. I know what I want the tea to be like, then I tap the cup, and there it is."
Hermione looked thoughtful, like he'd just handed her a problem to solve, and Ron smiled. She was never going to change her first instinct to chip away at things until they were as neat and orderly as she could make them, but at least she'd waited till he had finished. Perhaps she was coming to understand that not everything had to be stated in glorious, precise detail. Harry simply accepted Ron's explanation, seeming to find nothing incongruous between a tale of accidental warding and a way of making tea just how one wanted it. Ron could feel the connection between the two, but he couldn't articulate it further.
"I have some ideas," said Hermione, and Ron smiled again, finally uncomplicatedly happy to be back, surrounded by his friends and ready to pick up their work together.