Bartemius Crouch Junior was interrogated that night.
Veritaserum — Amelia had made the decision within thirty minutes of the arrest, with the specific professional judgment of someone who understood that the admissibility of evidence and the speed of its acquisition were competing values and had decided which one mattered more right now. The interrogation was conducted in the presence of Dumbledore and two of her most senior Aurors, in a room in the castle that had been secured with wards Ron recognised as her team's work rather than the standard Hogwarts variety.
He was not in the room.
He had not asked to be. He was in the corridor outside with Hermione, who had her notes — of course she had her notes, she had been taking notes since the moment things had settled enough to take notes — and who was looking at them with the quality she brought to information she was organizing in real time.
Harry was inside.
Amelia had made the decision that Harry should be present — not as a witness in the formal sense, but because the interrogation concerned what Harry had seen, and what Harry had seen was going to be the foundation of what came next. Madam Pomfrey had assessed him, confirmed he was physically capable of being present, and Harry had looked at Ron in the corridor before going in with the expression of someone who had been through the worst of it and was now in the aftermath and was choosing to face the aftermath fully.
Ron had nodded once. Harry had gone in.
The interrogation took two hours.
When it was done, Amelia came out of the room with the quality of someone who had received the full shape of a thing and was in the first moments of understanding its implications. She looked at Ron in the corridor.
'He's confirmed,' she said. 'All of it. Voldemort — ' she said the name with the deliberate precision of someone who had decided that euphemism was a luxury the situation could not afford — 'has a body. He is alive and mobile and has been since last night.' She paused. 'He also confirmed your identification. The flask tell. Several other things you apparently documented.'
'Eleven tells,' Ron said. 'I have them written down if you want the full list.'
She looked at him with the expression she had used twice tonight — the recalibration. 'I want everything you have,' she said. 'Every document, every observation, and every piece of preparation you have been doing since second year.' A pause. 'I am going to need to understand what you know and how you know it, and I am going to need to understand it quickly.'
'Yes,' Ron said. 'I know.' He looked at the door where Harry had gone. 'Can I see him first?'
'Give me an hour with the Aurors,' she said. 'Then yes.'
He sat down in the corridor with Hermione, who handed him her notes without being asked — the full account, in her handwriting, everything that had happened from the moment the Cup's light had gone out to this corridor, organized with the specific architectural precision she brought to things she intended to be useful. He read them once and handed them back.
'The full conversation,' she said quietly.
'When we're somewhere private,' he said.
She held his gaze for a moment. Her expression had the quality it had at the cliff path in Padstow — the one that was receiving something large and was deciding what to do with the size of it. Then she took his hand, both of hers around his, in the specific way she had since February.
They sat in the corridor outside the interrogation room while the June night resolved around them, and the castle was quiet in the specific way it was quiet when something had changed in it, and Ron thought about what came next and about the Wulfhall and about the years between this night and the end of it, which he could see more clearly than anyone else in the building and which were going to require everything they had built.
He thought about Harry saying 'I saw my parents.'
He thought about the heartbeat under his hand, faint and then steadier.
He thought: this is the beginning. We are still here. We have work to do.
He held Hermione's hands and waited for the hour to pass.