Harry wandered into the kitchen at the Burrow bleary-eyed, as he'd been up until early into the morning. A raid on a suspected illegal potion dealer went on longer than he'd anticipated. All in the life of an Auror-in-training, he mused. He grabbed a piece of toast that Molly had thoughtfully left out for him under a warming charm and fell into a chair at the large wooden table, pulling the day's Daily Prophet towards him. He perused it with caution, wondering what storyline would be running about his two best friends today.

Ever since Ron and Hermione had taken off on an impulsive tour of the world, the papers had been in frenzy about them both. 'The Boy Who Lived Abandoned By Friends', 'Whirlwind Romance Heats Up For The Golden Couple!'. Hell, they'd even been rumours of Hermione falling pregnant. That gave Molly quite an excitement one morning (and Fred and George a lot of material.) He mentally shook his head. What was the world coming to!

He flicked through the Prophet, only stopping to read an article on the new line-up for the Chudley Cannons, until he came to page nine. Bingo. Bertie Herman's weekly article about his life:

'….Earlier this week, I was in Rome, where I had been staying for the recent International Journalism awards. One evening I was in the restaurant 'Villa Caspa', with my family and Daniel and Tanya Harming, when who should wander past our table but war legends Ronald Weasley and Hermione Granger. As anyone one in Britain will know, they've been flitting around the globe on a well-deserved holiday for these past few months. After all they've done for the wizarding world, and at such a young age (Mr Weasley celebrated his 19th birthday just last week), who can blame them? So I did what any decent Britain would do, and invited them to join us.

And I can now say every compliment that has been piled on them? Surprisingly true.

I found them both to be amazingly humble and genuinely lovely people. Miss Granger is undoubtedly wise beyond her years, spending most of the evening discussing my daughter in law Tabitha's job as a Liberation Officer with passion. (And at the risk of sparking the green-eyed monster in Ronald - looking rather gorgeous doing so)

And as for Mr Weasley? He is, to put it frankly: an absolute riot. He kept the group endlessly entertained with stories of the group's Hogwarts days and tales of his family, particularly his twin brothers exploits, who own the joke store in London's Diagon Alley. And all the while, despite the fact he drank the rest of us under the table by a WIDE margin, neglected to tell us anything revealing or incriminating of the trio's 'adventures'

'Breaking into Gringotts? Yeah that was rather terrifying… But let me tell you about the time my cousin got a vase stuck on his head…'

But I couldn't help but think all evening that they made rather an odd couple romantically. Ron is loud, unashamedly crude and seemed to find the joke in everything, where Miss Granger was dignified and rather reserved all night. Until the bill came, that is. When they both slapped down enough galleons for the lot of us, amidst our protestations. 'Oh it's fine,' Ron commented, suddenly sobering up 'It's from the reward the Ministry gave us after the battle. Felt we should have something after all that…' He tailed off and Hermione came to his rescue thank god: the poor bloke looked close to tears… 'After their entire royal ****-ups, those ****ers deserve to pay, literally.'

That settled that.'

Well I wonder what everyone made of that, Harry thought.