It did not take long before the papers found out about their engagement. It was common knowledge by the time Harry and Ginny returned to work after the holidays. Most reports were overall positive though rarely completely true but Harry did not care what they wrote because he was truly happy in his life. In the evenings Ginny would come over, always greeting him like it had been weeks. They had started discussing wedding plans. He had a whole future to look forward to, something he did not have before. Every day he wondered how he had gotten so lucky that Ginny was part of his future.

Even reporters pestering him could not bring his mood down. He managed to dodge most of them or ignored their prying questions. Ginny also had her fair share of attention both as a Harpy and being newly engaged. The reporting took a turn when Ginny gave a snippy reply to Rita Skeeter, who had been eagerly writing about them.

After that, gossip after gossip seemed to find its way into articles and not all appeared to be from the hand of Rita Skeeter. Somehow Ginny managed to turn even that into something fun, which Harry enjoyed tremendously.

"Harry! You didn't tell me you were seeing an old flame again!" Ginny said while reading the paper with her breakfast before heading out for training. She had learned to check it before going outside if she didn't want to be unpleasantly surprised by rumours she hadn't heard of.

"Who now?" Harry asked as he walked into the kitchen.

"... was spotted with- read more on page five," Ginny read aloud and promptly flipped to that page. "Of course, Kate."

Harry shook his head with a chuckle.

"What do you want me to do, you have been canoodling with Neville the whole time," he replied, referring to a rumour of a few days back.

"Canoodling? I don't think that was the word they used," Ginny said, thinking out loud as Harry sat down beside her with his breakfast. He kissed the top of her head as he did so.

"It most certainly was, Neville was mortified," he replied. To his surprise, the auror department had not minded all the publicity. Being auror hadn't been a particularly popular job in recent years and the rumours did not reflect badly on the department. Moreover, they mentioned regularly that Ron and Neville too were involved in the Battle of Hogwarts and it shone a positive light on the aurors. Their popularity was starting to rise slowly after the slump that had gotten into it leading up to the war.

Ginny finished her food and kissed Harry goodbye for the day and went off to quidditch practice.

They had settled into this new routine. Ginny split her free time between The Burrow and Grimmauld Place. They were also looking for another place because neither of them wanted to live in the house much longer. It would do for now but it carried too many memories and it was too hostile. They had not yet pinned a date for their wedding and only made a few arrangements. Harry would blindly agree with anything she proposed. So sometimes if he had agreed to anything she had said in the last ten minutes, she would stop and look and ask him what he wanted. 'I just want to marry you' had been banned as an acceptable reply.

All aurors were paired for training about occlumency; defending your mind could be a useful tool for any auror. Ron and Harry happily paired up together, they thought it would be best since they knew each other well. They had been warned that not everyone would even manage to enter someone else's mind if they simply did not have the ability. They just had to try and figure it out.

"You will either be really bad or really good at this," Ron told Harry, who chuckled as they moved to stand across from each other. Harry prepared to enter Ron's mind. They waited for the cue of Robards to start. According to the older aurors, he was unusually adept at occlumency.

"Legilimens!" Harry said along with the other aurors. Ron stood waiting with his wand drawn. Harry looked at him and Ron shrugged. Nothing had happened. Harry focused and tried again. Ron shook his head. Charles came up to him and gave him some pointers. Harry made another attempt under the watchful eye of Charles Weston. As suggested, he was looking for a particular memory. Then he suddenly saw it, a foggy memory from Ron's childhood, a teddy bear turning into a spider but as soon as the memory turned into something tangible, it seemed to pull away from him and he was pushed out of Ron's mind.

They looked at each other in surprise.

"I will not think about spiders if I can help it, so that was an easy one to resist," Ron explained with a shrug.

"It was one of the things I could think of that I wasn't actually there for," Harry clarified his choice of memory.

"Great work, Ron!" Charles praised him, it seemed not many people managed to resist it on the first try. They switched roles as Charles moved on to another pair.

Harry tried to mentally prepare himself, though he did not have much expectations for his own skill.

'Do not think of Ginny, do not think of Ginny, do not think of Ginny' he repeated in his mind as Ron said the spell, there were some things Ron did not need to see. Except repeating it over and over in his head made him think of Ginny. He could see her in her black dress that night at the Harpies party, swinging to the music and he was aware Ron could see it too. Before he could try to block it, Ron had already taken his leave out of Harry's mind. He was covering his eyes though he had not seen it.

Tobias, who had been paired up with Neville, laughed at their reaction. They both stood speechless, staring at each other.

"It was your mistake for pairing up with your future brother-in-law," he shook his head and offered to switch places. Tobias paired up with Ron and so Harry stood across from Neville.

"Tobias' mind is impenetrable, he blocks me as soon as I enter," Neville sighed. Harry told him he could try on him instead. Harry prepared and learned from last time and instead tried to clear his mind.

Harry felt Neville enter his mind and he focused hard on clearing his mind and resisted thinking of the memories Neville was trying to worm his way to. Neville lowered his wand and his mind cleared. Harry encouraged him to try again. Again Neville entered his mind. It felt as though he was looking for something and then it came into focus. Harry was pretending to be dead, carried by Hagrid as people were entering the courtyard. McGonagall screamed and he remembered how painful it felt. He knew which scream was going to come next. He did not want to hear it. Desperately he tried to think of something else. He pushed it to the back of his mind trying to escape the memory before he realised that had been enough to resist Neville. Neville looked a bit startled.

"Sorry, I didn't mean to-" Neville started but Harry cut him short.

"Don't worry about it, you didn't know what you were going to find," Harry told him. They both nodded in understanding.

Harry stepped into the hallway in Grimmauld Place, quickly closing the door behind him. It was freezing cold outside. He took his jacket and scarf off and went upstairs. He expected Ginny to be home already. When he had no luck in the sitting room he continued up to their room. He looked around the room for a sign of her when he heard a voice behind him.

"What do you think?' she asked, she was standing in the door opening with her full Holyhead Harpies gear on. It consisted of a green jersey, dark trousers, a thigh holster which held her wand, leather boots and shin guards, all topped off with a long green robe.

"Wow," was all he said as he admired her. Ginny turned around to show off the back. It read 'Weasley' and below it was a large number '5'.

"Of course they'll change it to 'Potter' once we're married," she clarified as she turned back around. Harry smiled.

"You know, you don't have to take my last name if you don't want to," he said as he wrapped his arms around her waist. Ginny shook her head, they had been through this already.

"There are plenty of Weasleys out there, but I think we could do with a little more Potter."

Harry smiled at that. Ginny bent down and fiddled with the wand strap. Harry swallowed hard but it went unnoticed by Ginny.

"Apparently these will be all the rage next season, so we got them as part of the attire," she explained. Harry raised his eyebrows.

"Oh, I can see why."

Ginny was about to ask why when she caught his eye and noticed his expression. She smiled smugly.

"I will tell them it is approved, then," she winked. He chuckled.

"I am gonna go change again, we should get dinner," she stood up on her tiptoes to kiss him and he held onto her a little longer than needed, making Ginny giggle.

"On second thought, let's stay in for dinner."

Harry nodded in agreement, "I'll get started, you get changed."

A/N: Thank you for returning to read again! Love to hear your thoughts and see you on Saturday :)