Hermione gave a slow nod and looked away. “Alright.” She swallowed. “You can probably stay here until Harry gets back from his current mission. And then we can move you to one of the hospice safe houses. You'll want to be with your mum, won't you?”
Ginny shook her head sharply, smearing the tears off her face. “No. I need to hide it. No one can know. Not Mum, not Harry, not anyone.”
Hermione stared at Ginny bewildered.
Ginny looked down and her chest shuddered. “Harry — Harry isn't doing very well right now. Everyone has been getting so excited that we're nearing the end, that we're at the final haul. And he's happy — he thinks it could be real but — it's also breaking him. It's all resting on him but — he doesn't know how to win. How it's supposed to work. He's afraid if anyone realises it, that the whole Resistance could collapse. He's started having nightmares again. Even with me. I don't think he even knows how to function without Ron. We're all that's holding him up. If he finds out I'm pregnant — I'm afraid the stress will end up breaking him completely. It's not like he needs more motivation to want all this done. Thinking that he has a child depending on him — it would probably make everything worse.”
Hermione swallowed hard, trying to weigh whether there would be any value in trying to dissuade Ginny. She studied Ginny's face. The stubborn set line of her mouth and jaw and the determined fire in her eyes.
Hermione let out a low, tired sigh. “What do you want to do?”
“I don't know. Maybe I could pretend to get sick with something and hide at one of the hospice houses.”
Hermione raised her eyebrows doubtfully, but after a moment she tilted her head thoughtfully to the side. “I think I could pull that off. But — Ginny, you're going to have to be isolated. It could be months. What if you have the baby and the war is still going? Are you going to hide it from Harry then too?”
Ginny shook her head. “No. If the war goes that long, I'll come clean. But if I'm pregnant, Harry will just worry. Being pregnant isn't the same as having an actual baby. If you made me seem sick with something contagious but curable, he'll be upset but he'll be fine. He trusts you. If you tell him it'll take a few months to heal but I'll be alright, he'll believe you. He knows you don't lie to him, even when he wants you to.”
Hermione's eyes dropped, and she twisted the hem of her shirt in her fingers. Ginny grabbed her hand.
“You'll help, Hermione. You'll help me protect Harry, won't you?”
Hermione nodded slowly. Her whole body felt leaden. “I'll help you. I'm going to need a few days to figure out how to do this.”
“Thanks, Hermione.” Ginny grew tearful again. “God, I was so careful. I never meant for this to happen.”
Hermione hugged her stiffly and let Ginny cry into her shoulder for several more minutes. She rubbed absent-minded circles on Ginny's back while she made a mental checklist. “We'll figure something out. I know you weren't trying to get pregnant.”
Ginny nodded against Hermione's neck. “Thanks. I mean it, Hermione. You're only person I can trust with this.” She sat back and rubbed her face. “God, these hormones and everything smells. I don't even know when I cried this much. I think I'm going to have to just hide in here. I passed the kitchen earlier and nearly threw up in the hallway.”
Hermione nodded as she mentally catalogued long term illnesses. “That's fine. I need to research.” She stood up. “Just stay here. Let me know if you need anything.”
Hermione walked out of the room and down the hallway to the bathroom. She closed the door carefully behind herself and, looking down at her stomach, cast a pregnancy detection charm. Her hands were shaking faintly.
Negative.
She closed her eyes and collapsed against the door in relief.
She stayed there for another minute until her hands stopped shaking, then she hurried out of the bathroom to the library.
Hermione spent nearly two days straight brewing experimental potions and practicing glamour charms and trying to make sure that every detail was perfect. She gathered up a bagful of potions and went into the bathroom. She downed a small vial and watched the potion take affect.
It took a few minutes. Then a sensation similar to a mild form of polyjuice tingled across her skin and she watched herself transform. Her skin broke out in tight clusters of painful-looking purple pustules across her entire body. She grimaced and inspected herself from all angles. It was a horribly convincing transformation. She pressed and prodded at several of the pustules and felt nothing. The suspended glamour was painless.
She swallowed the antidote and felt her skin tingle again as she watched her skin clear.
She gathered up her potions and went to her room.
Ginny was sitting in her bed, flipping through a magazine. Hermione sat down, and Ginny looked up, her eyes wide and curious.
Hermione fidgeted with the bag in her hands. “I've developed a potion that mimics the external symptoms of spattergroit disease.”
Ginny's face screwed up. “Really? Does it have to be that?”
Hermione rolled her eyes. “It's the best option I can come up with that meets all your requirements. It's contagious; it's known to take up to a year to recover from, so you can stay hidden as long as necessary. It looks convincing; if you don't look horribly sick, people might be skeptical. Especially since your brothers are the ones who invented skiving snackboxes. No one is going to think you're faking this. And possibly most importantly, it's non-lethal. Harry isn't going to have to worry that you may die from it. Since it's not a full physical transformation — just an external glamour — I was able to suspend the potion in dragon blood, which means each dose will last for weeks. You won't have to constantly redose to maintain it.”
Ginny nodded.
Hermione fidgeted with the string on the bag. “Spattergroit is highly contagious. If someone in the Resistance contracted it, they would be immediately placed in quarantine to prevent risking the entire Resistance. Even though it's non-lethal. I'm — I'm going to have to inform Kingsley of the real situation in order to quarantine you.”
Ginny immediately opened her mouth to object, but Hermione held up her hand to silence her.
“If I don't tell him, he won't approve having me as your caretaker. I promise, if I explain it, he won't feel obliged to tell Harry. But he needs to know in order to maintain the lie. And — that way if anyone in your family or Harry try to demand to see you — he has more veto power than I do. Moody will back him too. We need Kingsley.”
Ginny gave a reluctant nod.
Hermione pulled out a book with a marked chapter which she held out to Ginny. “Early symptoms of Spattergroit are itching and a sore throat. Anyone you interact with is going to get quarantined for a few days. So avoid Poppy and Padma,” Hermione's mouth twitched faintly, “if you have anyone you think needs a few days off, they're the ones you should go see.”
The corner of Ginny's mouth lifted slightly. Her eyes grew misty.
Hermione stood up. “I need to go talk to Kingsley. I'm going to dose you before you go to bed. So you'll 'wake' up with it.”
Ginny's 'disease' threw Grimmauld into chaos. Hermione and Ginny's room was placed under a mountain of quarantine and containment wards. Only Hermione could enter the room without setting off a house-full of screaming alarms.