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"What is that awful smell?" Hermione groaned. She had just made herself shower after spending the entire previous day in bed and had just come back into Ginny's room to find her getting ready for her day.
"Just my perfume.." Ginny was frowning slightly as she turned to face Hermione. "Are you alright? You look...peaky."
Hermione tried not to breathe too deeply as she sat heavily on the edge of her bed. "Truthfully? Not really." She said quietly. "I'm going to make an appointment with a healer, I think."
Ginny gave a slow nod before she moved to sit beside her. "That sounds like a good idea… and maybe… take it easy?" She suggested hesitantly, which Hermione knew was mainly down to the fact that she was usually so stubborn, but the last few days of not feeling at all herself had shown her that she needed to take better care of herself.
"Yeah, I'm going to. Note that I've not gone into work yet." She pointed out as she let herself lean her head on Ginny's shoulder. "Another day of impersonating a vegetable is my plan."
"Good." Ginny's voice was firm and her arm snakes around her waist to give her a gentle squeeze.
Hermione let herself rest against her friend for a moment, her eyes closing before she got another whiff of Ginny's perfume and she had to pull away before the nausea overtook her. She had so far managed to avoid it today but now it seemed to not give a toss that she had been taking it easy or that she really didn't have the patience for anymore of this.
She found herself bolting for the bathroom without another thought and throwing up all the water that she had dared to drink over the last day. She knew Ginny was next to her but only because she could feel the girl's hand rubbing over her back. Her eyes had started to water and so she couldn't really see anything anymore, but that was probably for the best. She had seen enough of the inside of the toilet bowl this weekend to last her a lifetime.
"I'm gonna get Mum." Ginny said quietly when Hermione had stopped heaving and had managed to stop herself from full on sobbing there on the bathroom floor. "She'll at least have some ginger stashed away that you can have…" Ginny paused for a moment before she helped Hermione to her feet. "George said you weren't feeling great but he never said you were actually sick, especially not like this."
Hermione let out a sigh. "I don't know what's going on with me.."
"Don't hit me but you couldn't be… you know…" Ginny gestured vaguely while Hermione watched her with one eyebrow raised. She didn't know what Ginny meant at all.
"Be what?" She asked slowly as she tried to figure it out, her lips forming a frown as she took in her friend's serious expression.
"Pregnant."
The word hung in the air between them and the whole room seemed to spin as Hermione shook her head feverently. There was no way that she could be pregnant. She hadn't been with Ron since…
"Shit." She muttered under her breath as she basically pushed past Ginny and rushed back through to the bedroom to grab her diary. She leafed through the pages as she tried to do some quick maths as her brain raced on at a mile a minute. "Shit, shit, shit."
"Mione…?" Ginny had followed her through but seemed to be hanging back for reasons that Hermione didn't quite understand. She really could have done with having someone wrapping their arms around her just then.
"You could be… you could be right." Hermione whispered as she turned to face her, tears filling her eyes as the word pregnant kept swirling around her.
"I'll get Mum…" Ginny whispered, keeping her distance from Hermione in a way that made the panic that Hermione was starting to feel boil up even quicker. The way that she was acting it was as if pregnancy was contagious.
Hermione didn't particularly want to have to talk to Mrs Weasley about this either but before she had time to protect, Ginny had left her to practically collapse on the bed. She let herself stare up at the ceiling as she tried to let the idea that she could possibly be pregnant sink in. It didn't matter how hard she tried to do that though, all it made her do was start to cry.
"Hermione, love?" Mrs Weasley's voice was far too soft, far too kind. It made Hermione feel worse about bothering the woman with something that could potentially be nothing. "Do you want to talk?"
Hermione took a slow, deep breath before she managed to make herself sit up and look over at the door where the woman who had looked after her for the last five years was now standing. "I… I don't know what there is to talk about. I don't know what Ginny told you but I'm sure it's just - I'm sure it's just a sickness bug…" She wished that she could have gotten through that sentence with a little more confidence but that didn't quite work out.
"I have a potion I can whip up for you. Well, two actually. One for the nausea and one as a test. I can bring them up?" Mrs Weasley offered. Hermione wished that she wouldn't be so nice to her, especially when there was a chance that she was about to make the woman a grandmother. She knew that Mrs Weasley loved her current granddaughter, but that was different, wasn't it? Bill and Fleur were married - not that Hermione believed that you needed to be married to be a parent but she didn't see how the woman, being of a different generation, could just be so calm about it all.
"I.. thanks." Hermione managed to say before she fell back on the bed. Her thoughts were now stuck on the possibility that her potential pregnancy might lead to a child and she could feel her chest starting to tighten.
She and Ron had once talked about children, but the plan had always been for when Hermione finally made it as Minister of Magic and had served for at least four years. That future had always been distant and they hadn't even talked about it in the last year. Now Hermione knew why, of course, but she had never planned for a future without Ron there by her side.
Her mind flickered to the other men in her life as she heard the door creak shut. How was she meant to tell Fred and George about this? She let out a groan as she grabbed a pillow and pulled it over her face. She wanted to scream into the pillow but she found that she couldn't even do that. She felt sick again but she couldn't even bring herself to move now as she waited for Mrs Weasley to come back.