Several potions were gathered from a cabinet above the sink and a handful of herbs tossed into the kettle before Mrs. Weasley followed Harry up to the second floor. Ginny had managed to prop herself up on a few pillows in his absence as well as arrange the sheets around her legs a little neater than they had been earlier, but now that she sat a little straighter, the dark growths ringed in an inflamed purple that clung to her neck and disappeared beneath the neckline of her shirt became painfully obvious.
"Oh dear." Mrs. Weasley set the potions to the side and used her wand to cast a bubblehead charm over both herself and Harry.
"What is it?" Harry asked, words the slightest bit distorted due to the charm.
"The growths along her neck, it's not just a fever she has, but scrofungulus."
"That's a wizarding disease, right? Is it dangerous?"
"It won't kill her, fatal cases of scrofungulus are rare. But she'll need to be taken to St. Mungo's if she's to be treated properly, we'll have to put our plans on hold for the moment."
"Seeing her well is more important. Besides, the manor isn't going anywhere and things have been pretty quiet as of late, we shouldn't be in any danger if we hold off on our retreat for a few more weeks."
When the others were informed of Ginny's sudden illness, they all wanted to sit with her and offer whatever comfort they could, but due to the contagious nature of the sickness, they were firmly told to keep their distance by Mrs. Weasley. Harry, who had already been exposed to the virus was the only one allowed to remain with Ginny, offering his companionship and distractions in the form of stories of when Dudley had been sick as a child. And it was him who carried her through the floo, with Mr. and Mrs. Weasley just a few steps behind her.
The healers took one look at the boils that had begun creeping up Ginny's throat and across her chin, before encapsulating their entire group in some modified version of a bubble charm and herding them up to the second floor. They were taken to their own room, private from any other patients in the ward and Harry was finally able to set Ginny down (she really was quite heavy) on a small cot.
A healer was at her side immediately, casting a diagnostic over her while simultaneously looking her over from top to toe with her own two eyes. "Mark this down as one more scrofungulus case," the healer ordered one of the two medi-wizards observing the procedure before turning to Harry and the two Weasley's. "When did she begin showing symptoms?"
"Sometime in the night, I would think. She went to sleep fine, but when Harry went to wake her this morning she was already sporting the growths." Mrs. Weasley wrung her hands worriedly. "Is there something else wrong with her? It doesn't usually come on this quickly, does it?"
"Not normally, but we've seen a few cases of quick onset scrofungulus these past few days, it may be a new strain. Any idea where she may have caught it?"
"She visited Diagon Alley with a few friends yesterday afternoon, it could have been from anyone there."
"Medi-wizard Prudence will take the name of those friends if you have them. He'll then have a few forms for you to fill out. Were bubble-head charms worn throughout the duration or, at least, the majority of your time with her?"
Mrs. Weasley nodded.
"Did any of you have physical contact with her?"
Harry stepped forward. "I did, before I knew what it was she had."
"I'm afraid that means you're ours for the next twenty-four hours. We'll need to keep you quarantined to make sure whatever you may have caught from her doesn't get passed on to others."
"You said this isn't your first case of scrofungulus this week," Mr. Weasley spoke up. "But it's not usually so commonly occurring. Should we be worried?"
"No. At the moment there is no cause for concern." The healer tucked away her wand, done examining Ginny. "You said she was at Diagon Alley yesterday, such places are where one is most likely to pick up any sort of sickness, especially one as contagious as this."
"And how quickly it set in?"
"We see mutated viruses and new strains of sickness all of the time. So far it has shown no sign of being any more fatal than the previous strain."
"But it must be more aggressive if the symptoms have begun showing much sooner than usual."
The healer shrugged. "Or perhaps it just has a shorter lifespan now. But it is not our job to research the disease, only ensure your daughter is well treated for it. Now, if you don't mind getting those names to Prudence. And we'll need a bit more information from you sir, once we have you settled in a room of your own."
The last thing Harry wanted was to be stuck in quarantine for the next twenty-four hours, not when he had far better things he could be doing, but the healer allowed him no option. She guided him into a separate room with the skill of a woman used to dealing with stubborn patients and set him up with a clipboard and quill to fill out his personal information. Mrs. And Mr. Weasley paid him one last visit with an update on Ginny before they returned home, she was still having trouble remaining conscious for more than a few minutes at a time, but the healers were already plying her with the necessary potions and salves to see her better.
"It shouldn't be more than a week before the worst of it has passed," Mr. Weasley explained. "Once she's no longer contagious we can take her home, you'll be out of here by then and we can be on our way."A week's postponement wasn't much of a setback, the muggles had been quiet and with those responsible for the farm town's massacre dead the wizarding world had settled down if only slightly and focused their energy on finding some way to rebuild their food stores rather than fruitless attempts at revenge. They could wait a week.
But then it passed, a full seven days, and Ginny wasn't better. Harry had been released after twenty-four hours, miraculously having avoided catching the illness in the short time he'd spent exposed to Ginny, he returned to the Burrow where the rest of the Weasleys remained gathered, waiting for the news that the treatments were beginning to take effect. But the news never came, she got worse. The pustules spread across her entire body, covering every patch of skin with painful blisters that burst when they grew too swollen and excreted a foul smelling pus that seemed to burn at what little skin of hers hadn't been covered by the boils.
All of the cases that had come before hers and the multiple more that had come after were just as awful, the healers cited them as being far more aggressive than any strain they had seen before. And it was incredibly contagious, of the five friends Ginny had been with when she'd likely been exposed to the virus, four of them had fallen ill with is a well. An entire corridor of the magical bugs floor had been taken up by those suffering from scrofungulus and another one was being cleared to prepare for the continued influx of infected.
"This is it, he said this would happen." Harry set aside his copy of the Prophet. The front page bore an article pondering over this curious spread of this magical bug. It was worded with concern, but no one had yet died from it so fear had not yet set in. He knew it would only be a matter of time. "The Ministry is doing their best to keep it quiet, but we're already beginning to see the start of another war, we're already beginning to see the effects of famine, and now this, now pestilence."
A heavy look was exchanged between Ron and Hermione, one that they assumed he couldn't see because of the way his gaze still lingered on the Prophet even though he really could.
"How do you know?" Hermione spoke softly, gently, as if afraid of spooking him.
"I can sense it."
"Sense it how? What does it feel like? How do you know?"
And for a moment, Harry had no answer. There were no words that could wholly encompass the magnitude of what Death and his Heart had done to him. "If I was born without sight, how would you describe its existence to me?" His head tilted curiously to the side as he waited for a response, when it was evident there would be none, he answered for his two friends. "You couldn't. There is no way to describe it, explain it. It just…is. I can't tell you how I know, I just do, the same way that you can look at this horrible bedspread and tell me that it's orange. People are going to die, a lot of people."
Hermione's hand trembled when she reached out to place it atop his knee. Harry's was steady when he allowed his fingers to trace along her knuckles before twining them together. "We have a way to stop it."
"We haven't touched the ritual since we got here. We don't know how to perform it and we don't have the items necessary to perform it."
"We will though; we'll learn how to perform it and we'll find everything we need to perform it."
Harry smiled, unable to do anything else when Ron was so confident in himself and the words he spoke. He wished desperately for a bit of that confidence for himself, because now, when Ginny's life was quite possibly on the line, he couldn't afford not to be.
"And you're wrong for that matter about us not having worked at all on the ritual since we arrived here." Hermione's tone had taken on the lofty pitch of the know-it-all schoolgirl he'd once found to be dreadfully grating but now only felt an unparalleled affection for. "I never stopped working on it."
"What have you got for us then?"
"I owled Hagrid about the unicorn blood, he was understandably curious about what we would need it for, but he agreed to collect a vial or two for us."
"Which leaves only the fulgurite and the skull."
"There are places that sell it here in Europe, but it's pricey. As in tens of thousands of galleons."
Harry didn't even flinch. "We have that. So the skull is really all that's left."
Hermione nodded. "I've been in contact with a few vendors in the Mesopotamic region, I'm just waiting on a response now."
"You know, when we first started all this hero-ing, no one told me there would be quite this much waiting." Ron sighed and sprawled out across his bed. "It's not nearly as glamorous as the stories would lead you to believe."
Hermione laughed and reached for a book she'd been perusing in her spare time while Harry settled down on his own cot. "I don't much mind waiting," he mused. "The moments in-between are nice."
There would no doubt be a half-hearted scolding from Mrs. Weasley waiting for them in the morning, she'd never condoned Hermione spending the night in the attic with Ron and Harry but since she and Ron had officially begun their relationship she'd been even more adamant about sticking to boundaries. But Harry knew she didn't like sleeping in the twins' old bedroom, George still slept in his own apartment above the joke shop, but the room still had too much of his and his passed twin's personality's