By the first week of December, she had all nine journals fully translated. She had picked up tantalizing pieces of the puzzle along the way: translations mentioning a branding iron, or a spell for "caged birds." Some mention of an impenetrable circle. But she'd simply marked them for later and forced herself to finish the translations before getting twisted up in reading and research.

Even with the journals fully translated, there were chunks of pages missing from each one — especially Tobias Tolbrette's. Jones's journal confirmed Tolbrette's importance. In the beginning pages, just before the key, she found a unique string of characters that could only be Tolbrette's name. Beneath it, she found numbers where Jones had referenced the reader to certain pages of Tolbrette's journal.

Nott Sr. had been liberal in tearing out pages of Tolbrette's journal, but he'd also been rushed. He'd missed two pages following a mention of a "lightning barrier" that Jones had referenced; he'd left a full five pages after a mention of skin brands. Every time she came across a torn page, she knew it was missing because it was exactly what she needed. So reading the pages that came before and after became her newest task.

On December 5, she took out a new sheet of parchment and listed her first hypotheses.

1.) Both the Scourers and the Death Eaters used the same boundary spell to lock in their slaves: the "lightning barrier" (Jones, p. 2; Tolbrette p. 4, 18, 67-70, 111, 123-124; Emerson p. 9; Taylor p. 34-35).

2.) The Death Eaters used a tattoo as a conduit, whereas the Scourers used a branding iron upon the skin of their slaves (Jones, p. 2; Tolbrette p. 48-53, 95, 162-163; Fernsby p. 27, 76).

3.) In both cases, there must be a way to link a boundary spell to the conduit. Whatever binding mechanism the Death Eaters used is likely highly similar to the one used by the Scourers.

Hermione rubbed her arm, remembering the day she'd jumped through the barrier and rolled down the hill. Before the numbing pain and darkness, she'd been crippled by the searing shock that had originated in her tattoo. She wondered how many "doves" and "pigeons" had suffered a similar fate while trying to escape. Perhaps their owners had left them outside the boundary to die.

She swallowed and refocused. If she was to find out how to break the magic of the tattoos, she'd need a test subject eventually. She'd need a wand as well — there was no way around it. Although she was weeks away from being ready to test anything, her stomach still turned over at the thought.

The remaining few hours of daylight were unproductive. She mused and ruminated until her dinner went cold and her back ached from sitting so long in one position. When her eyelids began drooping over Tolbrette's journal, she finally dragged herself back to her room.

Unless Draco returned, there was only one possible solution, but it was far from ideal: Narcissa. She'd simply have to hope he came home before it was necessary. As for what him coming home might mean for the Order and her friends— that was something she couldn't let herself think about.