Directing Hermione firmly to turn back to the mirror, Pansy started in on her curls again. Hermione blinked rapidly, her mind spinning at breakneck speed.

"So you drank the potion, and the tattoo appeared on your skin?"

"Not quite." Pansy tugged her hair a bit too harshly. "I don't know what the potion did, but when Yaxley signed the parchment, his signature rose up on my skin."

"What parchment? What did it say?" Her heart was hammering, her breath shallow in her lungs.

"Nothing." Pansy shrugged. "It was blank."

Hermione spun around to her again — Pansy sighed — and lifted her tattoo to Pansy's eyes. "Was the ink he signed in like this? Black with gold mixed in?"

Pansy shook her head. "He signed in blood."

Like a clock striking midnight, the pieces clicked into place.

Blood magic.

She stared off, letting her mind work.

She'd need blood magic to lock the mouse in. That's why the tattoos hadn't bound properly to the barrier. But she'd missed more than that. There was a potion component as well.

"Oh goody," Pansy drawled. "Do I have the pleasure of watching the brightest mind of my age work through a problem?"

Hermione grabbed her sleeve. "You're sure it was just the potion and the signature? There was no dark spell cast on your arm?"

Pansy shook her off with a scowl. "That's all." She forcibly turned Hermione's head to face the mirror again.

"But—" Hermione furrowed her brow. "But I didn't drink a potion. I woke up in the Ministry and was already tattooed."

"They injected you," Pansy said. And then: "Probably. I know a lot of the girls in the cell were knocked out when they brought them in, and they were already tattooed as well."

"But they kept you awake?"

Pansy met her eyes in the mirror and swiftly looked away. "They wanted me to watch as they took it all away. No magic, no bloodlines… Just property."

Pity pulled tightly at her ribs. She swallowed. "They?"

"Yaxley. And my father."

Pansy pocketed the wand, having finished with her curls, and reached into her other pocket for pins. Apart from her tightly-set jaw, there was no indication that they were discussing anything unpleasant.

Hermione's voice was barely above a whisper as she asked, "Why were you at the Auction, Pansy?"

She twisted a section of her hair off her neck and gave a long-suffering sigh. "One of life's great many questions." When Hermione didn't respond, Pansy leaned forward to whisper into her ear. "You'll never figure it out, Granger. I want you to go to your grave knowing that the one riddle you couldn't crack was Pansy Parkinson."

She smirked at her, and with a final shove of a pin into her scalp, she proclaimed her work complete.

Hermione examined herself for the first time. A similar style to her makeup and hair for Edinburgh, but not as smoky. Her lips and eyes were light. Her hair was up off her shoulders for once, gathered into a twist at the back of her head with her curls cascading down her back.