Narcissa seemed more interested in the parchment in front of her, almost her full concentration was on prodding the worn parchment page in front of her. Hermione reached for the leather-bound book, waiting for the permission to be cruelly retracted at the last minute. She found her fingers were still under her blunt control, it was only her thumbs that proved practically useless. Her fingers lingered on the cover, savouring this treat, before she pushed through to the first chapter. Hermione knew that her eyes had been cursed, but as her eyes danced over the first page, she wondered firstly if the book was a translation, the symbols arrayed between diagrams did not look familiar, the cold realisation of what had happened hit her as she searched for the familiar names of the founders, but the jumble of word units Dammit the letters  proved elusive. In normal times Hermione would have been bereft, she wondered if it was a function of how far she’d fallen that only a sad disquiet settled over her, knowing that sextoys didn’t need to read. Books had always been the gateway drug for her bright intellect and natural curiosity. Her mind searched for happier memories of bed-time stories with her parents, but that only brought back flashbacks of their most recent interactions. It was soul-destroying that they had defiled her mind in as thorough a fashion as they had ruined her body. It was a further hammer blow to Hermione’s psyche that she was a physical and mental wreck