The binding room is under the east stair and it floods every spring, and nobody has taken the book out of it in living memory.

You come down with a candle and find Mione already there, and Malfoid behind you both, because Malfoid has never once let anyone read a family document without her.

MalfoidIt smells like a butcher's. It has always smelled like a butcher's. My mother said it was the damp.

It is not the damp. The whole room smells faintly of rendered fat, and the smell comes off the book.