It is no stretch at all to say that parchment, though prepared and sanitized, bears the mark of death. Hermione did not doubt that no other student had given thought to whence came the parchment that became so ill-treated with misspelled essays and dashed-off homework assignments. But Hermione investigated this topic with her usual zeal. The process of making parchment was certainly speedier than when performed by medieval Muggles, but it required the same raw materials—animal skins. Many, many animal skins were required each year by Hogwarts, even though the house-elves salvaged and recycled what they found in student's wastebins. The number of beasts that needed to be slaughtered for their skins was far greater than the number required for food. Each shelf in the sizable library that she loved so much represented dead animals in the thousands. Hermione knew the relationship between parchment and death.
No doubt her classmates sniggered over Hermione's revelation that she linked the scent of parchment to deep love. Typical bookworm. But for Hermione, it was no silly or clichéd response. Books were where she found her answers, where she sought meaning. Though her love of books separated her from her peers, it is also what brought her admiration from adults and enabled her to keep her closest friends safe. So while animal skin, tanned in lye, objectively smelled less pleasing than wood pulp, the smell of parchment represented for her answers and solutions and magic and significance and wisdom and creativity and life itself and something akin to hope. New parchment in particular meant new answers, represented the possibility that all problems could be solved by reading this new volume. And when the books failed the only thing she could think to do was open a new one and start afresh in constant longing that this next one would provide the answer at long last. She would never admit in words, to others or to herself, that her books might not provide all the answers. They might not tell Harry how to defeat Voldemort. They might not bring back the dead. They might not—they might not help her do that, either, that other preoccupation she couldn't yet, perhaps couldn't ever verbalize. But she continued to love her books, and the scent of parchment brought her both excitement and peace.