Hermione should be used to the scars by now. She looked at them in the mirror every single day – read the mirror-backward letters, mouthed them silently to herself, traced the thin ridges with her fingers. She shouldn’t still feel a flush of hot shame and fear when she saw them by herself, when she realised they were exposed so plainly in front of Draco. Surely after all these months Hermione should be desensitised. Why wasn’t she? She couldn’t figure it out, and it galled her. Mostly Hermione tried not to think about it, and with everything else that had been going on – Draco, the war, Draco and her – Hermione had managed to not dwell too much on the way Bellatrix had mutilated her.