After McGonagall had gone, she turned to him. The mask had gone from her honey-brown eyes, and he tried to remember what she had looked like before, when she had been fearful and fawnlike and trembling, because there was no trace of it now. He had thought that was her truest self, the very essence of her—a frightened, hungry schoolgirl. That had been a lie. That was an outer shell, brittle and sheer, crumbling at the slightest outside pressure. Pain had burned it away, leaving behind something surer, ridding her mettle of impurities. 