She has seventeen blemishes on her body, seventeen imperfections. She can't ignore them. To pretend they don't exist is essentially to lie in her book, so she simply averts her eyes whenever she undresses.
But now, she stands in front of the old mirror with the fancy frame, counting.
The first is the newest. A long, thin scar that traces her left clavicle and reminds her somewhat of a snake. When she runs a finger along it, she remembers a mad laugh and a mane of matted black hair and those heavy, feelingless eyelids that lifted cruelly as the wand was raised. She shudders. One.
Out of all her flaws, that one is the worst. She figured it would have been best to get it out of the way first, but now it stays on her mind as she surveys the rest of her body.
There. Her hand falls on the freckles just above her hip. Each freckle counts. There are five freckles spotting her side, therefore five faults, huddled together like a cluster of mockery. She hates them because they're there and they're together and they're the first things he notices whenever she takes of her skirt. Six.
Her hands trace over her stomach, and she almost forgets that her hands are imperfections in themselves. If her fingers were just a little longer, maybe she'd be able to wield a wand just a little bit better. Not that she has much difficulty now, but she's sure that there's always room for improvement somewhere or other. Eight.
She meets her own eyes in the mirror. The next one is faint, but she knows about it and it annoys her deeply. 'Eye freckles', he calls them. But that's just what they are, and that's what's so irritating. Three of them. A darker brown than the rest of her eye. One on the left, two on the right, each a deep, dark, blackish-brown blemish that she can't quite ignore. Sometimes he'd call them poppyseeds or dots, just so she might someday find them attractive, but everyday she'll see them and think that they just look sort of like blackheads. Eleven.
She gives a sigh and a curl floats lazily on her breath. She'd count each strand as a flaw, but there are too many that are too tangled. So she just counts it as a whole, an entity, if you will. Besides, she's grown kind of fond of it over the years. Twelve.
Pressing a finger on top of each, she finds imperfections thirteen, fourteen and fifteen. She doesn't really count them as much, since they're no more than a few bruises and faint scars that will fade within a month or two. She only kind of notices them, maybe when she's sad or has had a long day at work.
It's when she cranes her head to search for sixteen that she hears the door slam.
He's home and she's starkers and, of course, the first thing he looks at is the patch of beauty marks just above her hip. He's wearing that bemused smile that shows up when he doesn't quite understand something. It seems, however, from the way he drops his coat and rucksack on the floor and wraps his arms protectively around her, that he doesn't much mind being confused.
She can feel the first of the last two blemishes as a few strands of his red hair fall against her ear. It was silly, really. For some reason she was sure that a muggle piercing would make him excited, but he just seemed shocked. "Pierced your ear? Blimey, 'Mione, what did you do to the blokes? Not even on a fleshy bit, but up where it's hard on the top? Didn't think muggles could be so dangerous. Should I floo Harry?"
She took out the ring the next day, but it still scarred. It's her own embarrassment that makes it a flaw. Maybe he's forgotten by now.
Probably, but she hasn't. Sixteen.
His hand traces over her stomach, thinking only of how beautiful her hips are and how nice the slight curve of her tummy feels under his palm. He doesn't much care about her last imperfection because it's what he likes about her. He likes her impulsive need to correct him when he's wrong and likes the somewhat superior tone she takes whenever someone says something ignorant. Besides, she's 'Mione, and that's just the way her brain works. After all, she is nothing if not a walking brain in a pretty shell.
And he likes that. He likes it as much as she's made self-conscious by it.
But she stops counting as he presses his face to the side of her jaw and she steps away from the mirror, seventeen utterly forgotten.