"You do pretty darn well when you're under pressure or angry. Perhaps that helped you during the war. But the problem is you can't always wait till your life's in danger before you start to fight seriously. You need to want to go into a battle wanting to take someone's eye out.
Your mistake is, you care too much. At the wrong time. And not every opponent of yours is going to care back. You need to want to hurt him. Cripple him. Disable him. So factor out the care, and you've already won half the duel."
Draco was instructing her, and doing a thorough job of it. It reminded her of Professor McGonagall herself.
"Wow, you seem to be quite good at this."
"Yeah, well, I learnt from the best." And then Draco stopped, his smirk faded a little, and turned away.
"You mean your aunt, don't you? Bellatrix." Hermione asked shrewdly. She absently touched her scar.
"Sure."
"She left quite a mark on me," Hermione said, looking down and straightening her sleeve.
"I know," he suddenly snapped. "I was there, remember?"
Hermione looked up. "I'm not blaming you, Malfoy." It just occurred to her that Draco was as much affected by that night as she was.
"I'm assuming that you had to endure a lot of such incidents when Voldemort took over your home."
Draco turned around to look at her. And then slowly, nodded his head.
"Well, I guess we all have our battle scars," Hermione said.
"Now, let's continue with the duelling."