Still, Greg knew he was overly large, and built for hitting things It's good to see that, while he has been rehabilitated from some of the nastier bits of his DH-self (very nice references to the loss of Vince, and I like his unflinching self-assessment of his past actions, by the way), he's still recognizable as Gregory Goyle.
Perhaps he'd always been this alone — he'd just been too thick to notice before. Greg's narrative voice says this so baldly and unsentimentally, but it really tugs at my heartstrings, perhaps because of the guts it takes to face up to those two unpleasant facts without softening them or trying to weasel out of the realisation.
Then he realised she needed reassurance as much as he did. I like the equality of this pairing. There's much more room for understanding each other.
The bit with Alicia's spell and the tentacles was inspired; Greg didn't get disgusted (and it didn't even occur to him that that might be a reasonable reaction), and then when his level-headed solution dispelled her Glamour, he found her beautiful still.