Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince - J.K. Rowling

J.K. Rowling
HARRY POTTER AND THE HALF-BLOOD PRINCE
“Er does he?” said Harry.
“Don’t pretend you didn’t see him,” said Hermione. “He wasn’t exactly
hiding it, was —?”
The door behind them burst open. To Harry’s horror, Ron came in,
laughing, pulling Lavender by the hand.
“Oh,” he said, drawing up short at the sight of Harry and Hermione.
“Oops!” said Lavender, and she backed out of the room, giggling. The door
swung shut behind her.
There was a horrible, swelling, billowing silence. Hermione was staring
at Ron, who refused to look at her, but said with an odd mixture of bravado
and awkwardness, “Hi, Harry! Wondered where you’d got to!”
Hermione slid off the desk. The little flock of golden birds continued to
twitter in circles around her head so that she looked like a strange, feathery
model of the solar system.
“You shouldn’t leave Lavender waiting outside,” she said quietly. “She’ll
wonder where you’ve gone.”
She walked very slowly and erectly toward the door. Harry glanced at
Ron, who was looking relieved that nothing worse had happened.
“Oppugno!” came a shriek from the doorway.
Harry spun around to see Hermione pointing her wand at Ron, her
expression wild: The little flock of birds was speeding like a hail of fat
golden bullets toward Ron, who yelped and covered his face with his hands,
but the birds attacked, pecking and clawing at every bit of flesh they could
reach.
“Gerremoffme!” he yelled, but with one last look of vindictive fury, Hermione
wrenched open the door and disappeared through it. Harry thought
he heard a sob before it slammed.
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