Ron sat nearly motionless in the shadow of the tall maple tree, painfully eyeing his prey. He followed its movements as it twitched, rolled over, did a flip, and nervously settled for a moment.
"AHA!" Ron yelled, launching himself at it. It tried furtively to escape Ron's sweaty hands from pulling it to the ground, but Ron pounced once again so that his whole body was crushing the thing. Only when it was pinned to the ground did it settle; eerily, as if playing dead.
A few feet away, peeping above her "Hogwarts: A History" for the first time in hours, Hermione rolled her eyes, saying, "Oh honestly, Ron! It's just a broomstick, you know! Like I told you before, you should just bring it in to Professor McGonagall. No harm can be done to it, it's already defective enough. I mean, just look at the poor thing, shaking violently all the time-honestly, Ronald, are you even listening to me?!"
Ron turned his head at the mention of his name and thumped the stupid thing hard on its handle to stop its convulsions, but that only resulted in giving him a very sore row of knuckles, and he winced, swearing. "Yeah, yeah, I know. But, Herm, this thing's all I have! Mum won't be able to send another in time for practice tomorrow, and it's always been so faithful..." Ron trailed off, sighing with relief as the criminal thing ceased its thrashing again.
Hermione raised a bushy eyebrow. "You know, you could ask Harry about it..." she murmured.
"What was that?" Ron said, cursing as he was flung a few feet from it in a violent shake and hit the ground with a heavy thud.
"Oh, nothing. Do be careful, Ron, please!" she gasped as the end of the broom whacked him across the face. She whipped out her wand and muttered a spell, which made a whole rectangle of wavering air around the broom; silencing its movements once and for all.
Ron stared at her incredulously. "Why da bwoody hell dibin't yoo do dat behfore I goht a bwoody nose?"
Hermione just looked back at her book, after plugging up his leaky nose of course, and said, "you looked like you were having more fun than you could with a box of chocolate frogs is all. I didn't want to spoil that," and she smirked, "also, that's for being mean to Crookshanks!"