"Still in one piece!" - Claire, Resident Evil II

*

Shocked, Hermione bit down, though it was Draco's lip her teeth made contact with, and not her own. He yelped and jumped back, and Hermione tired to disentangle herself from the embrace.

Whatever had hit her wasn't letting up; it felt like her hair was being pulled from her skull at high speed. She brought her hands up to her head to fend off her attacker, and was rewarded with a sharp peck on the back of her hand. It was a bird.

Hermione shrieked, and batted at the thing again, this time succeeding in driving it away. She looked up to see Draco was having the same problem.

The room was quickly filling with large, black birds.

They'd apparently come in the window, which was broken. Shards of glass littered the floor. Why didn't I hear that happening? Hermione wonder.

She looked at Draco, whose bottom lip was puffy, and remembered exactly why she hadn't heard. If she got out of this alive, she was never, never going to tell anyone that Draco Malfoy kissed better than anyone she'd ever kissed before. She doubted Malfoy would be posting the bans, though, so she really had nothing to worry about.

Except the birds.

Hermione remembered, when she was younger, sneaking out of her bedroom late at night, and seeing an old black and white movie on television. It featured birds, attacking people, plucking out their eyes; killing them. It had given her nightmares for weeks. She was certain these birds were capable of that, and possibly more. They could very well be zombie birds, after all.

Or they could have rabies.

"Hermione!" She shook her head, and looked to Draco, who was frantically calling her name.

Somehow, in their mad dash away from the birds, they'd managed to become separated to opposite sides of the room. She could barely see him through the feathers and flashing beaks. "What?"

"Birds!" he said.

"I've noticed!" She waved her hand in the air, frantically trying to clear her line of vision.

Stupidly, she'd left both her wand and her gun on the desk before she'd pulled Draco into the world's worst timed snogging session. Now she's managed to hop and dance herself out to the window, which really wasn't a good thing, as more birds seemed to be flying in by the minute. It was like one of those clown cars at the circle, only they weren't getting out of the room, but coming in.

A bird cawed triumphantly, and flew away with a chunk of Hermione's hair. She let out an ear-splitting scream that seemed to momentarily stun the birds, and made a dash to Draco's side.

"Hi," she said. "Do you have any idea how to deal with these things?"

"I was thinking we should kill them."

"Good plan. I'll help."

"It's reassuring to know I'm not in this by myself." He swatted a bird away from his nose, while another pecked at his sleeve.

Hermione had a sudden vision of Draco being lifted into the air by a swarm of angry zombie birds, and burst into laughter. Draco didn't seem to appreciate the humor, and yelled, rather hysterically, "This isn't funny!"

He only succeeded in making Hermione laugh harder, as he looked like an animated scarecrow, dancing about the room in a mad jig. She bit her cheeks to stop the giggles. "Right, sorry. So, we kill them. How?"

"Maybe you could bray like a donkey some more, and their heads will explode." He was very cross with her.

"I said I was sorry. Really, this isn't the time to trade petty insults. We need to - ow!" A particularly large bird landed on Hermione shoulder and bit her ear, drawing blood.

Draco laughed.

Hermione made a mad dash in what she hoped was the direction of the desk. When her thighs collided with a solid object, she knew she's made it. She looked around for her gun. It wasn't there.

"Draco!" she yelled, "Did you take my gun?"

"No. I don't even have mine. My hands were slightly occupied before feathered friends decided to drop in for tea."

She blushed, and dropped to her knees, hoping the gun had fallen to the floor and she hadn't noticed.

The floor was littered with black feathers and - ew! - was that bird droppings? Hermione made a mental note to not be disgusted and instead to concentrate on finding her weapon. She shifted her head an inch, and found herself looking directly into the cold black eyes of one of the birds.

It was holding her gun in with its feet.

"Why you little thief!" she cried, and lunged for the bird.

Too quick by a fraction, the bird took off, and left Hermione holding thin air.

She sighed, and squirmed under the desk, hoping that if she didn't find her gun, she'd at least be slightly protected from the mad swoops and dashes of the birds. She swore one of them had just bit her bum, and was none too pleased about it.

"Hermione!" yelled Draco, "Would you quit playing hide and seek and do something useful like kill some of these things?"

"If I could find my gun, I would." She thought a second. "Why can't you kill any of them?"

"I did!" he said with a touch of pride in his voice, "I've been throwing glass at them. They seem to die if they're beheaded."

"Lovely."

"It's better than whatever you're doing over there."

"I'm trying! I'm not very well going to bite their heads off, and at the moment, that seems to be my only choice, as I can't find my bloody wand, and a bird has stolen my gun." From under the desk, she could see only one side of the room, and it wasn't the side Draco was occupying. Her view consisted most of birds. And more birds.

"You're kidding. If the bites weren't bad enough, they're going to start shooting at us, now?"

"Yes, I'm sure they will. One bird will hold the gun in its little feet, and another will pull the trigger with its beak." She groped around the floor, hoping to find some sort of a weapon beneath the pile of feathers. Really, most of those birds had to be bald by now at the rate they were molting.

Then Draco was in front of her, pushing his way into the small space Hermione occupied under the desk. She moved over, but it was still a tight fit, and her knees were scraping her chin, and one of her elbows was twisted behind her back

"I didn't ask for your company."

"I know. But I'm tired of being used as a bird feeder. I think I've lost half the skin on my arms, and this shirt is a bloody dishrag now." He pointed, indicating the tears and chunks of missing fabric.

"How many did you kill?"

"Maybe four, maybe five. I don't think any more are coming in, if that matters any." He wiped his forehead, smearing sweat and blood over his eyebrows. "I thought you might want this." He held up her wand.

"Draco! Where did you find that? I could kiss you." Hermione yanked the wand away from him.

"Not now, please. Your kisses tend to happen before disasters."

Hermione threw him an evil look, and pushed her way out of the small space. As she wiggled, she felt his hand on her upper thigh. She froze for a moment, and then made herself ignore him and continue.

As she stood up, she heard him say, from under the desk, "You know, Granger, for someone who spends all her time in the library, you really have a nice set of legs."

"You've got a decent mind for someone who spends all his time with walking amoebas."

Hermione surveyed the room. Draco was right; there didn't seem to be any more birds coming in the window. The ones already in the room must have been losing some of their energy as well. The frantic flapping of their wings had slowed, and Hermione was actually able to see across the room thought the mass of birds.

Mentally tallying the number of birds, Hermione began her assault. Whenever a bird would come close to her, she would quickly transfigure it into a bullet. Soon, there were only three birds left in the room, and Hermione had a large pile of bullets sitting on the desk in front of her.

"What are you doing?" came Draco's muted voice.

"I'm teaching them parlor tricks." The last bird fell to the desk with a clank.

Hermione ducked her head under the desk. "All done."

Draco turned around and pulled himself halfway out from the beneath the desk, resting his head and hands on the surface. "Nice work, Hermione."

"Bit less messy than beheading, though," she admitted.

"More useful, though."

"Is that a compliment, Malfoy?"

"I wouldn't dream of it. Help me up?" He held out his hand, and she helped pull him the rest of the way out from under the desk, noticing that he'd taken off the tattered shirt. Bare chested and bloodied, he looked somewhat like Rambo, or perhaps the man from Die Hard.

Hermione spotted her gun across the room, where the bird had apparently dropped it. As she made her way over, she stepped on another gun, and picked it up. "Draco," she asked, "Where's your wand?"

"I don't know," he said. "The last time I remember having it was when I was looking out the window. Before you k -"

Hermione cut him off before he could finish. "You mean, when you were standing by that window?" She gestured towards the empty pane, which now held only a shard of broken glass.

He nodded, and she walked over to the window. "Lumos," she whispered to her own wand, looking out into the night.

Draco walked over to her, curious. "Is there anything down there?"

"Yes," Hermione said, "Your wand."