Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows

By JK Rowling

A handsome manor house grew out of the darkness at the end of the straight

drive, lights glinting in the diamond-paned downstairs windows. Somewhere

in the dark garden beyond the hedge a fountain was playing. Gravel crackled

beneath their feet as Snape and Yaxley sped toward the front door, which

swung inward at their approach, though nobody had visibly opened it.

The hallway was large, dimly light, and sumptuously decorated, with a

magnificent carpet covering most of the stone floor. The eyes of the pale-faced

portraits on the walls followed Snape and Yaxley as they strode past. The two

men halted at a heavy wooden door leading into the next room, hesitated for

the space of a heartbeat, then Snape turned the bronze handle.

The drawing room was full of silent people, sitting at a long and ornate

table. The room’s usual furniture had been pushed carelessly up against the

walls. Illumination came from a roaring fire beneath a handsome marble mantelpiece

surmounted by a gilded mirror. Snape and Yaxley lingered for a moment

on the threshold. As their eyes grew accustomed to the lack of light, they

were drawn upward to the strangest feature of the scene; an apparently unconscious

human figure hanging upside down over the table, revolving slowly as

if suspended by an invisible rope, and reflected in the mirror and in the bare,

polished surface of the table below it. He seemed unable to prevent himself

from glancing upward every minute or so.

“Yaxley, Snape,” said a high, clear voice from the head of the table. “You are

very nearly late.”

The speaker was seated directly in front of the fireplace, so that it was difficult,

at first, for the new arrivals to make out more than his silhouette. As they

drew nearer, however, this face shone through the gloom, hairless, snakelike,

with slits for nostrils and gleaming red eyes whose pupils were vertical. He

was so pale that he seemed to emit a pearly glow.

 Questions 

 1) In paragraph 1 what technique is used to describe the manor house?

 2) Why does the author use onomatopoeia in the first paragraph?

 3) What does the word ‘sumptuously’ make you think the house is like?

 4) How does the author’s description of the paintings on the walls add to the eerie quality of the house in paragraph 2?

 5) What does the word ‘strode’ tell you about how the men were moving in paragraph 2

?6) What does ‘surmounted’ mean in this context?

7) Why did Snape and Yaxley linger at the threshold in paragraph 3?

8) Why could they only make out the speaker’s silhouette in paragraph 5?

9) Write down four features of the speaker’s face given in paragraph 5.

10) In your own words, what does ‘emit a pearly glow’ mean?