Trying to answer a question with Hermione next to him, bobbing up and down on the balls of her feet with her hand in the air, was very off-putting, but Harry had a go.
The boys had been too absorbed to notice the hush that had stolen upon the school awhile before when the master came tiptoeing down the room and stood over them.
Before long, he was thumping around the house, thin as a string bean, swallowing buckets of food to regain the weight he'd lost. By then, the twine was a family fable.
I waited, then stood and tiptoed to the door, pressing my ear against it. Nothing. I looked at the clock—four forty-six p.m. I washed my face and changed briskly into my uniform.
And now it was a question of tiptoe work, not daring to go too fast, hardly daring to breathe, out through the scullery (giant sculleries smell horrid), out at last into the pale sunlight of a winter afternoon.