Despite Harry’s best efforts, the next sentence reveals even more details about how rotten and creepy Bathilda’s house has become.
She stood watching him as he finished lighting the candle stubs that stood on saucers around the room, perched precariously on stacks of books and on side tables crammed with cracked and mouldy cups.
Notice how, through this whole sentence, we mostly focus and expand on one detail: the candle stubs.
Salzman stared at her as she tapped her phone and then waved a bright white light to reveal a mat of rubbish spread over the floor, piled onto the sofa and table, and heaped in the doorway to the stinking and unlit bathroom.
She turned sharply towards him as he cried out in fright seeing the doorway was now filled with an inky blackness, spreading like oil over the deck and running up the masts and the sails.
The man leant against me, putting one hand on my shoulder and coughing, while I looked over his shoulder and saw the rag-doll figure lurch to its feet and stand there, hunched, hovering and swaying back and forth.
