Then she set down her spoon and did not touch the pastries again. Mr. Greengrass did not touch them either. He merely gave them a polite glance, then looked away, as though they were decorations in someone else's home that had nothing to do with him.
The House-Elf standing behind Lady Walburga moved. Its skin was grayish green, its eyes smaller and narrower than those of the Hogwarts House-Elves, its pupils dark gold like two flattened brass buttons. It stepped out of Walburga's shadow, moving as swiftly as a snake springing from the grass, without making a sound.
Gleely startled and took half a step back, nearly dropping the notebook from his hands.
The little elf did not look at Gleely. It walked to the tea table, extended two withered, knobby fingers, and without using a spoon or fork, plunged them directly into a muffin. Its fingers sank into the pastry, cream squeezing out between them and dripping onto the plate.
It withdrew its hand and brought its cream-smeared fingers beneath its nose, taking a deep sniff through its sharp, slightly hooked aquiline nose. Then its lips peeled back, revealing a row of uneven yellow teeth. The corners of its mouth turned down, and its whole face wrinkled into a ball like a sun-dried walnut mottled with mold.
"Cinnamon from the Madeira Islands." Its voice was shrill and condescending, as though it were not judging a pastry but pronouncing the crimes of a condemned prisoner. "But the cinnamon in this was harvested last year and stored for over eight months. More than half its fragrance is gone. The flour is ordinary wheat from Norfolk, with too much gluten. It will not make cream puffs light enough. As for the cream—"
It licked the remaining cream from its finger, then spat