Sample 3rd Person - Sofian Bell (original character, HP AU)
Wednesday was an unpleasant night. Even though March had brought weather a little warmer, it didn't help if the rain wouldn't stop, and it hadn't stopped for almost a week now. Little rivers ran down the curbs of the streets and the intersections were filled with small ponds. In the dark, the streetlamps made everything reflective and strange and bright. In the wind, everyone ran for cover in the pubs and restaurants that were open as the evening went on.

By 11:00, it was only the places that served alcohol that were still full of patrons. The streets were almost empty, except for cars carrying people home. And except for Sofian. It must have been an hour he'd been walking. In good weather, it would have taken less time, but when you're pretty much drenched, and trying to convince yourself you don't care, it can be slow going. The problem was, try as he might, he cared way too much. He didn't want to be out there, he didn't want to be headed where he was headed, he would have much preferred to be home. Not wet, not worried. The problem was, if he had been at home, he knew he would still have been worried. He'd be worried until the night was over, until he had done what he set out to do.

The street that held his destination was a dismal place. Everything was closed up for the night, except one shabby pub. The light inside was gray, and despite how good a drink might have been right now, Sofian wasn't inclined to go in. It was a depressing looking place, paint peeling, part of the roof sagging. The whole street was like that. Rotting office buildings that Sofian could only assume belonged to bookies and amateur pornography studios, a dumpster that was more likely than not the feeding place of a couple of homeless gents...and then the phone booth.

Sofi watched it from the curb across the street. The red paint on it looked over bright in this dingy street, even though it was just outside the sphere of light from the streetlamp overhead. The sky rumbled and the rain poured harder, and the boy swore to himself and took off pelting across the rainswept street, into the relative safety of the booth.

Inside, he wasn't sure if it was better or worse. He pulled the door shut behind him, and the rain became a muted sound against the glass. Sure, he wasn't going to get any wetter now (not that he thought he could)...but now he was here. He'd come as far as he meant to come, and now there were things to be done. The walking, the freezing rain, had been the easy part.

Sofian shut his eyes, pictured his breath steaming the window in front of him. He pictured all the rain, the patterns it was making on the glass, until he could almost see it, and then he turned around. Picture the telephone. Ok, he thought. If this is real, I reach out and I do it.

His fingers closed around the freezing black plastic of the receiver, and he brought it to his ear. His other hand reached out for the dial, and with his eyes squeezed shut, he picked out the numbers. The sound of the wheel turning was grating, with his eyes shut. He imagined it almost drowned out the sound of the rain.

6-2-4-4-2

The sound of the dial sliding back really was painful. Sofian couldn't have opened his eyes if he wanted to, and then -

"Welcome to the Ministry of Magic. Please state your name and business," a tinny, canned female voice echoed either out of the receiver or out of the booth itself.

Sofian's knuckles were white on the telephone, but it was about all he could feel. "Sofian Bell," he said. "I don't know why I'm here."

"Thank you," the voice responded. "Visitor, please take the badge and attach it to the front of your robes."

Robes? Sofi didn't have time to be confused about it, because there was another sound in the booth, almost like change being spat out of the phone. He opened his eyes, and the phone booth came brutally into focus. There was something in the change tray - a square silver pin with Sirius Black, Seeking Answers in scrolled print on it.

"What is this?" Sofian asked, but before he had gotten it all the way out of his mouth, the voice filled the booth again and said, "Visitor to the Ministry, you are required to submit to a search and present your wand for registration at the security desk, which is located at the far end of the Atrium."

The booth shivered, and Sofian slammed the telephone receiver back onto its box, as the entire structure began to slide into the ground, like a lift out of a science fiction film. There was a minute where Sofian almost panicked, seeing the street start to slide out of view, thinking he might somehow get stuck in here...and then he screwed his eyes shut, pictured everything around him with his mind's eye again, and some of the terror disengaged. It was still horrible. That was an undeniable fact. But you knew this would happen, Sofian thought, and the panic went down another tiny notch.

It could have been a minute, or it could have been all night, but eventually, Sofian felt the darkness dissipate. It wasn't exactly light that crossed his eyelids, but an absence of the perfect dark of an underground tunnel. A moment after that, the booth ground to a halt, and the canned voice of the woman said, "The Ministry of Magic wishes you a pleasant night."

Sofian's eyes popped open as the telephone booth door slid away. His heart sank into his stomach, and his stomach into his feet. There it was - the "Atrium" was the atrium from his dreams, a long, stately, dark-panneled hall. The place was illuminated with a dull, blue glow that seemed to be coming from the ceiling, which shimmered like the Northern Lights. In the centre of the hall was a great, ornate fountain made up of staggeringly life-like, golden statues. It would have captivated anyone, but it barely registered in Sofi's head.

There was a clock in the wall. Somehow, it was almost midnight, and it gave him pause to wonder how long he'd stood on the curb, streetside, and then how long he'd stood in the phone booth. But the pause didn't last very long. His feet carried him purposely across the broad, polished wood floor, past the fountain, to a golden gate leading into another hallway. He wrenched it open, and wondered if this was what being insane felt like - just barreling along with something you didn't understand, for no reason you could identify anymore, to some unknown purpose.

Beyond the gates was a lift stop. They lined both sides of this new hallway, stock still and equally as ominous as anything that had passed before, if not moreso. Sofian headed straight into the first one, and jammed one of the buttons in, without a thought. It was only once he started to move again further downward into the earth, that he noticed he was still squeezing the silver badge in the palm of his hand.

His hand relaxed, and there was blood on his palm, where the pin bit into his skin. It hurt, but he felt removed from it, and stuffed the silver thing into his pocket, almost angrily.

The lift came to a halt, and he found himself in yet another hallway.

Something like a smell wafted out of it and smacked Sofian in the gut. He staggered, retched, and put his hand out to catch himself on the lift doorway. There is no smell, he thought. It's nothing, keep moving.

Whatever it was, though, it was definitely real, and left Sofian reeling as he made his way down the hall. His fingers traced the stone wall, to support himself in case he toppled over again. If only he'd thought to bring an umbrella with him when he left his house. This far underground, it was clammy and damp, and the wetness of his clothes seemed to bite into his skin worse than the metal badge had. He gritted his teeth so they wouldn't chatter, and reached the doorway at the end of the hall.

The panic was trying to edge back, where he thought his stomach had been, and it was all he could do to force himself to pull open the door. Behind it, the room was solid black, except for the flaming blue wall sconces. And yet it seemed to suck up any light that had been in the dim, torch-lit hallway, and he was reminded of a story he'd read once, about scrying shadows. The shadows had killed a man.

Letting up his support grip on the wall, he stepped into the room. There was no way there could be a breeze here, underground, in a building (oh, but there was somewhere, wasn't there?), but the door fell shut behind him. Sofian spun around and reached for it just before it clanged into the latch, and then was nearly knocked on his arse, as the doorway spun out from in front of him. He looked wildly to the side - the whole room had started spinning, and he knew it wasn't his imagination. His eyes squeezed shut again, he had to press the palms of his hands to his lids, and concentrate very, very hard on holding still, to keep the retching feeling at bay again.

Then, just as abruptly as it had started, the spinning stopped.

Sofian coughed, which was more of a gag, and opened his eyes.

Everything was still, and black, and blue, and horrible. "I want out," he whispered. But there was no way out, he had no idea which door he'd come through. Pick one, he thought. Just hurry up and do it, do anything. He crossed over, two doors to the left of him, and touched his fingers to the door's black surface. It slid away into the wall, as if it had been anticipating him. Immediately, he wished it hadn't.

Sofian stood at the top of a stone sort of amphitheatre, tiers and tiers of stone seats or steps, leading down to a sunken arena in centre of the room. And in the centre of that, was his nightmare. The harder he stared at it, the more Sofi thought he could feel that implausible breeze that ruffled the veil in the archway. It was cold as ice and carried on it that almost-smell that had about bowled him over when he first left the lift. He felt his stomach rise out of his feet and up into his throat.

Arms wrapped around his torso, his legs shaky, he made his way down the stairs. It seemed like such a big room, but it hardly took any time for him to find himself staring up at the archway. What happened here, in his dreams? Suddenly, he couldn't remember. "I want to get out of here," he told the arch. The veil gusted a little higher in response, and the non-extant wind gripped the base of his spine in a cold vice.

He stepped up onto the dias the archway stood upon, until the tattered cloth, at the height of its arc, could almost touch him. The fingers of his bloodied hand reached out and let the tattered material ghost over them. His stomach clenched up again, and his head spun. He sank quickly down on his knees, made a valiant attempt at swallowing, and coughed up the contents of his stomach.

When he couldn't possibly have retched out anything else, he sat with his eyes shut, his knit hat pulled off his head and pressed against his face, so he could at least feel like he wasn't breathing that awful non-smell anymore. He rocked himself back and forth, and tried to think of anything, but nothing was coming into his head, except the cold, and the panic, and the awful, disgusting feeling in his mouth that came from throwing up.

"Let me go home," he said again, as soon as he thought he could talk without making another attempt at hurling. "I wanna be home." And once he thought his legs would hold him, he opened his eyes and stood up, pulled his hat back on his head. The veil was still there, blustering behind him.

And then there was the strangest part. Something he didn't remember from his dream: there were voices. He couldn't see how he hadn't noticed them a moment ago, they seemed so plain. Far off, but clear as daylight, and somehow just beyond the fluttering cloth, even though he could clearly see the other side of the room, through the arch.

"I'm here," Sofian whispered. The voices seemed to pause. Louder, he repeated himself, and then the voices seemed to part, singled out one of their number. He recognized it. "James?" he asked, and he couldn't understand the tone he asked it with. He stepped forward, gripped the edge of the stone gateway and looked through again, just to be sure it was the other side of the room. The fingers of his other hand trembled just in front of the arch. What was there to reach for? Oh, there was something all right. His hand went out, started to touch cold.

Don't. The voice came louder, almost like it was inside his head, but it wasn't his voice. His head tipped back a little, and his eyes fluttered closed. He felt dazed. "I want to be with you."

No, you don't, the voice repeated.

"Mm," Sofi mumbled. Out of the arch came a breeze that was less stale, more alive somehow, and free of the non-stench. It didn't just waft over him, it touched him. It made him turn around. By the time the dazed feeling had dropped, he was halfway up the stone steps again. He glanced over his shoulder at the archway, looked back up the stairs into the black room, and ran like the devil was chasing him.