The extract is from Roald Dahls autobiography, Going Solo.

Donald MacFarlane, the snake-man, may have been old and small but he was an impressive looking character. His eyes were pale blue, deep-set in a face round and dark and wrinkled as a walnut. Above the blue eyes, the eyebrows were thick and startlingly white but the hair on his head was almost black. In spite of the thick leather boots, he moved like a leopard, with soft low cat-like strides.

Description of a favourite place: I love to lie on the soft sand on an island in the middle of nowhere, with the waves gently crashing and the sun beating down and making everything shine like a neon light in the sky. I run my finger through the fluffy sand and birds fly overhead and then I walk towards the sparkling sea, where fish are splashing about. I listen to all the sounds and I can feel the light breeze on my face as the sun beats down and the wind slowly passes through the trees just in front of me. I walk towards the quaint green trees and the beautiful flowers and there is a wonderful feeling all around me.

This is an extract from J. K. Rowlings Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. It is a description of Professor Slughorns study. Whether it had been built that way, or because he had used magical trickery to make it so, Slughorns office was much larger than the usual teachers study. The ceiling and walls had been draped with emerald, crimson and gold hangings, so that it looked as though they were all inside a vast tent. The room was crowded and stuffy and bathed in the red light cast by an ornate golden lamp dangling from the centre of the ceiling in which real fairies were fluttering, each a brilliant speck of light. Loud singing accompanied by what sounded like mandolins issued from a distant corner; a haze of pipe smoke hung over several elderly warlocks deep in conversation; and a number of house-elves were negotiating their way squeakily through the forest of knees, obscured by the heavy silver platters of food they were bearing, so that they looked like little roving tables.