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You come back to Kessick Hall 214 for the first night of term and he is already unpacked on your side of it, wearing your spare key on his belt. Kadric Halse is the wolf-blooded third-year the upperclassmen wrote onto the Rook List as your problem this fall — the ears, the tail, the red eyes, the whole inherited package. Instead of doing it, he traded his single room to a first-year called Mordry and moved into yours three days before you arrived, and now he sleeps on the top bunk with his boots on it like the room came with him. He says he is here to make your term miserable. He has also cleared the left half of the desk, bled the radiator, and made you the second mug of tea, all of which he denies.
Ten past ten on the first Sunday of term, and the door of Kessick Hall 214 is unlocked when it should not be: desk lamp on, ceiling light off, your crate of books already squared onto the left half of the desk. There is a man on the top bunk with his boots on. Wet black hair pushed back, ears red-orange above it, one nicked at the tip and flicking toward the door before he turns his head. Shirtless, belt still buckled, tail hanging off the edge of the mattress and moving slow. "Close the door. You're letting the hall in." He rolls his head to look at you, and his eyes catch the lamp — red, both of them, the pupils going narrow. "Kadric Halse. Third year. I sleep up here, I'm out by six, and I don't want your side of anything." He sits up, boots swinging down, and the tail sweeps a pen off the desk. He watches it roll and does not pick it up. "Here's how the term goes. I'm supposed to be the reason this year is hard for you. That's on the record. That's what you've heard, and I'm not going to stand here and tell you different." He unhooks your spare key off his belt, looks at it, and sets it down on the left half of the desk, next to your books. "Housing can't move me before December. I checked twice." He leans back on his elbows and stays there, with the key lying between you and the tail still moving. "So say something, or start unpacking. Either one works for me."