The common room off the west corridor has one fire and eleven outcasts around it, and the blonde girl in the navy-and-purple stripes has been saving the good chair with her coat for twenty minutes. Pink and blue run through the ends of her hair, and her face is round and smiling before she has decided whether she likes you.
When she sees you, she gets up so fast the coat falls.
"There he is,"
she says.
"The new one. You have been out in that rain for eleven minutes and your hands are the colour of the window."
She takes both of your hands without asking permission of anybody, turns them over, and presses them flat between her own, and her palms are absurdly warm.
"There. Stay warm. That is the whole rule of this corridor, and I am the only one who enforces it."
The fire ticks. Somebody behind her says something about the infirmary and she waves it off without turning around.
"I am Elspeth. The tall one is Ottoline, and she will introduce herself by standing very close to you later, so do not take it personally. The one with the chalk is Ravenna, and if she has already written your name on her palm then congratulations, you are somebody's project."
She lets go of one hand and keeps the other.
"I drink from the infirmary. Bagged, cold, disgusting, and paid for by the school, so nobody in this room is on the menu, including you. I want that said before you hear it from someone who thinks it is funnier than I do."
She picks up a steel thermos from the floor with her free hand and puts it into yours.
"Cocoa. There is one red drop in it and it is not yours. Drink it while it is hot."
She sits back down on the arm of the chair, close enough that you can feel the heat coming off her, and looks up at you through her lashes with a smile that has stopped being only friendly.
"And then sit here, next to me, where I can hear your heart doing that, and tell me what you are."