Red Brick Heart

1

Harry has only had his room for thirty-two minutes when it stops being his.

He's unpacking his suitcases, Mum and Gemma in the kitchen unloading his cutlery and pots and pans while chatting with the mums of the other two boys currently in his flat – a dark-haired, buff boy called Liam who'd nearly crushed his hand when he shook it and introduced himself, and a quiet boy in a leather jacket who'd muttered "Zayn, nice to meet you," before disappearing outside with a lighter and a packet of cigarettes.

The university halls of residence aren't bad. Well, they're not terrible. Well, they're liveable. Harry had applied for the much cooler, much more popular halls across town and not got in – this was his second choice. There's a yellowed patch of what looks suspiciously like damp on the ceiling but at least the carpet is clean and on first inspection the mattress doesn't have any weird stains on, so that's good. And besides, he's at university. University. He's been dreaming about this day for years and he's not going to let a disappointingly anticlimatic red brick building get in the way of that. This is the first day of the rest of his life, or something appropriately inspiring like that.

He's just unpacking his speakers when a boy bundles into his room, drops a giant overstuffed rucksack on the floor and calls into the corridor, "Mum! Found it!"

"Um...hello," Harry says, when the boy turns around and meets his gaze. His expression is one of complete bewilderment.

"What are you doing in my room?" he demands. Harry clears his throat in alarm.

"Well, um. It's my room."

"No it's not, it's mine."

"No..." Harry says, frowning, at a loss to how this is happening. The boy looks at him like he's mentally deranged – Harry's sure he's got a similar look on his face – before kicking his rucksack aside and stepping forwards.

"Yes, it is. See here?" The boy fishes for something in the pocket of his jean shorts – Harry's eyes linger longer than is probably acceptable on his bare legs, toned and lightly fuzzed, neat little ankles leading down to sockless feet, dirty white Vans. Harry's startled back to reality when a piece of crumpled paper is thrust in his face. It reads Louis Tomlinson, Flat 9, Room 494.

"Er," Harry says, glancing up at the boy – Louis, he presumes – and handing him his own slip of paper. Harry Styles, Flat 9, Room 494.

They stare at each other. Then Louis yells, "Mum! Come in here!"

The halls officer is in disarray. Harry feels quite sorry for her.

"I am so – I absolutely don't understand how this could have happened," she says, when he and Gemma  and his mum, and Louis and Louis's mum and all of Louis's many, many sisters are in the crowded entrance hall. The halls officer - :) Stacey, her name tag proclaims – flicks desperately through the sheets of paper denoting which student is in which room as if it's going to magically produce an answer.

"I'm extremely disappointed," Louis's mum says, as Smiley Face Stacey looks like she's about to cry. "We've come all the way from Doncaster and we were told Louis had a room. Now you're saying we might have to find him a house to live in?"

"We can't afford that," Louis says, face set, and Harry bites his thumbnail with a heavy pool of guilt squirming in his gut. It turns out it isactually his room, all of the official papers say so, it's just that Louis got sent the wrong letter. He should have been in one of the private houses across the city, but Smiley Face Stacey can't reach anyone on the phone to sort it out and Louis refuses to leave because it's what we were told, it's cheap here, I can't afford a hundred quid a week, no way.