Severus quickly shook off McGonagall’s warning as he exited her office. He had other things to worry about and this wasn’t exactly the first time she’d threatened him recently, so it didn’t have the same novelty as before.

Thanks to McGonagall, he knew what he needed to say to Potter, but he had no idea how to go about it. Forget what to say to Potter, he didn’t even know where the boy was.

Severus had barely made it out of the hallway McGonagall’s office was in when he stopped walking. He had realized that he had no idea where he was going. After considering this question, Severus reasoned to himself that Potter was probably in the common room being comforted by his little friends.

And if he wasn’t, his friends would probably have a good idea of where to find him. Severus directed his path to the Gryffindor common room and picked up his pace. The sooner he fed Potter the ridiculous story, the better, because the longer Potter sulked the harder it’d be to pull him out of it.

He made it to the tower quickly and gave the Fat Lady the password. Stepping into the common room, he surveyed the students scattered around, looking for Potter. He was quickly able to discern that Potter was not present. He should have known Potter wouldn’t have made this easy on him.

Severus scanned the room again, this time looking for Granger or a Weasley.

His gaze landed on Granger and the youngest Weasley boy and he headed over to where they were shamelessly sharing a single armchair and giggling at each other. Disgusting.

“Have y’all seen Potter?” Severus asked, startled when that stupid accent spell warped the actual words he meant to say. He was mostly used to hearing the accent when he spoke, but it was always more shocking when the words or phrases he meant to say were completely distorted into something new. He shook it off and focused on Granger’s response.

“Not lately, but he’ll probably show up soon.”

That was useless.

Then Weasley said, “Oh wait, I think Neville said something about Harry going to look for you and to bring you some food because you never showed up to dinner. They were worried you’d gotten lost or something, but Harry must’ve missed you.”

Severus was discomfited to feel a pang of guilt at the confirmation that not only had Potter tried to do something nice for him, he’d also had good intentions for doing so. He realized that he should probably say something about what had happened by the lake since they’d find out eventually and probably not be pleased if they found out without any indication from him.

He decided on, “We didn’t quite miss each other. Earlier, when I was heading out to the lake, I was hit by a spell from behind. It didn’t do anything when it hit, so I figured whoever cast it messed up and the spell failed or something, and I just kept going with my walk. But then when Potter showed up, I…”

He paused for a moment, unable to remember the exact lie he was supposed to tell and unwilling to complicate the situation by getting it wrong. Then he remembered that this was the part of the lie that most closely resembled the truth and continued, “I lost control and said some horrible things to him. He ran off and once I realized what had happened, he was gone, so I ran to McGonagall to tell her what happened. She told me that it was probably a prank spell gone wrong and that the effect should be worn off by now.”

“You mean you were attacked in the hallways, and you just shook it off and continued on your walk?” Granger said shock evident in her tone, “What the hell kind of school did you go to?”

“Forget that, Hermione, I want to know who attacked Eli and why and then I want to let them know that we don’t let Gryffindors get attacked like that,” Weasley butted in.

“Look,” Severus interjected when Granger looked like she was gearing up to go off on a rant, “can we talk about this later? I really need to find Potter.”

Weasley and Granger made eye contact for a brief moment and Weasley climbed out of Granger’s lap to his feet, quickly followed by Granger standing as well. “We’re going with you, then,” Granger said decisively.

“Wait let me go see if the map is in our room,” Weasley said and rushed towards their dormitory, quickly disappearing from view.

The map- Weasley must mean the Marauder’s Map. For a moment, Severus felt a brief rush of panic at the thought that he might be about to be discovered. But then Severus came to his senses and realized that he could be reasonably confident that Albus knew about the map and would have planned accordingly. God forbid Albus’s entertainment be cut short.

To that end, Albus had cast several enchantments on him in preparation, and one of them had been the spell to fix his accent. It stood to reason that one of the spells Albus had cast was something to fool the Map and other similar artefacts into believing that he was Alfonse “Eli” Hopkirk in truth.

He stood awkwardly next to Granger while they waited for Weasley to return. After another moment, Severus realized that he should have no idea what Weasley was getting, so he said, “Wait, what map is Ron getting?”

Granger glanced sideways at him, not turning away from the staircase Weasley had disappeared up and said, “Harry has a map of the school that also shows the locations of the people in the castle.”

Severus paused for a moment, “Isn’t that… I don’t know… kind of invasive?”

She shrugged, “It’s not like it gets any more specific than physical location.”

Weasley chose that moment to reappear, conspicuously empty handed. “I think Harry must have it with him. So we’ll have to do this the old fashioned way.”

“This castle is absolutely enormous, how do you plan to actually find him?” Severus asked dubiously. He could think of a couple methods, but none of them were appropriate for the situation.

Hermione said reasonably, “Well, Ron and I know Harry pretty well, so we can use the process of elimination to figure out where he’s not and then check the remaining places that he could be.”

“Can we at least head out and walk around while we talk about it? We’ll cover more ground that way,” Severus suggested, unwilling to stand around and do nothing while Potter was sinking further and further into hatred of Eli, and still slightly annoyed that he was now saddled with the two of them. They hadn’t been at all useful yet.

“Yeah alright, let me tell Neville to message us if Harry comes back and then we can head out,” Hermione said walking over to where Longbottom was seated at a table covered in parchment.

They exchanged a few words before Granger looked back over to where Severus and Weasley were still standing and beckoned them over to join her as she headed out of the dorm.

Severus vaguely resented being ordered about like that, but it was hardly worth fighting over, so he followed Weasley and Granger out of the common room.

Severus was trailing just behind Weasley and Granger as they aimlessly walked through the castle, discussing where Potter could have gone. He clearly had nothing to contribute to their discussion so he tuned them out and focused on his surroundings.

Were it not for the urgency with which Severus felt the need to find Potter, he thought he would have enjoyed this walk much more than he was. The halls were calm and peaceful. There were no younger years’ about anymore since it was past their curfew and because it was still a comfortable temperature outside, the overall environment was quite pleasant.

Hogwarts had many virtues, but one of its flaws was the draftiness of the hallways that made strolling through them unpleasant in the winter.

Weasley came to an abrupt halt, nearly causing Severus to collide with him and jolting Severus out of his reverie. So much for a nearly pleasant walk.

“We’re being so dumb,” Weasley said, which was a bit rich coming from him. Then he exclaimed to the empty corridor, “Dobby! Harry needs you!”

Severus was startled by the immediate appearance of a house elf. It took a moment, but the name and appearance of the elf finally connected in his memory. This was the house elf that Potter had freed from the Malfoy’s about four years ago.

“Hey Dobby, can you help us find Harry? We’re worried about him-” Weasley started before the elf interrupted him.

“Dobby can take Harry Potter's friends to Harry Potter,” he said and held out his thin arms.

Severus resented being referred to as Potter’s friend, especially when Eli wasn’t even in Potter’s good books. But he was quite glad that the problem of finding Potter had turned out to be so easy to solve. And he reluctantly acknowledged that Weasley and Granger had turned out to be quite helpful. Not that he ever intended to say anything of the sort to them.

He reluctantly gripped one of the elf’s bony hands as Granger and Weasley gripped the other hand and arm. As soon as they all had a good grip, Dobby apparated them away, hopefully to where Potter was.

Harry wasn’t sure how long he’d been laying in the field; the sun was setting now so he had probably been out for at least an hour or two. I should probably head back inside soon, Harry thought, but he wasn’t any closer to figuring out what to do about Eli than he had been before, and he was reluctant to face him before he figured it out.

Currently his only real thought was that he could possibly ask McGonagall if he could sleep somewhere else. This would at least solve the problem of not making Eli sleep with someone he knew was a murderer.

Really, he should have done that ages ago, but he supposed that nobody had ever actually said that he was a murderer to his face. Seamus had called him a liar plenty of times, but he’d never gone so far as to actually blame Cedric’s death on Harry.

And prior to this year, he hadn’t yet realized that he was responsible for all the deaths around him. The only death he could remember personally witnessing was Cedric’s and he’d been able to live in blissful ignorance of the pattern that was now clear. His parents, Cedric, Sirius, had all died because of him and the horror of seeing Sirius die in front of him had really driven this point home.

If it weren’t for him, his parents wouldn’t have been affected by the prophecy, and they would never had had to go into hiding. Voldemort would never have hunted them down, and they wouldn’t have died. The Triwizard Tournament was only turned into a trap because Voldemort wanted him, so if he hadn’t been there, Cedric would never have been in danger. And Sirius would never have gone to the Ministry if Harry hadn’t been too stupid to realize that the vision had been a trap.

Harry painfully withdrew his thoughts from the dark path they had gone down and tried to refocus on the problem at hand.

It would be wrong of him to not even try and minimize his contact with the one person who could see the truth about him. He needed to go and talk to Professor McGonagall about the possibility of living elsewhere and to see what else she thought would be best. He could only, selfishly, hope that she wouldn’t come to her senses and minimize her own contact with him.

He wished he had a better plan in mind, and one that didn’t risk losing the confidence of one of the few adults he still respected, but it was starting to get dark out, and he really ought to avoid being out after curfew.

Harry had just resolved to go inside when he was startled by the loud pop of apparation. He jumped to his feet and drew his wand, wary of being caught unawares.

Ron, Hermione, and Eli all crashed to the ground in front of him and Harry took a step back from them, shocked that Eli would want to be anywhere near him now, and curious as to what Ron and Hermione had to do with anything. He slid his wand back up his sleeve.

“Dobby has delivered Harry Potter’s friends to Harry Potter! Dobby has to get back to work now, but Dobby hopes Harry Potter is okay,” he exclaimed as he darted in for a quick hug around Harry’s knees before promptly popping away.

Harry had to stop himself from choking up at the brief hug and quickly refocused his attention on the friends that Dobby had delivered.

Hermione and Ron were brushing each other off by hand while Eli performed a similar action himself. Harry had no idea what they were doing here, so he stood there, waiting for someone to say something. When he made accidental eye contact with Eli, Harry focused his gaze on the ground, unwilling to risk it happening again.

“Eli, mate, I think you know what’s going on better than any of us, so why don’t you explain things,” Ron said after they’d stood around without anyone saying anything.

Harry glanced up at Eli and saw that he was shuffling his feet, then quickly looked back down.

“I uh, I went to talk to Professor McGonagall,” Eli said, causing Harry’s heart to stop with anxiety. Harry had thought he’d have a chance to talk to her himself and maybe keep her on his side a little. He quickly forced himself to refocus on what Eli was saying.

“After I said those terrible things to you,” Eli continued, shocking Harry once again.

“She thinks that I was hit with some kind of prank spell made malicious- she said she recognized the effects from her own school days and she’s trying to look for the culprit, but I was hit with the spell on my way out to the lake, and I didn’t see anyone and it has no immediate effects, so it’s not looking likely that she’ll figure out who did it.”

Harry stood in silence while he processed this. Then he said, “So, you didn’t mean what you said? You don’t think that- think that those things you said are true?”

“No, no, I didn’t even know what I was saying at the time!” Eli said fervently, and Harry finally lifted his gaze from the ground to see the tail end of an emphatic head shake.

“Wait,” Ron said, looking from Harry to Eli and back again, “what did Eli say?”

Harry’s gaze dropped back to the ground and he crossed his arms over his chest in a mockery of a hug, unwilling to repeat the words himself.

He was startled by Hermione colliding with him, pulling him into her warm embrace, and it was everything he could do to not burst into tears. He belatedly slid his arms out from around himself and put them around Hermione. He buried his head into the crook of her neck and basked in the warmth of her hug, feeling as though the pieces of him that had fallen apart when Eli had called him that were being gently nudged back together into one piece.

A moment later, he felt Ron come up behind him to hug him too. And then he really did start to cry as he was encased in a sandwich of love from his friends.

They stood there simultaneously for what was both an eternity and nowhere near enough time before Ron and Hermione pulled away, although Hermione retained her grip on his hand. Harry had thankfully stopped crying by this point and he swiped at his eyes with his free hand to remove the evidence.

“Eli,” Ron said, more firmly this time, “what did you say to Harry.”

“Ron, he didn’t have a choice,” Hermione reminded Ron before Eli could say anything.

“Yes, please do remember that,” Eli said with a nervous undertone.

Ron didn’t respond to this audibly.

“I, well, I basically interrogated Harry about his involvement in the Triwizard Tournament, but I didn’t let him get a word in edgewise and then,” Eli stopped here and Harry glanced up at him when he failed to continue, only to make brief eye contact that Harry immediately broke once again.

“And then?” prompted Hermione.

“And then I called Harry a murderer,” Eli said in a heavy voice.

Harry flinched back as soon as he said this and Hermione tugged gently on the hand she was still holding to pull him into another hug. Harry took advantage of the opportunity to bury his face in her neck again and simply hide from the world.

When Hermione said, “That must’ve been one hell of a prank spell gone wrong,” Harry barely processed what she said and instead focused on how her words vibrated against him as she talked.

It reminded him of the times when he was a child and particularly cold, or lonely, and he would wait till the clothes drier was all warmed up and lean against it as it tumbled the clothes. He would close his eyes and if he tried hard enough to pretend he could believe for a moment that he was being hugged.

He shook the memory off and focused on the present and the very real, very warm embrace Hermione was giving him.

Eventually Hermione broke the hug again and Harry reluctantly refocused on what was happening around him.

“Harry?” Eli asked, sounding like it wasn’t the first time he’d tried to get Harry’s attention.

“Yeah?” Harry replied, resisting the urge to wrap his arms around himself again.

“I really really didn’t mean those things I said,” Eli said seriously.

Harry nodded, not sure what to say to this.

“Can you forgive me?” Eli asked tentatively.

Harry looked up, startled. He took a moment to process that Eli seemed to genuinely want his forgiveness. “Yeah, of course I can, I just,” Harry stopped himself and looked away, embarrassed.

“You just?” Hermione encouraged gently, sliding her hand back into his.

“I just didn’t think he’d want my forgiveness,” Harry mumbled, still not looking at anyone.

“Oh Harry,” Hermione said and squeezed his hand.

He finally looked up again and saw that Eli had a bewildered expression on his face.

“Why on Earth would I not want your forgiveness?” Eli asked, sounding as confused as he looked.

Harry shrugged. “It’s just, most people don’t bother to apologize when they hurt me. And well, you were right about what you said,” he stopped himself before he could continue, unwilling to make himself sound more pathetic than he was sure he already did.

“Harry James Potter,” Hermione said in shock and Harry winced. He’d forgotten the Hermione factor. “You listen here-”

“It’s dark and late,” Ron interrupted, “why don’t we move this inside.”

Hermione tugged on Harry’s hand as she stalked off towards the castle. “This isn’t over, just so you know.”

And Harry smiled, glad to have his friends back.