The castle was asleep.
Moonlight pooled across the marble floors like spilled milk, catching on every torch bracket and painting the suits of armor in pale silver. From somewhere deep in the corridors, the whisper of shifting portraits echoed softly, as though the walls themselves were dreaming.
Harry moved quietly through it all.
He didn't need a map.
He didn't need a cloak.
The magic of the castle pulsed faintly around him, familiar and warm. It had accepted him again, and in its vast, wordless way, it guided his steps.
He could feel Dobby nearby — a quiver in the magic, bright but frightened, like a candle fluttering in the wind.
He followed the sensation down to the unused classrooms on the second floor, where dust hung thick as parchment smoke.
And there, crouched beneath a window cracked open to the night, was the small figure he'd been searching for.
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"Dobby," Harry said softly.
The elf froze, his enormous green eyes widening in disbelief. "H-Harry Potter, sir?" His voice trembled like a glass about to crack.
"Harry Potter....knows Dobby?"
"Harry Potter came… to see Dobby?"
Harry nodded, kneeling so they were eye-level. "Yeah. I thought we should talk."
Dobby's expression flickered through half a dozen emotions — awe, panic, devotion, and sheer terror. "Harry Potter must not be here! He must not be at Hogwarts! Terrible things will happen, sir!"
Harry smiled faintly, though the memory behind that smile ached. "You've said that before."
Dobby's ears twitched. "Before?"
Harry hesitated — the Law of the Unspoken hummed faintly in the air, a warning at the edge of perception. He could not speak of futures that had already burned. But he could speak in ways that magic accepted — truth shaped like empathy, not prophecy.
"Let's just say," Harry said gently, "you've tried very hard to keep me safe before. And you did, Dobby. You really did."
The elf blinked, confused, tears shining in his eyes. "Dobby does not understand, sir."
Harry shook his head. "That's alright. You don't need to."
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Dobby wrung his hands, shaking so hard his tea towel rustled. "Dobby knows terrible dark magic is in the school, sir! Dobby heard the whispers at the mansion, felt the pull in the air — something old and cruel!"
Harry exhaled slowly. The same compassion that had driven him to face death once now softened his voice.
"It was," he said carefully, "but not anymore. The dark object's gone, Dobby. Destroyed. It can't hurt anyone now."
The elf's eyes widened further. "Gone? Destroyed?"
Harry nodded. "You can feel it if you listen."
He closed his eyes for a moment, letting the castle's hum fill the silence. Dobby, uncertain but trusting, did the same.
The echo that had once haunted the school — that oily vibration of corrupted soul magic — was gone. In its place was only the steady rhythm of Hogwarts itself, strong and whole.
Dobby gasped softly, a sound halfway between shock and wonder. "It is true," he whispered. "Dobby feels… peace. It has been so long since the stones sang like this."
"See?" Harry smiled. "You don't need to hurt yourself trying to protect me anymore."
But Dobby's face crumpled. "Dobby only wanted to save Harry Potter, sir! Harry Potter gave Dobby hope when he had none!"
Harry's throat tightened. The words struck too close to the memory of a beach — a knife, a final breath, a body cradled in the sand.
He forced himself to breathe. "And you did, Dobby. You saved me — more than you'll ever know. But now it's my turn to make sure you're safe, alright?"
The elf looked at him, trembling. "Dobby safe? Dobby is just a house-elf, sir. We are not meant to be safe. We are meant to serve."
"Then let's change that."
Harry reached into his pocket and pulled out a small folded scrap of parchment — a token he had been crafting in secret, a simple charm of his own design. It wasn't freedom — that was something Dobby would one day win himself — but it was protection, drawn from the harmonics of the Heartstone's light.
He held it out gently. "Here. It'll keep you safe if anyone tries to hurt you."
Dobby's hands trembled as he took it. The magic glowed faintly between his fingers, golden and soft.
"Harry Potter gave Dobby… protection?"
Harry nodded. "Not because you're bound to anyone. Because you deserve it."
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Dobby sobbed once — loudly, uncontrollably — then clapped both hands over his mouth. "Dobby is sorry, sir! Dobby did not mean to cry on Harry Potter's shoes!"
Harry laughed quietly. "I don't mind. It's better than when you used to hit yourself with lamps."
Dobby blinked, startled. "How did—"
"Call it intuition," Harry said, smiling.
For a long moment they sat in silence. The night wind carried the scent of the forest, cool and damp. In that stillness, Harry felt something old inside him ease — a knot of guilt and grief that had been quietly strangling his heart since the day Dobby had died in his arms.
He couldn't undo that timeline. But he could make this one kinder.
When Dobby finally looked up, his voice was small but firm. "Dobby will serve Harry Potter freely, sir. Not as a master, but as a friend."
Harry's voice caught. "Yeah," he whispered. "I'd like that."
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Before Dobby left, Harry knelt again and said softly, "There's something you should promise me."
"Anything, sir."
"When you feel afraid again, don't hide. Come to me. Or come to Dumbledore. You don't have to fight alone anymore."
Dobby nodded solemnly, pressing the glowing charm to his chest. "Dobby will remember."
The elf vanished with a faint pop, leaving the air trembling with the residue of gratitude.
Harry remained kneeling for a while, the moonlight silvering his hair, until the ache in his chest faded into something gentler — not sadness, not quite peace, but a balance between them.
When he finally stood and looked out the window toward the forest, he whispered quietly, "That's one promise kept, at least."
The wind answered softly, carrying the scent of dew and wild magic.
Somewhere deep below, Hogwarts itself seemed to sigh — a quiet acknowledgment from the castle that one more thread in its great tapestry had been gently mended.
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(End of Chapter 49– "A Promise to a Friend")
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