Lean on me || Creszerfield
The first place Finn went when he had checked in with McGonagall was the Hufflepuff basement. He ran down there, to the kitchens, desperate to talk to Dirk, or just to be with Dirk, or something. He didn’t know what he needed, but he couldn’t be alone, he felt completely lost, and he had missed his best friend. He stood by the barrels, panting, trying to cast his mind back to the once before he had been into the badger set, but he wasn’t positive he could remember the passcode and besides maybe it could have changed since then, and he remembered Dirk once saying that the price for getting it wrong was not simply denial of access as in Gryffindor but a vinegar bath, and Finn still couldn’t stand the smell of vinegar ever since his hungover Charms lesson the day after Saint Patrick’s Day.
After a while of standing there awkwardly, Finn heard his name being called and he turned to see Liv walking towards him, a look of confusion on her face. “Where have you been? Someone said you’d dropped out of school. Do you need letting in?”
The shake of his head that Finn had been giving her at the suggestion that he had left school turned into a nod. She tapped the barrels in a semi-familiar rhythm, and the both of them entered the revealed common room. Finn ignored the continuation of her questions over where he had been, and barely noticed that she followed him up the boys’ staircase, into the 6th year dorm. He made a bee line for the bed where his best friend already sat, flopping down next to Dirk with not even a hello.