Disclaimer: I Do Not Own Harry Potter.

Thank you to kenziescott54 for improving this.

Thank you to everyone who has followed / favorited / read / reviewed the story so far.

"Achan," Maya snapped, "no one knows about our connection to Quill. We're quite safe! Stop your endless griping, or I'll kill you, I will!"

"I'm already dead, love," said Achan, with a cocky grin. "I have been for quite a long time, so that little threat just doesn't work on me, sorry. And I'm getting on at you because you've got almost every Auror in Britain looking for us - half because they now know Harry Potter is with you, and half because Malfoy wants you dead. They already know I'm with you; people have seen us together, you know."

"They've known we were friends for ages, Achan - that changes nothing, I still don't see what the big deal is -"

"You didn't have to leave a note, you could have pretended the side effects were because he was human!"

"Do these two often bicker like this?" Harry whispered to Quill.

"They cannot help themselves," Quill whispered back, "but they are really the best of friends, Harry Potter." Just as he said this, Maya growled and grabbed a red cushion of the floor, ripped it to shreds then stormed out of the room.

"You know, if you're going destroy something every time you get angry then you can pay for it yourself!" Achan yelled after her.

To pass the time, Achan sometimes told Harry stories about when he was alive; how he was born to a Pureblood mother but had a Muggle father, so that when his father died his mother remarried a wealthy Pureblood who wasn't willing to raise a half blood child.

At the age of eight he was sent away to live with his ailing Muggle grandmother, who hated the name his mother had given him and got it into her head that he needed a new one. It was his stealing that got him the name Achan. By the time he went to Hogwarts he refused to go by anything else.

His second year, his grandmother died, and he was sent to an orphanage. He ran away, of course, and didn't bother to return for Hogwarts his third year. No one bothered to look for him, either. Completely alone, he eventually found his way to the place where all those who weren't wanted; he found refuge where the lowest of the lowest went - Knockturn Alley, the place where you could buy anything dark or forbidden for the right price.

All this had happened two hundred and fifteen years before Harry was born. Yet the way Achan told his stories, it could have all happened yesterday. Achan told it all as if it had been a great adventure, but Harry couldn't help but think that it couldn't quite have been as rosy as all that. He was also quite curious about how Achan had died, but he didn't ask; mainly because Quill had warned him not to. He didn't want to upset Achan, and in so doing risk losing the only friends that he had ever had.

It was dinner time, and Harry was enjoying a big plateful of mashed potatoes and sausages. If he was to be honest, there was far too much on his plate; but Quill seemed so happy having a human to cook for again that Harry didn't have the heart to tell him so.

He had come to find that mealtimes were the perfect opportunity to study his three new friends without making it evident that he was studying them. Achan was dead, and so couldn't eat food; but he still enjoyed being around it. Maya, while herself and her family had been far too close to witches and wizards for comfort of other Goblins, would not eat in front of Harry. Maya would not say so, but Achan told Harry that it was their closeness to wizardkind that had ultimately made them a target for Voldemort.

Quill would excitedly nibble on bits of food that Harry would insist the Elf eat. Quill would then wash the bits of food down with any alcohol he could find. He had two moods when drunk: extremely depressed or overly happy. Harry liked happy drunk Quill a great deal better than depressed drunk Quill. Sometimes he even found the happy drunk version of the elf better than the sober one, as Quill could be quite merry.

When he was depressed, however, nothing could cheer him up. He would curl up and bawl loudly, wailing something or other about "Little Miss," and when Harry tried to comfort him, he would only say, "Harry Potter is very good to poor Quill - but he did not know Little Miss!"

Eventually, Maya explained to Harry why Quill acted this way. "House Elves, they're born to serve," she told him. "Quill's family has been serving the family who lived here for centuries."

Quill had been a great favorite of the Little Miss; she loved him, and he loved her in return; so greatly that he let her rename him. The day the Death Eaters had come, Quill had been picking out sweets for Little Miss; he had returned home to find the house broken into, trashed and empty, with not a single living thing inside.

It was these bits of information that eventually made Harry begin to understand that what he brought into the trio's life was just as valuable as what they brought into his. He was the boy who had lost his parents and had never had a friend; Achan, the boy his mother threw away because she thought him impure; Quill, the devoted servant who'd lost everyone he loved, and Maya the hardened Goblin whose entire family was gone because they were willing to stand against the Dark Lord.

They were a motley crew, these four, but they were incredibly good for each other; and Harry began to realize it, and to be very glad and happy indeed.

AN: It has been suggested that it would be good for Harry to a friend his own age group and I was wondering how many others agreed and if so which Canon character do you believe should be added as his friend.