diff --git a/solr/CHANGES.txt b/solr/CHANGES.txt
index 5c8be74367d..50a12dc4d4e 100644
--- a/solr/CHANGES.txt
+++ b/solr/CHANGES.txt
@@ -93,6 +93,12 @@ New Features
   deprecated in favour of close(). (Mark Miller, Tomás Fernández Löbbe, Alan
   Woodward)
 
+Bug Fixes
+----------------------
+
+* SOLR-7046: NullPointerException when group.function uses query() function.
+  (Jim Musil via Erick Erickson)
+
 Other Changes
 ----------------------
 
diff --git a/solr/core/src/java/org/apache/solr/search/Grouping.java b/solr/core/src/java/org/apache/solr/search/Grouping.java
index 8b8b87f5636..df126697f82 100644
--- a/solr/core/src/java/org/apache/solr/search/Grouping.java
+++ b/solr/core/src/java/org/apache/solr/search/Grouping.java
@@ -927,7 +927,7 @@ public class Grouping {
      */
     @Override
     protected void prepare() throws IOException {
-      Map context = ValueSource.newContext(searcher);
+      context = ValueSource.newContext(searcher);
       groupBy.createWeight(context, searcher);
       actualGroupsToFind = getMax(offset, numGroups, maxDoc);
     }