diff --git a/Modules/posixmodule.c b/Modules/posixmodule.c
index f77832dbe69..03fae255c32 100644
--- a/Modules/posixmodule.c
+++ b/Modules/posixmodule.c
@@ -1855,6 +1855,7 @@ posix_listdir(PyObject *self, PyObject *args)
 				free(wnamebuf);
 				return NULL;
 			}
+			free(wnamebuf);
 			return d;
 		}
 		/* Drop the argument parsing error as narrow strings