Mistake might get me punished by my college

If a teacher made a paper available to you and you downloaded it, then that is on them rather than you.

Okay, so I'm year 13 and our college set mocks in December that you just came in to complete. Anyone who missed any for whatever reason has been sitting them remotely this month through Teams, me and a quite a few others. We got told these papers would be different to the ones set in December to make it fair.

The December chemistry paper accidentally got sent out on Teams during one of the catch up days to a few people who weren't scheduled to sit the mock that day. I didn't realise what was going on and downloaded it and saw it was the December paper. It was quickly deleted from Teams. I was under the impression, because we were told repeatedly, that this paper wouldn't be the one we were sitting for catchup. I have to admit I was a little skeptical and confused.

I sent it into the Chemistry snapchat group chat and the few of us who hadn't sat the mocks in December were just going to use it for revision. We had already been given the list of topics that would be on the paper and a few other past papers to use.

But it turns out, it was the same paper and they hadn't bothered with new ones for some reason. Someone leaked the group chat messages to a teacher and apparently it is going to be dealt with. Quite a few people in the group chat said they would stand up for me because I didn't mean any harm by it.

I was in no way trying to cheat or help anyone cheat, I actually didn't use the paper to revise and I did awful in the mock. I don't know how to explain it to my college when they contact me about it and I know I'll be in serious trouble.

I really need help if anyone can offer anything!