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Chapter Thirty-Six—Once a Friend

Harry stared around him, trying not to lick his lips or flinch or show any other sign of nervousness. The room that he stood in—if it was a room and not a cave—was made entirely of stone, with curved walls that hugged the floor. Harry couldn't see any windows, and the shadow that perhaps hid a door over to the side was too deep for him to be sure if anything was there. A torch burned on the wall, filling the room with less light than inky smoke.

In front of him was Catherine Arrowshot, her eyes tightly shut. She was chained to the floor, a pair of heavy manacles linking her wrists together and her legs folded beneath her as if the chains weighed too much for her to stand up under. A steady stream of whimpers escaped her mouth. Something strange had been done to the shape of her jaw, Harry thought. Perhaps someone had beaten her.

The thought outraged him, despite the fact that she might have gone with Nihil willingly, and he leaned forwards. "Are you all right?" he asked urgently. "Can I help you?"

Arrowshot's eyes opened and she turned her head, but her wide, blank eyes looked past him. "Who's there?" she whispered." I can hear you. Your voice is familiar. Where are you?"

"Right here," Harry said. He had started to tell her his name, but he didn't think that was the wisest thing in the world, just in case she was a traitor or Nihil could force her to tell the truth. "I don't think I'm really here." He had just looked down and seen that his feet were transparent where they rested on the floor. "Can I do anything to help?"

"I don't know," Arrowshot whispered back. Her head had sagged as if she hated to hear the fact that he wasn't really there, and now it turned restlessly back and forth. Her hands opened and shut in helpless little grasping motions. Harry swallowed another burst of anger when he saw the red lines that crisscrossed her palms, the marks of whips or fire. "I need someone to free me, and how can you do that if you can't touch anything?"

"I don't know," Harry admitted. "But is there anything—"

And then he could have smacked himself, because of course there was something he could do for her that would at least comfort her if not precisely help her, and help them at the same time.

"What can you tell me about Nihil?" he asked. "I'm trying to destroy him. I could at least get revenge on him for you."

Arrowshot jerked as though someone had shot her with a Stinging Hex. Then she looked up and shook her head back and forth, eyes searching past the point where Harry stood. "Are you mad? No one can destroy him."

"I know what he is," Harry said. "Or part of what he is. And I know that you vanished from the Auror training barracks when he did. Did you join him willingly?"

Arrowshot laughed wildly. Blood flecked her lips. "Do you think he would do this to me if I had?"

"I've seen him destroy people who were sworn to him," Harry said. "The fact is that he's not human, and what he might do if he's angry, I can't really understand. That's what I'm trying to find out, and that's where you can help me."

Arrowshot closed her eyes. "He got a hook in my soul," she said. "When I got close to him during the battle. And he grabbed hold of me when he vanished with the rest of them, the people sworn to him and corrupted by him. Then I woke up and found myself here."

"Where is here?" Harry asked, his heart soaring now that he could tell Draco one of the first friends he had tried to make besides Harry wasn't really a traitor.

"I don't know," Arrowshot said. "A fortress of some kind. A cave. He keeps me here always, and makes experiments. I think he's pulling my soul to pieces one by one, but I don't know what he does with them."

Harry shuddered. "Has he ever mentioned anything about Horcruxes?"

Arrowshot shook her head. "Or, he did, once, but he said something about them being a coward's tool, and he didn't think they would work." Her forehead wrinkled. "I didn't understand what he meant."

Harry relaxed with a sigh. Come to think of it, given what Nihil was, and so steeped in death, Harry wasn't sure that Horcruxes would have worked for him at all, or whether he had a soul of his own that he could have split. "Is there any chance of you escaping? Have you heard any rumors about people opposing Nihil who could help you?"

"No one opposes Nihil," Arrowshot whispered. "No one here. Out there are people, but they would think that I had come here on purpose and wouldn't try to help me." Yearning stained her voice. "Are you really going to try?"

"I promise, yes," Harry said, and he did, although he didn't know what he could do right now. "I'm still trying to figure out how I got here myself."

"You surely Apparated," said Arrowshot, and then frowned. "I thought you were under a Disillusionment Charm, but you're not, are you?"

Harry shook his head, then realized that couldn't do any good. "No," he said aloud. "As far as I know, I was—at home, where I always am, and then my hands and face got numb and I came here."

"It's like the ghosts of the unicorns," Arrowshot said unexpectedly.

Harry started. He hadn't forgotten those phantoms at the edge of the Forbidden Forest, staring at him and trying to call him to account, but he hadn't been able to make them fit in with the picture that he was creating of Nihil, and had been unsure of what exactly he should do with them. Their refusal to appear a second time also contributed to push them fairly far down his list of problems, he had to admit. "You know about them?"

"He's talked about them, sometimes." Arrowshot's voice was full of hate and fear. She folded her arms around her legs and bowed her head so that her face rested against her knees. "I don't know where they come from, but apparently they've appeared in the cave and walked up and down. He has no control of them, and they won't serve him or vanish when he tries to make them. He said something once about stirring and reversal, but I don't know what that means." She paused. "Are you a necromancer, too?"

That knowledge, Harry wasn't about to trust outside their comitatus; he would have kept it even from Ventus if he hadn't been absolutely forced to reveal it. "I'm sorry, but I don't think so," he said, and hoped his strained smile and regret would come through in his voice.

"Oh." Arrowshot paused again. "I don't know what to do," she said in a low voice. "Sometimes I dream about Gregory coming and rescuing me. Nihil talks about her. But I don't know any details." Her voice was thick with longing.

Harry hesitated. He didn't think it could do any harm to give her this information, since Nihil must have already mentioned it in her presence. "Gregory is still somewhere out there, fighting. Nihil can't corner her, and he worries about her."

"Does he really?" Arrowshot lifted her head, and hope came back into her eyes. Harry smiled, but a darker part of him, which he seemed to have acquired along with the shimmer in the back of his head, wondered if that had been kind. The longer hope took to die, the more of a victim she would make for Nihil. "That's—that's wonderful. Wonderful." Her voice shook and sank, and she stared at the wall with eyes of blind ecstasy.

Harry waited as long as he could before he decided that he should try one more time to see if he could learn useful information. "You really don't know anything about this place? Do you remember what happened when you came here?"

"I haven't been outside this room," Arrowshot said. "I don't even know if this is his main stronghold, the only one, or somewhere where he simply stories inconvenient prisoners. I don't think I'm that important to him." Bitterness had returned to her voice.

Harry made soothing motions with his hands, which of course she couldn't see, and then said, "I know. I know. But are you sure that you haven't heard him mention anything? If he talks about the unicorn ghosts and Gregory, maybe he said something about this, too, thinking that you would be too cowed to turn it against him."

"He laughs sometimes about it," said Arrowshot, and Harry could hear the bitterness in that, too. He wondered for a moment what it would be like to be held captive by Nihil, away from Draco, away from his friends, away from anyone who could help him, and taunted relentlessly by the man—being—whatever he was—all the while. His respect for Arrowshot increased; she had been through this and yet managed to stand it. "He says that he's living in the home and heart of his enemies, where they'll never look for him." She hissed. "But I don't know what that means!"

"I do," Harry said, his heart abruptly beating faster and a lightness flooding his chest. "I do. Thank you, Arrowshot."

She stared at him. "You do? Well, tell me! Is it something that can help you free me?"

Harry started to answer, but cried out as a constricting band seemed to close around his chest, destroying the lightness. He staggered and put a hand to his heart, then around his neck. It felt as if someone was dragging him backwards, away from Arrowshot, in the direction of something that he didn't want to touch.

Nihil found me.

That had to be it, but all he could really see at the moment was Arrowshot growing smaller and dimmer in front of him, while she called out anxiously, "Are you still there? Where did you go? Hullo!"

Draco was not amused.

He had spent the last ten minutes shouting into Harry's motionless face, conjuring water to dump on him, pinching his ears, and casting hexes that ought to shock anyone out of unconsciousness. Lowell and Weston had done much the same thing, but stopped before he did and retreated to confer across the room. Draco knew that they would probably come to him soon, grim-faced, and tell him there was nothing to be done, that Harry was too far gone to be rescued.

But Draco kept it up because he had to, because Harry was his partner and he wasn't going to simply abandon him, and finally he thought to cast a spell and aim it at Harry with malicious intent, forcing the compatible magic into action.

Harry gasped and opened his eyes, flopping about on the floor like a fish someone had hooked. Draco didn't waste time; he immediately cast another Stinging Hex, one of the spells he had tried before, to keep Harry in the moment, and then reached out and pulled him into a ferocious embrace. His head was spinning with relief, and he felt as if he wanted to kiss Harry and slap him at the same time.

He actually hoped that Harry didn't recover too fast this time. He would otherwise see Draco looking starkly undignified.

Harry went on gasping so long that Draco began to worry that he had taken some kind of permanent damage to his lungs, though Draco wasn't sure what might have caused that. A fainting fit couldn't, surely…

But this had to be one of Nihil's attacks, and maybe he could torture a spirit who was away from the body, as it seemed Harry had been from the entirety of those ten minutes. Draco shuddered and clung tighter.

"Draco?" Harry finally whispered. His voice was weak, shaky, but it didn't matter, Draco thought, his arms once again tightening around Harry, until he thought he would break bones, either Harry's or his. It didn't matter. The only thing that mattered was that he had Harry back again, and this time he had no idea of relinquishing him. "What happened?"

"You lay on the ground without stirring for ten minutes, and then we called you back," Draco said. Lowell and Weston were hurrying towards them, stunned looks on their faces, so Draco raised his voice. "Well, I called you back. It seems that you couldn't resist the call of our compatible magic, no matter where you were. I didn't give up."

"Trainee Malfoy exaggerates the situation," Weston said, shaking her hair back behind her ears as if she imagined that would disguise her own relief. "We had not given up. We merely feared that you would not return."

Harry just raised an eyebrow at them and then faced Draco. Draco saw the flicker of his eyes, and knew immediately what was going to happen. Harry was about to lie, but he was trying to do it in such a way that Draco was the only one who would know about it.

That was intriguing. And Draco could agree that there were some things that Weston and Lowell shouldn't know about, even given the instructors' newfound commitment to usefulness (which probably wouldn't last that long). He settled back on his heels and prepared to help in any way he could.

"I was feeling weak and dizzy the other day, too," Harry said. "I think that practicing compatible magic sometimes drains me because of interaction with the curse scar." He gestured towards his forehead, as if Weston and Lowell could either possibly miss or not know what he was talking about. Draco gave him a glance that was meant to warn him against overacting, and Harry might have seen it, because he calmed his voice a bit. "We don't know why. But it happens most often after new magic or a long time of intense strain."

"In the future, Trainee Potter," Weston said, her voice less acid than Draco would have expected it to be, "perhaps you could inform us of things like this before we put you through an extended training session."

"I'll make sure to do so," Draco said at once, picking up his cue and taking his place in making the lie solid. "I would have done so, but Harry always insists that he's fine." Remember the times when Harry had hidden secrets from him or tried to ignore wounds made his glare sufficiently heated.

Harry blinked and lowered his head, hunching his shoulders in a convincing imitation of sullenness.

Lowell chuckled. "They are worse than we were at that age," he said to Weston. "At least we did not have to live with the legacy of a war and a madman. But do you remember what we were like?"

"How can I forget, when you continually remind me of it?" Weston snapped, but her eyes were so soft that Draco knew anyone who listened to her words alone would get the wrong impression from them.

Lowell smiled at her, and Draco decided that he and Harry might as well leave. Lowell and Weston had accepted their lie, and that was the important thing, the only thing they could do here. He heaved Harry to his feet. Harry stumbled but came, hanging more limply than Draco suspected he needed to.

"I'll take Harry back to our room and do what I can to make sure he's all right," he told Lowell and Weston. "Most of the time, he only needs some rest to recover from this, but if it's more than that, I'm the best one to take care of him."

Amazingly, neither Auror challenged his claim, which Draco had made mainly because he knew they would expect such a thing. They simply nodded and then faced each other, speaking in soft voices about things Draco didn't think mattered, if the looks of fond remembrance on their faces were any indication.

He manhandled Harry out of the room. Harry only permitted that until they were in the middle of the corridor that led to their barracks; then he shook off Draco's arm and began to walk on his own. At least he stayed close enough that Draco could resume the pretense in a moment if he needed to.

"What happened?" Draco asked.

Harry gave him a sidelong, amused glance. Draco scowled. He knew his voice had cracked like a whip with his impatience, but what of it? It mattered that he know what was happening, and Harry could be reticent unless one forced him to speak.

"I saw Catherine Arrowshot again," Harry said. "Not for a fleeting vision this time, but in a cave with a torch on the wall, chained to the floor. What's more, she could sense that I was there, if not see me, and spoke with me."

Draco licked his lips. "And Nihil? Did you see him? Did he sense you?" He hoped that he was keeping the fear out of his voice as he said that.

Harry shrugged. "I don't know. I didn't feel anything from him while I was there, but Arrowshot implied that she had been tortured for information, so I tried not to betray too much. She did say that she hadn't gone with him willingly; he put a 'hook into her soul,' she said, and dragged her along after the trainees."

"She could have been just saying that, or he could have told her to say that," Draco muttered, but he couldn't deny the relief that swept through him. He had wondered for a time, until he met Ventus, whether any friend he made was destined to abandon or betray him in some way.

One could say that that's happened even with Harry.

"I agree," Harry said. "However, she did tell me one thing that I don't think Nihil would have wanted revealed. He was laughing about making his home in the homes of his enemies. I think he's using the Death Eater caches—not just as places to give him weapons and information about the Death Eaters' experiments, but as strongholds."

Draco licked his lips. "And we have a map of those places."

"Yes." Harry grinned at him.

Draco touched his shoulder. "This is important," he said. "News that we need. But I don't want you doing it again deliberately. Nothing is worth risking your life for."

Harry stared calmly at him. "You know we disagree on that," he said. "I think your life and my friends' lives are worth putting myself in danger for."

"I mean," Draco said, caught out again and not liking it—surely it was Harry's fault that he had been making so many generalizations lately?—"that I don't want you risking your life for the sake of information."

Harry nodded. "I'll try. I don't know what happened, Draco. I don't know why I was seeing visions before that dark gift settled into the back of my mind, and I don't know why this one was so powerful as to pull me into Nihil's stronghold. If I find myself there, though, then I'll spy or cause havoc or do as much damage as I can while I'm present."

Draco nodded reluctantly. He couldn't blame Harry for that. They needed to hurt Nihil as much as they could while staying as safe as possible themselves.

It was possible Nihil had learned some respect for them after their battle, but Draco didn't think so. Why otherwise would he send Aran, a single servant, to try and destroy Harry's gift for necromancy?

"She also mentioned the unicorn ghosts," Harry said. "And Gregory. Nihil apparently mutters about them to himself, or else rumors are flying and coming to someone who's mostly hidden from the world. I wonder if the unicorn ghosts represent something he fears, some weapon we can use against him." His voice sank, and he stared ahead of himself, frowning as though he had another mad plan.

Draco grabbed his shoulder, forcing Harry to blink and face him. "Understand this," Draco said. "If you do something about this—if you try to find Gregory, for instance—you had better include me from the beginning." He took a deep breath and then realized that he might make this more palatable to Harry to decrease his temptation to strike out on his own. "And I imagine that your friends and Ventus would like to know as well, if she is right and we really are a comitatus."

Harry nodded. "I was actually thinking of going back to Hogwarts and seeking out the unicorns. The dead, if they'll show themselves to me, or the living if they won't. We need answers, and it'll be easier to find them than to find Gregory."

"Maybe not," Draco muttered, thinking of the way that living unicorns could bound through the Forest and lose themselves in patches of shadow he would have sworn were too small to hold a squirrel. On the other hand, the dead ones had stood at the very edge of the Forest, plainly visible.

"We'll try, at least," Harry said, and gave him a brilliant smile. "What do you say about tomorrow? I know that Hermione has an essay she's determined to get done today, which would prevent her from coming with us."

Draco stared at him and slowly shook his head. He reckoned Harry would always be quick to form plans like this, to dash into danger. At least he was making a conscious effort to include other people this time.

"What?" Harry's smile had faded, apparently because he had taken the headshake as a sign that he was wrong. "Do you have an essay to write, too?"

Draco finally gave in and laughed reluctantly. Harry shook his head as though bewildered, but then gave Draco a small smile and reached out to touch his shoulder, sliding his hand down to his arm.

"There are other things we could do in the meantime, while we're making plans and deciding what to say to the others," he said. His voice had gone breathy, and he looked up at Draco with dazed, dilated eyes.

Draco suspected he led the way to their rooms faster than was strictly necessary, but at least no one could accuse him of not having sufficient motivation.