Harry drifted back out of the blackness slowly. Everything ached: his head, his muscles, his very bones. But the ache was worth it, when he felt how his magic had been drained to heal him from Severus's venom. He knew it was extreme, forcing his magic to save him again and again, but he swore he would never let his power loose again. Not after the death and destruction of last time.

He sat up in bed and spotting Kreacher, sitting on his usual chair next to the cupboard door.

"Kreacher," he croaked out through a very dry throat, "what time is it?"

"Almost midnight, Master." Harry nodded as he got up and stretched. He'd been out about six hours, then. He was sure Winky had fed everyone and put the boys to bed. Awful as it was, it was almost a routine for the residents of Number 12. Winky knew she had to deal with the boys on her own each time, since Kreacher was needed to raise the wards on Harry's room. They could only be raised from the inside, and not even a house-elf could pass through them.

Harry changed into pajamas and lowered the wards, intent on getting to the kitchen and eating as much as he could handle.

Or he would have been, if Draco Malfoy hadn't been seated in the middle of the stairs, waiting for him.

"This better not take long, Malfoy, I'm hungry enough to start eating you if I have to," he grumbled, crossing his arms. His posture screamed annoyance.

"How often do you have to do that?"

"About every month or so, now." Harry extended his right arm and showed Malfoy the newest puncture scars on his wrist. "More if it's a very high stress time at work. Right after the War, when the papers were going after me and I hadn't gotten any real control over my temper yet, it was about once a week." He pushed his sleeve up a little to show the myriad of silvery circles on the underside of his forearm. "It's the only thing so far that works."

Malfoy had a loose grip on his wrist and an expression of shock on his face. He touched the newest scars lightly, as if afraid of hurting Harry. It didn't, but he fought back a shiver at the odd feeling.

-0-

Draco couldn't speak. He couldn't even think to count the number of puncture scars on Potter's arm. He pushed the sleeve up to the elbow and ran his fingertip across the scars in its crook. There weren't nearly enough marks there to match up with the dozens of times Potter said he had been bitten. Draco grabbed Potter's left wrist as well, see if there were more marks there, only to have it ripped away from him.

"Don't." Potter's voice was flat and cold as ice, but his expression was pained. "I won't ask to see your left arm, and you won't ask to see mine." He pulled his other arm free of Draco's grasp and walked past him. Draco stayed put, lost in thought.

Of course Potter didn't ask to see his left arm. He knew that's where Draco's Mark was. He could hardly not know, since it was the whole reason Draco was living in his house to begin with. But why was Potter's left arm such a sore point for him? It couldn't be because… Draco's whole being shied away from the idea that Potter had ever taken the Mark. He was the Savior, the Boy-Who-Lived. His mission in life had been to kill that bastard, not bow to him. Lucius had said once, on a night near the end of the War when he had been rather drunk, that Potter had refused to bow to the Dark Lord in the graveyard during the Third Task. He even threw off an Imperius Curse, just because he didn't want to play the bastard's mockery games before a duel.

So what was on his arm?

Draco sighed. Another question he couldn't ask Potter. He was tired of all these damn questions. Why couldn't Potter just be straight-forward for once?

Then he had an idea. A game meant for getting to know someone, a way to ask questions: Twenty Questions. It was a Muggle game, but Potter was raised by Muggle, so surely that would be comforting, right? The only downside was that Draco would have to answer twenty questions from Potter, but if it got him more information he would deal with it. He went down to the kitchen to propose the idea to Potter.

"Fine, but only ten questions, five each and we take turns. You ask a question, I'll answer it as truthfully as I can or I pass, then I ask and you do the same." Draco could agree with that. While Kreacher was making tea, he thought about his first question.

-0-

"Where did all that power come from? You didn't have much more magic than the rest of us in school?"

"I got most of it when I went through my maturation after the Battle. It should have happened when I turned seventeen, but the stress of the War and spending a year starving and on the run delayed it, along with… other factors. Why did you ask me to take you in?"

"No one else in the Order would have. I didn't think anyone would, but then I remembered that you testified at the trial and thought you might be my only chance to escape Azkaban. You're a Parselmouth. I haven't heard of anyone outside the House of Slytherin who could. Where did it come from for you?"

"The Peverells. It's an ancient gift, and a Dark one, but it's been kind of diluted through the Potter line. Too much Light, I guess. I'm the first Potter who can speak Parseltongue in centuries. Most of the Gaunts were speakers, but their family was Dark. The fact that Slytherin was a speaker is really surprising, in fact. For all his value on blood purity, he was actually a pretty Light wizard, or at least on the Light end of Grey. Do you regret taking the Dark Mark?"

"Every day. Even before I did it. That bastard was insane. He didn't have any humanity left. I couldn't show it, though. He would have killed me. I may believe in blood purity, but even then I didn't like how he did things. If you're the first in centuries, does that mean you're a Dark wizard?"

"Not Dark, just Grey. I believe in the balance of magic. There's a lot of power in both sides, so I practice them equally. I was never Light, not even before I knew about magic. Not after the night Voldemort tried to kill me. What happened that night meant I never had any chance of being Light. I just can't really spread it around. The papers would have a field day, saying the Savior of the Light had gone Dark. For the public there isn't any sort of balance or middle ground, just good and evil. So you never wanted to be a little Lucius Junior, like how you acted in school?"

"My father… had a lot of influence on my ideas, especially when I was younger, but… He was a bit extreme. He contradicted himself a lot too. He would teach me all these important 'Malfoy ideals,' but then he wouldn't follow them. 'Malfoys have the purest blood and only marry pure-bloods,' except my grandfather Abraxas married a half-Veela, so father and I are both part-Veela. 'Malfoys are superior and bow to no one,' but he goes and gets himself bound to a madman and bows and scrapes every time his Master is near. 'Malfoys are powerful wizards,' but he can't even cast a Patronus, something you mastered in as a third year! What happened to keep you from being Light? Plenty of Light wizards have wanted revenge."

"Do you know what a Horcrux is?"

"No. And you just used up your next question."

"That's fine, I'm sure you're more curious about me than I am about you."

"Probably true. Now answer the question."

"A Horcrux is some of the darkest magic. It's Black magic, actually, because it requires death. It is an object that holds a piece of a wizard's soul. As long as the Horcrux is safe, the wizard cannot be killed. An object with a sentient soul piece inside is dangerous and Dark on its own, but to split the soul requires murder, which makes it Black magic. Somehow, when Voldemort was a student, he learned about Horcruxes. They appealed to him, so he… went a bit overboard. Most wizards with Horcruxes have only one or maybe two; he tried to split his soul into seven pieces. He made his first while still in school. The last was supposed to be made when he killed me. The worst murder, killing an innocent child. When the Killing Curse reflected back to him, it split his soul. He didn't notice, he didn't mean to, but his soul was so shattered already that it happened easily. He fled, but the soul piece stayed and attached itself to the only object it could: me.

"My magic accepted the piece as my own, for the most part. It was so dark that it tainted my core, and that's why I can't be Light. It let me be a Parselmouth. I also used a lot of power unconsciously protecting it, which is why I didn't seem all that powerful in school. With it gone, a lot of my magic has been… freed up for me to use. It had a lot of Dark magical power in it, which I still have. It may have also been responsible for the famous temper I had, though I've heard my mother was the same way. Do you think you can stay here, knowing I've got secrets, and put all the rivalry we had in the past behind us? It was school boy stuff, and it would only make us both miserable now."

"Yes, I think I can do that. That was your last question, you know, since you asked me if I knew what Horcruxes were earlier. When Granger and Weasley were here, they were yelling about Teddy, but not Reggie. Why just Reggie?"

"They don't know about Reggie. No one else living does, except you, since I could hardly keep my son a secret in my own home for two years."

-0-

Early in the morning, as the sun was rising, Draco lay in bed, lost in thought.