(A/n: hiya :) if any of you read LT, don't worry. It's not abandoned, and it is coming. Slowly. Patience, my darlings. Patience. And . , thank you. You darling darling creature. You made my day. You're the beautiful one, not me :))

"-Th?"

A voice trailed into his mind, but Harry was to busy staring wide eyed at the dead man on the floor.

"Seth? Knock it off."

Again, he ignored the voice, who he assumed was Dillan.

"Seth!" The voice snapped a moment later, followed by a light shove in the shoulder. He finally, slowly, turned to face his mentor.

"Stop staring at him like you've never seen a dead person before! It makes it pretty clear to everyone looking at us that you're completely inexperienced." Dillan hissed in Harry's ear, making him shiver despite himself.

"Now go and get my wand for me. Take a breather while you're up there. It's in the study. And I am sorry you had to see that." Dillan whispered, the last part coming out softer and quieter than the rest.

"Where's the study?" Harry's voice was dry. His eyes had returned to the corpse. Though he had seen death, he now realised that he would one day be the one doing the killing. And that shook him to the core.

"It's the door straight ahead when you get up the stairs. Go and calm down, okay? But don't take to long, I need to clean this up." Dillan gently turned Harry to face the stairs, and he tore his eyes from the dead man, heading towards the stair case and trying to look as normal as possible.

People whispered as they parted for him, but he wasn't sure if they were whispering about his odd behaviour, or the murder they had just witnessed.

Once he had climbed the stairs, he noticed the door directly ahead of him was slightly open, and light was spilling out.

He could have been wrong, but he swore that the door had been closed the last time he saw it.

Instantly on alert, Harry edged closer to the door as quietly as he could, given his amped up adrenalin and slight case of shock.

As soon as he was within range, he heard whispering inside, and drew his wand. He took another step forward, and prepared himself to shove the door open.

He had the element of surprise, but there was definitely more than one person in the room. That was the tricky part.

He considered going back downstairs to warn Dillan, but instantly dismissed the idea. His mentor would burst in, knifes blazing.

He wasn't keen on seeing any more death that night.

Drawing in a deep and quiet breath, he listened for another second, making sure he hadn't alerted them of his presence. The frantic whispering continued, and Harry let his breath out and burst into the room, his wand aimed and ready.

The two people in the room turned with shock on their faces. They had obviously been rummaging through the draws of the desk. Neither had time to draw their wands.

They stared at Harry in shock, and he stared right back, for what felt like a very long while.

"What do you think you're doing?" He asked finally, trying to inject some danger into his voice.

Neither of them said anything, merely looking at each other and shifting slightly.

Harry straightened his wand arm in warning, sensing that they might try to draw their wands.

"Don't give me a reason to curse you. Tell me what you're doing in here." He pushed, his voice a harsh whisper. Though there was music downstairs, he didn't want to alert his mentor.

"We were just leaving." The woman said, looking to her accomplice as if looking for approval.

"Yeah, we're leaving now. We wont cause any trouble."

Harry had watched the two of them with scrutiny as they spoke. There was something familiar about them. Very familiar.

"Who are you?" He asked, his voice dripping with suspicion. He knew these people. He was sure of it. He just couldn't put his finger on it. There was something about the way they held themselves...

"We're no body. We meant no harm." The woman persisted, and Harry's jaw dropped as he realised who they were.

Ron and Hermione.

"What the hell are you two doing? Do you have any idea where you are, or are you both mentally challenged?" Harry blurted before he could stop himself.

The two looked confused by the outburst, and Harry spoke once more, in an attempt to get them to forget about his sudden shouting.

"This place is more dangerous than I think you realise," He began in a calmer tone.

"Are you aware that my mentor just ran someone through with a sword? That guy's dead now. If he knew you were here, in his study, riffling through his things, what do you think he would do?"

Ron looked green in the face.

Hermione bit her lip and glanced around the room as if looking for signs that her death was imminent.

"He'd fucking ruin you both. Get out of here. The both of you. And don't come back. These wards, they've been altered for tonight only. If you come back through them, you'll wish you were dead." He made the last part up. He had no idea what the wards did if someone who wasn't permitted entered them, but he was sure it wasn't pretty.

"Climb out the window. Now." He pressed, more urgently.

"How do we know you're not just trying to get us to turn our backs?" Ron, ever the paranoid one, asked.

"If I wanted you dead I could just make a loud noise, couldn't I? He's waiting for me." Harry warned.

"Why are you helping us?" Hermione asked, confused.

"That's none of your concern. Now go. I have to be downstairs." Harry made a flicking motion with his wand toward the window, and this seemed to startle them into action. Ron pulled the window up and Hermione drew her wand, presumably to cast a feather light charm on her husband and herself, but Harry kept his wand aimed at them, just in case she picked that moment to be brave. Braver than usual, at least.

He was right in assuming that she was casting a charm to make them float gracefully to the ground, and he watched the two of them bolt across the lawn, waiting to make sure they made it out of the wards safely before pulling the window closed and searching for Dillan's wand.

He found it in the top drawer, and was glad that they hadn't taken it. Harry wondered if they had taken anything, and found himself worried. He should have told them to empty their pockets, or something. But it was to late for that.

He exited the room, trying to spot anything out of place, but since he had never seen the study before now, it was a rather wasted endeavour.

He made he way down stairs for the second time that night, and was surprised to see that everyone had pretty much gotten over the fact that there was a dead man on the floor. Drinks were once again flowing, and everyone was back to chatting and laughing as if it had never happened.

Harry wondered what he had gotten himself into, and felt a stab of fear. Would he be like that, one day? Completely unaffected by death? He supposed it was normal, for a murderer.

He felt the colour drain from his face as he thought about it.

He pushed the thought from his mind, just as he pushed through the crowd. There was a time and a place to wonder about his morals. Now and here was not it.

When he reached his mentor, he gave the man his wand and received a frown for his efforts.

"What took you so long?" Dillan whispered, his tone slightly clipped.

"I'm sorry, I just needed a minute." Harry said, turning away slightly.

"That's all well and good, but competence and speed are highly valued things in this community. You may not see it, but every one here is judging you. They're judging me, too. I said you could take a minute, not twenty of them," Dillan said, his tone lightening slightly towards the end, as if his anger was fizzling out.

Harry said nothing, and tried to look appropriately cowed.

Dillan sighed and gestured for Harry to follow him. He levitated the dead body that Harry had been pointedly ignoring, and raised it above everyone's heads.

The people moved out of their way as Harry's mentor headed toward the front door, corpse floating above everyone like a sick flag.

Harry pushed the front doors open for Dillan and followed him around the side of the manor. They walked a fair distance, and Harry wondered whether they were still in the wards by the time they stopped.

They were standing in front of a large slab of stone, and it took Harry a moment to try and figure out what they were doing.

It looked like a place where you might burn a body.

"What are we doing?" Harry asked. He had a fair idea, he just wanted to be sure.

"We're burning him," Dillan answered, slowly lowering the body onto the stone.

The younger man said nothing when his suspicions were confirmed.

Harry watched as if he weren't really there as his mentor took a match out of his inner robe pocket and lit it. He began lighting various places on the dead assassin's robes.

Said robes were obviously flammable, because the flames grew quickly.

Harry didn't bother to ask why he had used a match instead of his wand. It was likely the same thing as wanting to use a shovel instead of magic.

Though he was curious about why he wasn't burying the other assassin.

Dillan looked over at Harry once the fire was lit, his face expectant, as if he were waiting for his apprentice to comment on the match.

Harry didn't. Instead he sat down heavily on the grass, looking into but not really seeing the flames. After a moment, Dillan crouched down next to him.

"Why did you burn him, and not bury him?" Harry asked quietly after a moment.

"I save burial for people who have done nothing against me."

"And he's done something against you?" Harry's tone was dead pan.

"Yes."

"Hmm. Are you going to tell me what?" The younger wizard asked, glancing at his mentor from the corner of his eye.

"Maybe one day."

Harry glanced back at the now roaring flames and repressed an urge to sigh. Again, he wondered what he had gotten himself into.

He could be at home right now, with Ginny. It would be miserable, and he would be hungry, but that was usual for him.

At first, the idea of becoming an assassin was very abstract. For whatever reason, he assumed that it had nothing to do with him. That somehow, magically, without any effort on his part, the people who he was supposed to kill would just drop dead.

Or that maybe he would never have to do it.

But that night, he was faced with a harsh reality.

And he had to decide whether or not it was worth it.

Was it worth throwing his soul away?

"Are you okay?" Dillan asked from beside him.

"Not really." Harry answered truthfully.

"Do you want to talk about it?"

"Not really," Harry repeated, looking away from the fire and into the trees behind it.

"Was there a reason he called you a faggot?" Harry wondered aloud.

"Is that what's bothering you?" Dillan asked, not sounding angry or surprised.

"No. I just need to think about something different." Harry answered honestly.

"It could have been because I like fucking men, but I never stopped to ask him." Dillan gave a short sarcastic laugh with his answer and Harry blushed scarlet, choking on his spit. He was glad it was dark.

"Does that shock you?" Dillan asked, his voice quiet and somehow pleading.

"I think it could be the way you said it that shocked me. But I don't know." Harry pulled at the grass around himself and turned to look at his mentor, and found Dillan studying him intensely.

"Shouldn't we be getting back?" Harry asked, feeling uncomfortable under the weight of Dillan's stare.

"If that's what you want," Dillan said, looking away and making no move to stand.

"I don't know. I don't really want to go back in there." Harry said, and he was telling the truth. He didn't want to go inside.

He wanted to stay here and watch the body burn, with the assassin who killed him.

"Then we'll stay here," Dillan said with finality.

"Why didn't you just use my wand, earlier?" Harry asked, dismissing his dark thoughts.

"Because I didn't want too." Dillan said in a tone that left no room for questioning.

Harry said nothing for a while, curious about what his mentor had said but not asking questions. His mind wandered to when he had first met the assassin, and he got to being curious about something else entirely.

"Your knife," Harry began,

"The gold one, is there, I mean, is it, um." Harry stopped talking then, unsure about the question he was asking.

Dillan laughed quietly, but otherwise let Harry struggle with his words.

"Is it just a normal knife?" Harry finally asked.

"You mean this one?" Dillan asked, pulling it seemingly out of no where.

"Yeah." Harry said, looking away from it quickly, embarrassed by the memories it brought.

The younger man heard a sigh of pleasure and had to look back at his mentor, even though he didn't want to.

The man was running the golden blade across his hand, blood beading a trail behind it. Harry couldn't tell whether he was aroused or disgusted, or disgusted because he was aroused, but he couldn't look away.

"It's blessed," Dillan began, his voice breathy and quick.

"The deeper you cut, the better it feels. People have been known to kill themselves with this blade, simply because they couldn't stop." Every word Dillan said came out erotic, the pleasure in his voice made it impossible for him to sound anything but. He ran the blade higher up his arm, careful not to cut to deep, humming with pleasure as he did so.

"Why didn't you use it earlier, in the fight?" Harry was hypnotised by what he was seeing, and his voice gave it away.

Dillan looked up at him and smirked, his eyes hooded and lazy, before he replaced the knife where ever it had come from in the first place.

Harry almost objected, and then he realised that that was just insane. What was wrong with him?

"Because that bastard hardly deserved this knife,"

Harry cleared his throat and looked pointedly away. He said nothing about the other assassin not deserving it, because he knew he wasn't about to divulge any details about why, exactly, he didn't.

"So you thought I deserved it?" Harry whispered, his question almost lost in the roar of the flames.

"Yes. You've never done anything to wrong me, have you?" What seemed like a statement came out more like a serious question, and Harry turned once again to look at the assassin.

"No, I haven't." He said, though he wasn't sure.

Was letting his friends go wrong? Would his mentor see it that way?

Dillan sighed and shifted slightly, and Harry couldn't tell if Dillan believed him. The assassin stood suddenly, and stretched his arms above his head.

"Come on, the fire should burn through the night." He told Harry.

The younger man had thought they weren't going back in till the gala was over, but he stood and brushed the grass and the dirt of his behind, anyway.

He followed his mentor back to the manor, and ran a hand through his hair and brushed his ass off one more time.

He didn't want to walk in his grass on him or messy hair. People would assume, incorrectly, that he and Dillan, had, well, done something.

Something that didn't involve burning a body.

He should have done what Dillan did, and just crouched, instead of sitting.

"Here,"

Harry was startled out of fixing himself up. Dillan was pointing his wand at his apprentice.

"It's to get rid of the burning smell." Dillan had paused at the word burning, as if he had been about to say something else.

Possibly char grilled human.

Harry grimaced and nodded.

He hadn't noticed any smell. He wasn't sure why that was, but he was glad that he didn't.

After waiting for Dillan to cast the spell on both of them, Harry pushed the door open and stepped inside.

Not many people turned to look at them, but Harry could feel every eye in the room on him. He resisted the urge to duck his head in shame.

He wasn't sure why he felt ashamed, but he did.

It wasn't as if he had killed the assassin, and even if he had, it wasn't like anyone in the room gave a crap about it.

They were hardly staring at Dillan with disgust on their faces.

Nevertheless, Harry felt shamed. He couldn't wait till the gala was over. He wouldn't mind getting drunk. Possibly blindingly so.

Harry sat in front of the now lit fire, on the now replaced plush rug. He was hidden from the last few guests by the lounge chairs, now also returned. He peeked over the couch at Dillan, who was saying his farewells to the stragglers.

When they finally took their leave, Harry sighed with relief.

He ran a hand through his hair, wondering if the enchantment that changed his appearance would wear of on it's own, or he had to change it back with magic.

Dillan took a seat on the couch, leaning into the cushions and sighing.

"Would you mind if I had a drink?" Harry asked.

"Just the one?" the assassin asked sarcastically.

"Maybe more than one." Harry sighed, feeling almost more tense than he had been when the gala was still in full swing.

"Would you like me to make it for you?" Dillan said after it had become apparent that Harry was making no move to get off the floor.

"Oh, yes please." Harry said, almost finding humour in the situation.

Dillan stood with a sigh and busied himself at the bar, while Harry picked at the threads of the rug beneath him.

"Here," The assassin said after a moment, standing before Harry, closer than the Boy Who Lived thought was necessary.

He was leaning over the younger man, drink in hand, smirking. Harry took the glass and grimaced at the blood rushing to his face.

He didn't look at the assassin until he was back in his seat, with his own drink.

Three hours and ten Black Dahlias later, Harry was laying on the floor staring up at the chandelier and attempting to create a snow angel in the plush carpet.

Dillan looked on with a lazy smile and hooded eyes.

"Do you believe in God?" Harry asked suddenly, lifting his head and looking at his mentor.

"How do you mean?" Dillan replied, bringing his drink to his lips and licking the rim of his glass.

Harry noticed himself licking his own lips and snapped his tongue back in his mouth, shocked.

"Exactly how I asked it," The younger man said after he had torn his eyes away from Dillan's mouth.

"I suppose on some small level I believe there is something. But it doesn't matter to me."

Harry let his head fall back into the rug, licking his lips once more. "Do you ever think that he looks at the human race and wonders, 'Why did I ever create these vile things?'"

"No, but I suppose that's probable." Dillan said, standing and crossing once again to the bar.

"Do you think anyone else wonders about that?" Harry pressed, not sure why he wanted to know so badly.

"Most likely," Dillan said, looking over his shoulder at the man laying on the floor.

"Do you think it inspires them to be better people?" The Boy Who Lived sat up and propped himself on his elbows, staring intently at his mentors turned back.

"Does it make you feel as if you need to be a better person?" The assassin asked, focusing on the drinks that he was pouring. Harry thought about it for a moment, and realised with a pang that no, it didn't really.

What God thought didn't really equate into what he felt he needed to do.

Harry didn't answer, instead he watched the Freelancer make his way back to Harry, and to the younger man's surprise, he sat on the floor, so close their legs were brushing lightly against the others.

Harry made no move to shift away. Instead, though he didn't know why, he pressed his leg ever so slightly closer as he took the drink the assassin handed him.

Judging by the tiny smirk gracing Dillan's mouth, he had noticed.

"I take you silence to mean that no, you don't want to become a 'better person,'" Dillan asked, looking from their legs.

"No, I don't. I cant afford morals." Harry said, taking a sip and licking the blackberry flavoured alcohol from his lips.

A deep, throaty chuckle came from the man seated beside Harry, and he couldn't help but smile at the sound.

"Well done Harry. You might not do so bad, after all."