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When Harry Dresden was sixteen he killed his uncle. Justin Morningway undoubtedly deserved it, but Harry knew what would happen if the fucking White Council ever figured out that he had murdered the man.
He liked his head right where it was thank you very much, and he had no intention of having it parted from his body by a bunch of overzealous, bigoted old men.
Harry might have only been a teenager, and rake thin one at that, but he was already towering head and shoulders above most grown men and that gave him barely enough leverage when he grabbed the stiffening form of his mentor's body and dragged it up the stairs and into the master bedroom.
The velvety white robe that Justin wore when he was conducting ceremonial spells was pulled from it's drawer, and Harry efficiently stripped the corpse of his clothing and managed to replace them on their proper hangers so it looked like that was all the old man had been wearing when he had died.
He brought candles in that he had carefully melted down on a table so that it looked like they had been lit when he had died, and finally he had tipped a small mouthful of the gloopy potion down the side of Justin's face and left the chalice he had brewed it in clasped in Justin's hands.
Justin might have been useless as a guardian but he had been a viciously thorough teacher, when his body was found the next morning by the housekeeper, there wasn't a trace of magic on the body to reveal that his death had been anything but a suicide.
The potion that Harry had whipped up under Bob's gleeful double-talking instruction would be noted as a type used almost strictly for suicides because of the quick and painless death it offered.
The brutal man had raised Harry for twelve years, and in those twelve years Harry had learned everything that he could from the older man. The man had tried to mold the young boy into someone that he could control; what he had succeeded in doing was giving the once sweet child a streak of viciousness that he wouldn't have gotten if his father had lived long enough to influence him.
A viciousness that Morgan felt as a low warning buzz from his magic when he walked through the manor doors and came face to face with the tall teenager.
The teen's hair was dark brown and hung around his face in shaggy waves, his dark eyes were reptilian cold and watched Morgan's approach with no fear.
Dark blue jeans and a black t-shirt highlighted his pale skin and the dark circles underneath his eyes.
"Harry Dresden."
"Warden."
The voice wasn't all that deep, but it promised to be something liquid and terrifying once the boy grew into his huge frame and had a couple of years to practice.
Morgan shook his head slightly trying to clear his mind of the irrational fear that had filled him when he caught sight of Dresden.
Harry was just a boy, and he couldn't feel the slightest bit of dark magic coming off of Dresden.
"Justin is up in his bedroom Warden, please follow me and I'll lead you there."
The journey seemed endless to Morgan, the Manor a winding maze that he would never be able to escape.
When they finally entered the Master bedroom of the Manor, Morgan's eyes swept the large room.
Just as pretentious and gaudy as he had expected really, Justin had always wanted more of everything. More money, more power, just more and even better if getting whatever he wanted meant taking it from somebody else.
So when he had received the news that Justin had died from an apparent suicide, he had been immediately suspicious.
But nearly two hours after entering the room he still hadn't found anything to make him believe that something else had happened to the wretched old fiend.
Morgan paced easily behind Dresden as the teenager led him back towards the front door and bid him a polite good-bye.
Morgan would have to speak to the Council about his fear that the young Morningway heir had been the cause of Justin's death.
But somehow he doubted that the Dresden boy would be convicted of anything, after all it looked exactly like the sort of pompous ceremonial suicide that Justin would have pulled if he had felt trapped into a corner that he couldn't escape from.
Perhaps he was just being paranoid, it was probably a suicide, no need to make the Council fear his competency, and there had been no dark magic except for the potion, no reason to believe that Dresden had done anything.
No reason at all.