Disclaimers: We don't own anything. We are not supporters of slavery. Slash abounds.
Maid Service-
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Chapter 2
Bellatrix's eyes traveled from Sirius' pigtails to his pouffy blouse to his short skirt. Her eyes widened in horror at the shortness of the skirt. It showed too much leg even for a particularly shameless prostitute. When she caught sight of the tall, white, sparkly boots with their silver platforms, it was just too much. Her eyes rolled up in her head and she collapsed.
"Bella!" Lucius grabbed her as she fell, pulling her into the crook of his arm. "Bella? Bella!"
"What's going on!" Bellatrix's husband, Rodolphus, and his brother, Rabastan, had come charging into the entry. Rodolphus stared, taking in the sight of his brother-in-law struggling to hold up his twitching wife while maintaining a hold on a man in a scary schoolgirl's uniform. Then he began to twitch himself as he realised that the 'schoolgirl' was really his wife's cousin, Sirius.
"Help!" Lucius wailed. Rodolphus darted forward to take his wife from Lucius' arms. She was twitching violently, and as Rodolphus bent over her, struggled to speak.
"Horrible... scary... too much skin... please put something on him... I beg of you!..."
"You're scaring my wife, Black!" Rodolphus barked. "Get out of here, and change!"
"Yes sir," Sirius mumbled, happy to get away. He ducked behind a bush and stripped off the loathsome schoolgirl's uniform, stuffing it into his bag. Luckily, he still had the grey robes and black combat boots he had been wearing when he left home, and he put them on. He hastily unbraided his hair and stuck the ribbons in his bag. "Okay, I'm fixed!"
"Thank God," Rabastan mumbled from a corner, where he was nibbling on a biscuit. Lucius pushed Sirius across the Lestranges' threshold, and threw his bag after him. "Try not to screw up too badly!" he shouted, jumping into the carriage. "Takeo! Get me OUT OF HERE!"
The carriage sped off as if pursued by all the demons of Hell. Rabastan shut the door.
Bellatrix seemed to have recovered; she was sitting up at least, clutching at her heart. She glared at Sirius, but was still unable to speak. Rodolphus looked up at Sirius. "What are you doing here, anyway?"
"Bellatrix bought me," Sirius said sullenly. "I'm your new servant."
"I paid two Knuts and some pocket-lint for him," Bellatrix smirked, getting to her feet. "You're in for it, dear cousin. We don't even have house-elves, so you'll get to do EVERYTHING."
"No house-elves!" Sirius yelped. He had never heard of a pureblood family who didn't have house-elves - well, except for the Weasleys, of course. "NO HOUSE-ELVES!"
"NO HOUSE-ELVES!" Bellatrix shrieked at him. "LOOK AT MY HANDS!" She held them out. Her skin was cracked from being in water all the time. "NOW YOU CAN DO MY DISHES AND MY LAUNDRY!"
"NOOO!" Sirius wailed. The dishes were bound to be endless - Rabastan never stopped eating.
"YES!" she shrieked. Sirius burst into tears, and blew his nose on the schoolgirl skirt.
"Damn you, Bella-bitch," Sirius cursed under his breath, scrubbing furiously at a roasting pan firmly encrusted with pork fat. He was wearing a ruffly apron over his robes, and his hair was tied up under a kerchief. "I hate you, I hate your smelly dishes, I hate your smelly laundry -"
It had been a terrible week. All Sirius did was wash dishes, with short breaks to take clothes out of the washer, put more in, and hang the clean things out on the clothesline. His hands soon became so chapped from being in the water that they cracked and bled. He could do nothing about it but apply copious amounts of hand lotion every night, and make a vain attempt to bandage his wounds.
"BLACK! GET IN HERE!" Bellatrix's unmistakable screech sounded from the parlour. Sirius sighed, drawing his chapped hands out of the sudsy water and going to see what the Queen Mother wanted.
"Yes, Bella?" he mumbled, eyeing the Lestranges, who were clustered in front of the telly watching Waiting For God.
"Dirty dishes," she snarled, pointing to a stack behind Rabastan's chair. Sirius could have cried. He put them all on the tea cart and wheeled it into the kitchen. "I hate you, Bella-whore," he mumbled, stacking them on the counter and wheeling the tea cart back into the parlour. None of the Lestranges looked up at him; there was a commercial for an insurance company on the telly which featured a truck being crushed by a load of bricks. Surely, television would be the downfall of the once-mighty Black family.
The dishes oozed goo and got stinkier as Sirius scrubbed them clean. There seemed to be twenty smelly plates for every one he cleaned. Thankfully, the washer buzzed, and Sirius was able to abandon the dishes for a while in favour of the laundry.
He lugged the heavy basket outside and began to hang towels. From between two of the towels (black, of course, monogrammed with a silver L), he found a slinky red negligee, complete with matching bra and thong.
"ARGH!" He flung the revolting garments away, wiping his hands on his apron. "Ew, ew, ew! I touched Bella-slut's underwear!" It was the scariest thing he had ever encountered. But he couldn't leave the awful underwear lying on the grass. He had to find some way to hang it on the line.
He picked up a stick and poked it at the bra. He succeeded in hooking it by one of the straps, and draped it over the line, managing to fasten a clothespin between the cups to hold it in place. The negligee wasn't as scary, as long as he only touched it by the straps. Now that only left... the thong.
He eyed it nervously. How on Earth was he going to put it on the clothesline without touching it?
Duh. Magic.
Sirius pulled out his wand, nervously swishing and flicking. "Wingardium Leviosa!"
He levitated the lacy thong to the clothesline, and reached out bravely with a clothespin to hold it in place. Once he did, he began to shudder violently, and started to whimper.
"I hate this," he wailed. "I miss Remmie!"
With that, he put a Memory Charm on himself to forget Bellatrix's knickers, and trudged up to the house to resume dish duty.
Back at the Shrieking Shack, Harry was happily digging into his second helping of roast beef and mashed potatoes. He was beginning to look a lot less starved - Lucius' money was doing good for him. Remus, however, was merely picking at his food, staring morosely out the window.
Remus missed Sirius. He had been furious with his mate, and had made a very hasty decision he now regretted with all his heart. He really loved Sirius with every ounce of his being, even when the man was doing utterly stupid things. Having him gone was proving to be quite difficult. True, it was a lot quieter now, and Remus could sleep without someone trying to have sex with him at two o' clock in the morning; but those were part of being with Sirius, and the werewolf felt he could put up with noise and begging just to have his lover back.
Harry waved his fork energetically in front of Remus' face. "Hwo, e'th 'oo 'Emus, 'oo 'wake?"
"What?" Remus asked politely, truly revolted by the amount of food Harry had in his mouth.
The boy swallowed with difficulty and repeated, "Hello, Earth to Remus, you awake?"
"Oh. I'm fine." Remus pushed his broccoli around in his gravy.
"You haven't touched your food. You barely touch any of your meals. You miss Sirius, don't you?"
Remus' bottom lip quivered at hearing his lover's name. He burst into tears, dropping his fork and jumping up. He fled to his bedroom, slamming the door behind him and throwing himself onto the king-sized bed, sobbing.
Harry started to get up, intending to go and comfort his second godfather. But then his eyes fell on Remus' untouched plate (ew! what an image!).
"Can't let good food go to waste," he concluded, and sat down to devour Remus' meal.
Sirius had been up all night crying as well. He really missed Remus and Harry, and despite the fact Remus had sold him into slavery, he still loved the mild-mannered ex-professor with all his heart. He hated being at the Lestranges', and hated doing dishes and washing his cousin's knickers. He wanted to go home, but he couldn't see a way out of his situation.
When he came downstairs the next morning, red-eyed and sniffling, Bellatrix paid no attention. He ate his usual grapefruit (they didn't allow him anything else, even though he hated grapefruit), and stood up to start on the mountain of dishes Rabastan had left beside the sink.
"Not today, Black!" Bellatrix barked. "You're doing something else!"
"Yes, ma'am," he mumbled, heading for the washing machine.
"Not that, either! Come with me!" She dragged him down to the basement, where an extensive potion-brewing laboratory had been set up. Sirius raised an eyebrow. He had never expected his cousin to be so proficient at potions.
"I'm terrible at Potions," she started, shattering that idea. "I only passed because I was sleeping with my Potions teacher."
Well. Sirius hadn't expected any less from her.
"I need to have a poison done for tonight," she said grudgingly. "You're the only one in this house who was ever any good at the subject. So I'm ordering you to make me a potion!"
"Yes, ma'am," Sirius mumbled as she shoved a roll of parchment at him. Bellatrix stormed away, slamming the basement door behind her and locking it. With a sigh, Sirius unrolled the parchment and read it. It was a recipe for a poison Sirius had never even heard about before, written in Lord Voldemort's shaky old-man handwriting. It looked as though the Dark Lord had invented it himself.
It was also the most complicated potion Sirius had ever seen. He gulped, looking up to glance at the shelves of potion ingredients lining one whole wall. Though Bellatrix had an extensive collection of ingredients, he was sure she didn't have everything that was in Voldemort's recipe. Well. He knew if he ventured upstairs to tell his cousin he couldn't do it, he'd end up getting Crucio'ed or something. He'd have to improvise.
He began making the poison, frequently checking the recipe. It called for some ordinary things, like newt tails, porcupine quills, and wolfsbane, but try as Sirius might, he just couldn't find goolug tree bark, zanglang eyes, or something called 'Windex'. Maybe he just couldn't read Voldemort's scribbledy handwriting. In any case, he substituted the fungus on the basement walls for the goolug bark, Bertie Bott's Every Flavour Beans for the zanglang eyes, and water for the 'Windex'. What on Earth 'Windex' was, Sirius had no idea.
"Okay," he said, looking at the boiling orange liquid he had produced. "Um... I guess that's what it's supposed to look like." He looked at the final ingredient.
'Crumple-Horned Snorkack Horn.'
"Those aren't real!" Sirius protested. "Stupid recipe!" He looked around wildly. The only thing available was a broken metal pipe.
"Oh well!" Sirius seized it. "Bon Chance!"
He drooped it in.
KABOOOOOOOOOOOOOM!
Several hours later, Sirius awoke to find himself lying in the grass. He sat up groggily and looked around. His eyes widened. The Lestrange house was gone! Where it had stood, there was nothing left but the hole where the basement used to be. The grass was burned away for twenty feet in all directions. Bellatrix, Rodolphus, and Rabastan were sitting nearby, looking furious. As soon as she noticed Sirius was awake, Bellatrix started shrieking at him.
"YOU STUPID, STUPID MAN!" she shouted. "HOW COULD YOU HAVE DONE THIS! YOU'VE DESTROYED OUR HOME! WHERE ARE WE SUPPOSED TO LIVE!"
"I'm sorry!" wailed Sirius. "Please, don't kill me!"
"I'm not going to," Bellatrix said through clenched teeth, "though I'd like to. Instead, I have sold you!"
"Sold me!" Sirius wailed. Not again! He wanted to go home!
"Yes. To Severus!" she shouted.
Sirius gagged and fell over. He had been sold to SNAPE! This couldn't be happening! Why, oh why, did the gods hate him so much?
A foot connected painfully with his ribs, and he yelped. He looked up to see Snape standing over him, looking sour. Lucius, Draco, and Narcissa were there as well. Apparently the Lestranges were going to live with them until they got a new house.
"Come on, idiot," Snape sneered, grabbing Sirius and pulling him towards Lucius' carriage. "It looks like I'm stuck with you now."
It was a very uncomfortable ride to Snape's house. Draco was staring at Sirius, breathing rather heavily with his hands clenched in his lap. When he tried to avoid Draco's lustful stares, Sirius found Bellatrix was staring at him as well, grinding her teeth so that sparks flew. He thought it best to look at his fingers instead.
The carriage came to a stop. Snape pulled a bottle out of his robes and handed it to Bellatrix. "Here you are, Bella," he said. "Your weight-loss potion."
"What!" Sirius yelped. "You're a TWIG! You sold me for a weight-loss potion!"
"Anything to get rid of you," she snapped, as he was pulled out of the carriage. "Try not to screw up too badly!"
The Lestranges and the Malfoys cackled evilly as their carriage sped off like Mrs. Gulch on her bicycle. Sirius sniffled, and turned to look at Snape's house.
It was horrible. It was painted entirely black, and the paint was peeling. Weeds were growing out of the gutters, and the lawn needed mowing quite badly. A few scrubby trees dotted the garden, and the bricks in the path were crumbling. It looked rather like a haunted house in a particularly tacky Muggle horror film, from the sagging porch to the bats roosting under the roof's underhang to the skeleton-head weathervane on the top of a tower. Sirius gulped as he approached the peeling black door, expecting the porch to collapse under him at any minute.
As he stood and waited for Snape to find the key to the door, Sirius heard an ominous creaking and groaning. Snape finally found the right key, opened the door, and walked in. Just as Sirius was moving to set foot inside the house, the porch did just as he had feared.
CRASH!
Realising there was no way to escape the situation, Sirius yelled. Snape turned, and glowered. "I assume you've figured out what your first task is then, Black?"
Sirius glared back and nodded curtly. "I assume you've got some ridiculous outfit for me as well then, Snivellus."
A grimace came over Snape's face then - one would assume it was a smile, but the, you could never tell with Snivelly. "Of course I do. Follow me, Black."
Sirius climbed out of his hole and followed Snape into the house. Sirius couldn't believe his eyes. It was not as it should have been. Sirius had always imagined Snape's house to be dark, and full of evil things. But alas, it was... CLEAN! The walls were - GASP - normal colours! The one room that seemed to be out of the ordinary was Snape's bedroom. The walls were the colour of blood, and the bed had a canopy. One would never suspect Snape owned a canopy bed! Sirius followed Snape into the bedroom. His eyes darted around quickly, searching for the greaseball. Reappearing as quickly as he had disappeared, Snape showed up with something in his hands that Sirius couldn't quite make out. He did see that it was white.
All of a sudden, Sirius realised why Snape had bought him. He was going to be - A SACRIFICE! Sirius broke down and started sobbing. He missed Remus, and he wanted to go home! He was sorry he'd ever BOUGHT that STUPID motorbike. He was angry with the salesman of that motorbike even more. He wondered if the man knew that he'd caused all of this to happen!
Well, we all know that even though Snape is evil, he is a part of the Order of the Phoenix. We also know that he isn't stupid, and anybody could trace Sirius to him. One more thing we know is that he doesn't like to sacrifice things. Well, we don't actually know that, but we can assume that.
"BLACK! Don't make a mess of my rug! If you get so much as one tear on anything in this home, consider yourself sacrificed!" Sirius squeaked in horror. Snape ignored him and continued. "Go on, put this on and get started on some dishes. I won't allow you to go out to get the wood, and I don't have any at my disposal... it'll have to wait until tomorrow. Make yourself useful!"
Sirius took the clump of clothing from Snape and headed into the bathroom. Upon closing the door, he took a look around. The walls were... PURPLE! He couldn't believe Snivellus would allow a purple room in his home. After all, the outside was black! Come on now! Sirius shook his head and returned his attention to the outfit. Taking it by what seemed to be the shoulders, he let the rest drop. His mouth hung open in disbelief.
"BLACK! What's taking you so long! Get out here this instant and start on the laundry! Or something! Get moving!" Snape shouted. He couldn't wait to see this outfit on Sirius. He'd gotten the outfit from his niece. Or rather, she'd left it behind last time her family stayed with him.
Sirius stepped out of the bathroom, and the first thing he heard was Snivelly's laughter. He knew he looked ridiculous! The dress was short in front and got longer in the back. AND IT WAS RUFFLY. Ruffles EVERYWHERE! The sleeves, which were off-the-shoulder and pretty much only straps, were quite wide and also ruffly. The neckline was ruffly and went all the way down to his navel. There was a red ribbon around his waist, and another one running around the hem of the skirt. Snape had also inadvertently given him shoes. They were red ballerina shoes! The lace ran the whole length of his calves. He had no idea how he was supposed to do any work in this mess of ruffles.
Snape was positively screaming with laughter at the sight of the man in the dress, with his hair tied back in pigtails. He didn't know how the others had made him do it. "Get to work, Black! Do something useful... maybe you can use those ruffles to dust or something."
Sirius scowled at Snape. "Fine, Master Snivelly! Where is the laundry room?"
Snape started and headed towards the kitchen. "I don't have a laundry room. What's more, you have to wash my laundry by hand. I don't allow electricity in this home. All the lamps are gas, as you will notice. They make my complexion better."
Sirius stared at Snape as he followed along, clearly thinking he was bonkers. The kitchen was fairly bright and normal. There were large plate-glass windows all along the wall, looking out towards a pool. The wall treatment was a quite pretty design, redwood at the bottom with white tiles above, almost of a medieval sort. One would obviously never expect this of Snivellus.
Snape led the way to the washbasin. It was of the old wooden make, with the handle on the side and the scrubber on the top. This was going to be a handful of work for poor Sirius. He picked up one of Snape's robes. He looked it over and cringed. It was encrusted with egg yolk and other food items. Obviously the man wasn't just greasy, he was a messy eater as well.
"Black, you know what there is to do. After you get done with my clothes, wash the dishes, and then rake the front yard."
Sirius grumbled, but set to work. Snape walked out of the room, and Sirius decided to use a little magic to get the work done faster. Poking around the kitchen cupboards he found a pink soapy solution that he thought would work quite well to get the robes clean and as good as new. After pouring the solution into the basin, Sirius said a few words, waved his wand, and the robes began scrubbing themselves. Turning his back to the basin, he looked at the pile of dishes on the counter. He could have sworn he had seen a pack of cockroaches dash hurriedly out of sight. Only then did he remember why he was so frightened of them... that one night in a Muggle motel... Sirius shuddered.
Meanwhile at the Shrieking Shack, Remus was washing the dishes and got a sudden chill. With a smile, he remembered the night he and Sirius had once spent in a Muggle motel. But the memory was as painful as it was amusing, and Remus began to cry, shaking his head sadly. Harry walked in, rolled his eyes, shook his head and turned back the way he had come (the insensitive wart). He still could not fathom why Remus missed Sirius so much. He was, after all, always complaining about how much of a slob Sirius was and all that.
"Harry, you just don't understand!" Remus wailed. Feeling guilty, Harry turned back 'round and began to try to comfort Remus.
At Snape's house, Sirius was finally finished cleaning the dishes after an hour and a half. He turned around and fished the robes out of the pink sudsy water. For a moment, he thought he had put the wrong robes in. They were pink! All of them! Sirius' eyes widened in horror as he realised what he had done. He picked up the pink soapy solution and read the label. BLEACH, it proclaimed loudly. Sirius dropped the bottle in terror and began to think furiously. How could he fix the robes before Snape saw them?
Well, he couldn't. Snape walked into the room at that moment. He blanched at the sight of his robes, and then went wild. He couldn't believe that Sirius would sabotage him like tha- wait. What was he thinking? Of course he would! Snape grabbed Sirius by the hair and dragged him down the hallway. Throwing the whimpering Sirius into a broom cupboard, Snape began cursing and thinking of ways to get rid of the beastly man. All of a sudden, a brilliantly evil idea came to him. Running into the drawing room, he picked up a piece of parchment and began writing furiously. He ran to his owl, Snapey-kins, and tied the roll of parchment to its leg. "Off you go then!" he yelled as the owl took flight, "To the Daily Prophet with you!"
"What have you got planned for me, Snivellus?" Sirius wailed through the door of the cupboard.
"Just you wait and see, Black!" Snape shouted gleefully, giving the door a kick as he passed.
To Be Continued...
(A/N: Finally, the second chapter. We apologise for being so slow. Please bear with us!
The "night in the Muggle motel" Sirius and Remus remember refers to our first story, "Some Enchanted Evening". Please check it out! Thanks!)