Day Two

Sirius opened his eyes, but instead of the ceiling he had expected to find, he saw the bottom of the dining room table and the hem of the black robes.

"If you are quite done, I would like my coffee now. And this time without any of your digestive juices."

Gasping for air, Sirius got up from the floor, picked up the coffee cup that lay untouched in front of Snape, and tottered back into the kitchen. He had been so certain one little spit in the coffee would go unnoticed, but as soon as he had placed the cup on the table, Sirius had known the spell had outsmarted him once more. Evidently it did not even need a direct order from Snape to sense when its wearer was up to no good and act accordingly.

He poured another cup of coffee, looked at the black liquid and swallowed down the temptation, then carried it into the dining room for his waiting Master.

"I fear I have no time for coffee any more," Snape said, as he pushed the cup aside, and Sirius could see the corner of his mouth twitch. "Follow me."

Snape swept through the hall and up the stairs with Sirius at his heels. Even though he had already searched every room for a chance to escape the day before, this was the first time Sirius had paid any attention to the house itself and he could not help but see certain similarities with his own home in Grimmauld Place.

The Snapes had apparently shared his parents' liking for grimness when it came to decorating, although lacking the financial means to achieve the noble darkness of the House of Black. Everything looked a century or more past its prime, although most likely not much older than Sirius. The walls were striped with a number of different wallpapers, offering glimpses of the house at various times in history, each more hideous than the last. Evidently most of the furniture had either been sold or had disintegrated, which had left the place with a hollow echo of death that made Sirius wonder whether he had, indeed, been brought into the land of the living at all.

The whole house had a feel of neglect, of abandonment, which was scarcely surprising if the Snapes had been living there without a house-elf, and especially as their only son and heir had spent the better part of the last sixteen years at Hogwarts.

Snape stopped at a door at the end of the upstairs corridor. Sirius remembered that he had already tried to open it but, unlike all the others, this one had been locked. Snape turned the key in the lock and pushed it wide open.

"Get inside."

The number of bottles and jars on the shelves was quite astounding. They were all glimmering in different colours and some of their contents appeared to be moving. Sirius reached for the nearest jar, full of bright orange liquid with something quite quick and purple whizzing around in it.

"Do not touch!" Snape exclaimed and shoved him away from the shelves.

At the far end of the room stood a large desk, covered in books and parchments. Snape bent over it to examine something, grunted a few times and then strode to the fireplace, where a large cauldron was slowly simmering, wafting a curious smell into the room. Carefully he scooped out the slightly smoking potion and poured it into a goblet.

"Drink," he said, handing it to Sirius.

"No, thank you," Sirius said with a wave of the hand. "I'm not thirsty. Apparently dead people don't eat or drink."

"How economical," Snape drawled in a low voice, "but I believe I must insist that you drink this."

"Why? We've already established that I can't be killed again, so you'll just be wasting good poison on me."

"This is not poison," Snape said as he forced the goblet towards Sirius' lips. "This is the only thing keeping you in this world after the Exmortuis Spell. Call it your Aqua Vitae, if you wish."

Sirius took a few steps back, looking him straight in the eye. He had completely forgotten about the potion Snape had forced him to drink right after his arrival in that house. And what had brought him back to life, might easily offer a chance to depart from it, as well.

"And what if I refuse to take it?" Sirius asked, unable to hide the hopeful tone in his voice. "That would mess up your grand scheme pretty thoroughly, wouldn't it?"

But Snape merely sneered at him, shaking his head slowly.

"No, Black. Refusing to take it would not only result in another death scene, but also leave you, shall we say, 'in between'. You would be neither dead nor alive."

"A ghost?"

"Not even that," Snape said coldly. "Rather what some might call 'damned'."

"A day with you gives rather a nice ring to 'damned'."

"Am I to understand that you refuse to take the potion?"

"Yep."

"I see."

Snape turned around and, to Sirius' surprise, sat down in a comfortable-looking armchair.

"Very well," he said, leaning back in the chair and crossing his legs.

In the next instant, Sirius was gasping for air. The leather band around his throat was choking him so hard he thought his eyes would pop out, but still he remained standing, desperate to show Snape that he would endure it. Again, however, as his strength began to drain from his body, Sirius felt the same panic, the same lust for life and fear of death, and struggling furiously he fell to the floor, and died.

When the first breath of air jolted his body back to life, Sirius found his Master still seated in his chair, looking rather amused.

"Ready for the second round, are we?" he asked, again offering the goblet to Sirius. "Drink it."

"Fuck off," Sirius managed to whisper before the wave of panic returned.

Four times he died that morning in Snape's study; three would have been enough if it had not been for the applause Snape gave him after the third.

"I must say I enjoyed watching such an excellent performance," Snape said as Sirius finally gulped down the disgusting liquid. "I do believe you have an aptitude for this sort of thing."

The empty goblet flew across the room and smashed through the glass door of one of the cabinets.

Quite calmly, Snape pointed his wand at it and muttered, "Vitrum Reparo." He bent down to pick up the goblet, wiping it on his sleeve. "However, this might get a bit tiresome if you were to put on such a show every morning. From now on, I suggest that you will do as I say without any unnecessary fuss."

"Care to know where you may shove your suggestion?" Sirius asked, still out of breath.

"No, I have something called imagination, you may have heard of it." Snape gave him a sharp kick in his side. "Now get out. You are a waste of perfectly good space."

Amazingly, Sirius managed to find the door and stagger out of the study with only a few scratches from the doorframe.

He did not hear Snape Disapparate, but for the rest of the day, he saw no sign of the man anywhere in the house.

As his dying quota seemed to have been met for the day, Sirius decided to postpone any plans of escape till the next day and started the dusting in the library. It was a boring yet relatively painless job and gave him something to think about beside the stickiness of his current situation.

He did not get far, however, before having the quite questionable pleasure of meeting one of Snape's ancestors, one Gengulphus Snape, whose portrait hung above the fireplace in the library and who after taking just one look at him yelled "My word! A giant house-elf!" and burst into hysterical laughter. Sirius tried to talk back at him and pointed out, among other things, Gengulphus' rather poor attempt at covering his bald head with a few strands of hair that were not fooling anybody, but his comments were drowned by the shouts of "Tea towels!" and "A giant duster!"

As if that had not been enough to humiliate Sirius, he soon noticed that wherever he went, Gengulphus followed him, from picture to picture, and along with him came the laughter. At first, Sirius tried to lose him by running zigzag from one room to the next, but somehow the sniggering bastard managed to find him every time, and after a few minutes of dusting the bark "Giant elf!" drove Sirius back on the run.

Finally he saw no other choice but to barricade himself in the cellar, the only place he was certain held no bloody pictures, and there he sat, plucking out the feathers of the duster and listening closely for the smallest of chuckles, which would signal that the maniac had found him. And when the door opened hours later, there was a part of him that expected to see Gengulphus' face, grinning.

Snape had not been particularly pleased to find his cellar looking rather like the residence of a moulting owl, and so Sirius had been ordered to clean up the mess before dinner, which was also supposed to be his task. After gathering the feathers in one large pile, which he hid beneath the stairs, Sirius dragged his feet up the stairs to burn something new for his Master.

Getting information out of Snape was not the easiest task in the world. In fact, it took Sirius the whole of dinner to force the man to tell him how the battle in the Ministry had ended, and more importantly, how Harry was. Naturally Sirius knew his godson to be still alive; otherwise he would have already run across the lad on the other side of the veil. In a few words, Snape assured him that the "brat" was perfectly well and safe with those Muggle relatives of his, which was only a small comfort to Sirius.

On the darker side, though, he learnt that the Death Eaters captured that night in the Ministry had all escaped from Azkaban in a matter of days. That was the first moment during this second life of his that Sirius actually felt the urge to continue with it, to exploit the opportunity to return the favour to his dear cousin. The thought of duelling Bellatrix filled him with warmth, and the little bonus of not having to worry about dying in the process was almost too much to grasp.

Still, in the short time he had been dead Sirius had already grown quite attached to the world behind the veil. As much as he had enjoyed being alive, the opposite had its own odd appeal, and at that point, he would have done anything to return to the dead. Besides, there was a certain chess game he was eager to get back to; in his absence, James was bound to cheat.

"Look at yourself, you are simply repulsive," Snape said as he stepped out of the bathtub and took the robe Sirius was holding out for him.

There was nothing Sirius could say to that, as he knew what a mess he was. Nearly two days' worth of rolling on the floor and dying, in addition to the night spent in the cellar and the attempted dusting had certainly left their mark on him.

"I had intended to give you the opportunity to cleanse yourself properly, but after the poor job you did, first with the dinner and now with that sponge, I don't think you deserve to have any water wasted on you," Snape said, the familiar sneer on his lips. "Nevertheless, I have left my bathwater for you to bathe in. Enjoy."

Snape wheeled around and walked out of the bathroom, leaving Sirius alone with a tub full of soapy, turbid bathwater. It looked far from tempting, but one glance at the mirror told him that it was still cleaner than him. So, taking a deep breath, Sirius stepped into the tub and let out a curse as he plunged into the cold water.

He did not dare to use the sponge for fear of drowning, so he took off the two tea towels that had served as his loincloth and turned them into a washcloth. The shampoo labelled 'for oily hair' made him wonder whether it in fact meant 'to achieve oily hair', but nevertheless, Sirius resisted the temptation of using it. As quickly as he could, he washed his hair with the soap, knowing he would never run his fingers through it again after that, and climbed out of the tub before the hypothermia could kick in.

Without thinking, he took one of the white towels off the rack and soon stood holding the rather grey towel in his hands, imagining the hours he would spend turning it white again. He had once heard that the Muggles used something called 'bleak' on their whites, which also sounded just about right to describe his immediate future.

Sirius walked to the small window and looked at the falling darkness outside.

It could not go on for much longer. The servitude was humiliating enough as it was, but what he had seen Snape do in the tub again had been the last straw. Snape had tried to hide it, and the foam had covered most of it, but there was no question that the man had been stroking himself all the while Sirius had been washing him. There would be nothing he could do to stop him, should Snape suddenly decide that he was not quite that repulsive after all and that, in the absence of anyone else, he would have to do. Snape could make him do just about anything his evil mind desired, and if Sirius refused, nothing would prevent him from taking what he wanted while he lay dead at his feet.

There was only one solution and that was to escape, yet Sirius knew from painful experience that there was no way out of the house. Pressing his head against the windowpane, he cursed Severus bloody Snape and the Exmortuis bloody Spell and that whole bloody house and Gengulphus, the bloody portrait - and that was when he saw it.

Sirius knew there had been something missing from the house, but until then he had not been able to put his finger on it. Yet now that he looked at the backyard and the little shack not far from the house, he felt simultaneously incredibly stupid and incredibly cheerful.

The tea towels were still quite wet, so Sirius wrapped the greyish bath towel around his waist and headed to the kitchen to prepare his master's late dinner. But just as he strode across the hall, Snape's voice stopped him.

"Get in here, Black."

Sirius entered the library and found Snape seated in an armchair with a book on his lap.

"The fire is not lit."

Sirius' gaze turned from Snape to the wand on the table next to his chair and back again.

"You do know that you'll actually have to lift the wand to Incendio?"

"No, I want you to light the fire," Snape said with a wry smile. "It's much more entertaining that way."

"You bloody bastard..." Sirius started but managed to bite his tongue. He now had a plan and the plan entailed that he was not supposed to waste his energy by dying unnecessarily. "Do you expect me to rub two sticks together, or what?"

"Nothing quite as primitive." Snape threw a little box at him. "Authentic Muggle matches."

Grudgingly Sirius got down on his knees in front of the fireplace and started lighting the matches.

"What is that you're wearing?" Snape asked abruptly. "Is that one of my towels?"

"Maybe if you had let me use clean water, it might have been spared," Sirius muttered, not turning from the fireplace.

"Take it off this instant!"

"And what am I supposed to wear instead? The tea towels you so graciously gave me are still soaking wet."

"They will dry off soon enough in front of the fire."

"But there is no fire!"

"You had better get it started then, hadn't you?"

Only now did Sirius turn to glare at Snape and biting off what seemed like a huge chunk of his tongue, he tore the towel off and threw it on the floor.

"Even more entertaining," Snape said quietly and crossed his legs.

Breathing heavily and trying very hard to forget that he was naked, Sirius returned to his task. It proved quite a challenge to get the logs burning without the use of magic, especially as there were only far too heavy logs and no lighters whatsoever. A couple of times he came pretty close but in his excitement he piled too many logs around the slightly smoking one, and what might have been soon died down. In the end, Sirius merely sat on the floor, scratching the matches and throwing them aimlessly at the logs.

When the fire finally lit, all the logs suddenly bursting into flames, Sirius nearly screamed in triumph, but as he turned around to gloat at Snape, he found the man sitting with the wand in his hand.

"I was just about to get it started," Sirius grunted. "That second log on the left was definitely beginning to blacken."

"It was rotting." Snape leant forward in his chair and traced his lips with the tip of his wand. "Come here."

Sirius made to get up, but Snape stopped him.

"No, I want you to crawl here, on your hands and knees."

Again Sirius had to sacrifice a part of his tongue and taste the blood in his mouth, to keep him from charging at the bastard in his chair. He must not die, he must think of the plan, he must not die, he must escape.

"What Master wants, Master gets," he mumbled and began crawling towards Snape.

When working with the fire, Sirius had nearly managed to ignore the thought of Snape watching his naked body, but as he made his way across the floor, he could feel Snape's eyes on his skin, studying every inch of it.

"So, had enough of the master and dog game already?" Sirius asked when reaching the armchair and stopping in front of it. "Can I get up now?"

The look on Snape's face sent shivers down Sirius' spine.

"Am I to understand that you are not enjoying this game?" Snape asked and let the tip of his wand run slowly down Sirius' cheek. "Doesn't Sirius Black like being at the mercy of others, so helpless, so insignificant? It is not easy to take orders from people you despise, is it?"

"I suspect we are still talking about me, aren't we?"

"You are nothing but a pawn," Snape said leaning back and letting his legs drift apart, so that Sirius' head was left between his knees. "A mere pawn. You go where I tell you, you do as I tell you." An evil grin spread over his face, as he continued, "And if I was to order you to move one step forward and eat the king, you would have to obey, wouldn't you?"

For a few seconds Sirius kept telling himself that the chess reference had no sexual innuendo whatsoever, but as the smile stayed on Snape's lips, he knew the moment he had been fretting about had come sooner than anticipated. He glanced at Snape's lap: the man was still in his bathrobe and if he was not mistaken, there was a definite bulge in the front of the black robe. Sirius felt sick.

"You do know that if you make me eat the king, he will be gone for good."

"I rather doubt you would have the time before giving one of your shows again."

"Oh, I know I would end up dead," Sirius said casually, "but I'd wake up with a big part of the king in my mouth. Now, I don't think there's a spell to restore a half-eaten cock."

Snape's eyes flashed as he leant forward, clenching the wand in his hand.

"In that case," he hissed between his teeth, "turn around."

"Pawns don't move backwards, it's against the rules."

"Have you learnt nothing yet?" Snape snarled, his eyes narrowing. "It is I who makes the rules around here - turn!"

Slowly Sirius turned on his hands and knees to face the fireplace. He could suddenly hear every crack of the logs as the fire took hold of them and every squeak of the old house as it lived around them. His fingers dug into the carpet as he waited for the sounds that were bound to come.

First came the creak of the floorboards telling him that Snape had stood up, then the scratching of the chair being pushed aside, then the quiet rustle of his bathrobe. Sirius held his breath, knowing that the next sound would be that of Snape kneeling down behind him.

He must not die, he must get through this. He would simply have to grin and bear it, for fighting it would only lead to suffocation, and that he could not afford if he was to go through with his plan.

He heard Snape move behind him and closed his eyes, waiting for the first touch.

However, it was not the sort of touch he had been expecting. When Snape's foot landed squarely on his arse, sending him face down to the floor, Sirius scarcely even noticed the pain from the relief.

"Go and prepare my dinner, you sorry git," Snape said coldly. "And be quick about it, it's late enough as it is."

In an instant, Sirius was up on his feet and, after gathering the towels off the floor, out of the door. Panting heavily, he hurried across the hall, not wanting even to think how close he had been to being raped. What had made the man change his mind was a mystery, but Sirius was certain his sentence had only been postponed.

As he passed though the parlour, he heard the familiar voice snigger, and did not need to turn to know who it was that had followed him from the library.

"The giant house-elf got a kick in the arse!"

Sirius slammed the kitchen door shut hard enough for the pictures on the walls to rattle for a good while after him.

The house actually looked better at night, when one could not see the holes in the tapestries and the chunks of paint missing from the walls. The age of the floorboards, however, was only more clearly underlined, and the sound of Sirius creeping through the hall would have wakened the dead.

At last he reached the library and stood in the doorway for a good while, listening carefully. But evidently Snape slept soundly in his coffin, and so Sirius ventured into the library.

Once inside, he headed straight for the desk on the opposite wall. If he was to go through with his plan, certain things would be needed, and Sirius was fairly sure he would find them there. He did not dare to light a candle, so he had to poke around the table in the dark, taking every item in his hand in order to identify what they were. He had just wrapped his fingers around something smooth and cold, when all of a sudden the logs in the fireplace burst into flames.

"Explain yourself," came Snape's cold voice from behind him, and a dark figure emerged from the darkness.

"I... I couldn't sleep," Sirius stuttered. "I mean, I can't sleep, at all. You know, the dead don't sleep and all that rubbish."

"And how is that letter-opener helping you with your insomnia?"

Sirius looked down at his hands. The long, thin blade glowed in the light of the fire. Although forgetting to breathe, Sirius told his oxygen-deprived brain to think of something and fast.

"What's all this racket?" asked a sleepy voice. "It can't be morning just yet for I know perfectly well... I say, if it isn't the giant elf!"

One look at Gengulphus and Sirius' mind was made up.

"That bloody portrait is driving me mad!" he shouted and waved the letter-opener at the picture. "All day he kept calling me that! I came here to tear him to shreds!"

"Why, I never!" Gengulphus exclaimed, and looked to Snape for help. "You certainly need to teach your house-elf better manners! In my day..."

"Oh, shut it." Snape strode past the portrait to Sirius and took the letter-opener from him. "As much as I would like to see that damn picture in shreds myself..."

"Severus! That is no way to speak of your elders!"

"I always said that blasted artist made him just a tad too lifelike," Snape muttered, rubbing his wand against his palm.

"Well, I'm certainly more intelligent than the rest of the portraits in this house put together," Gengulphus said proudly. "I'm just the man I was when I was still alive!"

"Yes, " Snape drawled. "Unfortunately."

"I beg your pardon!"

"Nevertheless," Snape continued, obviously doing his best to ignore Gengulphus altogether, "I can't have you demolishing my ancestral home." His face was uncomfortably close to Sirius' as he pressed the cold metal of the letter-opener against his cheek. "Now, I know you were never one to take orders, Black, but with this," - he ran the sharp tip of the blade along the collar - "you are perhaps more likely to remember that from now on, you are not to touch another knife in this house."

"Including the kitchen knives?" Sirius asked, staring him straight in the eye. "Won't that make cooking a bit of a challenge?"

"You will simply have to be rather more resourceful, won't you?"

"The giant elf chopping carrots with a spoon! Oh, I simply cannot wait to..."

In a swoosh of black robes, Snape spun around and out of his wand shot a yellow spark, which burnt a small, circular hole in the canvas right below Gengulphus' feet.

"Watch it!" the portrait screamed. "You could have taken an eye out with that!"

"And that I will, if you can't keep your mouth shut!" Snape snapped at him. Then, turning back to Sirius, he said, "Back to your cellar, Black. You have a big day ahead of you."

"That I do," Sirius muttered as he made for the door, safe in the knowledge that all that he needed would be waiting for him right there in that room.

Not a peep came out of Gengulphus as they passed him, and it was only now that Sirius noticed the numerous small, circular holes, spread all over the canvas, and he felt a sudden warmth towards his Master.

To be continued...