Toleration
The next month developed a routine. Sakhmet would wake up barely an hour before noon, when she would go downstairs to reheat her breakfast. Sirius would have already made breakfast a few hours beforehand. Then she would pick a room to clean and decorate, because as she said, "If this house isn't going to look like people live in it, then I'm not going to live in it." Sirius agreed, partially because Sakhmet decided what to do with the room. All he had to do was perform a few simple charms.
By the time summer began, most of the house was finished, including the kitchen, Sakhmet's room, the Order's meeting room, several of the guest bedrooms, and the bathrooms. Sakhmet had tackled the bathrooms soon after her own room, when she found out that Grimmauld Place didn't have a shower. After replacing the rusty metal bathtub with a working shower, Sakhmet had attempted to figure out a design for her father's room. However he had taken to locking his door, preferring his "creative chaos".
"The creature known as Kreacher", as Sakhmet had dubbed him, had been allowed his small corner of the kitchen, provided he stayed there and shut his trap. After listening to his pathetic grumbling her second afternoon in Grimmauld Place, Sakhmet had finally shouted at him to "be silent before she summoned a pestilence". Kreacher had taken into his head that, because Sakhmet was named after a goddess, she was somehow a higher order of "scum that would appall the mistress, if she only knew". Thus Kreacher was confined to his corner to prevent further theft of the junk previous family members had left in the house after they "kicked the bucket" as Sirius liked to say in front of his mother's painting. Every time he did, she glared death at him, as Sakhmet laughed.
After taking a break for lunch, father and daughter would not stop their crusade against the house until around six when one of them would try their hand at cooking dinner, the other laughing at their choice of language. And father and daughter grew to love each other (A/N: Stop thinking like that. GET YOUR MIND OUT OF THE GUTTER!) in a purely familial way.
After dinner, the two would chat about the house, the Order of the Phoenix, which Sirius had explained to Sakhmet recently, and the world in general. Often, Sirius would read an article out loud from the Daily Prophet while his daughter laughed at the government's stupidity. Every now and then their conversation would wander to the topic of who exactly was Sakhmet's mother. Sirius had already decided that it was probably an auror, although he wasn't quite sure which one. Sakhmet wasn't too far off with her idea that her father had once been "the male equivalent of a slut".
More often, the conversation would turn to Hogwarts. Sakhmet wanted to know all about it, seeing as she would be going there in September. Dumbledore had also decided that she could catch up on her first two years at Hogwarts in classes during the summer with him and a Professor Snape, whom Sirius vehemently hated. The classes would take place at Grimmauld Place every other afternoon, forcing her to wake up and eat breakfast by eight every morning to practice her spells. Mrs. Weasley, a kind redheaded woman with several children at Hogwarts, had taken her to buy her wand. Sirius was thought to be a criminal for reasons he had yet to disclose.
After talking to Sirius for a few hours, Sakhmet would go to bed where she would wonder which house she would be put in.
Emma Barrows-Thank you very much, and btw Maelstrom is great so far!
ERMonkey, Burner of Cookies-Nice to know you've gotten off the Jenny kick.