HARRY POTTER AND EVERYTHING RELATING TO THAT MAGICAL UNIVERSE BELONG TO JK ROWLING, WARNER BROS, BLOOMSBURY BOOKS ETC. AND I AM VERY LUCKY TO BE ALLOWED TO PLAY WITH IT ALL.
Barking Mad
Sirius spent the next day tidying. He woke up hung-over on dirty sheets and noticed the disorder his bedroom had fallen into. After Bill had left, he'd spent a few hours as a dog to try and stop himself from thinking, and a few more with a knock-off bottle of vodka from the batch he was supposed to be hiding for Mundungus. The vodka was the more effective of the two. But being an Animagus didn't make him throw up the next day.
When he raised his head from the toilet seat, he had seen the shower and the next thing he knew he was in the bath tub, stroking the enamel. He lay there for a while recalling the texture of wet skin, before the headache got too much and he went down to the kitchen for a Cure.
He sat down to swallow it, knowing full well that he'd chosen the chair Bill had sat in to drink his lager. It was pathetic. It wasn't like he was a teenage girl with a crush. It was just that he'd been so lonely. And he was sick of staying in this hated house where nothing ever happened. He missed Harry and his friends now that they were back at school. There was so much that needed to be done to stop Voldemort and it was frustrating to be the one Order member unable to do any of it.
It was all starting to drive him mad. No, the murders had started the process, Azkaban had intensified it and this was just sending him deeper inside his sick mind. Obviously nobody was going to want to stick around to witness that.
He wasn't going to obsess about what had happened with Bill. He would just be grateful. It had been fun. That was it. Be happy. But he kept glancing to the fireplace nonetheless. Not that there would be a Floo Call.
He didn't trust Kreacher to make him coffee, but while he drank the dark sludge he had brewed himself, he barked for the House Elf to come and receive orders.
With exaggerated stiffness, Kreacher climbed out of his cupboard, muttering "Master Sirius is shouting at poor Kreacher even though they are in the same room. He looks very sick and it serves him right for drinking that nasty Muggle liquor last night …"
"Shut up, Kreacher!"
The bat-eared Elf had no choice but to be silent, though his resentment was clear on his face.
"Now, Kreacher. I need clean bed linen, the windows in my bedroom need washing and when I've sorted out the stuff I've been keeping on the floor you can dust and brush up and whatever. Got it?"
Kreacher nodded and Apparated upstairs.
Sirius checked the front door - for no reason - before going up to the bedroom himself and spending most of the morning there. Not that anyone other than himself was ever going to be going in that room. He interrupted himself a couple of times an hour, to just nip downstairs, because he might not have heard a visitor coming in from the top floor. Not that he was expecting one. Or an owl. Or a Floo Call.
On the way past, he became aware of the smell coming from Buckbeak's room and tore a strip off Kreacher, sending him in to muck out and change the straw.
"Kreacher thinks he should be cleaning the bathroom. He heard lewd acts, dirty acts, should be scrubbing away the Master's…"
"I've given you an order! Get on with it! You worthless lump of rags!"
And Kreacher sloped along the landing.
By midday Sirius had imposed some organisation on his possessions. He looked around the room. Better. Then he looked at his own reflection in the big mirror on the front of the wardrobe. Grey, sickly, skinny and mad. He could do with a new look.
"Kreacher! I'm having salad for lunch. And I want some kind of wholesome stew with vegetables and meat in it for supper. You might as well make enough for two."
"Is Master expecting a guest?" Kreacher asked, narrowing his protruding eyes with disgust.
"Just do what you're told!" Sirius snapped, throwing a heavy book at his Elf who Apparated away with a loud crack before it could hit him. Sirius picked the tome up and placed it carefully on his bed-side table to make it look like he filled his time productively with study. To anyone who might happen to make it into the bedroom. Which nobody ever would.
After lunch, while Kreacher shampooed his carpet and dusted the furniture, Sirius had a long bath. A particular spot on the floor held his attention, the place where Bill had lain on the towel (which was hidden under his bed), where Sirius had tasted him. He had tasted wet and clean, but underlying that was the salty metallic taste of cock and the sharp smell of testosterone.
Sirius brushed and trimmed his nails, washed his hair and scrubbed at his grimy skin.
He ate his healthy supper, spent some time telling Buckbeak how happy he was and had an early night.
He spent the next day in bed. These days were the reason why he hadn't put on any weight since escaping prison. He spent nights in near-catatonic depression, too, but at least then he could kid himself that he was trying to get to sleep.
Kreacher left him alone, only twice wandering past the door muttering about blood traitors and lechery. Sirius neither ate nor drank. He just lay still and felt sorry for himself. On the occasions when his bladder forced him down to the bathroom, he stared fixedly into the toilet bowl and avoided seeing anything else in the room.
As evening began to fall beyond his curtains, he thought he heard a voice say: "Hello you." But it was the same voice that had been in his head for two days, so he ignored it.
"Do you mind if I come in?" it asked.
Sirius looked over to the open door and wasn't sure whether he was hallucinating.
"It's your HQ. Go where you like," he replied out loud.
"For Salazar's sake, Sirius, it's your bedroom! I don't know if I'm welcome. Would you rather I went away?"
He sat up in the bed, with a terrible fear squeezing his chest and looked properly at the man on the gloomy landing, the tall man with the perfect hair and the broad shoulders, the man he'd been hoping for and not expecting.
"Please come in and make yourself at home, Bill," he greeted, summoning the phrase from the etiquette lessons of his distant childhood.