Harry Evans: Memoirs of a well-lived Death (SI)

AN: This one didn't really fit anywhere else. To canon to be left out, to short to be a chapter. Double release, whoohoo. It's not as rigorously grammar corrected as the rest because I couldn't be arsed - cough, I mean, I'm sick, cough.

-/-

Many adults would describe life as inherently Sisyphean.

Sisyphus had been the king of Ephyra, who had cheated death thus and thus been punished by Hades, the god of the underworld, to push a boulder up a hill, only to let it roll down, and push it up again, for the rest of eternity.

The reason why Sisyphean as an adjective gained such popularity was because of the modern realisation that a lot of the tasks one had to complete in life were essentially endless by their very nature. Thus, in a way life could be seen as a punishment, even if, unlike the Greek punishment, it was thankfully not eternal.

Of course, there was a strict requirement on what was Sisyphean, since, by definition, one needed to not enjoy the endlessly repeated task. Thus, if one enjoyed eating food, the biological necessity of eating it for the rest of one's earthly existence could not be considered a punishment and thus was not Sisyphean.

Buying food, however, was, since there were, to Harry's knowledge, no well-adjusted human beings who enjoyed buying stuff they knew would be consumed within the week, necessitating another shopping trip.

There were many adult tasks which were Sisyphean in nature. Work. Driving to work. Driving from work. Shopping. Cooking. Repairing.

Cleaning.

However,

Was not.

One of them.

After all, the boulder rolled down the hill, after Sisyphus had pushed it up the entirety of the hill. Cleaning, however, metaphorically never even got on the fucking hill. Everything existed in a perpetual state of entropy, no matter how much you clean it, it would only, ever, get, fucking, dirtier. From the creation of the object in question to its incineration in the heat-death of the universe. It would be nice if cleaning was Sisyphean, it would mean that it would be possible to actually clean one's living space to any capacity.

But how was one supposed to do this, when cleaning a space perfectly would imply dusting all surfaces, moving the furniture and not only cleaning underneath it but also cleaning the furniture itself? Cleaning was not Sisyphean, it was barely even a stop-gap measure between a semblance of order and complete utter chaos.

Every single adult, other than the mentally diseased ones Harry had ever talked to, hated cleaning with a burning fucking passion of a million suns multiplied by a thousand infinities. You had to do a bit of it every day. If you didn't want to do a fucking lot of it every week at once. And it never, ever, returned back to the state in which one had received the accommodation.

No, cleaning was not Sisyphean. Cleaning was just straight out hell. But not even that, because hell was at least static, whereas cleaning got worse and worse every time one did it. Because of the shit under the furniture, in the walls, it got worse, causing one to essentially clean only to get a dirtier space after every single attempt for the rest of one's life. It was as if Sisyphus would get kicked in the dick every time he succeeded in rolling the boulder up the hill. But every time that he did so, he'd get kicked in the dick one more time. One more time, each time, endlessly, for the rest of eternity. Until Sisyphus would be getting kicked in the dick more than he was actually rolling the fucking boulder.

Suffice it to say, Harry hated cleaning. Harry hated cleaning almost as much as he hated being water-boarded, tortured, or put into the high-security isolation ward in Azkaban.

That was why, because of this hatred, without which there would have been no love, he shed a tear as he looked at the inside of Privet Drive 4.

"Spotless," he breathed as honest to god tears slid down his face. His new secondary black wand slipped from his fingers and fell on the immaculate floor. He fell down to his knees. "I could eat off it," he whispered, looking at his reflection in the wooden floorboards

The realisation that with access to magic, with his new-found godlike powers, he would have to never clean manually again hit his body like a series of world-shattering heaven-defying orgasms. He spasmed as if he were having an epileptic attack. The perfectly coloured walls, polished windows, dustless curtains and immaculate air quality blurred in his eyesight as he became more and more overwhelmed at the sheer beauty of what he and Dobby had accomplished in less than an hour. Running through the house, house-elf and human magic combine to create an orchestra of angels.

"It do be clean, Master Harry," the house-elf muttered with a self-satisfied tone.

"It do be clean!" Harry shouted.

Aunt Petunia would love it, obviously. She was a housewife who'd been struggling with cleaning for longer than Harry had been alive in his last life. And even he, had anyone gifted him such a perfectly cleaned house, he would have treasured it more than all the gold in the world. He would have fallen to his knees, sucked the dick, licked the pussy, and made oral love to whatever non-binary genitalia combination the giver of such a gift would have had.

It was perfect.

"The power, unlimited power," the boy whispered. "Never cleaning again. Never, never, never, never!" he laughed maniacally.

To quote the Roman emperor Vespasian before he died of explosive diarrhoea. "Alas, I think I am becoming a god!" Harry shouted in ecstasy, and promptly, fell to the floor, frothing at the mouth from sheer universal gratitude.

Dobby, the beautiful creature, rushed over to his new employer and helped him shift into a stable side position so that he wouldn't choke on his spit as he shook on the floor like a fish out of water.

Harry had often considered the past few days what he should do with the elf, it would be hardly fair to give him absolutely no job at all. As the elf tutted over him, fretting and wringing the tea towel he was dressed in, he suddenly came to the decision that Dobby should also go to school while Harry was gone at Hogwarts.

But not any school. No, only the finest for the elf who'd helped him create this paradise on earth.

Dobby would be attending the British Butler Academy.

A tale worthy of its own spin-off series.

But that was a story.

For another time.

Harry passed out.

From joy.

-/-

AN: Was unsure what to do with this for a while since it doesn't really fit the rest of the stories vibe. But, Dobby will actually be going to butler school, and Harry did clean the house, so it's sort of canonical. The actual chapter coming tomorrow.C