Jily oneshots

Means of Egress

by BookWorm77071 on fanfiction.net

Lily's already dressed, down the pole, and ready to go, waiting in the passenger seat of the truck before she realises no one else is coming.

She blinks. Did she imagine...? No, there's the brigade siren, wailing in the background. It won't shut off until the truck drives out.

Lily blinks again. Pinches herself. Yes, she's definitely awake.

Why isn't anybody coming? Some poor civilian home is going up in flames right now. A child could be dying. Or already dead.

Lily looks around. The siren has been going off for a minute and a half now, and none of her fellow firefighters are coming. This has never happened before. They're a professional bunch. Fire Captain McGonagall keeps them all in line.

She hears a clank from the the second floor, a muffled curse, and a moment later she sees Marlene sliding down the pole.

"What're you all waiting for, then?" Lily asks her.

"Could ask you the same thing," Marlene grumbles. "Just go. Siren won't turn off until you do. We're trying to sleep, you know."

Lily blinks at her in disbelief. "I know we haven't cleaned this windshield in...ever, but it looks like you're just standing there, in your pyjamas, not getting on the truck and driving us to the fire."

"And," says Marlene.

"And what?"

"We haven't cleaned this windshield in ever and it looks like I'm just standing there. But's the wrong preposition."

"But and and are both conjunctions!" calls their fellow firefighter, Mary MacDonald, from their bunks.

"Shut up and go already!" Benjy Fenwick says, sleep and anger evident in his voice even though he is on the top floor, with Mary.

"Marlene, people are dying! Let's go!"

"Honestly, Lily no one's dying. Haven't you seen the location?"

"What's it matter-"

"It's at that dumb bloke's. The one on Gryffindor. He just moved there six weeks ago, and he's called the department fourteen times. He's an idiot," Marlene says, quite confidently, "and McGonagall says we don't have to go anymore."

"What?" Lily cries. "Are you-is she-for real?"

"Evans, really, calm down-"

"You're sentencing a civilian to death because you don't like him! And McGonagall's all right with it!"

"No one's sentencing him to any sort of death, honestly, and I didn't say I didn't like him. But he's a right dolt."

"This is insane," Lily says, half to herself, and throws herself in the driver's seat. "This is insane," she says again, slamming her foot down on the gas.

The drive to Gryffindor Court is a short one, but Lily feels every second, certain that this poor man is locked in his own home, smoke clouding his vision and his throat, his body trying and failing to fight the heat. Lily can nearly feel the flames licking her own form, feel the fire climbing up her legs...

Ugh. This is why she isn't supposed to take the truck anywhere alone. Under Fire Captain McGonagall, no one's supposed to take the truck anywhere alone, but she specifically. And though she pretended to be very upset at being singled out so, she was secretly very grateful.

Dumbledore had been a little more...liberal, as Fire Captain.

The truck's siren is the only the light in the night, and she can't hear any screams or smell any smoke, so it is abundantly clear even before she reaches the split-level house on Gryffindor that there is no fire.