Jily Oneshots (pt2)

Dead Men Rise Up Sometimes

by cgner

prologue.

Three.

Lily's heart galloped in her chest.

Two.

She imagined her fingertips tingling.

One.

Truly, she should have been used to this by now.

Zero.

The second hand ticked over the ornately-lettered twelve on Lily's watch. She brushed a finger over Podmore's hand, which lay cold and ashen in death. The moment she made contact, he launched into a sitting position, his eyes flying open. The white sheet that had covered him pooled in his lap while his hands rushed to his throat.

"Hi," Lily offered.

Sirius grunted behind her.

Sturgis Podmore, age forty-three years, five months, and ten days at the time of his demise, tried to suck in a few breaths, but his lungs persistently failed to fill. After scrabbling against nothing but skin, his fingers withdrew from his throat, but they didn't stray far, lingering nearby. In Lily's experience, this was a common enough habit in strangulation victims.

She waved at Podmore, and his attention finally shifted to something other than his inability to breathe.

Fifty seconds.

"Hello," she said, "I'm Lily, and this grunty sod behind me is Sirius. We've got less than a minute before I touch you again and you're off for good. Would you like to tell us who killed you?"

Podmore took in the hexagonal-tiled floor, the fluorescent lighting, and the unmistakable wall of large, metal drawers from which his perch protruded. His face fell, but only for a moment. Then he nodded with enthusiasm, and opened his mouth to speak.

He managed a faint wheeze, and nothing more.

"Shite," muttered Sirius.

Violet bruises spiraled around Podmore's neck in a thick coil. Whatever the murder weapon had been—it had the wrong imprint for rope—it had put an end to both his life and his capacity for speech.

Podmore mimed writing something out with a pen, a hopeful look in his basset hound eyes.

"Damn," Lily said, patting down the pockets on her sunshine-yellow trench coat. "Sirius?"

She turned to find him scrounging through his pockets, but he only withdrew a few loose coins, his sparse ring of keys, and a sad piece of gum in worn silver wrapping. Lily stepped forward to snatch the gum from his hands and hurried to unwrap it.

"Pen!" she said.

At the tinny sound of a palm slapping on metal, she paused, turning back to Podmore. His other hand was miming sliding across his throat in the universal sign for cut.

"What is it?" she asked, glancing at her watch.

Thirty seconds.

Her heart hurtled against her ribs.

Podmore beckoned Lily over and smoothed out the sheet on his lap. She rushed back to watch him draw slow, deliberate letters on the sheet.

"V," Lily said, eyes following the lines traced out by his stubby fingers. "O. L. D."

She wondered if the suffocation had damaged his brain in addition to his throat.

Twenty seconds.

"Hurry," she pleaded, and Podmore sped up his writing. "E. M. O. R. T."