This Time, Last Time (A Harry Potter Universe Fanfiction)

2.

"Oh no."

The doors opened at their floor, and she preceded him out, saying, "Good luck with that."

"Crap. Anna, no, what'd you have to say that for?" he asked, raking his hand through his hair as she strode out, heels clicking on the black, tile floor. "We haven't- I haven't spoken to her in eleven years," he said in a low voice. Anna just kept walking.

She glanced over her shoulder at him. "You'd have realized in about five minutes anyway," she said, heading further down the hall to where the court officials worked.

"Crap!" he said again, though no one was there. "Crap, what am I s'posed to-"

Anna just wiggled her fingers at him without turning around and turned the corner leaving him face to face with the door which lead to the auror's department. He shook his head slowly from left to right and pulled out his wand to scan at the door. Too late now. He'd already accepted.

Inside the door, James took his time heading down the hallway, reading over the name plates on each of the offices. Back when he had worked here, Elise's office had been a small closet of a space, the second door on the left as soon as you entered the auror's department. He checked immediately, heart pounding, for her name on the door, but it now read "Carston Finster," one of his students from his very first class of first years. James was both relieved and a little sad. He'd spent a lot of time in that office. He could picture her so well there. He'd come up to the open door, knocking twice on the wall next to it and she'd have her blonde hair tied up in a ponytail, as she always did - neat and sleek at work, but wispy and a little loose after. And she'd be curled up in her swivel chair - which he'd always joked could have swallowed her little frame if it was alive - with her legs twisted up in some impossible position. She never sat with both feet on the floor. Never.

He could still have listed, in order, all the books she had stacked along the back of her desk. He could even picture the last state of the corkboard to the right of the door, constantly evolving with Elise's most recent assignments and her own personal leads. She had liked to dig around on her own. She was always talking about work. Even at home.

His stomach felt all twisted up already. He thought about Elise all the time, but never this specifically. He always stopped himself before he got sucked in too deeply. And he never talked about her. After everything with Dawson had begun to quiet down, he had thought about telling Raigan what had happened, but he never did and she knew better than to ask.

And Dawson was a whole other story. James passed his old office a little farther down the hall, a decent sized room next to one of the larger conference rooms and, conveniently, located just past the old muggle vending machine which someone had refurbished as a hobby and brought in to work. Dawson could be found fishing out Chocolate Frogs and Licorice Wands probably twelve times a day. Piper had inherited his sweet tooth.

Thinking about it made him sad, so James stopped himself.

His own office had been right at the end of the hall, but it too now bore a different nameplate: Regina Taylor.

Gillespie's office, at least, hadn't changed. He found it, as always, at the end of the hall, just to the right of Potter's. The two senior executives bookended the department head. The door stood halfway open so James just knocked to announce his arrival and pushed it open the rest of the way and poked his head in. "Hey there, Steve," he said pleasantly, pushing away his rather morose train of thought.

"James Mason," he boomed, turning around. "Or should I call you Professor?" he joked. "Welcome back, son." Gillespie was a rather rotund man with an impressive moustache. He sported a nasty scar on his forehead which he was forever seeking out excuses to tell the story of. For someone who'd been an auror as long as he had, nearly forty years now, he was frankly jolly. Just now he wore a wide grin that crinkled his blue eyes.