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

18.

You're still living in the way back then

But I never meant to hurt you or to lose a friend

'Cause time's going by on a runaway train

And there's nothing we can do to bring it back again

-"Stay," Gabrielle Aplin

July 2018

The door to the Auror's Department flew open with such force that no one, no matter where in the department they were, could have missed it. James, who happened to be in Gillespie's office sitting in view of the hallway, saw it too. The door flew open, slammed into the wall, and then Carston came bursting through looking an odd combination of spooked and exhilarated.

"I've caught him!" he announced, marching down the hall towards the executive offices. All down the corridor, aurors began opening their office doors, poking their heads out. "I caught Pauley." Gillespie jumped up out of his seat and James followed him out the door. Pretty soon a crowd had gathered all around Carston, missing only a few of the aurors who were out of the office: Potter, as usual, Elise, and Regina.

"Well where is he then?" asked Gillespie. "What've you done with the fellow?"

"Elise has him," he said excitedly. "She took him to the temporary confinement cells. We've already set up an emergency trial for him tomorrow morning. She'll be back any minute."

"Where'd you find him?" asked a witch with long grey hair who James had seen around, but did not know. He was pretty sure she was Potter's secretary, because she never got sent out on any sort of business and didn't often take part in departmental meetings.

"His office," said Carston grinning. "We'd been going through a whole list of ideas and he wasn't anywhere and I said, 'let's just go to the headquarters or his house or something' because they were really the only places left we could think of to try, and there he was. Working like nothing had ever happened. Pretty stupid, if you ask me, but it's definitely him. Elise used a tiny drop of veritaserum just to confirm. They said they'll use the full dose in court tomorrow because it's such a big case. Full wizengamot and everything."

Carston looked giddy and the grin on his face, in combination with his sandy blonde hair and blue eyes, made him seem even younger than usual.

James remembered how he'd felt the first time he'd been responsible for a big breakthrough on an investigation. He'd been working with Dawson on an assignment, their first of several together, and he had come back into the office one day with news that they'd figured out who was responsible for a series of false advertisements that You-Know-Who had returned which had sent a lot of people into a panic. If anyone had bothered to look closely, there were all sorts of holes in the argument, but people were gullible, and still a little scared, and they had fallen for it. Nobody wanted to have another experience like when he had actually come back and no one believed it. No one wanted to be hoodwinked.

Turned out they were anyway.

James and Dawson had caught the guy in charge and he'd never tried anything since.

Carston was still going on about the details of his capture when Elise arrived.

She squeezed Carston's shoulder as she passed, gave him a smile, and pushed through the rest of the crowd. She paused briefly in front of James to say, "We'll need you as a witness tomorrow. About the storeroom." He nodded and then she turned into her office. James guessed that no one would see her the rest of the day.