This Time, Last Time Chapters 7-9 from Elise's point of view

Elise waited behind her office door with her heart pounding. Why she was so dead set on doing this she didn't know. She didn't want to do it, didn't even think it was a particularly good idea, but for some reason, she knew she was going to do it anyway.

She heard him head down the hall, knew without checking that it was him and not someone else, because somehow, after all this time, his gait was still so familiar.

She pushed through the door and after him, trying to walk at exactly his pace, not too fast because she didn't want to catch up to him but not so slow that she would miss him.

He reached the door and she thought he might not even notice her behind him, but he glanced back, saw her coming, and stood with his back against the door to hold it open for her. There was no backing down now.

She stopped in front of him.

"James," she said, but she regretted it instantly. Saying his name felt weird. It felt too personal. It felt too comfortable. It was getting hard to breathe.

"Elise," he said. "Hi."

She felt dizzy. Hearing him say her name was even worse. He let the door fall shut. It clicked closed and Elise felt herself starting to sweat. She didn't have a plan. She didn't know what she wanted to say to him, only that ignoring him no longer seemed possible and she had to do something. She pushed the sleeve of her robes up her arm.

"How are you?" she asked. It was the only thing she could think to say.

He stared at her and only after a pause did he say, "Alright," and then "How are you?'

"Fine," said Elise, even though she didn't feel fine at all. She couldn't remember ever feeling this nervous. She remembered feeling nervous around James often, but not like this. It had been butterflies in her stomach nervous. It had been looking at him and knowing this was a boy who kissed her nervous.

He wasn't a boy anymore. And she wasn't nineteen.

Elise searched for something to say. She wished he would say something first, but then again, she didn't. If he directed the conversation, she didn't know where it would go and that was dangerous, especially here. How long did they have before someone walked by or got off the elevator at this floor? How likely was it that they would remain alone much longer?

"You're going to tail Brigg's today?" she asked finally.

He nodded.

"Good. Uhm- try the Leaky Cauldron, alright? He has lunch there most Fridays." This felt so strange to say. She was used to giving direction, but not to him. He had technically been more senior than her when they'd worked together, but mostly they'd been partners.

"Yeah," said James. "I will. Thanks."

He stood there like he was waiting for her to say something else, but Elise was out of ideas. He took a step back.

"James?" she said quickly, only to stop him from walking any further. She'd never work up this kind of courage again if she let him go now. Her heart started pounding again. Say something, she willed him, but of course, she was the one who had stopped him and he stood there absolutely silent waiting for her to come out with it.

"D'you wanna come over sometime?" she asked. She felt her face pale as the words came out, a surprise even to her.

"Okay," said James. He said it so quickly, so eagerly.

"Okay," said Elise. Her heart rate started to settle again. They could talk later, not here. She would have time to figure out what she wanted to say and ask. She would not have to stay so hyper alert of all the people who might overhear them. She needed this, she realized. She really needed to talk to him. She couldn't keep pretending she didn't want to. It didn't make sense to avoid him anymore. This summer wasn't something she could just get through and then he'd leave and everything would go back to how it was. He'd been near her again and he'd said her name and he'd looked her in the eye and Elise wasn't going to be able to forget that.

"When?" James asked.

Elise pressed her lips together, glanced down at the ground, and took a deep breath. When was a very good question. She thought about playing it cool, suggesting some time a few days from now, but the thought of having to pass by him in the halls for days before they spoke was too much. She'd never be able to handle it. "Tonight, maybe?"

"Yeah," James said. He wasn't smiling, but looked at her in total awe, like he couldn't have hoped for anything better, and Elise suddenly felt like they were standing in front of the check-in desk as that bed and breakfast in Suffolk, right after she'd kissed him. She hadn't been pretending even a little bit and she'd still thought James' was until she'd seen the way he looked at her when their faces were still close together.

"Yeah, I'll just... meet you back here," James said.

"Okay," said Elise. Was she blushing? It felt like it. She couldn't stop thinking about how much courage it had taken to kiss him like that, knowing how obvious it would be that she wasn't faking it. She needed to get out of there. She needed to get back to her office where no one could look at her. Her face was revealing far too much right now, she was sure of it. "Okay, well... I'll let you go," she said. "I'll uhm- I'll see you later I guess."

Then she pulled out her wand to let herself back into the office, hoping to get out of there fast, but he said her name again and she froze. "It'll- it'll be good to talk," he said. "I've missed you."

It took a lot of self control to keep everything she felt at those words in. She wanted to smile and cry at once. She wanted to jump up and down and also maybe throw something very hard. She didn't trust herself to speak so she just nodded, and then hurried back inside, walking very quickly, head down, into her office where she locked the door and sat down at her desk with her face in her hands trying hard to breathe evenly.

She was shaking everywhere. That had been the scariest thing she'd done in ten years.

—-

The rest of the day was agonizing. Elise felt like she was going to throw up. She did her best to pretend it wasn't happening and get something done, but her limited capacity to focus on work grew even smaller when James returned from tailing Briggs and she could hear the low undertones of his conversation with Gillespie two rooms down. A part of her was interested in what they were talking about, but her body was going through some kind of intense emotional anticipatory response and she couldn't even focus on trying to overhear.

Her hands were shaking, her face felt like it was buzzing, her teeth chattered even though she wasn't cold. After an hour, she gave up on working entirely. She sat there instead, waiting, wondering how she would make it appear like she hadn't been waiting for him.

By the time James finally poked his head in, she had been anticipating so long that the actual sight of him stopped her short. For ten whole seconds they stared at each other.

"Just give one minute," she said at last. "You can uhm... you can sit if you want."

She grabbed a quill and started writing, just making things up as she went. She had to appear like she'd been doing something. She had to make it seem like she hadn't just spent six hours thinking about whatever was about to happen. Elise had never been like this before. She had always been able to think about work. She had always been able to tune things out. Always except for right after everything had happened.

This thought ricocheted through her with sharp edges. She glanced up at him. He wasn't looking at her, but he wasn't looking at her in a way that Elise thought meant he was trying not to. She put her quill back in its cup, turned around to lock up her files, taking that moment with her back turned to rearrange her face, then she turned back to him.

"Okay uhm... you're ready to go?"

James nodded.

The next two minutes while they grabbed their belongings and walked down the hall, side by side, felt like they were happening to someone else.

She was about to leave when she noticed the hesitation on his face.

"It's the same place," she said quietly. As she said this, her mouth went very dry. It was going to be bad enough trying to forget him now if she needed to, but if stepped foot in that house again, there would be nothing for it. Elise would forever connect each place he'd stood with this night, would constantly remind herself that he had been there.

Everything she'd built up around her for ten whole years was quivering, ready to crash down, but Elise disapparated anyway. Let it, she thought.

She couldn't bear to look at James face when they arrived on the doorstep. She could sense him taking everything in and it hurt. She'd pushed him out of here. She unlocked the door and stepped inside. James followed behind her, steps quiet and careful.

She remembered walking into this room for the very first time. It hadn't looked this way then. It had been falling apart, the carpet molding and waterlogged, water stains covering the walls. But the way the light came in through the door in a slanted panel, the sound of the ocean in her ears, and James standing behind her, it felt the same.

"D'you mind if I go change?" she asked, mostly because she needed a minute. She left him quickly, shut the bedroom door behind her and squeezed her eyes shut hard. Everything was getting all stirred up again. Everything was coming back. James was right there outside the door, looking around probably at the house they'd fixed up and lived in together, at the house she had kept almost exactly the same, unable to picture it any other way.

She gave herself thirty seconds to sit on the edge of the bed, feeling waves of nausea roll over her, and then she pushed it back, found something easy to throw on instead of her work robes, and headed back out.

"You kept it the same," James said. She couldn't read his tone.

She just nodded. James looked back out the window.

"Want to go for a walk?" she asked.

Elise's mind was going a million miles a minute as they stepped outside and yet she couldn't think of a single thing to say. James didn't offer anything either, just walked beside her, standing patiently whenever she stopped to pick through the rocks in search of glass. She could feel her eyes on him every time, and she wasn't sure whether she wished he would look away or whether she wanted to turn and look him straight in the eye, to really take in the fact of him seeing her again She remembered thinking that when James looked at her, he was talking all of her in. He never just saw her surface. He'd somehow been able to see every part of her at once and that had been terrifying but it had also made her feel so loved.

She stood up and brushed the sand off her hands. She had to say something.

"James, can we talk about it?" she asked. Her throat started to tighten.

"About it?" he asked, even though she knew he was perfectly well aware what she meant.

"Yeah," Elise said. It was all she could manage. She was so hyper-aware of everything.

"Yeah," he agreed. "Let's talk about it."

He sounded so nervous. She wondered if he was feeling even an eighth of what was going on inside her.

They backtracked to a spot with a log but when James sat, Elise got scared. Sitting there next to him felt too intimate. She wasn't ready for it. She sat in the sand instead, looked down at her hands and tried to breathe evenly, but she couldn't.

She slid her hands across her stomach to hug herself and then the tears started. She realized she'd been holding them off all day, ever since she'd stopped him outside the door of the department.

James didn't reach out for her or say anything and she didn't blame him. How was he supposed to know what was okay? She'd been trying to keep her distance for weeks.

"Sorry," she said, though it angered her to apologize for crying about this. "I try not to think about it anymore because this happens."

"It's okay," James said automatically, and this made her angry too, because it wasn't really. It wasn't okay at all. It was the worst thing that had ever happened to her. It was something that continued to break her apart every time she was forced to think about it. But she knew James didn't mean it that way. He'd never really known what to do when people got emotional. He'd always liked that she was calm. He'd always liked that she didn't cry at every little thing.

That hadn't been an act, either. Elise really had been that way, but then this had happened and ever since her brain had gotten so busy. Her emotions had grown so overpowering.

"It's just when I saw Piper last weekend— She's so grown up. And I just started thinking how—" A new wave of nausea pushed against her stomach. "Oh my god," she said. A sob escaped. She covered her mouth, trying hard to squeeze everything back down. She didn't want to cry. She wanted to talk logically. She wanted to have an honest conversation with him.

But Elise had never said any of these things out loud. She had never, since the day it had happened and she had told him in the first place — shouted it at him rather — spoken out loud what had happened to her. She couldn't. Not even alone to herself. The words were too dirty, too mean.

"I just feel so guilty. All the time," Elise went on. James seemed unable to speak, but it didn't matter. She'd opened up the door she'd locked this all behind, and everything was pouring out against her will. She wiped the tears off her face even though more were still falling. "God, I mean you told me not to come. You told me. You said you needed help and I should get ahold of Dawlish and them. But I had to be idiotic and selfish and—" She shook her head, trying anything to clear her mind a little. "I thought it was so condescending that you'd ask me to just stay home and keep safe, like you didn't think I was good enough to keep up with you."

"I didn't mean—" James began to say, but she already knew that wasn't what he'd meant. Of course it wasn't. James had always thought highly of her as an auror and she'd known that, but she'd been so sensitive with everything else happening, so edgy. It hadn't mattered what she'd known. She'd just reacted.

"I know you didn't," she said, before he could finish his statement. She kept focusing on pushing the tears back. "You were being smart and I was..." She paused, exhaled. "You know I used to think being an auror meant using a lot of flashy spells and getting your name in the paper alongside big news stories, but it's not. I was so naive. God, I was so young, James. So young. I wasn't ready to be..."

"You would've done fine," James said quietly. He sounded so sincere. Elise couldn't entertain kind words like that right now. She needed to be angry with herself. She needed to let this all out.

"I couldn't even stop thinking about myself for five minutes. Too selfish to remember it wasn't just me dueling."

"Elise, no-" James said. "Don't pretend— that's not—"

"No, you don't get it," Elise snapped. "I never told you what happened." She'd managed to stop crying for a few seconds in her anger, but now began spilling out again, stinging at her eyes. She pulled her knees up and hugged them to her chest.

"You told me," James said. Elise began to shake her head. "You said it was just a curse. It wasn't your fault, Elise. You couldn't have known—"

"It wasn't just a curse, James," Elise snapped again before he could go further. He shouldn't have been trying to comfort her. She had done an awful, awful thing. She didn't deserve to be calmed down or told it was a mistake. She put herself in a position of danger knowing what she was risking. "It was the Cruciatus Curse. And it didn't hit me. I never felt it." Elise had goosebumps everywhere and her voice shook. This was the part he had never known. She hadn't been able to bring herself to admit it. The very thought of it made her sick to her stomach. She had never wanted to tell him, because if she did he would look at her differently. If she told him, he would know that she had done a really evil thing. She didn't like knowing this about herself. She couldn't bear anyone else knowing it, too.

But now it was out there and there was no taking it back.

James didn't say anything at first. Elise sobbed into her knees, sure he was so angry with her.

But then she felt him sit beside her in the sand and then his hand went to her side and he pulled her up against him. He smoothed his hand down her back, his touch so familiar it was almost painful.

"I'm so sorry I left," he whispered. "I'm so sorry."

She almost wanted him to be angry with her. She didn't know how to process this. They had not touched this way in such a long time, but it didn't feel like it at all. This was what she should have let him do all those years ago. He had tried to hug her and she had pushed him away, too horrified with herself to allow it, but she shouldn't have.

"Your friend had just lost her husband," she said shakily. "I understood."

Elise didn't know what either of them said after that. She knew he said something, knew she responded, but she couldn't hear any of it. Everything in her consciousness had been taken over by the feeling of his arms around her, his lips against her hair. It got to a point where it was too much. She needed him to let go.

"Let's go home," she said softly.

Back in the living room, she curled up on the sofa, unsure how to behave. She felt twenty one years old again. She'd just found out and she didn't know what to do. She had lay in this very spot that night, had curled up just like this and stared at the empty fireplace and wondered how she was supposed to go on from this, knowing what she knew.

The only thing that was different was that she let James go into the kitchen to make tea without a fight, drank it in silence and actually tried to allow it to calm her down, and then, when her cup was empty, instead of wishing he'd just go so she could deal with this alone, she laid back down with her head in his lap. When he put his hand in her hair, the past ten years were completely erased and it was just the two of them on that night, the hurt and the guilt fresh inside her.

But no matter how terrible a thing she'd done, James loved her, and this time she let him do that.

—-

Elise had fallen asleep a twenty one year old who'd just lost her baby. She woke up a thirty one year old realizing she was still in love with someone she'd thought she'd never see again. She lifted her head from his lap and James stirred. Her heart beat very fast in her chest.

"I forgot you were here for a minute," she said, which was not entirely true. She had known he was here. It was when exactly this was all taking place in the timeline of her life that was something of a surprise.

James put his hand down between them. His finger brushed against the side of her leg. She didn't know if she wanted him to move it away or put his whole palm on her thigh.

"James," she said. She put her hand down on his. She felt frenzied. Time seemed to be moving in slow motion, but her brain was going at least four times as fast.

"Mm?" James murmured in response.

"Never mind," she whispered.

Without really thinking it over first, Elise turned towards him, climbing into his lap. Her hands found his arms and she slid her palms up to his shoulders. Her brain shut off. Her hands went to the sides of his neck and then to his face and she felt his hands find her waist.

She kissed him, for no other reason than she wanted to. And James kissed her back.

"Stay tonight, okay?" she whispered.

She wanted to kiss him again, but she was too scared to. She wasn't quite sure what she had just done.

"Okay," said James.

Elise's heart beat very quickly again, but this time it didn't pound. It fluttered.