Well your left hand's free

And your right's in grip

With another left hand

Watch his right hand slip.

-"Left Hand Free," alt-J

July 2018

"I've had an idea," said Elise when James arrived at the office after another Monday morning spent watching Anniston walk into work and not do anything suspicious. James had not even had a chance to say hello to her.

"You have," he said, raising his eyebrows. He leaned across the desk and kissed her and then sat down in the chair opposite her.

"I have," she agreed. "That muggle stuff cart is still out there behind Gringotts, yeah?"

James nodded.

"Good. Alright, I'm going to issue a search warrant and that'll give you permission to interview the goblins working at the back entrance, ask them if they've seen anything, etc. And then you can find out how long they've been working that particular job, how long they've been a witness, right? Well it can't have been that long. We know that. So you ask who worked here before and say we need to question them to, under the pretense of trying to get this cart shut down, and that could potentially get you in and definitely get you a chance to talk with those other two goblins you used to see all the time. What do you think?"

She said all of this sitting at the edge of her seat, were her hands clasped on the desk, and her eyes wide and locked on his.

"Yeah," said James. "I think so."

"Good," she said. "So why don't you take the morning to get a general questionnaire written up, trying to get as much out of them as possible about what we're actually interested in, and show it to me when you're done. Hopefully we can send you back there this afternoon."

"Got it," said James. "Okay."

"Great. Well I'm glad you caught me," she said, reaching for her robes. "I need to head back to Magical Law Enforcement because I've got more Cleansweep people coming into question this morning but I'll be back at... quarter to twelve or something. So if you could just have it ready by then."

"No problem," said James with a bemused smile. She was already up and halfway out the door, but she turned around all of the sudden, kissed him on the cheek, and said, "Good morning," and then she was leaving again.

James laughed, calling "Always out of order with you, isn't it?"

"Shut up," said Elise over her shoulder, and he chuckled to himself and grabbed a fresh piece of parchment to get working.

---

"Sorry to interrupt, Elise, I have a- oh." Carston stopped dead when he saw Elise's chair empty and James sitting at the desk instead. He had finished up a pretty good length list of potential questions just a few minutes ago.

"She's out terrorizing some Cleansweep workers for information," James smiled. "Said she'll be back at quarter to twelve-ish."

"Sure," he said. He took a step back, but he hesitated to leave.

"Did she put you on the Berlin investigation, then?" asked James.

Carston nodded.

"That's her passion project."

Carston pulled up the other chair and sat down. "Yeah," he said. "I gathered that."

He sat forward, elbows on his knees and looked down at the floor. James thought he looked stressed.

"She thinks very highly of you," said James. "She wouldn't have given you this if she didn't think you could handle it."

"Yeah I know she likes me," said Carston, carefully not looking up. He sat there with something else sitting on the tip of his tongue, waiting for permission to spill out, but he never said it. Instead he sat up, checked his watch, checked the door, and said, "How are you not scared of her."

James smiled. "I know her," he said.

Carston blew out a breath and ran his hand through his hair. "I just don't have clue what I'm doing and she keeps giving me these projects that like... I don't even know where to begin with so I feel like I'm in here asking stupid questions all the time, things that I should be able to figure out without her having to tell me."

"I don't even know what I'm doing," said James. "I never know what I'm doing. The fact that you ever learned anything from me is a miracle."

Carston shook his head, laughing. "You're the best teacher at Hogwarts. It's a miracle I learned anything from anyone else."

James had never been told something like that before and he found himself momentarily unable to speak. "Thanks," he said finally, frowning. "That's nice of you."

Carston shrugged and checked his watch again. James could tell he was still battling with his self-doubt. He had seen him get in his head like this a few times when James had pushed him on a paper or a project or the application of a particularly difficult defensive spell. He always came out of it like a different person, but part of his learning and growth process was this mid-project shut-down where he decided he couldn't do it, shouldn't have been asked to in the first place.

"Carston do you remember when I assigned you an extra research project over the summer that I didn't give to the rest of your class?"

Carston nodded and looked up at the ceiling. "Current events."

"You wrote me a letter first week of summer and said you couldn't handle the assignment because it was too complex and too advanced for you. And then I said it was optional and you came back to school with one of the best papers I've ever read from a student. Maybe the best." James paused to gather his thoughts. "Look, Elise isn't making you do this. She gave you the assignment because she cares about it and she trusts you to do it well, but it was your choice to accept it.

"I figured out early on that you were good at research and so I pushed you in that regard especially because it's important. It's at least ninety percent of this job actually. We need people like you who can sort through a whole load of rubbish and say, okay this is the information we need and here's what it all means or could mean together. Elise figured that out quick too and that's why she gives you work like this. You're capable of it. We've got a lot of people who can do defensive magic, but not so many who can get us to the point where we even need to use it. Keep asking questions if you need to. There's nothing wrong with that. But you are capable of doing this, even when it feels like you don't know what you're doing. The fact that you have this job at all is a testament to that, because god, I could've ruined a lot of potential if I'd've done as bad a job teaching you as I sometimes felt like I was doing. We've all got more in us than we think."

Carston didn't say anything to this. Instead, he sat there for a long time, eyes on his hands and a frown on his face. James had a feeling he was thinking about the actual content of the assignment and not about James' peptalk. James checked his watch - nearly time for Elise to be back now. And that was when Carston finally spoke. "You're right," he said, and then, "You and her are really...?"

James just nodded. They heard the department door open and the telltale sound of heels coming down the hall. Carston stood up.

"Thanks," he said, then his voice much lower, teasing, he added, "I'll let you two uh..." He smirked and headed out the door.

"Oh hi, Carston," said Elise out in the hall. "Did you need something?"

"No, but thanks. Professor Mason helped me sort it out."

"Oh," she said. "Okay. Sure. Good. Well just let me know." And then she was stepping inside her office again.

"Professor Mason, huh?" she asked.

James laughed. "It's like how your childhood friend's parents will always be Mrs. and Mr. I guess."

She smiled and sat down in the chair Carston had just vacated instead of across from him. "So show me what you got."

---

Elise was just about to send James on his way again when he began to panic. A terrifying fact had just occurred to him at this inopportune moment and though James was embarrassed to admit it aloud, especially to Elise, he didn't know what else to do, so he turned around to face her, clutching the list of questions she had fine tuned in his hand, and said. "Uhm... Elise?"

She looked up from her desk. She was already getting herself ready to head off for another slew of Cleansweep questionings scheduled for that afternoon.

"Uhm-" said James again. "See I've just- I've just realized a bit of a small problem."

She blinked. "Okay."

"Well, see I haven't exactly questioned anyone since, uhm..." he trailed off.

"2007," Elise filled in.

"Well, yeah," said James.

Elise cracked a smile and bit her lower lip to try to stop it. "Okay- yeah. Right. Well- uhm... I suppose we could... or you could... I mean." She paused, frowning and smiling at the same time.

"Elise this is giving me no help whatsoever."

She shot him a look and went back to her planner.

"Let me see if Potter and Gillespie are willing to push back this meeting at four and if they are... I'll go with you. Go see if you catch Anniston on his lunch or something and I'll send you an owl, alright?"

"Alright," said James. Then he paused and added, "Thanks," feeling a little sheepish.

---

Given it was nearly one by the time James left the ministry, he only caught the tail end of Anniston's lunch break, arriving just in time to watch him head inside and have another polite conversation with absolutely nothing of worth. He couldn't think of anything else worthwhile to do in the meantime so he took a slight dip out of his auror duties to attend to his professor ones.

Sitting himself at a table in the back of the Leaky Cauldron, he ordered himself a gillywater and a plate of fish and chips and took a small stack of letters from his students. The overachievers had begun sending in their questions on their summer assignments. A few letters would arrive sporadically throughout the next few weeks but the majority always piled up in the last two days of break. James never quite understood how anyone expected to wait for his answer and have any time to finish the assignment in that amount of time, so he usually ignored the letters and warned students at the end of the school year that they wouldn't get an answer if they put the work off too long.

But the couple he'd received already with a month still to go to make revisions and resolve problems, he was perfectly happen to answer. It struck him as odd not to have a letter from Sean O'Connell who'd just won the Triwizard in June, or his girlfriend Evelyn, both of whom were just the sort to be on top of the game. But they'd graduated. His new class of seventh years were, truthfully, a bit of a mess. There were a few good students, a few very talented in his subject - only about seven of the whole class had kept DADA past O.W.L. year which was unprecedently small - but the rest of them were just dramatic and a little goofy.

Piper's class had a lot of potential. His fourth years weren't bad either. Bunch of teacher's pets, but that wasn't always a bad thing.

He got wrapped up in his responses until about half past two when an owl came fluttering right into the restaurant with a letter from Elise, very brief, but written in her neat, small mix of cursive and print. All it said was that she'd meet him at the front of the bank at ten to three and had about an hour and a half, because she hadn't been able to push back her meeting much.

James finished up a response to a third year girl named Eliza who worried about everything and couldn't submit any assignment carrying more gravity than a worksheet without coming to visit him in his office and ask about it, then he gathered his things, dropped the letters at the post office three doors down and headed to Gringotts.

He leaned against the window of an apothecary opposite and waited all of a minute and a half for her to arrive (ten minutes earlier than she had said).

James headed over to her and kissed her on the cheek. "Hey," he said.

"Hi," said Elise. She hitched her bag up her shoulder and said, "Let's go."

James decided she was intimidating when she was in work-mode. She wore neat black robes today over a black pencil dress and black heels. Coupled with her pristine ponytail, she looked every bit the powerful business woman.

"God I hate goblins," she muttered. "Never met a friendly one."

James smirked, but she was right. Maybe they seemed nice enough to each other, but by wizard standards, they were all a bunch of brats. "So you're in charge here, right?" asked James.

"I guess, but you'd better back me up," she said, glancing at him.

"Course," he said. They fell quiet around the back side of the bank and headed towards the employee entrance where the two goblins stood. James hadn't learned their names yet but he recognized them.

"Afternoon," said Elise as they approached. Two pairs of beady eyes had zeroed in on them with suspicion. "My name is Elise Walsh and this is James Mason. We're aurors at the ministry and we have received several complaints about this cart behind us-" she nodded her head back towards it, "which sells muggle merchandise. Sometimes illegally enchanted. In order to get it shut down, we need a little more information and your job puts you in view of the cart which makes you a witness. May I have your names?"

"Bogrim," said the first with a sneer. He glanced at this companion with the definition of curled lips.

"Rickford," said the other, with a look of equal distaste.

"Excellent, thank you," said Elise, jotting their names down in her notebook. "Now would it be possible to find someone to take your place here for a few minutes while we ask you a few questions?"

"Perhaps," sneered the first goblin. James had already forgotten their names. Goblin names all sounded the same to him.

By the time they had wrapped things up with the two goblins, James had just finally begun to remember their names. Their interview had been pretty successful when it came to gathering enough information to have the muggle curio cart shut down, but in terms of what they were actually interested in, they didn't get much. Still, James was hoping Grapfort and Riglock would have more to say. They certainly had more of a rapport with Anniston, or at least, Anniston seemed to make more effort to engage them than he did these two.

Bogrig had just gone to fetch them, but Rickford had stayed behind, probably to supervise James and Elise. The goblins had made it perfectly clear they did not trust either one of them, despite the fact that they had been shown identification and documents proving that they were in fact aurors. They'd given their answers grudgingly.

They all sat in silence, Elise pouring over the notes she'd made, and then James realized something terrible. A major oversight on his part.

"Uhm," he said, "Elise?" He began inventing rapidly, because Rickford sat across the table from the two of them, peering over his glasses as though bound and determined to catch him at something. Elise turned her head to him, frowning. "I'm feeling-" James paused, desperately searching for some excuse to leave this instant. "I'm feeling a little lightheaded," he said, hoping his pause didn't register unnaturally. "You know my..." James squeezed his eyes shut and bent over his lap. He wasn't much of an actor, but he'd learned a thing or two from Piper who was dramatic as all get-out. "My condition," he finished to his knees. "Didn't really eat lunch today."

He estimated he had thirty seconds to get out of this room before Grapfort and Riglock came in and recognized who he was. His last encounter with them was not the sort of last encounter one typically wanted to have in the event of an interrogation. They had, after all, thought he was trying to break into the bank.

"What, are you alright?" asked Elise, who didn't seem to have a clue what was going on. He could only hope her surprise might make Rickford buy his pathetic excuse.

James shook his head. "No," he said, trying his best to make his voice sound a bit hoarse or weak or something. He lifted his head slowly and made eye contact with Elise. It seemed to click with her all of the sudden what he was trying to do, though he doubted she had arrived at why.

"Well... well you need to go home then. Ged some food before you- before something-"

"Yes alright," said James, fumbling for his wand so he could apparate.

But of course, that was when the door opened and Bogrig strode back in, Grapfort and Riglock behind him.

Riglock stopped dead in the doorway, his beady black eyes narrowed. "Intruder," he hissed and raised his hand. James was not too familiar with the potential of goblin magic, but he had a definite and sinking feeling that he was not in for anything good.

Luckily his wand was already in his hand. "Protego," he said, and the force of his shield knocked all three goblins down. Even Rickford, who'd been seated, was now plastered to the back of his chair like he'd been physically knocked backwards.

James looked sideways at Elise with wide eyes, but she was focused on something in front of her. James didn't know what it could be. Her eyes didn't quite point at any one of the four goblins or even at an object. Her hand was gripped around her wand so hard her knuckles had turned white. She seemed like she was waiting for something, an exact moment.

James turned back to the goblins and saw Riglock, now looking positively livid, raise his hand again, lips curled back in a snarl, but the spell that lashed through the air came from their side of the table again, from Elise's wand. All at once, the goblins limbs snapped to their sides and they went rigid.

Elise had stood up and she leaned forward now, hands on this desk. "If you'll examine the agreement written and signed by a conglomerate of both wizards and goblins regarding our shared interest in this bank, aurors are allowed investigational rights at any time we deem necessary. Under the current climate and recent events which you may or may not have seen in the news, there is a lot at stake which involves Gringotts and it's workers, both wizard and goblin. It is crucial that we have your cooperation if you expect to maintain the peace and relative order of the magical world and its existence alongside muggles. My coworker was assigned to be here last month. He disapparated not for fear of being recognized by the two of you-" she looked directly at Grafort and Riglock now, making eye contact with each of them, " but for fear of being recognized by a wizard whom we have named a potential suspect. An enemy working among you. He was not here to try to steal from the very bank his own savings are kept in.

"Any more signs of violence from you and I will have to jinx you again for the safety of my worker, but because I trust that the written agreement between our species will keep all six of us alive and safe, I'm going to release you in a moment, and we will all calmly discuss several subjects of which you four and others in your workplace may have information."

She removed the spell and they all relaxed. "Am I clear?"

There were no verbal responses, but no one moved to harm again.

"Excellent," said Elise. She sat again, and nodded that they should all take their seats as well. "Now," she said. "James, you weren't feeling well." She turned to him.

He blinked. "Right," he said.

"If you've got enough energy, I'd love for you to head back to the ministry quickly and deliver a message for me, but then you really go home and get something to eat."

God, she was smart. She had saved his reputation twice in the last two minutes: once for today and once for a month ago.

"You can handle this alone?" he asked.

"Of course," she nodded, scribbling a note on a blank sheet in the back of her notebook. She passed it to him with a small smile and said, "Feel better, yeah?"

"Yeah," said James. He disapparated just as she began to ask for verbal confirmation of their names and businesses for her records.

---

As James wasn't actually sick, he decided to wait around at the office until Elise returned from her meeting with Potter and Gillespie, now pushed back even later than they had agreed to. It was nearly seven by the time she had wrapped things up with them and returned to her office to pack up for the night. James had been able to answer all the rest of his letters from students, and help Carston with a bit of a hiccup in his research in the interim. He caught up with her on her way out the door again and she looked surprised to see him.

"You're still here," she said.

"Yeah," said James. "What happened this afternoon?"

She glanced at him. "Well that cart's gone, that's for sure."

James waited for more, but she didn't offer it. "Come on," she said, and very quietly slipped her hand in his. James squeezed and let her take him wherever she had planned to go.

They landed a moment later at the muggle restaurant near her house that James had taken her to earlier that summer. When they had been seated at a little table for two with drinks and appetizers in front of them, Elise leaned forward and said, "So it's not what I expected."

"Alright, then what is it?"

"Well they didn't actually want to tell me much of anything, but I gathered a bit, and I think the main thing is that Anniston's been out trying to acquire all these goblin made treasures and things and 'return' them so to speak to their rightful owners or whatever goblins believe about the exchange of things. But he's not doing it because he believes the goblins actually have a right to any of it, obviously. He's trying to butter them up. I think by how quickly all four of them were willing to give information on that cart, you can pretty safely assume they're not too fond of muggles, which is bad, because that means they're that much closer to siding with the opposition. You've heard Potter's story about when he broke into Gringotts. I told him what I'd found out and he think it's pretty dangerous that they've been given as much as they have already. Apparently, they'll go pretty far for something they think should belong to goblins. In the case of his story, actually going against their own kind. Which leads me to that supposed family vacation you mentioned a while back."

"You think Anniston's going on that vacation specifically to try and get something they'd like?"
"It's just a suspicion, but that's my hunch."

They fell quiet. James took a long sip of his drink, thinking over the consequences of the situation.

"So basically," he said, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. He set his cup down. "We're left to hoping that they care more about not being ruled by wizards than by gaining any sort of power over muggles."

"Unless we can prevent that it comes down to that," said Elise.

"How would we do that?"

She shrugged and turned her face to the window. It was raining, as usual. Her face was shadowed but he could see the worry in her eyes by the flickering light of the candle between them. "I don't know yet."

"Can I ask a stupid question that has almost nothing to do with this?" James asked.

Elise frowned and looked back at him. "Alright."

"Are there any girl goblins? Because I've never seen one."

Elise let out a laugh and James grinned at her. "I'm serious," he said.

"You're ridiculous," she said, smiling back at him with bright eyes.