If I May Be So Bold (A Harry Potter Universe Fanfiction)

32.

January 2035

JAMES

"James," called Elise the moment she arrived home after work one Friday. There was an urgency in her voice that made him spring up from the kitchen table and into the living room.

"What is it?" he asked, expecting bad news, but the look on Elise's face wasn't sadness or fear. It was shock. Real, genuine shock.

"You're never going to believe this," she said.

"What?" he asked again.

"Gillespie is retiring," said Elise. "End of the month."

"Steve?" said James. The shock made perfect sense now.

"Yeah," she said, a little breathless. She dropped down onto the couch and leaned back, a hand on her forehead. "He just came into my office twenty minutes ago and said so. "Said he and his wife talked about it over the holidays and it feels like it's time."

"No kidding," James said with a little laugh. "And here you were thinking you might have to push him out."

Gillespie had been a very good auror in his day, but he'd been around for ages. He'd already been in his fifties and twenty years into his career when James had been hired as an auror in 2004. Thirty one years later, he was still going.

"Well it didn't seem like he was ever going to retire," Elise said. "I thought I was going to have to demote him. He was taking so many days off, you know? Barely working when he was there. And poor Carston. God. I've been priming him to take over Gillespie's position since Ella was a baby and he just had to keep waiting and waiting."

"Are you even going to have interviews?"

"I mean I'll offer them," Elise said. "But it's already decided."

James laughed.

"I just can't believe it," she went on. "I mean he hadn't said anything. Hadn't even mentioned... It's just going to be so strange. He's such a fixture you know? He's the only person there I've never not worked with."

"Huh," James said. "I guess you're right." Everyone else had come and gone, himself included.

Elise got up to make dinner shortly after that. James was in the middle of telling her something about school when suddenly she just stopped what she was doing and started to cry.

There had been a number of years where Elise had been very weepy, but as the girls had gotten older, she'd regained most of that composure and stoicism James had associated with her when they'd first been together. She sometimes cried out of pride or when the girls went back to school, but this onset of tears seemed to have taken her by surprise.

"Oh god," she muttered, hurriedly wiping the corners of her eyes with the back of her hand.

"E," said James, putting a hand on the back of her neck.

"I'm fine," she said. "I'm just being silly."

"No you're not."

"It's just kind of sad, you know? I mean... he drives me crazy the majority of the time and he's a... a pain in the ass to be perfectly honest. But he was my mentor at one point, too. He was the first person to tell me I was good at this."

Elise's tears started to stream out quicker and James wrapped her up in his arms.

"This is so ridiculous," Elise said. "It's not like he's dead. He's just retiring."

James smoothed his hand up and down her back. Elise could be so intense sometimes, so serious and pragmatic, it often surprised him just how deeply she cared about people.