This time, Amarissa did close the distance between them. If for nothing else, if James passed out in the kitchen, it was going to hurt to hit this floor. She didn't relish trying to clean him up off of it while he was spaced out. Tentatively, she pressed one hand up against the side of his face, able to feel the slide of stubble underneath her hand. There was a tension though too. It was built through his entire body and it made her frown just slightly.
"James," Amarissa said softly, trying to recapture his attention, to try and bring him back into the present. She wasn't even sure if she could break him out of the memory he was experiencing. Merlin, she didn't even know if it was safe. But it was nearly impossible for her to repeatedly watch him slip into these near trances, especially when it seemed as though he was reliving something unpleasant, and not try to do anything about it.
And then he was back, gritting out a name that she wasn't sure if she should have expected or not. It certainly wasn't a surprise. She glanced off to the side for a moment. It seemed as though she was going to have to disperse another one of her secrets. It involved another task relating to her job, and one that nobody was ever supposed to know about. But James... he had a right to know. And now that he asking, she found that she couldn't deny him. To say that she knew that they hadn't caught him would imply that he could be wandering around somewhere, but she knew a truth that was very different from that. She accepted the cigarette that he offered to her wordlessly; she needed it. Balancing it between her own fingertips, she inhaled, and then exhaled the smoke in the form of a sigh. This was going to be tricky to explain.
"When you all come back, you come back with the clothes you were wearing when you died, and with any items you had on your person when you died. And because of such, there are magical signs around resting places that we've come to know to look for." She twisted her lips to the side, took another drag on the cigarette and then finally met his gaze. "A little after you all came back, I went and," she faltered for the proper wording. She supposed 'dug' was technically correct, but she didn't like what it implied. "I went and found him," she continued. "He's not back. I've continued to check. You can't tell anyone, besides Remus and Sirius, do you understand? I will get in trouble."
It was just another thing she could get in trouble for if anyone found out. Within her own organization, it wasn't her job to check graves. They got to what Death Eater graves they could to check, but the English Ministry still wasn't welcoming such ideas; indeed, they were staunchly against it. It was frustrating, but they had mostly complied with it, continuing on the legal routes of negotiation. No one knew that Amarissa Cross had gone out and checked to make sure that Peter Pettigrew was still in the ground.