“A flock of rotting squid brains…” Evangeline Kuester repeated Johann Storm’s translation once more, staring at the moron chained to a chair a couple of metres away. “You called the residing elders a flock of rotting squid brains?” She pushed off the table and paced the short length of the small office the three were currently locked in.

The hearing had been a disaster. Apparently her colleague sent to interpret couldn’t speak decent Russian and their defendant spoke it even better. He spoke it well enough to insult the governing body, cause a commotion and get Eva, Johann and himself locked in a governmental office until they ‘sorted themselves out’. Eva had a great issue with being in confined spaces. It tended to bring back vicious memories that she wanted to forget completely. Today, however, she was too busy being furious than panicked.

“Do you want to be locked up permanently Mr Snugglesworth? In Russia!” Where it was freezing cold and the witch couldn’t wait to get home. But they’d been here all day and in this office for over an hour. “Or they might sent you onto Azkaban if you’re lucky!” No one was lucky to go there. But at least the dementors had gone.

Frustration grew as she considered the situation. This was going the opposite to plan.

Ms Kuester turned to face Johann, addressing him bluntly in German. “You didn’t warn me you could only speak dog Russian.”

To say that today was going poorly would be an understatement, Johann thought. Poised on a chair in a locked office in a Russian Magical Government building which housed a court room, Johann was glancing between a set of notes he'd scribbled and his two counterparts. The notes were a mixture of English and Cyrillic, given the language the trial was in one of his languages, unfortunately not one of his strongest.

As long as they were home for the evening, that was all that thoroughly preoccupied him, Mr Snugglesworth was an inconvenience to begin with. He'd taken the biscuit, and now he'd taken the whole damned biscuit tin, which was why they'd been thrown in here to stew.

"A flock of rotting squid brains." He repeated as clearly as he could from behind his hands which were pressed to his face, mortified at the line. Snugglesworth had called the hearing that and Johann had been powerless to stop him, snapping,
"Don't call them that you idiot!" In Russian, which only made the situation worse, because it showed the three of them were not working together, and in the eyes of the trial, were seen as farce.

Evangeline Kuester, his dear colleague from the British Ministry cut into Snugglesworth in English. Thankfully the three of them had that common tongue, and Evangeline could tell him what she really thought in private. They'd been working on this for a little while now since the communication came to London that Snugglesworth had thought it was a brilliant idea to not only breed Carnivorous Snaplark[1] since emigrating from Britain to live in Russia, but also gift one to Russia's favourite witch songstress, who had been ignoring his advances by owl and in person for the past five years.

Snugglesworth was unhinged, in Johann's opinion. The Russians wanted rid of him, not only for his XXXXX classification plant breeding, also a Class-A non-tradeable good, illegal to grow or own without permit in Britain, but also the result of the gift - the consumation of two of the singer's staff who received her fan mail. Since Snugglesworth refused to employ his own defence in Russia (not that anyone had come forward to offer) the Russian authorities had instead called upon the British Ministry, with the intention to deport, requesting his repatriation. Back home, he'd only face another trial before the Wizengamot and be thrown into Azkaban, and frankly, they didn't want the trouble of having to. Locking the idiot up in Russia was preferred, but with the rather delicate situation between the two countries this month (the son of a senior politican here having tried to thieve priceless artefacts from Britain's museum) Kuester and Storm had been despatched to the freezing cold.

Not only was their client's behaviour outrageous at regular intervals in the hearing, he also had far better grasp of the local language, having lived here a decade. Johann's grasp was failing him with the difficult interchanges and he'd looked like he could spit venom on being escorted into the office and being locked in. Being made to feel like an idiot was a huge pet peeve of which Snuggleworth was rather good at.

“Do you want to be locked up permanently Mr Snugglesworth? In Russia! Or they might sent you onto Azkaban if you’re lucky!”

Kuester was a frustrated as her colleague it seemed, but Snugglesworth seemed to be enjoying the whole situation. Was he delirious? Johann asked himself, watching the man smile at them both. The idiot just shrugged and smiled.

“You didn't warn me you could only speak dog Russian.”

Johann turned his head to look at Kuester who had switched to German, the language the two of them used daily to converse because it irritated the hell out of colleagues who wanted to eavesdrop.

"I didn't ever say it was fantastic." Johann retorted, sore. "Nor did I expect to have to remember the words for rotting squid brains. Unfortunately we're a bit short in languages in London, at least in despatching to foreign countries for doomed trials of insane expats." The majority of those with second and third languages were daily employed in ambassador roles in offices around the world.

He shivered and pulled his suit jacket and cloak around him a bit more. It wasn't often he wore a cloak, but the cold and the situation over here had dictated proper formal uniform of sorts. Kuester always looked the part.

"Is this to our advantage that we can leave him to rot in a prison, I know its not what the plan was, but it saves us taking him home, sitting through another trial and housing him in Azkaban. Can we not get a healer to verify he's insane or something?" Johann reasoned with his learned colleague in mild desperation.

1.	Carnivorous Snaplark

Eva hadn’t been happy to come to Russia and deal with this mess in the first place. It was a long time since she’d stood up in wizarding court as a defence lawyer and back then it had always been in English, a language she was fluent in. Coming to freezing cold Russia in January after over eleven years not working a courtroom on a daily basis hadn’t been a prospect Kuester had delighted in yet her complaints to Murray had been pointless and instead here she was locked in an office with a German linguist she’d spent nearly nine months working with and a wizard she wouldn’t have happily left to rot in a Russian prison cell.

Storm made his excuses about the language barrier from his seat and Kuester didn’t feel obliged to forgive him that. He’d been there to help her, to speak Russian and keep her up to date with everything going on in the court, to translate her own words. Instead Snugglesworth had decided to take control, speak out words Eva didn’t understand and turn the whole hearing into a farce, making her, Johann and the British ministry appear to be a horde of dupes.

The ideas put forward would have been nice. Leaving Snugglesworth to rot in Russia so they could go home would have been less of a headache, that was for sure. But they’d been given orders. They were responsible for this idiot. And Eva, as much as she already hated this moron, she had always been determined to do her job right.

Glancing to the criminal master idiot, Eva noted he looked mildly less smug as they conversed in a language he evidently didn’t understand. Few people did. It was why the two had a tendency to use it with one another. Plus is came fairly naturally with another speaker. Eva had grown up speaking German at home with her siblings and German parents. It hadn’t been until she’d gotten married that she used English all the time. Then for a decade it had been French.

“A local healer won’t. They want him out of the country. Unfortunately he is ours.” Eva leaned against the table, watching the wizard that had caused all this trouble for them. “And I don’t to be stuck in here any longer while we wait for a healer to show up. Do you Storm? You could wait here yourself. Apparently I’m nonessential here today.”

"Damn." Johann replied at Kuester's explanation at why a healer wouldn't do.

"No, I've a pub to get to." He grumbled in return and scowled at Snugglesworth. "If I have to dump him in the local prison myself I will."

Snugglesworth knew he was the subject of the conversation given the scowl, though he'd be a fool to think otherwise. He gave them both a filthy look and began to open cupboards with some curiosity. Thankfully his wand had been confiscated during his arrest, though Storm and Kuester still had theirs, and he wasn't getting to them.

"You're anything but nonessential. We could mute him, that might our job easier." Johann tapped the fingertips of one pale hand to his bottom lip thoughtfully, looking from his colleague, back to Snugglesworth.

"Pity one of his plants didn't eat him."

Too cold to sit, Johann got up and wandered from where they sat, stretching his legs and doing a circuit of the room slowly.

"What if they banned him from speaking?" He suggested with a start to Evangeline, stood just behind Snugglesworth. "He's just insulted them after all, appeal to their best wishes to be rid of him, insist that for the expedite of this hearing, he be silenced." Johann held his palms uppermost, and gave a shrug as he suggested it.

Before him, Snugglesworth had stopped investigating a dictionary and had twisted his neck to regard the tall German, and then back to the international law expert before him, as if he knew he wouldn't like the suggestion.

The whole day had been a farce, a spectacle. And now the Russians’ detainee, Kuester and Storm’s ward and cause of their problems was looking uncomfortable yet far too satisfied with himself. Kuester wanted to shake him, demanding what exactly went through a wizard’s head to cause them to think giving man-eating plants to people as gifts was normal, legal and appreciated. He was demented and they were locked in a room with him. Eva hated being trapped anywhere; too many memories of her own incarceration were brought back.

"Pity one of his plants didn't eat him." Johann made a comment and Eva nodded, glancing at Snugglesworth.

She switched to the English language.
“That might work.” Her blue eyed gaze swept over the criminal idiot before turning her attention to Johann once more. “I’ll suggest they give him an apt punishment. Being eaten by his own plant fits the definition of apt, does it not?”

Snuggleworth instantly stopped snooping around and looked at the two discussing him. He watched them with suspicion, they wouldn’t suggest that. The British Ministry wouldn’t condone the death sentence. But they were in Russia.

“I don’t think the Russians liked being called a flock of rotting squid brains.” The lawyer told Snuggleworth plainly. “And Merlin knows we don’t want you back in England.” Despite their orders to get him back.

With a frown, Eva spoke once more in German.
“Did Murray specify he had to be alive when we brought him back?” They could get onto the silencing issue later.

"Not explicitly." Johann replied with a shrug, "But I'm not sure how getting a severed part of a plant that's ingested part of him back to England will go either, if I'm honest..."

He placed his hands on the back of the third party's chair, and leaned forward, over the wizard's shoulder so he could speak inches from the man's ear to give him a start. Doing as Eva had a moment before, he switched to English:
"... and you probably know better than I would about repatriating a body in a coffin. I think that's generally rather easier than doing it to a living person."

"I very much think they'll have you both the same if you try and top me in here." Snugglesworth hurriedly retorted, turning his neck to an awkward angle to try and look at Johann's expression.

"Who's to say we'd do it here?" He asked boldly, raising an eyebrow and turning his own head. "Not sure you'll be missed, especially not by your favourite singer. Think she's gone off you."

The idiot curled his lip in irritation and Johann maintained a stare.
"What exactly was your plan, pray tell, Mr Snugglesworth? To whip up the media? To ridicule the British Ministry? Or to antagonise the Russians enough that they lock you away for a long time in a cold place? Because we can help with all three of those, apart from one, and the sooner you elaborate, the sooner Ms Kuester gets to work out the plan, I get to translate it, you get to achieve it and the lot of us get to finish for the day so I can go and have a drink to celebrate my bloody birthday," he sweetened his expression which had been darkening with irritation, "alright, rotting squid brain?"

Apparently Johann Storm had bite. He was leaning close to Mr Snugglesworth to give him an earful and as Eva regarded the couple, she found herself intrigued by the contrast between the wizard’s name and his demeanour. Surely with a name such as Snugglesworth he should have been cuddly and friendly like a child’s teddy bear yet instead he was unpleasant, irritating and had caused them to end up locked in a room 7 by 9. She had counted. Twice.

An eyebrow tweaked, rising ever so slightly as Storm talked of needing drinks for his birthday. Well that was news. But she couldn’t think about his birthday now. Because of Snugglesworth they were stuck here. The last time Eva had been locked in a room was an Azkaban cell and she wasn’t finding herself wanting to wish Johann a happy birthday when his translation skills hadn’t exactly helped their predicament.

Once again the witch paced to the other end of the small room, arms folded. She was starting to feel agitated.

“He’s not going to behave.” Eva told Storm in German before she marched to the door and started banging on it for a guard to come.

Her next words were in English.
“Tell him we’ll cooperate. They can execute him if necessary.” She couldn’t continue to remain locked up.

"Fine with me." Johann replied, withdrawing from Snugglesworth, trying to keep an even keel.

His temper appearing was an indication things were slipping for him, and the last thing they all needed was for Johann to join the rotting squid shouting match, even if the wizard tempted Johann. No, he'd take a leaf out of Arcturus Hollingbury's book and adopt a poker face. Thank goodness being angry was easier to steady than panic and nausea from his work with Landis Morgan. Kuester would hate him if he'd thrown up everywhere as well as been inaccurately translating.

As they waited for the door to be opened, Johann made a mental promise to himself to work on his understanding of the language, his own incompetence wasn't helping his mood.

"We have reached a resolution." Johann assured the guard in the local language, though Snuggles snorted and shook his head. Johann aimed a foot at the nearest leg of the man's chair, nearly missed, hit his target and stumbled. The guards laughed and remarked
"Idiot British."
"German, actually," He replied curtly, making for the open door, and switched to English, "And you don't want to call Kuester an idiot, she's anything but. Him however, you're welcome." Johann thumbed over his shoulder and let Eva leave before him, she seemed ever so slightly in a hurry...

"Much as I hate to fail," He told her in German, Snuggleworth infuriated by their tactic as he was escorted, "I'm willing to deviate from orders today, given our assessment of the situation, and I think you feel the same..."


End