Work Text:
"In October of 1999, three student filmmakers disappeared in the offices of Karkaroff & Krum, while shooting a documentary...A year later, their footage was found.”
It's ‘Take Yourself to a Firm of Lawyers Day’ for a group of amateur horror filmmakers, this being the best way they can imagine to learn from life when it comes to their art of creating horrific scenarios for the entertainment and or enlightenment of the masses. Accordingly, they suit up in cargo pants and heft good old fashioned cameras, prepared for a day full of backstabbing, insane fees, shouting, and incomprehensible gobbledygook, stepping out onto a damp street and taking a cab downtown to a fancy part of London, the central bit, where all the really good law offices and other entertainment venues are.
“You know, I've heard legends about this place.” says Harry Potter, while standing on a grey pavement staring up at a glass fronted high rise building boldly displaying twin letter Ks, possibly the most aggressive symbol of the English and Cyrillic alphabets. Their crocodilian jaws snap at each other because the second K has been turned to face the first, the pair standing atop surges of silvery glass so it appears as if they are dragons roaring at each from neighbouring mountains. Above the skyscraper the sky is a gloomy grey, a storm approaching.
“Yeah? Like what?” asks Ron Weasley, carefully climbing out of the cab with his precious camera.
“They say there are no rats in this building-”
“Great!”
“And no cockroaches either. Nothing but-”
“Lawyers.” whispers the third member of the camcorder loving trio, one Hermione Granger. All three shiver.
“I also heard they're witches. Or wizards. Whatever. They eat children.”
“Eww.”
The first thing they film inside the building is the reception area, which is cold (especially in terms of human resources, who the boys fail to get a smile out of) and also in terms of temperature. Asking the extremely pretty receptionist where the law wizards are results in nothing, she completely ignores them in favour of flipping through a Cosmopolitan magazine.
“Okay, okay, look at this. Here we go. A signpost.” Ron aims his camera at a set of brass plates attached to the wall besides a brass elevator. The plates show on which floor you can find what.
- Divorce & Family
- Civil & Criminal Litigation
- Property & Contracts
A camera lens zooms in on ‘criminal’ and then ‘family’. “I know, Hermione, I know. You wanna go in order and check out the boring floor first. Fine. It's not like we have another choice.” grumbles Ron, upon observing that Property & Contracts is first.
“I didn't say anything.” Hermione replies.
The lift spits them out on ‘Property’, where nothing interesting whatsoever occurs, no matter how long they spend wandering around looking over lawyer's and paralegals' shoulders, whispering at walls, or poking through wastepaper bins and pigeon holes. There is no human element, no magic, no criminals, no warring spouses. Just buildings. Upwards they go, on to the next stop - Litigation.
Immediately things become ominous, even before the lift opens. Someone, or something taps on the doors rhythmically, then giggles erupt.
“Oh, God, help!” Ron yelps, while Harry clutches his own camera tighter and Hermione whips out a disposable lighter, her hand trembling violently.
“Sir, Sanguini is here for your eleven o clock.” says a disembodied voice.
“What?!” yells Harry.
“Alright. I'll just be a moment.” says another, more breathless disembodied voice.
“AAAAAAR!!” screams Ron, pulling at his hair with his free hand.
The doors open, and a conjoined monster falls into the box suspended in mid air. The trio of filmmakers are so busy watching a lawyer and his assistant kiss that they forget to step out of the thing, causing the doors to shut.
“Hey! I want to see the criminals!” Ron bangs on the doors, but it's too late, the lift is ascending to ‘Family’.
“What could this mean?” asks Harry, turning his camera on the amorous couple, a curly haired man in a brutal grey suit, and a pretty woman in a pink female version of a suit. They're enjoying themselves and completely ignoring the golden trio.
“Oh…that's Karkaroff. Yeah. He's the criminal lawyer. His partner Krum is the divorce lawyer. Now I remember,” says Hermione, a slight smile on her face. “They're both really good at what they do. Krum's divorced more people than every natural disaster combined, and Karkaroff here is on every big time crook’s Next of Kin list. They say he's never lost a case.”
“Who the heck is he kissing?! A witch?”
“Krum's sister.”
An uncomfortable five minutes later the lift spits them out on the Family floor. The pair of law orientated people make only the most cursory attempt to restore themselves to the pristine state they were in before smashing lips together, then exit, nervously followed by the documentary makers.
The Family floor is even more sinister than the brief glimpse they had of the Litigation floor. Strange stick figures formed of pens lie about on desks, desks more chaotic than in Litigation. Piles of paperclips form small cairns, and files overfill the pigeon holes used to organise a lawyer's day. A man sits in a waiting room, dead eyes cast down at the floor between his feet. Karkaroff leaves his witch with another woman and barges into a huge office with an appropriately huge name plate. The word ‘Krum’ is scrawled in red across one long charcoal wall.
“No redneck is this creative.“ says Harry, awed.
“Come, come, come, Harry, Ron, let's hide in here!” Hermione pulls her friends into the cupboard full of broomsticks the second partner has in his office for some reason. From there they peer out of the crack between door and jam at what almost becomes an altercation as the first lawyer walks in on the second sitting at his desk whilst staring lovingly at a buxom blonde paralegal as she explains the many tasks he's supposed to complete that day.
“Hey. Keep your eyes off my sister.” says Yuri Karkaroff, the criminal.
“I don't kiss Bulgarians,” says Viktor Krum, the family man. “I mean…wait…no…I don't kiss Russians. Don't worry.”
The first man performs an excellent tomato impression while his sister also blushes, and giggles, her eyes saying that she knows Viktor is lying. To be fair, Viktor's eyes also say he knows he is lying.
“I'm going to throw you out of the window, Vitya.” hisses Yuri, in a dangerous whisper.
His best friend turns to the wall of glass behind him, all of grey London peering in.
“Don't say it.” Yuri growls, balling his fists.
The other man smiles like a golden retriever, deliberate as a naughty child. “Which window?”
“I'm scared to close my eyes, I'm scared to open them.” whispers Ron, blinking rapidly in the dark of the cupboard, tears of fear running down his face.
For a moment it looks as if bloodshed is about to erupt and stain the home of law and order, but the deadly cloud passes, to be replaced by a thick fog pouring in through the closed windows. Yuri rolls his shoulders, cracking his neck loudly. “Anyway, I have to attend court in a bit. I wondered if you had it in you to provide moral support.”
“Course, Yura. Let me gather my pens-” Viktor touches a pen stick figure, causing Harry to pass out and smash his skull on a broom.
🪨
“If I marry your sister and you marry my sister…what does that make us?”
“I don't know what you mean, my friend.”
“Hmm. Of course.”
“...Also, that makes us brothers.”
The pair of lawyers enter the courtroom all done up in their lawtime glad rags and wigs, although Viktor doesn't prosecute or defend criminals, but sadass people attempting to make themselves sadder. The three filmmakers crawl along under the tables, attempting to stay out of sight.
“What do we have here?” Yuri turns to his client, one Harold Shipman. He stares into the man's devilish face and wicked eyes, sighs, then turns back towards the judge. “Great. The big guns are needed, I see.” he pulls a long, straight twig out of his pocket and lays it beside his papers, causing Hermione to whimper from under the table.
“You can do it!” whispers Viktor, from over the bar.
The judge smashes a tiny hammer into his desk and clears his throat, then peers through a pair of tiny glasses at the accused, and then, even more intently, at the accused's lawyer. He has a bad feeling about that one, like he's had disagreeable experiences with him before. The lawyer stares back, menacingly.
“Harold Shipman, you stand accused-”
Yuri rockets to his feet and points his twig at the judge. “Imperio!” Although he doesn't need to audibly pronounce the name of the spell, he does so anyway, hitting the judge with a purple blast of light. Then, for good measure or merely for fun, he dances around the courtroom, mind controlling everyone else, including his own partner.
“Imperio!” he shouts, hitting Viktor point blank between the eyes.
“I just want to apologize to Hermione’s mom, Ron's mom, and my mom.” sobs Harry, from under the judge's desk.
The group find themselves lost and disorientated on the way back, sitting in the swanky town car with the KK lawyers.
“Have you ever seen 'Deliverance'?” Harry asks Ron over the back of Viktor.
Back at the law skyscraper the receptionist continues to ignore the trio and the lift takes them down instead of up. Down into the basement. Well, no, first it drops off the lawyers at the appropriate floors, and then whisks the filmmakers down to the basement. Somewhere along the way, Ron vanishes.
“It's not the same floor, Hermione. It's not the same floor.”
“SAME FLOOR!” Hermione screams.
The doors open and swallow Harry. Actually he gets lost amongst a stack of old office furniture, but Hermione is too busy staring into her own camera lens to notice.
“WAHOO! WOW!”
Down on the very bottom level of the basement, she finds Ron.
“Ron? Ronald? Stop messing around now!” she whisper-shouts, groping through darkness towards a red haired figure standing in a corner of the basement, staring at another godforsaken pigeon hole wall, this one horribly empty. “Ron?! Stop it! Answer me!” she stumbles on an empty pen and goes down, tumbling onto the dirty linoleum that covered the entire building until the hot young pair of lawyers took it over, her hands leaving prints in the dust.
The figure lurking in the dark shivers, but doesn't turn.
“Ron?! Ron?! Ro-”