Mr. Baudelaire was certainly starting the year off with a bang. One moment he'd been chatting up some stodgy Auror – the next, Ahmet learned he was chatting him up about him!

And now he was the head chef of the McPadraic kitchens. At least the pay was nothing to scoff at... the pantry stock, on the other hand. Well, he had his work cut out for him.

It was well into the evening. He was unbuttoning his chef’s jacket when he heard the heeled shoes of someone who did not belong on the servant’s side of the manor.

“Ma’am,” he called, English accented with German and... something else, “this is servant side.”

There was a pause in the heels, and then a hearty laugh. He glanced over, then hastily buttoned his jacket back up. Not only was this a perplexing situation, but there was another woman with her as well.

“Is that you, Ahmet?” the woman said in her native German.

Miss Nadia Schneider was the older sister of a classmate back in Germany, whom he’d met a few times when she came to collect her brother for vacation. He still wrote her brother on occasion.

“It is Armel these days,” he said with a bemused look, and she scrunched her nose in confusion. “Regionalization.”

“Oh. So, you’re one of the kitchen... boys, now?” she said, like she was arranging a puzzle mid-speech.

He made no correction.

“I shouldn’t hold you two up,” he chose to say instead with a polite smile.

She smiled, nodded, and turned to her partner in crime.

“I hope the chef is still in!” she commiserated, subtly slowing her speech but less subtly enunciating each word for this woman in a way she hadn’t for Ahmet.