"Do I even want to know what you three have done?" Along the walls of Professor McGonagall's office, portraits of past headmasters shook their heads and tutted in disapproval. Shelves lined the circular room below them, carrying a assortment of books, scrolls, and spindly devices of unknown purpose.

When Professor Flitwick had arrived on the scene, he'd quickly set about organizing the small crowd of students who'd gathered to gawk. After taking stock of the still delirious Filch and masked trio, he set two burly older students to haul the Caretaker up to the hospital wing before dragging the three stunned boys to an empty classroom. Once he'd got the full story, they were ushered back out again, up a staircase concealed by a stone gargoyle, and into the Headmistress' office. There he left them to repeat their tale while he sought out the head of Gryffindor house.

The headmistress settled back into the seat behind her desk, but made no indication that the three boys should sit. So they stood and took turns repeating the story - everything from the dungbomb on the train to discovering the textbook entry on blaue blume to stealing the flower and right up to the literal run-in with Filch. Throughout the account, she remained silent, though her face grew darker and darker with each word until they reached the end of the story.

"Of course you couldn't just let those idiots have their fun or gone to report the first incident to a prefect." She stood and planted her hands on the desk, "Instead, you stole dangerous specimens from the greenhouses, you lied to Professor Sprout about it, you put yourselves and everyone around you at risk, and Mr. Filch is the one who paid the price for your carelessness."

Bruce avoided meeting her gaze. That didn't seem completely fair, they had been trying to be careful, obviously not careful enough. He didn't say anything and neither did George or Miles.

After a moment, Professor McGonagall straightened up and went on, "Thirty points from each of you and detention. And this had better be the last I hear about this ridiculous little feud with Manchester Black and his cronies. I don't care what they do to provoke you, you ignore them or you find a teacher. If you can't do that then you'd best head to the dormitories and start packing your bags right now. Am I making myself clear?"

They nodded, which seemed to be all they could do. She sighed and sat back down, "You two may go and find your head of house, who I'm sure will have words for you. Bruce, stay a moment."

George and Miles both looked at him, silently asking the same question that Bruce himself was, why did she need him to stay behind? What extra trouble could he be in? No answer came and, after a moment of confusion, the other two made their way back out to the stairs. Miles turned back at the entryway, but the office door closed itself behind him. Somehow, Bruce felt like it was cutting off his avenue of escape.

When he turned back to face her, Professor McGonagall had retrieved a single slip of parchment from the stack on her desk. She looked at it then back at Bruce and said without preamble, "Did you tell anyone about what you three were planning?"

Bruce was stunned, he wasn't sure what he'd been expecting but it wasn't that. Tell anyone? Secrecy had been the first thing on their minds! "No, ma'am."

"Then perhaps you can tell me why Professor Nygma specifically requested that you serve your detention with him. Yesterday."

She handed the note to Bruce, who quickly read through it in astonishment. Professor Nygma had indeed asked that Bruce be assigned to serve detention with the Defense Against the Dark Arts instructor.

"I - I don't know." Bruce read through again, but the note only said when young Bruce Wayne soon lands himself in some mischief not a specific timeline. "Maybe he knew about the teasing and figured I would find a way to get back at them?"

"So you've no reason to assume he specifically knew what you were planning?"

"No, I don't think we ever talked about it where he could have heard us." They'd done most of the planning in whispers in the Library. Maybe Madame Pince could have overheard something, but he couldn't imagine any way that Professor Nygma might have.

"Well, I suppose I can't reprimand him for simply guessing you were planning to get into some kind of trouble," she grumbled, setting the note aside. "You may go now. I expect that you'll send word to Mister Pennyworth before Professor Flitwick does."

Confused but relieved that there wasn't any extra trouble, Bruce turned to go. Just as he reached out for the door-handle she added, "Oh Bruce. You might also tell him that I'm rather fond of blueberries." He turned back to look at her, but the Headmistress just gave him a cryptic little smile and repeated, "You may go now."

Bruce descended the hidden staircase and made his way back to the Ravenclaw dormitory, mind swimming. He returned to the common room to discover that word of the incident had already arrived. A small crowd waited, demanding to know exactly what had happened.

There was no love lost between the students of Hogwarts and its Caretaker and no one bothered pretending they were concerned or upset on his behalf. Instead, an overlapping slew of questions came from all quarters, from those concerned about the punishment Ravenclaw would see to those who wanted to enjoy the idea of someone finally getting back at Filch to those who had just seen the crowd when they got back to the common room and wanted to know what was going on. Well, Bruce reasoned, we've already gotten in trouble, so why not?

"Okay," he tried to project over the crowd, holding up his hands for attention, "Here's what happened." This time he left out plenty of details. There was no sense bringing up the dung-bomb incident or reminding everyone about the boggart, so he only said they'd planned to "get back at Manchester Black's gang" and left it up to the imagination of his listeners for what. He left out the blaue blume and its effects, saying simply that they'd "stolen ingredients" that they planned use. He completely ignored the Exploding Snap deck and let the crowd assume what they would about how they planned to "slip the powder" to the Elites.

He skimmed over all that straight to the part his audience actually cared about, when they finished their preparations and then accidentally bumped into Filch, who got a face full. Demands came both for more details about Filch's raving (which he eventually passed off to those who had trailed Filch up to the Hospital Wing when he was hauled to the headmaster's office) and for him to get on to how far back this would put them in the House Cup.

"Thirty points?!" Someone shouted as he neared the end. Bruce nodded solemnly.

"That'll put us even further behind Hufflepuff!"

"After that last Quidditch match we weren't likely to catch up anyway," Elaine muttered from Bruce's right at the same time one of the other sixth years said, "At least his buddies in Gryffindor lost them even more points."

"If you'd been there watching Filch, you'd agree the show was worth thirty points, easy," added a fourth year student Bruce knew by sight but hadn't really spoken to.

The discussion shifted, from demanding details of the incident to debating its fallout. It seemed they didn't actually need Bruce for that part, it seemed that this was as good a time as any to make himself scarce. He tried to edge his way through the crowd without drawing too much attention. There were a few more calls for him to answer questions, but eventually managed to shrug off the burden of the conversation and escape down the stairwell.

Once safely ensconced behind the curtains of his four-poster, Bruce sat down with his writing desk and message paper to try to explain to Alfred why he was in trouble again. He left nothing out of this account of events. Just before heading to the Owlery, he remembered Professor McGonagall's final comment and added it in a short post-script.

Breakfast came with a note that Bruce's detention would be taking place during the Ravenclaw-Slytherin match. Whose idea was that? he wondered. Was it meant to avoid a confrontation between Bruce and Manny? A match between the two houses could become strong provocation. Or maybe Nygma just doesn't like Quidditch. Game time came and the whole of Ravenclaw tower made their way down to the Great Hall. Similar streams of students and adults joined them on the way through the castle, until finally it seemed all of Hogwarts was filtering through the Great Hall, bustling, chatting, and waving flags and banners for the two teams. In the Great Hall, Bruce split from the general flow of bodies and his way in the opposite direction.

Professor Nygma's door was slightly ajar, Bruce pushed it open to find the Defense Against the Dark Arts instructor flipping through a textbook, two more propped open on either side. He looked up, "Ah, Bruce, right on time. Sit down," he gestured to a chair placed on the opposite side of his desk.

Once Bruce was seated, Nygma produced a roll of parchment, "Professor McGonagall was good enough to give me a copy of your account of your offenses, Bruce. I'd like to go over some details."

Bruce sighed, how many times do I have to tell this story? "Miles had the idea to use the flowers to get back at Manny for the dungbomb - "

"Yes yes yes, I know all that," Nygma waved the start of the story aside. "When you took the blaue blume outside, how did you protect yourselves from its effects?"

"We just... we covered out faces."

"With what, exactly?" Nygma continued to grill him. "Just plain wool scarves? Nothing else? How did Professor Sprout handle it? What did you use in the basement? What did you make the masks out of? Where did you get them? What kicked the powder up? How did you keep it packed down? How close were you standing to Mr. Filch?"

As he continued his questioning, Nygma leaned forward intensely, eyes shining behind his purple lenses. "How did you know you would be protected?"

"I... I don't know?" Bruce stammered, "It said you have to breath it in, so we wore masks over our faces."

Nygma paused and checked one of the open books before him, which Bruce finally recognized as the same one Miles had originally cited for their Herbology project. Another look at the one next to it and Nygma drilled into him again, "Why didn't you try a bubble-head charm?"

"I don't know what that is."

The second book was flipped around and Nygma pointed to a description and set of diagrams, "This charm, can you perform this charm?" It was more complicated than any charm he'd attempted so far, but it didn't look impossible, and Bruce said so.

"Show me."

It him took a dozen tries to correctly mimic the forms and pronunciation from the instructions but eventually Bruce found himself looking at an oddly distorted world with an odd rainbow hue on its periphery. He turned his head and watched the whole world seem to shimmer. Almost like a thin film was separating his head from everything around it.

"Excellent! Yes, excellent work!" Nygma jumped out of his seat, grabbing his hat and cane, "Follow along now! Quickly, Bruce!" he threw the door open and dashed into the empty hallway.

"Professor, where are we going?" Bruce's feet and mind raced to catch up.

"Through a nightmare, of course."