Draco Dormiens Nunquam Titillandus

Draco Dormiens Nunquam Titillandus

or

The Revenge of the Nerd

[A Cautionary Tale of three plants, being Hogwarts, Columbine, and an Exceptional Late-Bloomer, frequently mis-identified as a Pansy.]

In hindsight, which is always "twenty-twenty", it should have been obvious. Prophesy always is obvious, after it has been fulfilled, just a riddles are easy, after they have been solved. But of course everyone, the great, the merely competent, and the downright inept, had all managed to miss the point completely.

Of course, most of them didn't have ALL the pieces to the puzzle, until after it was all long over. And those who did still managed to get it all wrong.

Now that what had once been the half-blood Tommy Riddle, the boogeyman, Voldemort, was nothing but a smear of decomposing organic stains upon a slimy wall of Muggle concrete where he met his totally inglorious end, they were all in some degree of shock. "Just some more slime on the wall."

There was no "Green Light" exit for Voldy, no titanic battle of wills to the death. Like the 'King of the Ringwraiths', in that Muggle story about the other Dark Lord wannabe, "The Lord of the Rings", he was felled by the absolutely unexpected, the overlooked, the one unworthy of his slightest attention.

Six years of building anxiety had all gone "pop", like a blow-gum bubble, when Voldy had been hit by the curse that 'did him in', and his followers had all been too shocked, to temporary powerless, to even try to continue the fight.

Now the victorious ones themselves all sat, dazed and relieved, trying to absorb the fact of Victory. They were slumped about over the furniture and on the floor in the Gryffindor Common Room. All the players were there, and that included some Ravenclaws, and some Hufflepuffs, and even a couple of Slytherins. For once the Portrait door stood wide open to all who had met the test in that nasty, smelly back alley of Muggle London.

Harry thought back on where he had first missed the mark, months before, at the beginning of sixth year.

There had always been ambiguity about whom the Prophesy was about. Because he had survived, had been marked with the scar, everyone had focused on him. In the end that very fact had, perhaps, saved them all, since Voldemort had been among the mistaken.

Before the anticipated slaughter, he had intended to settle the score, mano-a-mano, with his (supposed) nemesis, Harry Potter.

Neville Longbottom had been the other candidate for the Prophesy, 'born as the seventh month dies to those who have defied him thrice', but no one took him seriously. His clumsy efforts at magic, stymied by his Father's wand (which hadn't chosen him), his seemingly borderline Squib-ness in so many things, had made him a joke, not a danger, in the eyes of those who looked to secure the Reign of Darkness.

Not to mention Neville's alleged friends.

A line from some book or a movie he had once read or seen ran through Harry's head... "Never pick a fight with a little guy, who don't say a lot. Don't ask my how I know."

He saw Neville sitting, more composed than anyone else at the moment, with a whisp of a smile playing about his lips, and a look of pure satisfaction in his eyes.

It occurred to Harry that a lot of girls were soon going to be offering anything and everything the new hero could possibly want to Neville, before long, but if looks told the tale, he had already had something more than they had the power to give him.

Another quotation ran through Harry's mind, from a Book of Oriental proverbs, "Revenge is a Dish Best Served Cold".

After the Ministry of Magic incident, Neville had returned to Hogwarts with his own new wand, and a whole new attitude. But nobody noticed. Everyone was focused elsewhere.

Harry had hurt, and he had hated, suffering for all the years he had done without his dead parents.

But Neville had had to watch his Parents alive, mindless, and failing to know who he was, just as long. And his pain, his hate, and his desire for revenge, were all carefully concealed, kept in a tightly stopped bottle inside "the quiet kid"; until they had built to the level of a small to medium atomic bomb, a Vesuvius ready to explode, and no one noticed.

A Sleeping Dragon hid behind his round face, and no one noticed.

And then Voldemort, intent on taunting Harry into a mistake, dared to mention "your parents" in Neville's presence. Little Tommy Riddle, ever the smartass, "tickled the Sleeping Dragon".

Whatever the words were that Neville murmured under his breath, no one knew, (he would never tell, either) but 'twas none of the famed or feared "Unforgivables". Instead a wall of blue light had flown from the tip of his wand. Flown at the object of his rage and hate, and crushed Voldemort against the wall behind him, so hard that his very bones were broken into particles too small to locate without a Muggle microscope. [Later investigation would show that the juices that parts of him were reduced to had penetrated the concrete to a depth of three inches, so great was the pressure under which he had 'arrived'.]

Later on Muggle Metropolitan Police SOCOs would come and investigated the 'crime scene', once the decomposition of the peculiar organic slush gave rise to unmistakable odors, that couldn't be ignored. They would barely prove that there had been a 'murder', for there was nothing that could be recognized as a body, as a body part, anywhere. Just decaying organic compounds, mixed with the rotting garbage they so closely resembled.

Of the feared Dark Lord, there was less left behind than would have remained of some oversized mosquito, crushed against a wall, by the thumb of God Himself, or by Merlin, if you preferred. Dark Lord, Drak Lord, Dreck Lord.... whatever.

Before most of the Death Eaters had recovered enough wits to even try and flee, they were disarmed, bound, and packaged, ready for delivery to Azkeban. Harry and the rest had taken them down in waves, like sharp scythes rippling across a field of wheat.

But Neville had taken no further part in the proceedings, had just stood there, smiling, that look of deep contentment on his face, the look that still hadn't gone away. His face was suddenly not comical at all, no bumbling clown any more, but terrifying, in the purity of his long-held secret purpose, achieved at last.

He looked as though he should raise his wand to his lips, like a cowboy gunfighter, and blow the smoke away. And Harry Potter, the "Boy Who Lived", looked upon the face of his spiritual Twin Brother, and shivered in sudden chill.

And if any part of Tommy Riddle persisted anywhere, on some plane of existence, he was left to contemplate the oracular advice which had once been written upon his Head Boy's Badge, and which he had ignored....Draco Dormiens Nunquam Titillandus. "Never pick a fight with a little guy, who don't say much..."