Gangsters don’t cry

I thought there might be a lot of other people who would benefit from reading this, too.

don't you mean professor potter who has tea every week with professor longbottom and every time someone goes "but sir, don't you think he's...kind of strange?" harry just smiles and says "i think we all are."

don't you mean professor potter who has stashes of chocolate he gives out if you ask and who never, ever, gets angry, except for the times he sees bruises on a kid's arm after winter break and storms off to see the headmaster about the kid's parents

don't you mean professor potter who is known for being loyal to gryffindor to the end, but still congtatulates the other houses when they win because he knows that they're all just kids and that it really doesn't matter at the end of the day

don't you mean professor potter who is known for being fun and kind and happy and everyone knows the stories, the first years whisper, and the fifth years just shrug because after a while, he stops being the boy who defeated voldemort and he becomes the professor who tells silly jokes and constantly tells stories about what he and the Minister of Magic, Hermione Granger, and Ron Weasley, a quidditch reporter, used to get up to

Like, that stuff is not even mentioned in passing. Kids in Harry's classes get stories like, The Time He Played In His First Quidditch Match And Nearly Swallowed The Bloody Snitch. (Usually told to any First Years who are nervous about flying for the first time, or any Quidditch team members— of any House— who are worried about messing up on the pitch. "At least you won't look as stupid as I did", says The Famous Harry Potter.)

Or, The Time When He And His Friends Started An Underground Defence Club Because Their Teacher Was Crap. (The exact role that Professor Potter played in the club is left deliberately vague, as is the reason why it was so important to learn defence.)

The Time He And Award Winning Quidditch Reporter Ron Weasley Flew A Car To School In Second Year, The Time He Totally Fucked Up On His First Date (useful for dealing with older students who are having troubles with their own love lives— the story usually gets a laugh at least), or even The Time He Had To Attend The Funeral Of A Giant Spider (no mention of any ulterior motives for going there that day).

If you just heard the stories, you'd have no idea that Professor Potter ever fought in a war. In fact, by the time he's been teaching a few decades, most of his students don't.

Or, rather, they know who Voldemort was, and that The Famous Harry Potter fought against him, but they all sort of assume that that stuff happened later. Professor Potter went to school with his friends and had all these wacky adventures (did you know that he once fell off his broom and had all the bones spelled out of his arm? Or that he and his friends used to sneak into Hogsmeade through secret tunnels?) and then later on, after he left school, he volunteered to fight in the war.

Fifth Year History of Magic, when they first cover the details of the Second Wizarding War, is always interesting. When students realise that all this stuff was happening while Professor Potter was still at school, they always look shocked and whisper to each other, asking why he never talks about this when he's telling them about his school days. Then, at the end of the lesson, The Famous Harry Potter co es in to do his annual Talk about the War. And, afterwards, nobody wonders why he never brought it up before.

If you want to build rock towers, get your own rocks and build them at home. That’s perfectly fine. But rocks provide vital habitat for wildlife, especially in stream bed; moving and stacking them leaves them without shelter, crushes them, exposes their eggs, and leads to soil erosion and bank destruction. Leave them where they are.

Poor character written by an author who has experience poverty: My problem is that I’m $300 short on rent and now my car is making a noise