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This topic is one very close to my heart for reasons that will become apparent very soon. I hold strong (and often contrarian opinions) about home-schooling. As such, this will likely run longer than most of my overlong answers usually do because I feel like I need to add some underpinning to the main skeleton. Let’s dig in.Should parents that are home schooling be required to show evidence they are actually doing it?Yes, yes, a million times to the fiftieth factor YES. “Having a Romantic Comedy Movie orgasm” sort of yes. Yes. Testing should be done vigorously and diligently.I, at least initially, was “gifted”. I don’t necessarily agree with that assumption, but that’s what the adults said. I wasn’t “gifted”…I just had very few distractions. Our TV picked up one channel clearly, I had no video games, I had no social circle. I enjoyed doing school and learning, so when I didn’t have to be doing anything else, school and school-related work was what I did. To me it wasn’t work, it was my chance to find out something I didn’t know. Mom got a curriculum through Gateway Christian Academy and I was off to the races.Age 7, some bloviating ass decided to dump the label “gifted” on me. Mom had decided (I think in a pang of doubt about her capability as a home-school teacher) to have me tested. T-CAP test was administered at the local elementary school. Neat trivia; only school I’ve ever stepped foot in below the college level was that elementary school for those few days. Whilst all the other kids were just getting stuck into it, I was the shy awkward kid raising his hand from Row 7 because he was sure he didn’t get all the sheets for his test because he was done and he seemed to be the only one.The incredulous teacher requested me to the desk with my test, she looked through the sheets, cut her eyes to me a few times. Then she made a gesture to the teacher’s assistant who took me to “the office” along with a note the teacher had scribbled. I met a nice lady who talked with me very sociably about how I enjoyed the test and whether I enjoyed being in the school for the very first time, whether the other kids were treating me nicely, and even how my home life was going. Cool lady. She, upon hearing that I helped my uncle gather the firewood, commented that it must’ve made me quite strong! She even asked if I had muscles! I, of course, being a boy who was a bit prideful, volunteered to show her my muscles! Rolled up the sleeve of my t-shirt so she could see them.A few years later I realized something; she didn’t care about my muscles. She knew I must have cheated and was trying to figure out how. Where I had somehow secreted the answers on my person. She knew I had to have cheated, all that was left was to figure out how I had.Coming up dry on that she started quizzing me on school stuff and came to realize I hadn’t cheated because I clearly knew the material cold. Upon further questioning, she made a secondary discovery; my mom got a deal on this year’s books and next year’s books…and I’d already read through most of them two or three times and had trouble understanding only a little of the math stuff. Everything else I could recite at will.My mother was summoned to the office, presuming I’d either gotten into a fight or had some other rule violation. She was quizzed, I was quizzed some more. The idea was tossed around to, just on a lark, maybe let the short intelligent one take the 2nd grade test? I’d gotten a perfect score on the 1st grade, so maybe give the 2nd a try?Took it, crushed it, save for one frickin’ math question because I’m not a math person. Still, good enough to “test out” of 2nd grade. (To shorten up the middle section here, I intentionally rush-rushed 5th grade and stacked 5th and 6th together. Same with 8/9. Graduated HS at 14. Though, don’t get too excited that I’m smart; the sheer volume of wasting of such a glorious opportunity since 14 essentially negates it entirely. My school experience says I should have been graduating college when most were graduating high school and holding a Masters by the time most got a Bachelors, but my life experience says I should be watered twice weekly, have my pot rotated twice monthly to ensure proper sun exposure to my leaves, and a soil change yearly whether I need it or not.)Last official test I took in the entirety of my education below college level? Those two tests plus an IQ test, which I scored “above average, 163 for age group.” Like I said, no distractions, and I loved to read. One of my favorite books? The dictionary. I kid thee not. I was that kid.In the years to follow, I found distractions along the way, mom got lackadaisical and I started to slip. In a way I feel like I set mom up without meaning to; for the first few years I was 100% self-pace, full throttle, let’s learn and learn well, let’s devour this material with mastery…when I finally discovered girls and other distractions, mom didn’t realize how distracted I’d really become. If a process is always reliable and self-propelled, it’s easy to not notice if it slowly loses self-propulsion drive.I graduated HS at 14, yes. I did that. However…I’ve recently gotten seriously interested in investments and finance, and I do not know how to calculate anything relative to percentages even with a calculator. It eludes me entirely and totally. A few weeks ago I wanted to test myself and see how much I knew about math and I ended up having to study hard to remind myself long division protocol. I have since given up on the hope of teaching myself to become adept enough and I’m just going with the “so far/so good” mentality; I’ve made it to 33 without needing to know how to do functional math, so maybe I never will need to know. I can guess close enough to avoid catastrophe, plus you can always ask a search engine.As a person, there are things I know, but there are also enormous gaps that I don’t know. I’ve got a HS diploma that hung on the wall for many years, and I struggle with basic 4th grade math. And, well, let’s face it; you’ve read this answer to this point, you’ve become casually acquainted with my grammar and punctuation level to realize I was taught largely on the self-study method…I took that little flurry of tests at 7 and because I/we (me as a student, mom as a teacher) did so well, it was presumed we didn’t need to bother with testing beyond that. This, in itself, is the crucial mistake. Pair that with a “Christian Curriculum” that soft-pitched 99% of the important elements of science and biology…it’s the perfect storm to release a bunch of students on society who have a high school diploma unjustly.Whoa, hold it. I just heard that gasp from the home-schoolers. Not saying all of us are unqualified, I’m just saying that there are too many of us and too few of you. If there’s a home-school-alumni brawl…those who are qualified to have their high school diploma are getting a one-way ticket to Got Stomped City.Speaking with the utmost honesty, if I go take the GED test tomorrow, I’m not sure the local adult education center would know how to educate me beyond the deficiencies I have; I might be that one student they just have to give up on and nominate for political office. My saving grace is that I already have the HS diploma, because if I didn’t I’d be the not-much-fun kind of screwed.I, in all my glorious ignorance and copious futile self-study in my adulthood, am the product of home-schooling being allowed to conduct its own train. Mom didn’t do a bad job, but I don’t think she ever had any basis of realistic feedback to know how little of what I was studying that I was actually learning. I should have been getting the same tests every other kid in my state was getting. Skipping grades? Awesome, but whatever grade you took this year’s the one you’re tested on, and you have to pass them.None of this BS of having a “Christian Curriculum” that softens and simplifies, and no getting to make up your own facts. Sad thing to admit…I was wholly unaware that women could orgasm until I was in my mid-20s, and had been conditioned to presume anything that mentioned the word “Evolution” was to be considered specious at best. That, among many other failures, should not be legally allowed under the guise of genuine education. I got watered-down tests that were designed primarily with an eye toward a moral goal rather than a scholastic one.I fully support the concept of home-schooling. I know for myself, with my medical problems, I’d have missed so much time that I’d have still been in 4th grade when I was buying the beer for the local frat boys. However, I can in no way support the idea of letting people say “Yeh, my child studied this. They know this. Yeh.” and taking their word for it.We let that happen, we’re allowing people to end up being…like me. Credentialed, but unqualified. Educated, but ignorant. Smart on paper, imbecilic in practice. A person should not be staring down the loaded muzzle of middle-aged life, and not being able to do math at the same level as the kid who recently was the talk of the school for getting a pencil eraser stuck in his nose.

Here is the MIT student newspaper's book review:http://tech.mit.edu/V132/N6/technologists.htmlOne-hundred forty years ago in Lawrence, Massachusetts, John Ripley Freeman found someone’s lost dog. For reuniting pet and owner, the high-schooler collected a generous bounty of $5. Freeman spent that fortune on the latest textbook in Inorganic Chemistry. With the change, he “procured a small supply of glass tubes, flasks, and a Bunsen burner, and set up a small laboratory at home, without setting fire either to the house or woodshed,” he later wrote.His self-taught chemistry knowledge propelled him through the entrance examinations at the fledgling scientific school whose faculty had written the textbook — the only school that trained budding scientists not with lectures, but by letting them do their own experiments in a laboratory and make their own mistakes.Of course it was the Institute of Technology in Boston, and John Freeman 1876 became one of our all-star alumni, turning down professorships at Harvard and presidency at MIT to be one of the most prominent engineers of the 19th and early 20th centuries.Those propitious and largely forgotten years of the Institute’s uncertain rise in post-civil-war Boston are the setting for Matthew Pearl’s new thriller The Technologists. Mr. Pearl, a bestselling novelist, has followed books like Bringing Down the House in making MIT and its students the stars of a novel that pleads its own plausibility.The story takes place in 1868, three years after MIT opened for classes. Most of Boston is deeply suspicious of what the Institute represents. “Their sciences are seen as practically pagan,” a policeman exclaims early on. As industry dawns, the city is hit by a series of terrorist attacks. Magnetic compasses in the harbor go awry, and seven ships crash into the piers of Boston. Later, all of the glass on State Street’s office buildings melts away. Nobody knows why.MIT is suspected of complicity in the scientifically-based attacks, but a small group of students — including Ellen Swallow Richards, class of 1873 and MIT’s first female student, her future husband Robert Richards, class of 1868, and a character partly based on Freeman — toil secretly in the basement to reverse-engineer the schemes, capture the evildoer, and restore their school’s reputation.What distinguishes Pearl’s book is how it self-consciously wears the trappings of high-end history. The 1860 debates on Darwin between our founder, the geologist William Barton Rogers, and legendary Harvard naturalist Louis Agassiz? Check. (Agassiz despised Darwin’s theory; Rogers thought natural selection plausible and favored keeping an open mind.) The Institute’s perilous financial state? The way MIT’s first geometry students nicknamed Professor Watson “Squirty”? Check. Harvard’s schemes to annex MIT are here, too, although in real life Rogers probably did not resist the plan by planting dynamite in a proponent’s office — a great scene that reminds us the book is not meant to be taken too seriously. The prim determination of Richards, granite-hard New England tomboy, future first lady of science and a founder of environmental science and of home economics, at being the first and only woman to attend not just MIT, but any scientific college? Her temporary segregation as a “dangerous animal,” taught separately from the male students? Here as well.These ingredients could make for a rich stew, and Pearl is smart to seize on this setting for a novel. (Ellen Swallow Richards, the subject of an adoring biography by a friend in 1912 and a tendentious one in 1973, could probably carry a new book all on her own.) This is why it is so disappointing to find The Technologists as overwrought as it is.Pearl has taken these elements and turned them up to 11. The characters are lucky to be one-dimensional. Bostonians fear MIT’s sorcery to an extreme degree — “Technology will bring God’s wrath!” an activist shouts. Everybody from Harvard speaks in page-long evil monologues about MIT as Prometheus. Agassiz: “Over there they will teach atheist machinists and the sons of farmers alike. The knowledge of science in such individuals cannot fail to lead to quackery and dangerous social tendencies.”The narrative moves essentially along one rail to an apocalyptic, 109-page climax. When we finally learn whodunit, there’s no satisfying resolution.Pearl’s fictional MIT is one where students compete for the ceremonial honor of being named “First Scholar” of their graduating class, and “charity scholars” attend for free but must wait on professors with brandy at faculty meetings. It is an Institute that exists only because, upon first arriving in Boston, Rogers applied for a teaching job at Harvard and was rejected. What we get, alas, is a Harvard view of MIT.More troubling for a book based on 19th-century scientific terrorism, Pearl has not done his homework to present credible calamities. The attack on the compasses is nautical nonsense. (If the ships are waiting for a pilot in the fog, they’re not already in the inner harbor or going ramming speed. And they would be on soundings. And making sound signals.)Later catastrophes are electromagnetically confused. The scientific discussions are flawed. For a book that calls itself The Technologists, this is a problem, or at least a wasted opportunity for verisimilitude.One tool the book uses to dress up in history’s clothes is jarring: Pearl has taken pains to insert the actual writings of Richards, Agassiz, Charles Eliot (MIT professor and later Harvard’s president for 40 years), and others into their dialog whenever possible — context be damned. In practice, this produces some choppy prose that is helpful neither to history nor to the novel’s grace.Here is the real Richards, in a letter quoted by her 1912 biography, discussing a period of depression before she left home for Vassar College in 1868: “I lived for over two years in Purgatory really. … I used to fret and fume inside so every day, and think I couldn’t live so much longer. I was thwarted and hedged in on every side; it seemed as though God didn’t help me a bit and man was doing his best against me and my own heart even turned traitor.”And in 1870, after she graduated from Vassar and was waiting to hear back from MIT: “Everything seems to stop short at some blank wall and I suppose I’m like Baalam and don’t see the angel of the Lord in the way.”Now here is how those letters manifest in the book’s scene-setting, with the 1868 depression moved forward in time: “But after she was graduated from Vassar, everything seemed to stop short at one blank wall after another. Despite all her hard work, a degree from a women’s college proved insufficient to secure her admission into her newly chosen profession. She was living in purgatory, fretting and fuming so much that she began to think she couldn’t live much longer. She was thwarted and hedged in on every side, as though God wouldn’t help her a bit and man was doing his best against her, and her own heart even turned traitor. She felt like the prophet Baalam, obstructed everywhere by an angel he could not even see.”The misspelled reference to Balaam may have tripped easily off Richards’ pen in 1870, but coming from Pearl in 2012 it is incongruous. And given that the real Ellen wrote in 1870 that she was over her depression, “not feeling the old unrest and fretting against the fetters,” what is the value of this quasi-historical pastiche?Pearl has Eliot explain why Harvard should acquire MIT: “President Rogers is a brave, even a remarkable man of our epoch. But far better than devotion to an idealized person is devotion to a personified ideal.”The real Eliot did write something quite like that second sentence — except in its original context, his “personified ideal” is pluralistic democracy in our country, in contrast with Europe’s “idealized” kings and queens.Later, Eliot-of-the-book criticizes MIT students as “shirks and stragglers.” The real Eliot did use this phrase — but he was most likely referring to part-time non-degree students at Harvard’s Lawrence Scientific School, where he had previously taught, not MIT.By liberally sprinkling these quotations wrested from history, The Technologists becomes a sort of ersatz jukebox musical. The words are true in the micro but ultimately threaten to betray the characters. It is not so difficult to pick out the insertions, which do not really match Pearl’s own writing.By contrast, when it is Pearl who gives voice to the characters, they ring more true. When Ellen Swallow proclaims, “Worry not, I am not one of the feminist reformers,” it’s not a phrase the real Ellen could have said in 1868, but in substance it’s on the mark. She was a complex character who criticized the suffrage movement, mended her mineralogy professor’s (later husband’s) suspenders while a student, and dissented on pragmatic grounds from MIT’s 1878 decision to admit female students on the same footing as men.Despite disclaiming the mantle of reform, or maybe because of it, she became a super-reformer of the 19th century who did much to advance the public health, the environment, and the condition of women. It is not so hard to draw a line from MIT’s first female student to its 16th president. Notwithstanding the book’s flaws, Pearl deserves praise for dramatizing these pioneering people at a pioneering school, at the dawn of an era of revving change that continues today.

It's been a long time since our favorite Harry Potter stars graduated from Hogwarts, and most of us have kept a watchful eye on our favorite three protagonists — Harry, Hermione, and Ron. We all know Emma Watson became a highly sought-after actress and feminist icon (she was appointed the UN Women Goodwill Ambassador in 2014). Few things were as delightfully British as Rupert Grint starring in Ed Sheeran's music video for "Lego House." And, of course, none of us can forget that bizarre movie where Daniel Radcliffe was a farting corpse. But what happened to everyone else in the cast?An alarming number of Hogwarts alumni have taken up careers in theater. Surprisingly enough, Draco Malfoy managed to turn over a new leaf and become a loving friend to the kids he used to torture. The same, however, can't be said for his faithful sidekicks (one of which was jailed for carrying around a Molotov Cocktail). Then there's Neville Longbottom, for whom we have no words.From the Weasley twins to Harry Potter's high school sweetheart, here's what everyone will be talking about at the Hogwarts high school reunion.Neville Longbottom got hotWarner Bros. Pictures/InstagramPuberty does wonders, doesn't it? In 2015, Matthew Lewis shocked the masses when he debuted a smoldering six pack on the May cover of Attitude Magazine. He looked so far removed from the timid, chubby character that made him famous that BuzzFeed coined the term "Neville Longbottoming" to mean when some nerdy kid gets really, really hot.For Lewis, his transformation wasn't the result of a beauty spell. He hired a personal trainer who helped him cut out carbs, sugar, and alcohol, but his transformation began long before he left Hogwarts. Lewis started losing so much weight during the series that he had to wear a fat suit while filming the final chapters."As Neville grew throughout the books, so did I. My evolution as Matthew Lewis really coincided with Neville," he said during a 2017 panel (via People).Neville may have achieved peak hotness (and peak bravery after destroying the horcrux), but he also got his fairytale ending. In May 2018, Lewis wed his longtime girlfriend, American Angela Jones, in a gorgeous Italian ceremony and announced the news on Instagram. He was met with praise from fellow Hogwarts alum Katie Leung (Cho Chang), who wrote, "Aw Big congrats and love Matt. Xxxx."Draco Malfoy kept in touch with his Hogwarts enemiesWarner Bros. Pictures/Getty ImagesApparently, Hogwarts has high school reunions just like any other school. The same week that Kim Kardashian attendedher 20-year high school reunion, some of Hogwarts' best and brightest had a little get-together (even though they really didn't get along during their studies).April 2018 marked seven years since Draco Malfoy terrorized students in the halls of Hogwarts, but the snarky Slytherin was game for a reunion with Hermione Granger and Neville Longbottom, the Gryffindors he used to bully. Hey, it's never too late to change. In real life, Tom Felton, Matthew Lewis, and Emma Watson are super-tight despite their characters' differences.Felton shared a snap of the reunion on Instagram with the caption, "School mates #hogwartsalumni." Emma Watson and Jason Issacs, who played Draco's dad, Lucius, used the comments section to discuss their gorgeous teeth. "It's true, our teeth do look excellent," Watson wrote. Way to beat British stereotypes, guys!Nymphadora Tonks got her own sci-fi series — with Draco MalfoyGetty ImagesNymphadora Tonks and Draco Malfoy have always been connected — they're first cousins despite the fact that neither of them ever acknowledge it in the series. As it turns out, the on-screen cousins, played by Natalia Tena and Tom Felton, are even more friendly off-screen. The two banded together to take on a sci-fi series for YouTube Red.According to BBC, Origin will debut as a 10-episode series that follows a group of strangers who are stranded on a spacecraft. The passengers, who were headed for a distant planet, must work together to get out of their situation, but someone is hiding a major secret. Sounds juicy, right?Since being sorted into Slytherin, Felton has crafted quite the sci-fi career. He starred alongside James Franco in Rise of the Planet of the Apes (and was inadvertently responsible for the ape uprising). Tena, on the other hand, went straight from Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows to HBO's award-winning fantasy series Game of Thrones, where she playedthe recurring character Osha until 2016.George Weasley developed a passion for theaterWarner Bros. Pictures/Getty ImagesOliver Phelps, the oldest of the Phelps twins, hasn't had many acting roles since appearing in the Harry Potter series as George Weasley. Besides regularly showing up to Harry Potter-related events like the grand opening of the Wizarding World of Harry Potter at Universal Studios Hollywood, he nabbed the role of Mr. Carter alongside his twin brother James in the BBC One movie Danny and the Human Zoo. He's also set to star with James for a third time in the dramedy Own Worst Enemy. Sadly, the British indie has been stuck in post-production since 2016. Beyond that, Oliver has since revealed to the world that he's not a natural redhead (gasp!) and that he's found a passion for theater.In early June 2018, Oliver was gearing up to make his stage debut as Detective Sergeant Totti in The Classic Thriller Theatre Company's production of The Case of the Frightened Lady. The Phelps twins had no acting experience prior to Harry Potter, so it's not surprising that Oliver was okay jumping into the world of theater cold."I know I need to prove that I can do it live in a theater, but I love that sink or swim challenge," he told Coventry Live. "And I'm sure I'll find out there's no better place to sink or swim than on the stage."The Case of the Frightened Lady debuted on June 12 at the Belgrade Theatre Coventry.Fred Weasley enjoys golfing more than playing QuidditchWarner Bros. Pictures/Getty ImagesApparently, the only contact sport allowed at Hogwarts was Quidditch. But that didn't stop Oliver and James Phelps from developing a passion for golf that remained long after they graduated from wizarding school.In an interview with Today's Golfer, the pair spoke about their various golfing excursions. While Oliver had a habit of hitting the local courses with castmates Rupert Grint and Tom Felton, James flew to Ibiza specifically for golf outings. He's also played while filming in Australia and fangirled over meeting golf legend Arnold Palmer at a course near Florida's Universal Studios."We've been lucky to play at some amazing courses all over the world — I've so many bag tags that it jingles like Father Christmas's sleigh," James admitted.In addition to honing in on his golf skills, James' film career has fared better than his brother's. Notably, he appeared in the 2015 black comedy Patchwork and is set to star in the 2019 fantasy Cadia: The World Within.Ginny Weasley went from magic to menopauseWarner Bros. Pictures/Getty ImagesUpon the end of the Harry Potter series, we learned that Ginny Weasley became a journalist after graduating from Hogwarts and marrying Harry Potter. According to Pottermore (via Gizmodo), she covered the Quidditch World Cup for The Daily Prophet,where she was a senior correspondent.Much like her on-screen character, Bonnie Wright is also a writer. She stepped behind the scenes after Deathly Hallows and crafted a career writing and directing short films, music videos, and commercials. When her days at Hogwarts came to an end, Wright went to London College of Communication where she studied filmmaking. Her thesis, a short film about a young girl befriending an old man, starred David Thewlis, who played Remus Lupin in the Harry Potter series. Wright later launched her own production company in 2012.Another of Wright's directorial projects ditched the magic and ramped up the menopause. Medusa's Ankles, a 2018 short film adapted from an A.S. Byatt short story, uses a hair salon as a setting to examine the female experience of aging. Wright cast fellow Harry Potter star Jason Issacs, who played Lucius Malfoy, as the charismatic hairdresser Lucian.Dudley Dursley lost a whole lot of weightWarner Bros. Pictures/Getty ImagesDudley Dursley was never Harry Potter'smost popular character. He was kind of the worst, unless you're comparing him to Voldemort (though he did sort of redeem himself after Harry saved him from Dementors). Actor Harry Melling hasn't really had much work since his days terrorizing Harry Potter, and part of that is because he just can't shake the iconic role."I kind of want to let it go. It's done," he told The Stage. "I don't know if it will ever really be done. People will still go, 'Oh you're Dudley Dursley, the fat one.'"Strangely enough. Melling isn't "fat" anymore. He pulled a total Neville Longbottom and shed so many pounds before the last Harry Potter film that he was almost recast. His weight loss journey began in 2007 after performing at the National Youth Theatre and ended with him in a fat suit during The Deathly Hallows. The weight loss allowed him to reinvent himself on the stage, and he attended the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Arts. He shifted his focus almost entirely to theater after primarily appearing in shorts and minor TV and film roles. This included a spot in the 2016 Robert Pattinson film The Lost City of Z.Luna Lovegood became a vegan activistWarner Bros. Pictures/Getty ImagesThough Evanna Lynch was widely loved as the quirky Ravenclaw Luna Lovegood, she hasn't had any acting gigs in the years since the series ended. Her film credits pretty much dip off after 2015's My Name Is Emily and Danny and the Human Zoo –but that's totally okay. She's moved her efforts towards a worthier cause. Lynch is a vegan activist and uses her podcast The Chickpeeps to advocate for a more sustainable, cruelty-free lifestyle.With zero acting gigs slated for 2018, Lynch is wildly busy saving the world. After partnering with animal rights organization Surge for the Official Animal Rights March in London, she plans to take her activism to the Reducetarian Summit. The three-day summit aims to help people reduce their meat consumption. She will serve as a keynote speaker alongside Beyond Meat CEO Ethan Brown and representatives from Quorn, Google, Greenpeace, and the Humane Society.Gregory Goyle needs a silencing charmWarner Bros. Pictures/InstagramDespite his rather minor role in the Harry Potter franchise, Josh Herdman came out of Hogwarts swinging — literally. Herdman, who's one of the more successful actors from the series, picked up a side hustle as an MMA fighter after earning a black belt in jiu jitsu. Since April 2016, he's fought in two different MMA matches. These days, he's preparing for the film Cagefighter,where he stars as an MMA fighter, and is drumming up some major controversy by getting a bit too aggressive with online trolls (not everyone out there is as nice as Dobby the house elf).It's hard to expect too much from a Slytherin who spent his formative years bullying kids and taking orders from Draco Malfoy, but someone should have hit Josh Herdman with a silencing charm when he graced headlines in March 2018 for slamming a superfan who slid into his Instagram DMs. According to The Sun, the argument was spurred when a fan named Chris asked the actor, "Can I ask why you would f*** your chances being a successful actor by using drugs?! No wonder the work dried up!" Herdman responded by calling the user an "absolute r****" and "some kind of c***" before saying he felt sorry that Chris' daughter had to grow up with a "Dad like you." Apparently, Chris was so deeply upset that he threw away his Harry Potterbox set.Vincent Crabbe served jail time after rioting with a Molotov cocktailWarner Bros. Pictures/Getty ImagesLife imitates art, doesn't it? Vincent Crabbe ended up exactly how you'd expect a Hogwarts bully to end up. He went from following the orders of Draco Malfoy and teasing his fellow classmates to stealing champagne from Sainsbury's and tossing around Molotov Cocktails. Apparently, Jamie Waylett's legal troubles were the reason for his early exit from the Harry Potter films — and they gave a whole new meaning to Slytherin green (yes, that's a weed joke).According to Us Weekly (via MTV), Waylett was originally arrested in 2009 after cops pulled him over and found eight bags of marijuana in his vehicle. They later raided his home to discover that he was growing ten cannabis plants worth about $2,900. Things only went downhill from there, and he was sentenced to two years in prison for his role in the 2011 London riots. He was allegedly caught swigging from a bottle of champagne that was looted from a local grocery store and carrying around a petrol bomb. His defense? It wasn't his. He said someone asked him to carry it. Is that really how you'd sell out Draco Malfoy? There's no loyalty in the Slytherin house.Pansy Parkinson became a Playboy modelWarner Bros. Pictures/InstagramSince her days as Draco Malfoy's love interest Pansy Parkinson, Scarlett Byrne has only become a bigger heartthrob — she's a literal Playboy model. In 2017, she showed off her bum in a nude shoot that was accompanied by an empowering feminist essay.Byrne has had a pretty successful career since Harry Potter. In addition to starring in TV thrillers like Sorority Murder, she nabbed the role of Nora Hildegard in the CW series The Vampire Diaries. It almost makes her Playboy spread seem out of left field until you realize that she's been engaged to Hugh Hefner's son Cooper since 2015. That's right: Scarlett Byrne will soon be living in the lap of luxury with the Playboy fortune. All she needs is a pair of velvet slippers!Cooper Hefner is largely credited with revamping Playboy's image and reintroducing nudity after becoming the company's Chief Creative Officer. Byrne's bottom was featured in the first issue back to boobs titled, "Naked is Normal."Cho Chang is taking a stand against racismWarner Bros. Pictures/Getty ImagesCho Chang was Katie Leung's first-ever role, and her kiss with Daniel Radcliffe triggered thousands of gasps from teen girls everywhere (why couldn't it have been us?). Surprisingly, after Deathly Hallows, Leung actually almost quit acting. She went back to school to study photography and was cast in the London production of Wild Swans during her final year. That's where she caught the theater bug. After the production, she attended drama school at the London Royal Conservatory and graduated in 2015.Despite only landing a few TV roles, Leung has had a rich career in theater. The Scottish actress starred in the National Theatre's production of The World of Extreme Happiness and joined the Royal Shakespeare Company for Snow In Midsummer. This was an important play for Leung because it brought a Chinese classic to the West. Leung has been consistently outspoken on the "casual racism" she's experienced in the acting world because of her Asian heritage. In 2016, she told BBCthat she had yet to play a non-Chinese role but hoped to at least diversify the type of Chinese women portrayed in the media."The challenge is being able to rid these stereotypes, so I'm not playing the submissive female who's a victim, but somebody who is determined and fearless," she said.Another project of the former Harry Potterstar's, a TV miniseries called Moominvalley,is slated for a 2019 release.Footnotes : What these Harry Potter stars are doing today