Augustus: I wish we had that swing set sometimes.

Hazel: the one from my backyard?

Augustus: Yes. My nostalgia is so extreme that I am capable of missing a swing in which my butt has never actually touched.

Hazel: Nostalgia is a side effect of cancer.

Augustus: Nah, nostalgia is a side effect of dying.

Above us, the wind blew and the branching shadows rearranged themselves on our skin. Gus squeezed my hand.

Augustus: It is a good life, Hazel Grace.

I want all the shirts!  They even have a Ravenclaw one

voldemortoutbitches:

OKAY SO HERE IS THE DEAL.

I’M STILL RECOVERING FROM MY LITTLE DRUG PROBLEM. THE DARK LORD IS FEELING GENEROUS.

SO OKAY, IF YOU WANT THIS T-SHIRT.

THIS BEAUTIFUL T-SHIRT.

REBLOG THIS AND I’LL PICK ONE OF YOU ON THE 15TH AND YOU CAN HAVE IT. TAKE ADVANTAGE WHILST YOU CAN BECAUSE SOON ENOUGH I WILL BE KILLING YOU ALL.

VOLDEMORT OUT, BITCHES!

magic-of-hogwarts:

1997 - 2011

• Harry Potter taught me that some things are worth dying for.
• Ron Weasley taught me that believing in yourself is a hundred times more powerful than luck.
• Hermione Granger taught me that an education is a girl’s best asset, even if it doesn’t make you many friends.
• Severus Snape taught me to never, ever, ever judge someone.
• Rubeus Hagrid taught me that anything can be cute with the right perspective.
• Ginny Weasley taught me that bold is beautiful.
• Lily Potter taught me that a mother’s love is the strongest force on earth.
• Remus Lupin taught me that fear is the only thing I should be afraid of.
• Dolores Umbridge taught me that education with a political agenda is a terrible, terrible thing.
• Sirius Black taught me that the ones we love never truly leave us.
• Albus Dumbledore taught me that good people are not always good.
• Draco Malfoy taught me that bad people are not always bad.
• Neville Longbottom taught me that courage is standing up for what’s right, even when you’re scared out of your mind.
• Luna Lovegood taught me that weird is wonderful.
• Dobby taught me that freedom is a gift.
• Lucius Malfoy taught me that no amount of money, pomp, or circumstance will buy you true friends.
• Fred & George Weasley taught me that sometimes all you need is a good laugh.
• The Dursleys taught me that a world without imagination is a dull and dreary place.
• Arthur Weasley taught me that a good sense of curiosity and a bit of obsession can be healthy.
• Fleur Delacour taught me that true love is not based on appearance.
• Molly Weasley taught me that a happy family is not measured in gold.
• Bellatrix Lestrange taught me that hatred and prejudice rot your mind and can turn even the most beautiful person into a monster.
• Kreacher taught me that if you want to get to know a man, look at how he treats his inferiors, not his equals.
• Cho Chang taught me that rebound relationships almost never work.
• Nymphadora Tonks taught me to love myself, no matter what I look like.
• Percy Weasley taught me that, in the end, no career is worth sacrificing your family.
• Sybill Trelawney taught me that you cannot change the past, only the future.
• Lavender Brown taught me that physical relationships only last for so long.
• Peter Pettigrew taught me that rats do not make good friends.
• Nicholas Flamel taught me that to the well-prepared mind, death is but the next great adventure.
• Minerva McGonagall taught me that a good cause is worth fighting for at any age.
• Hedwig taught me that the love we have for our pets is very real.
• Lord Voldemort taught me that a life without love is barely living.
• J. K. Rowling taught me that the stories we love will always be with us.

Until the very end.

It left me feeling inspired, so I thought I’d share it with you and maybe pass on the awesome?  Idk. I just wish all of my finals were so happy-making.

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In an essay of no more than 1,200 words: (a) analyze why it is vital that the remembrance, history and lessons of the Holocaust be passed on to a new generation; and (b) suggest what young people can do to combat and prevent prejudice, discrimination and violence in our world today.

Last Monday I had the privilege of meeting a Holocaust victim who had survived Auschwitz and many other concentration camps.  He showed us the scar he still had from when his number had been tattooed onto his arm and he talked about the nightmares he still has at night from his horrific experiences there.  Though these details made the Holocaust certainly seem more real and vivid to me in a way that merely reading about the Holocaust cannot accomplish, one specific story that he told stuck with me.

While he was imprisoned in one of the Concentration Camps, two other prisoners, who had been working in a factory producing bombs, succeeded in blowing up a gas chamber.  Immediately after their discovery the two girls were hanged.  Though this story was only mentioned briefly in passing, it had a profound impact on me.  I try to consider how much courage it must have taken to go through with their plan, knowing that they would eventually be discovered and knowing that when they were the punishment would be hanging.  Surely they knew all of this and yet they went through with their plan.  Unlike many of the other prisoners who gave up hope and gradually receded into death, these two girls fought until the end against their captivators.  While others around them struggled to wake up each morning, they planned, putting all of their strength into their mission.  I wonder what the other prisoners thought of the stunt.  Did they find it inspiring, did it encourage them to keep fighting the struggle to live?  Or did it remind them once again that there was no escape, that both the strong-willed and those who gave up reached the same fate in the end?  I have to believe that their bravery inspired many, at the very least the few that were spared that day when the Nazis were one gas chamber short.  But while I can’t speak for the witnesses of the action, I know without a doubt that it has inspired me.

The day I met the Holocaust survivor, as a group we learned about “The Pyramid of Hate”.  We discussed the simple ways that prejudice and hatred prosper from a seemingly harmless joke, to discrimination, to violence, and finally to Genocide itself.   It was scary to consider but is definitely true.  Since returning from the trip, I’ve noticed too many jokes about race, religion, and sexual orientation that occur everyday in the hallways of my supposedly diverse High School.  When directly confronted, I have spoken out and told some of my friends that using “gay” as a belittling adjective is certainly not appropriate, for example.  But far too often I ignore many other equally harmful jokes. This is wrong.  I’m not acting any different from the Germans during the war who sat back in ignorance while their Jewish neighbors were forcefully taken to gas chambers, to work camps and to death.  The same trick that made millions of Germans sit calmly while their neighbors were rounded up is used today. While most people have enough innate compassion inside of them to make them opposed to slaughtering millions, millions in Nazi Germany and millions today do not have the conviction to speak out against prejudiced jokes and this is why a public understanding of the Holocaust is essential. Everyone alive today needs to know not simply that the Holocaust happened but why it happened.  If more people realized that the Holocaust was a direct result of unchallenged prejudice maybe more people would work to stop the spread of hatred and the next generation could be raised in a world free from Genocide.

With Holocaust Survivors still living today as witnesses and the tremendous amount of primary sources from the period available today we really have no excuses.  One way that Holocaust education has helped improve my school and our surrounding community is the club we started a few years ago.  Triangles of Truth is our way of showing that learning about the Holocaust is not enough when prejudice and hatred still exist.  Selling cardstock triangles each bearing the name of a unique Holocaust victim, we use the money we make from their sale to help victims of Genocide in Darfur today.  We’ve raised $32,000 so far and have spread our program all across the United States and even into some parts of Canada. In the process of helping with the club, I have learned a lot about the thousands who die every day in Sudan and all the different ways we can help. I am very active in the club and for awhile I felt proud and even a little boastful about the fact that I dedicated so much time to such a charitable organization.  However, if despite my awareness of both the Holocaust and Genocides which occur today, I still allow hatred and discrimination to reign, I am contributing in a small but still significant way to a future Genocide.  I’m not the most outgoing, talkative, person but I still have a voice and I need to use it to speak out against any kind of intolerance that occurs around me.

The two girls who blew up the gas chamber had everything to fear from their method of speaking out against their situation and yet they still followed through.  I am privileged to attend a school where the worst that can happen to me if I voice my disapproval for a racist comment is that I might be laughed at for taking something meant to be humorous too seriously. I have nothing to fear and yet I cringe away from too many opportunities to show people around me that some jokes are not funny.

“Silence is golden except when it kills” declares a shirt that members of Triangles of Truth sometimes wear.  There are many types of silence.  While the world does need to wake up to the violence that occurs in way too many countries today, America needs to wake up to the nonviolent acts that can lead to the genocides,

In the half-year I’ve spent so far in my Holocaust class I’ve been taught so much.  Not simply statistics about the death rate at the camps, but I’ve learned so many ways to take a stand against Genocide and other acts of injustice.  Perhaps if my whole school were enrolled in this course, our cultural-tension issues would be resolved.  Without the lessons of the Holocaust, how can we entice others to learn from the “Pyramid of Hate”?

In a few years, the remaining Holocaust Survivors will be deceased and it will be on the shoulders of those who heard their stories to keep the world from forgetting about the tragedy and the others that occur today.  Future generations must not forget about the Holocaust.  The message of tolerance that it spreads is vital for a new generation to grow up in a world free of Genocide.  Those of us who have heard must stand up and speak out

“Never Again” but only when we are willing to put forth the effort it takes to mean what we are saying.