I F R Q C H A R A C T E R S H A D G O O G L E Ft. Cal, Maven, And Mare

Wren/Oak just might be the best Holly Black ship. Miss HB has outdone herself. The drama. The yearning. The absolute unhinged insanity. The teeth. I want to wrap them in bubble wrap and tuck them in a plastic container with the Christmas decorations. They’re perfect. They’re so flawed I want to die.

Kinda fucked up that ‘Draco’ and ‘Harry’ are acoustically so much softer than ‘Malfoy’ and ‘Potter,’ meaning that when they go from last names to first names not only is it more intimate but the sounds themselves are gentler. Anyway if anyone needs me I’ll be wallowing in my considerable agonies

50 Top Online Learning Sites

Rejoice fellow uni students looking for some studyspo, we urge you to take a few free lessons, as well as academic lessons provided from actual universities on several topics. Have a look at the 50 top learning sites you can find online to help you save some time.

Art and Music

Dave Conservatoire — Dave Conservatoire is an entirely free online music school offering a self-proclaimed “world-class music education for everyone,” and providing video lessons and practice tests.

Drawspace — If you want to learn to draw or improve your technique, Drawspace has free and paid self-study as well as interactive, instructor-led lessons.

Justin Guitar — The Justin Guitar site boasts over 800 free guitar lessons which cover transcribing, scales, arpeggios, ear training, chords, recording tech and guitar gear, and also offers a variety of premium paid mobile apps and content (books/ ebooks, DVDs, downloads).

Math, Data Science and Engineering

Codecademy — Codecademy offers data science and software programming (mostly Web-related) courses for various ages groups, with an in-browser coding console for some offerings.

Stanford Engineering Everywhere — SEE/ Stanford Engineering Everywhere houses engineering (software and otherwise) classes that are free to students and educators, with materials that include course syllabi, lecture videos, homework, exams and more.

Big Data University — Big Data University covers Big Data analysis and data science via free and paid courses developed by teachers and professionals.

Better Explained — BetterExplained offers a big-picture-first approach to learning mathematics — often with visual explanations — whether for high school algebra or college-level calculus, statistics and other related topics.

Design, Web Design/ Development

HOW Design University — How Design University (How U) offers free and paid online lessons on graphic and interactive design, and has opportunities for those who would like to teach.

HTML Dog — HTML Dog is specifically focused on Web development tutorials for HTML, CSS and JavaScript coding skills.

Skillcrush — Skillcrush offers professional web design and development courses aimed at one who is interested in the field, regardless of their background — with short, easy-to-consume modules and a 3-month Career Blueprints to help students focus on their career priorities.

Hack Design — Hack Design, with the help of several dozen designers around the world, has put together a lesson plan of 50 units (each with one or more articles and/or videos) on design for Web, mobile apps and more by curating multiple valuable sources (blogs, books, games, videos, and tutorials) — all free of charge.

General – Children and Adults

Scratch – Imagine, Program, Share — Scratch from MIT is a causal creative learning site for children, which has projects that range from the solar system to paper planes to music synths and more.

Udemy — Udemy hosts mostly paid video tutorials in a wide range of general topics including personal development, design, marketing, lifestyle, photography, software, health, music, language, and more.

E-learning for kids — E-learning for Kids offers elementary school courses for children ages 5-12 that cover curriculum topic including math, science, computer, environment, health, language, life skills and others.

Ed2go — Ed2go aims their “affordable” online learning courses at adults, and partners with over 2,100 colleges and universities to offer this virtual but instructor-led training in multiple categories — with options for instructors who would like to participate.

GCF Learn Free — GCFLearnFree.org is a project of Goodwill Community Foundation and Goodwill Industries, targeting anyone look for modern skills, offering over 1,000 lessons and 125 tutorials available online at anytime, covering technology, computer software, reading, math, work and career and more.

Stack Exchange — StackExchange is one of several dozen Q+A sites covering multiple topics, including Stack Overflow, which is related to computer technology. Ask a targeted question, get answers from professional and enthusiast peers to improve what you already know about a topic.

HippoCampus — HippoCampus combines free video collections on 13 middle school through college subjects from NROC Project, STEMbite, Khan Academy, NM State Learning Games Lab and more, with free accounts for teachers.

Howcast — Howcast hosts casual video tutorials covering general topics on lifestyle, crafts, cooking, entertainment and more.

Memrise — Lessons on the Memrise (sounds like “memorize”) site include languages and other topics, and are presented on the principle that knowledge can be learned with gamification techniques, which reinforce concepts.

SchoolTube — SchoolTube is a video sharing platform for K-12 students and their educators, with registered users representing over 50,000 schools and a site offering of over half a million videos.

Instructables — Instructables is a hybrid learning site, offering free online text and video how-to instructions for mostly physical DIY (do-it-yourself) projects that cover various hands-on crafts, technology, recipes, game play accessories and more. (Costs lie in project materials only.)

creativeLIVE — CreativeLive has an interesting approach to workshops on creative and lifestyle topics (photography, art, music, design, people skills, entreprenurship, etc.), with live access typically offered free and on-demand access requiring purchase.

Do It Yourself — Do It Yourself (DIY) focuses on how-tos primarily for home improvement, with the occasional tips on lifestyle and crafts topics.

Adafruit Learning System — If you’re hooked by the Maker movement and want to learn how to make Arduino-based electronic gadgets, check out the free tutorials at Adafruit Learn site — and buy the necessary electronics kits and supplies from the main site.

Grovo — If you need to learn how to efficiently use a variety of Web applications for work, Grovo has paid (subscription, with free intros) video tutorials on best practices for hundreds of Web sites.

General College and University

edX — The edX site offers free subject matter from top universities, colleges and schools from around the world, including MIT and Harvard, and many courses are “verified,” offering a certificate of completion for a nominal minimum fee.

Cousera — Coursera is a learning site offering courses (free for audit) from over 100 partners — top universities from over 20 countries, as well as non-university partners — with verified certificates as a paid option, plus specializations, which group related courses together in a recommended sequence.

MIT Open Courseware — MIT OpenCourseWare is the project that started the OCW / Open Education Consortium [http://www.oeconsortium.org], launching in 2002 with the full content of 50 real MIT courses available online, and later including most of the MIT course curriculum — all for free — with hundreds of higher ed institutions joining in with their own OCW course materials later.

Open Yale Courses — Open Yale Courses (OYC) are free, open access, non-credit introductory courses recorded in Yale College’s classroom and available online in a number of digital formats.

Open Learning Initiative — Carnegie Mellon University’s (CMU’s) Open Learning Initiative (OLI) is course content (many open and free) intended for both students who want to learn and teachers/ institutions requiring teaching materials.

Khan Academy — Khan Academy is one of the early online learning sites, offering free learning resources for all ages on many subjects, and free tools for teachers and parents to monitor progress and coach students.

MIT Video — MITVideo offers over 12,000 talks/ lecture videos in over 100 channels that include math, architecture and planning, arts, chemistry, biological engineering, robotics, humanities and social sciences, physics and more.

Stanford Online — Stanford Online is a collection of free courses billed as “for anyone, anywhere, anytime” and which includes a wide array of topics that include human rights, language, writing, economics, statistics, physics, engineering, software, chemistry, and more.

Harvard Extension School: Open Learning Initiative — Harvard’s OLI (Open Learning Initiative) offers a selection of free video courses (taken from the edX selection) for the general public that covers a range of typical college topics, includings, Arts, History, Math, Statistics, Computer Science, and more.

Canvas Network — Canvas Network offers mostly free online courses source from numerous colleges and universities, with instructor-led video and text content and certificate options for select programs.

Quantum Physics Made Relatively Simple — Quantum Physics Made Relatively Simple” is, as the name implies, a set of just three lectures (plus intro) very specifically about Quantum Physics, form three presentations given by theoretical physicist Hans Bethe.

Open UW — Open UW is the umbrella initiative of several free online learning projects from the University of Washington, offered by their UW Online division, and including Coursera, edX and other channels.

UC San Diego Podcast Lectures — Podcast USCD, from UC San Diego, is a collection of audio and/or video podcasts of multi-subject university course lectures — some freely available, other only accessible by registered students.

University of the People — University of the People offers tuition-free online courses, with relatively small fees required only for certified degree programs (exam and processing fees).

NovoEd — NovoEd claims a range of mostly free “courses from thought leaders and distinguished professors from top universities,” and makes it possible for today’s participants to be tomorrow’s mentors in future courses.

IT and Software Development

Udacity — Udacity offers courses with paid certification and nanodegrees — with emphasis on skills desired by tech companies in Silicon Valley — mostly based on a monthly subscription, with access to course materials (print, videos) available for free.

Apple Developer Site — Apple Developer Center may be very specific in topics for lessons, but it’s a free source of documentation and tutorials for software developers who want to develop apps for iOS Mobile, Mac OS X desktop, and Safari Web apps.

Google Code — As with Apple Developer Center, Google Code is topic-narrow but a good source of documentation and tutorials for Android app development.

Code.org — Code.org is the home of the “Hour of Code” campaign, which is aimed at teachers and educators as well as students of all ages (4-104) who want to teach or learn, respectively, computer programming and do not know where to start.

Mozilla Developer Network — MDN (Mozilla Developer Network) offers learning resources — including links to offsite guides — and tutorials for Web development in HTML, CSS and JavaScript — whether you’re a beginner or an expert, and even if you’re not using Mozilla’s Firefox Web browser.

Learnable — Learnable by Sitepoint offers paid subscription access to an ebook library of content for computers and tablets, and nearly 5,000 videos lessons (and associated code samples) covering software-related topics – with quizzes and certification available.

Pluralsight — Pluralsight (previously PeepCode) offers paid tech and creative training content (over 3,700 courses and 130K video clips) for individuals, businesses and institutions that covers IT admin, programming, Web development, data visualization — as well as game design, 3D animation, and video editing through a partnership with Digital-Tutors.com, and additional software coding lessons through Codeschool.com.

CodeHS — CodeSchool offers software coding lessons (by subscription) for individuals who want to learn at home, or for students learning in a high school teacher-led class.

Aquent Gymnasium — Gymnasium offers a small but thorough set of free Web-related lesson plans for coding, design and user experience, but filters access by assessing the current knowledge of an enrollee and allows those with scores of at least 70% to continue.

ELLIE WILLIAMS in The Last of Us Part II (2020)

As readers we only know what Harry notices/pays attention to, and although we have no idea what color Cho’s eyes are or what Zacharias Smith’s voice sounds like, we know a lot about Draco Malfoy. Consider. We know:

His hair is blond. But not just blond. It’s a particular, white-blond color that gleams in the sunlight. 

And very sleek, but loose enough that it falls around his face if he moves around vigorously enough.

He has grey eyes. Not just grey, but specifically light grey.

Harry also frequently describes them as glittering or sparkling. 

He presumably has a sweet tooth as he gets regular sweets packages from home delivered by his eagle owl.

He has very pale skin which takes on a grayish tinge when he’s sickly.

He tends to narrow his eyes when he’s angry.

He doesn’t blush when he’s embarrassed but he does flush - just enough to give his skin a faint pink tinge. 

He tends to move his hands a lot when talking animatedly. 

His speech has a very specific drawling cadence and tone that makes his voice easily recognizable (to Harry at least).

This is all in canon.

Meanwhile, even though Harry and Ron are together practically 24/7 for seven years, we only find out that Ron’s eyes are blue halfway through Deathly Hallows. 

Drarry + Eighth year + The Patronus Charm

Draco’s patronus is a doe.

A fucking doe. Not a snake, or a dragon, or the sharp fins of a great white. A small deer.

A microscopic female deer. He’d worked so hard for this moment. He’d reluctantly spent hours upon hours with his former nemesis- and savior of the Wizarding world- studying and practicing a charm he should’ve mastered years ago.

Draco is a master at magic- or so he deems himself- so the fact that he hasn’t been able to conquer the patronus charm is more than aggravating. That’s what led him to finally give into Potter’s incessant requests that they practice together. He’d rudely barged in on him one day in the Room of Requirement, and at the sight of the faint, flicker of a white wisp that exited Draco’s wand, the secret had been discovered.

“Just let me help you,” Potter insisted, and Draco had scoffed.

“I don’t need your help, Scarhead.”

“You know, I don’t have the scar anymore.” He’d flashed a facetious grin, lifting up tendrils of hair from his forehead.

“Okay, then, Saint Potter. You’re just a regular twat, now.”

“A twat who wants to help.”

“Fuck you.”

Draco had stomped out, thoroughly ruffled. How dare Potter offer help to him? As if testifying on his behalf wasn’t enough. Draco didn’t need any more favors. He didn’t need any of it.

But that wasn’t the end of Potter’s prying. Every day, it seemed, he found little excuses to spend time around Draco.

“Be my potions partner?”

“Are you fucking serious? You’ll drop my marks.”

“Maybe I need your help, you blonde prat.”

“You have a sick sense of humor, Potter.”

Nevertheless, they brewed that day’s assignment side by side.

“Care to study with me?”

Potter had approached him in the library. He’d been peacefully studying for his NEWTs until a familiarly annoying presence slid into the seat across from him.

“No.”

“Please, Draco. I need your help. I’m going to fail transfiguration.”

“You just called me Draco.”

“Yeah, I figured since were friends now, I should call you by your first name.”

“We are NOT friends, Potter.”

He smiled a quirky little grin that caused something inside Draco’s stomach to lurch.

“Okay, my not friend. Now turn to page 450; that’s where I’m struggling.”

And so on, and so forth.

Draco had eventually given in to Potter’s endless badgering and met him on the grounds after curfew to practice.

“It’ll be easier outside,” Potter promised, “where you can feel the freedom of the breeze.”

The freedom of the breeze had done nothing to quell Draco’s failed attempts that night.

It was extremely vulnerable, the number of times Draco had allowed the f-word to escape his frustrated lips. At one point he’d thrown his wand at Potter, who’d suggested he just needed to “think happier.”

Nothing made Draco happy anymore. Not since the war, which had resulted in the imprisonment of his father and a depressed mother. He’d only been pardoned himself because of Potter, a shame that he’d had to live with daily.

But on the contrary, he’d began to catch himself smiling more and more during their practice sessions. Potter would comment on their budding friendship; Draco would tell him to sod off.

And Potter would laugh. It was a peculiar sound, a dancing rhythm from his grin that sent Draco’s head reeling. He’d never noticed the small dimples in his cheeks, or the way he folds his lips when he’s concentrating. Little details that left him wondering what else he’d missed about Potter all these years.

Today, Potter had said the usual. “Hey, friend. Ready to cast a patronus charm today?”

Draco had shrugged. “Sure.”

“You didn’t tell me to sod off.”

He shrugged again, and a wide smile lit up Potter’s face. “I told you we were friends.”

His eyes were a vibrant green, a certain shade that only revealed itself when he smiled. Draco felt his belly expand, radiating a weightless sensation throughout his entire being.

Suddenly, he could cast a patronus.

The white wisp he was used to seeing morphed like smoke into a bright shape that contrasted brightly against the night sky. At first, he couldn’t tell what it was, squinting his eyes from the light.

He noticed Potter’s heated cheeks first.

Confused, Draco had studied the silhouette until he realized exactly why Potter was blushing.

A fucking doe.

A doe.

Harry’s patronus is a stag.

And Draco’s is a fucking doe.

His stomach lurches; he thinks he’s going to vomit. He drops his wand and without a word runs back to the castle.

“Draco, wait!” He hears faintly, but he refuses to turn around. He’d rather die than see his face again. This is a fucking nightmare.

***

Borrowing Pansy’s wand turns out to be more of a hassle than he initially believes. He’s forced to do a lot of things the Muggle way, as he can really only use it when she’s not.

It’s still better than facing Potter.

He avoids him at all costs; ignores his voice shouting down the corridors after him. Studies in his dormitory. Keeps his eyes on the floor, aimed oppositely of those fucking green irises, that smile...

Two weeks pass, and Draco’s doing a fine job of remaining invisible. He’s almost forgotten the feeling of flurries in his abdomen, the soft gaze of Potter’s stare. The fact that his patronus is a fucking doe. And the implication of what that means.

He hasn’t tried to perform the charm since, but something tells him he won’t be able to. It’s a nagging feeling in his gut, and he admittedly doesn’t like it.

He hasn’t been sleeping properly either.

This is what drives him to sneak out, throwing the covers from his insomniatic body and frustratingly stalking from the common room. He doesn’t know where he’s going, just that he needs some fresh air.

He finds himself outside, in the very spot where just a few weeks ago he’d been so happy and elated that he’d performed his very own corporeal patronus.

Now, he sits alone. If he’s honest, that hurts a bit.

The breeze tickles his cheeks, and there’s a slight freedom that comes from that.

“Fucking Potter, always being right.” He mutters to himself, wishing he hadn’t ended up here. Wishing he wasn’t thinking about stupid Potter.

“Hey, I’m not always right.”

Draco starts as Potter’s very form seems to appear from thin air beside him.

“What the fuck, Potter? How did you-“ His face is a cross between confusion and embarrassment, and his heart is pounding.

Harry lifts the invisibility cloak, revealing his secret. “I needed some fresh air.”

“Why are you always where I am?”

Harry chuckles. Draco swallows, and it’s a hard knot in the back of his throat.

“You’re so fucking stubborn, Draco.”

Before he can respond, Harry pulls out the familiar length of hawthorn from his pocket. He extends his hand, and for a moment Draco’s gaze snaps up to meet a set of vibrant green eyes.

He gulps, drinking in the sudden presence of what he’d denied himself for weeks. His stomach begins to inflate. His blood tingles. He’s drawn not only to the wand before him but also the hand that’s holding it.

He reaches his fingers forward, wrapping them around the base of the wand. He hesitates, nervous at the sudden proximity.

But it’s Potter who slides his hand from the wand and instead rests it on Draco’s hand.

“Potter, wh-“

“Your patronus is a doe, Draco. And mine is a stag. And that means something.”

His stare is piercing. It cuts through every guarded wall Draco has spent the past few weeks constructing.

“Potter, it doesn’t-“

“I wasn’t finished.”

Draco silences. The assertiveness startles him.

“It means something. For you, and for me. Magic doesn’t lie, Draco.”

His fingers trace soft circles around his hand.

“I know you’ve been avoiding me. I’ve missed you.”

He rubs a gentle caress along his forearm. Draco doesn’t dare move, or breathe for that matter.

“I want to see where this goes, Draco. I don’t care what it takes. I... I want you.”

“You do?” Draco’s voice is a whisper, barely audible even in the crisp night atmosphere.

“Is that so hard to believe? We all made mistakes, Draco. People died because of me. But that’s just it. We’re not in the war anymore. It’s over.”

Those eyes are peering at him again.

“I made more mistakes than you.”

“You saved my life, Draco. If it weren’t for you lieing at the manor, I would’nt be here.”

“It was nothing.”

“It was everything.”

There’s a silence that rattles Draco deep within his core. Because maybe he isn’t nothing. Maybe, to Harry, he could be everything.

He doesn’t have time to contemplate this, because Harry is leaning forward. His eyes have fluttered shut, and Draco doesn’t have much experience with this but he knows what’s coming next.

Harry’s lips are soft against his own.

The patronus feeling ignites a fire that courses through his veins. He knows he could perform the charm. He knows he will never fail at it again.

When they separate, Harry’s smiling. Draco can’t help but smirk playfully.

“You know, I really thought my patronus would be a shark.”

Harry laughs. “Why?”

“Because they’re mean. And they eat people.”

“But you do neither of those things!”

“Are you sure about that?”

They spend the next few hours just like this. Laughing, and smiling, and being everything together.

defo a plan

tag yourself studyblr edition

 im cactus 

“Loving masculinity in a woman differs crucially in one way from loving it in a man: In her it is a badge of standing out, not of fitting in. It is grown into through pain, or at least a sense of separation from those less different.”

— Carol A. Queen, ‘Why I Love Butch Women’, Dagger: On Butch Women