Like the rest of the Harry Potter fanatics of the world, this week is just seven days of complete anticipation. My week is just building and building in stress, but come Thursday at 11:55 p.m., everything will calm for two hours and 26 minutes while Harry battles his way across the English countryside in an effort to find the Horcruxes of He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named.

So, naturally, I started reading about the movie. I found what parts they’re leaving out and changing. I found scenes they’re adding and expanding. All of this was expected. After all, movies and books need different storytelling techniques.

But the thing that actually got me worked up was that Jamie Waylett, the actor who plays Draco’s lackey Vincent Crabbe, will not be appearing in the film as he has been jailed for cannabis possession. He was found in 2009 with eight bags of pot in his car, then with 10 marijuana plants in the house he shared with his mother and three siblings.

Aside from the obvious humor in this situation, what kind of movie actor needs to grow his own pot? I mean, he’s obviously not a major character in the movies, but he’s still got to be getting paid pretty well.

For the most recent movie, Daniel Radcliffe (the actor who plays Harry Potter) was paid about 8 million British pounds for the fifth film, about $12,704,000. I doubt Waylett was paid anything near that value, but any film that’s able to pay the stars that much has got to be able to pay lesser actors pretty well too.

We all know Waylett probably shouldn’t have been involved with pot in the first place, as he’s a role model and everything. And, you know, because marijuana’s illegal. But let’s face the facts: Even if something’s illegal, people still do it. So I’m not going to sit here and bitch about how he shouldn’t have done it. Whether marijuana should even be illegal is a whole different topic.

Instead, I’m going to pose a simple question: Why wasn’t he smart about it?

If you’ve got eight bags of pot in your car, why would you speed and risk getting pulled over? If you’re getting paid well to be a movie actor, why would you risk growing pot in your own home? Why not pay someone else to do it or move to a place where it’s legal?

After all, we’ve all been in that situation where we’re breaking a rule. And what’s the No. 1 rule? Don’t break the law. But if you do, don’t get caught. Otherwise, you’ll end up like Waylett, wishing you could Apparate.

Nick Glunt is a senior magazine journalism major and columnist for the Daily Kent Stater. Contact him at [email protected].