Esculent: something edible, especially a vegetable
March 10, 1974
Pomona Sprout played a game of chance with the vegetable crop. Each fall, she harvested the rows of carrots and potatoes and cabbages and whatever else she'd grown. And for the most part, they were good. She always knew there would be a few rotten ones, of course, but she could tell which ones those were long before she pulled them up.
But once in a while, she couldn't. Once in a while, she would take a firm hold of a nice, leafy, green top and pull, only to find that the edible part was rotted through. There was always room for chance, for flesh-eating slugs to attack just one row, or an irrigation canal to overflow in one spot, but with every small heap of rotten plants she threw onto the compost heap, she always found herself wondering if she'd used too much fertilizer, planted too deep or too shallow, watered too much or allowed for too much shade. No matter what the percentage of the crop came out beautifully, those rotten few gnawed at her.
A twenty-year-old boy took up the second page of the Daily Prophet. He had sandy hair and wide blue eyes. He looked younger than twenty; he had always looked young and naïve. He had been arrested for aiding a terrorist group known as the Death Eaters. The journalist seemed to agree with the rest of the world what a pity it was that someone with so much life ahead of them would spend it in Azkaban. She talked about his budding career as a cultivator for St. Mungos' potions lab, his loving family, his top grades when he'd been in school.
They didn't mention his school house, but Pomona Sprout never forgot one of her students. He was the first one of hers to turn up on the other side.
A/N: Short and sweet and to the point. Please review!