#2 Morning Gardening

His first class of the year over and done with, Oscar was ready to start his free time as productively as he could. He knew that it was an important year and that meant that there was no time to slack off.

He hoped that if he started well enough, then he would be able to keep it up for the year. And hopefully would not find himself taking afternoon naps instead of studying later on. Hopefully.

He tried to ignore the little voice in his head that attempted to tell him he had done well enough on his fourth year exams without studying as much as he should have. That voice was not helpful. OWL exams were probably about five hundred times more challenging.

Just what was Oscar’s idea of spending his time productively though? A trip to the student greenhouse of course!

Plants took time to grow, so it only made sense to him to start planting as soon as he could.

He made his way into the greenhouse, surprised to see that it was so empty still. Sure, it was only the first day of term, but still… Was he one of the first ones that year?

It seemed so, so he decided to make the most of all the free space as he carefully picked where he would set up his plants.

Carefully picked and still ended up towards the middle of the set out workbenches. He was pretty sure he always ended up around the middle rows of counters last year too.

His place picked out, he proceeded to pull five pots out of his bag - four standard ones, and then his extra special pot too. They were all set out on the counter top, along with his packets of seeds.

With everything that he needed taken out of his bag, he tucked his bag out of the way for the time being and then, his sleeves rolled up, began to fill all of his pots with soil.

A messy job, but he tried to keep it all as contained as possible. There was less to clean up at the end that way.

Once his pots were all filled, Oscar then opened his seed packets and began to bury them in the pots one after the other.

Yellow seeds found their way into two pots that he then pushed back into slots 40 and 39. Then purple seeds into his two other standard pots. They got pushed back as well, into slots 38 and 37.

That just left his special pot and a pile of multicoloured mystery seeds. Oscar knew that he’d had some trouble with them last year, but he thought that since it was a new year, he may as well give them another try. Maybe he could figure out what the plants they grew were for this year.

Oscar carefully buried the mystery seeds in his last pot and then pushed it backwards to rest safely in slot 36.

That done, he dusted the dirt off his hands and then pulled out his wand.

“Aquamenti,” he said as he waved his wand, sending a steady fountain of water over his pots.

He tucked his wand back in his pocket once the water had cut out, happy with how damp the soil was.

“Grow well,” he whispered to the plants as he cleaned up the bits of soil that he had not managed to avoid spilling.

Oscar straightened one of his pots and then nodded to himself. That would do, hopefully they would all grow as intended.

He picked up his bag and then exited the greenhouse once more. He planned to use the walk back to the castle to figure out what else he could do that morning.

[exit]

Having just been granted permission to use this space, as well as having been gifted a pot from Hagrid and some seeds from Sprout, Joshua was motivated to make something grow.

He barged into the Student Greenhouse and made his way into the second row of work benches, placing his pot into slot 11, which was still empty.

He was in rather good spirits, the sort that being productive ahead of time brought. He almost started humming to himself as he loosened the soil with his fingers and then dropped the seeds into the pot.

He patted the surface and wiped his hands on his trousers before pulling out his wand.

Joshua was not quite sure how much water was required but supposed gardening, as well as any other learned skill required some trial and error.

“Aquamenti!“, he decided to drench the soil so the seeds definitely got enough water to grow.

Since he had no Fertilizer Potion on him, he supposed all he could do now was wait and return at a later time.

Which brought him to the next step on today‘s agenda.

With a sigh he turned to see whether Amber had also chosen to plant some seeds and then said, mostly to himself: “Aaand into the snake‘s den I went.“

[exit]