Pomona Sprout
Template:HP character Professor Pomona Sprout is a fictional character in the Harry Potter series. She is the Herbology Mistress/teacher and the Head of Hufflepuff House at Hogwarts.
Background
Her rooms are located in her greenhouses and her office is just behind Greenhouse Three. She is described as a dumpy little witch with flyaway grey hair who wears a patched, frayed hat and shabby robes. Her clothing is often covered in earth due to the time she spends tending plants in the Hogwarts greenhouses, where she holds her classes. Sprout has a brisk, cheerful disposition and is firm but fair with her students, displaying no prejudice based on blood purity or house affiliation. As she demonstrates throughout the series, she is skilled with and knowledgeable about magical plants.
Sprout is introduced in Philosopher's Stone, but she plays no active role until Chamber of Secrets, in which she teaches her second year students to work with Mandrake plants. She is responsible for raising the Mandrakes to full maturity, at which point their juice is used to revive the Petrified victims of the basilisk. Sprout subsequently appears in Goblet of Fire, in which she shows her fourth year class how to collect bubotuber pus for use as a cure for persistent acne. Later on in the school year she comforts Amos Diggory and his wife after the death of their son, Hufflepuff student Cedric Diggory, whom she knew well.
In Order of the Phoenix, Sprout is a nonvocal supporter of Harry Potter's story about Lord Voldemort's resurrection. Like many teachers at Hogwarts, she detests Dolores Umbridge's presence and does her best to disobey her. On one such occasion, she awards twenty house points to Gryffindor because Harry passes her a watering can.
After the battle at Hogwarts in Half-Blood Prince, Sprout meets with fellow staff Minerva McGonagall, Filius Flitwick, Horace Slughorn and Rubeus Hagrid to discuss the future of Hogwarts. Sprout is a staunch advocate of keeping Hogwarts open after Headmaster Albus Dumbledore's death, stating that Dumbledore would have wanted it so. She also supports the suggestion that Dumbledore should be laid to rest at Hogwarts though no headmaster has ever received a burial there before. Sprout attends Dumbledore's funeral, where she appears cleaner than her students have ever seen her before.
Professor Sprout takes part in the second Battle of Hogwarts in Deathly Hallows, where she uses her knowledge of magical plants by improvising offensive botany. She and Neville throw Mandrakes from the castle walls and grapple enemies with Venomous Tentaculas. She is also seen chasing Severus Snape away from Hogwarts with Professor McGonagall and Professor Flitwick.
The epilogue of the final book reveals that nineteen years after the events in Deathly Hallows, Neville Longbottom has become the Herbology teacher at Hogwarts - the circumstances of Pomona Sprout's departure from the job are not revealed.
Naming
Professor Sprout's first name is not revealed in canon until Professor Slughorn uses it in Half-Blood Prince. Presumably as a reference to the subject she teaches, Sprout shares her first name with Pomona, the goddess of fruit trees and horticulture in Roman mythology. Her last name is equally appropriate; "sprout" is an English verb meaning "to grow (as shoots or buds)". It is also a noun referring to the germinated upper section of a plant.
Until after the climactic events in The Half-Blood Prince, Sprout is the only current Head of House whose first and last names are not alliterative, as are the names of Filius Flitwick of Ravenclaw, Minerva McGonagall of Gryffindor, and Severus Snape of Slytherin. (The non-alliterative Horace Slughorn takes over as Head of Slytherin after Snape's departure.)
Movie portrayal
Professor Sprout was played by British character actress Miriam Margolyes in the film version of Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, the only film in which the character has appeared thus far.
