The Complete Idiot's Guide to the World of Harry Potter Read online

  Babbling Beverage

  This potion causes someone to babble nonsensically. Its ingredients— and, admittedly, its purpose—are a mystery. However, the opposite potion, a non-Babbling Beverage, would be mighty popular among people with verbose spouses/girlfriends/boyfriends and among exhausted parents of toddlers and tweens.

  The word “babble” is found in a number of languages, including Latin (balbulus), Dutch (babbelen), Icelandic (babbla), and Sanskrit (balbala-kr). Because the word is associated with the sounds babies make before they learn to talk, babies likely make those same sounds (that is, “ba, ba, ba”) in all cultures; hence the same word is used the world over.

  Blood-Replenishing Potion

  This potion acts like a blood transfusion, putting lost blood back into the body. The ingredients are unknown, but leeches—which are known for the opposite quality, called bloodletting—are probably not on the ingredients list.

  Bloodletting, through the use of leeches, was a medical practice started by Ancient Egyptians and continued as late as the 1960s. Leeches were placed strategically on a patient’s body and allowed to feed on the patient’s blood until satiated—roughly a half hour. Recently, the practice has been revived to help patients who have insufficient blood drainage following surgeries. The leeches’ saliva produces an anti-clotting compound, a local anesthetic, and a good bacterium that kills harmful bacteria. University of Wisconsin scientists have even recently invented a synthetic leech.

  Bulbadox Powder

  Bulbadox Powder is one of those really awful potions that can be used only to wreak havoc on the unsuspecting user—it causes boils, which are large, painful infections on the skin. The name is likely derived from the word “bulbaceous” (a synonym for “bulbous”), which means bulb-shape (as, unfortunately, a raging boil is!). The ingredients of Bulbadox Powder are unknown, but a potion to cure boils contains nettles (see Chapter 10), snake fangs, stewed horned slugs, and porcupine quills. Stinging nettles, porcupine quills, and snake fangs are not the sort of soothing, calming ingredients you might expect to see in an anti-boil potion, but nettle tea has long been used as a treatment for boils, especially in Great Britain.

  Confusing and Befuddlement Draught (also Confusing Concoction)

  A Confusing and Befuddlement Draught is meant to befuddle and, therefore, distract the user. This potion is likely used on Muggles who have seen possible wizard activities, but think of how a rather evil wizard could find it useful in other situations: pouring a smidgeon into his dad’s nightcap just before he checks the clock to see how late he got home; sharing a little with a police officer as he or she is writing him a ticket or to a bank teller or store clerk who is counting out his change; slipping a little to a witnesses in a court case. A good wizard could easily go bad with powers such as these.

  Confusing potions aren’t unique to the wizarding world. George Eliot wrote about a “confusing potion” in her 1876 novel, Daniel Deronda (her last). Long before that, Sophocles wrote that Athena tricked Ajax into confusing sheep with men—which is highly inconvenient during war-time! Key ingredients include lovage (historically used as a medicinal tea), scurvy-grass (once a treatment for scurvy or vitamin C deficiency), and sneezewort (a form of yarrow to which many people are allergic). See Chapter 10 for more on these ingredients, all of which you can grow in your backyard.

  Doxycide

  Forget what you know (or can look up) about the word “doxy.” This potion is not intended to get rid of women of ill repute (a “doxy”) as the name might suggest; in the wizarding world, a doxy is an evil, fairy-like animal with four arms, four legs, sharp teeth, and wings. Doxycide, derived from the word “doxy” and the suffix -cide, which means “to kill” (as in the word “pesticide”), is a black liquid that paralyzes doxies with just one squirt. Its ingredients are unknown.

  Dr. Ubbly’s Oblivious Unction

  To be “oblivious” is to be unaware, and “unction” refers to an oil or salve, usually a soothing or comforting one, used for religious or medicinal purposes. (“Unction” also refers to rubbing into or sprinkling oil onto the body; thus, Extreme Unction is the term used by the Catholic Church for the Anointing of the Sick, also called Last Rites.) Because we don’t know the ingredients for this potion, nor do we know anything about Dr. Ubbly, we can only assume that it is a salve of some sort that’s intended to make people oblivious to the world around them (and could, therefore, have a strong connection to—or even be the same potion as— a Confusing Concoction) or forget something uncomfortable or terrifying they’ve seen.

  One note, however: doctors don’t exist in the wizarding world, so this potion may have originated in the Muggle world. “Healer Ubbly” would be more likely, if this were, indeed, a uniquely wizard potion. Ubbly, on the other hand, evokes a strong sense of a bubbling cauldron (ubbly-bubbly).

  Draught of Living Death

  The Draught of Living Death is a sleep potion unlike any other—it produces a sleep so powerful that it mimics death. Could this be what Sleeping Beauty was given? Or Juliet?

  This complicated potion—which starts off as a black-colored potion and eventually changes to a pale pink—contains all the best sleep aids.• Valarian: This herb has long be used in Muggle teas as a sleep aid.

  • Sopophorous bean: “Soporific” means “causing sleep.”

  • Asphodel: Known as the “flower of death,” people plant this around gravestones to honor the dead.

  • Wormwood: This plant with toxic qualities is used poetically as a metaphor for sadness.

  The Draught of Living Death may be the same potion as one mentioned in the wizarding world (but never named) that is supposed to cause dreamless sleep.

  Draught of Peace

  Possibly the same as a Calming Draught, the Draught of Peace calms anxiety, irritation, frustration, and agitation. In other words, it makes you chill. Excellent, dude.

  The only known ingredients are syrup from the hellebore plant (which is highly poisonous but has been used medicinally in small quantities) and powdered moonstone (which is a stone of unknown origin). Other ingredients are likely similar to those of the Draught of Living Death, albeit in far smaller quantities.

  Hellebore has been known for at least a century as a powerful physical depressant, lowering pulse rate and even creating a light form of paralysis in patients. With too high a dose, patients can die from asphyxia, but at the proper dosage, hellebore begins to immediately calm patients.

  Elixir of Life

  In the Muggle world, an elixir is a sweet solution in which the sometimes-nasty taste of drugs is hidden—a spoonful of sugar helping the medicine go down, so to speak.

  But the Elixir of Life, in both the Muggle and wizarding worlds, is something altogether different. For millennia, alchemists (half scientists, half magicians) searched for this elusive elixir, which is produced from the equally elusive Philosopher’s Stone (and called about a thousand other names), which is said to bring immortality to the drinker. Although no one was ever proven to have discovered this potion, alchemists in many parts of the world, over the course of hundreds of years, tried valiantly. Alchemy was, for a long time, considered a noble profession, one that usually involved an apprenticeship with a master alchemist. A second primary goal of alchemists, along with finding this fountain of youth, was to find a process for turning base metals into gold.

  One man is repeatedly mentioned as having succeeded in his quest for the Elixir of Life: Nicolas Flamel, who allegedly drank the potion and shared it with his wife, Pernelle. Only one sticking point here: Flamel lived to be about 70. Granted, 70 was pretty old in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, but still, one would think the Elixir of Life would create immortality longer than 70 years. (For more on Flamel, see Chapter 1.)

  Suffice it to say that, for thousands of years, people have been searching for a way to stay young and be rich. Alchemists are no different.

  Elixir to Induce Euphoria

  Euphoria is a feeling of great j
oy or excitement, and this potion produces those feelings in someone who is less than excited. Its ingredients are unknown, but we can guess at them, based on Muggle versions of feel-good tea, which include everything from rooibos, an African plant made into teas, to brandy and cognac, which have obvious euphoric qualities.

  Eastern teas that are meant to induce euphoria include the following ingredients: gota kula (known to stimulate a startle response in the brain); yerba mate (which contains stimulants that are in the same family as those in coffee and cocoa); and damiana (a plant with leaves that, when smoked, produce a relaxing effect).

  MAGIC TALE

  The Elixir to Induce Euphoria has been known to, among other things, lead to "excessive ... nose-tweaking.” Similarly, in the Disney version of Mary Poppins, Dick Van Dyke sings about getting his nose tweaked until he learned the magic word. But just what is nose-tweaking? It’s a sharp pinch or twist of the nose, meant to be a prank or joke. Oh, yeah. That sounds really fun, doesn’t it?

  “Euphoria” is also the name of a line of juice bars that serve energizing smoothies and teas throughout the UK. The company’s motto is “Positive Thinking. Positive Drinking.”

  Felix Felicis

  Felix Felicis is liquid luck, creating situations in which everything goes your way. Felix and felicis both are the same word in Latin, meaning fruitful, lucky, happy, fortunate, and successful. In other words, Felix Felicis is bottled confidence.

  For obvious reasons, Felix Felicis is banned in the competitive arena (sports, exams, elections, and so on), but what’s interesting about this potion is that the belief that one has taken it can be as powerful as actually consuming the potion. But that is true in the Muggle world as well: if one firmly believes in his ability to accomplish something, it is far more likely to be accomplished than if he doesn’t believe in it.

  MAGIC TALE

  Felix the Cat was a movie cartoon from the early twentieth-century silent film era that was revived as a TV cartoon in the 1950s. In the TV version, Felix had a Magic Bag of Tricks, which were shapeshifters that Felix could control and that could get him out of any mess. This sly, grinning, confident cat acted, in fact, just like a wizard on a dose of Felix Felicis.

  Hiccupping Solution

  Does a Hiccupping Solution cause or cure hiccups? Alas, we do not know. But given how often hiccups arise in the Muggle world (from a variety of sources, including eating spicy or hot food or eating food too quickly, laughing raucously, drinking too much alcohol), we can assume that this is a welcome cure for the hiccups. Why breathe into a paper bag, turn upside down and drink water, concentrate very hard on getting both index fingers close together (but not touching!), or eating a lemon when you have magic potions at your disposal?

  The Guinness World Records lists Charles Osborne as the world record holder for the longest attack of hiccups. A few days, you’re thinking? A month? Perhaps even an entire year? No, no … Osborne had the hiccups for 68 years! He started hiccupping in 1922, at the age of 28, and finally stopped in 1990, just a year before he died.

  Mandrake Restorative Draught

  This powerful and important potion restores to normalcy someone who has been petrified, a state in which a person appears to be frozen solid

  (but is not cold), looks to be in a coma (but has a rigid body), or gives every appearance of being dead (but is actually alive). Someone who is petrified is kept comfortable until the Mandrake Restorative Draught can be concocted, and because the draught calls for only fully grown Mandrakes, the potion can take some time to create.

  Chapter 10 gives you the lowdown on the magical properties of the unusual Mandrake plant, the roots of which look initially like a baby, then like a teenager, and later like a fully grown little person. Unlike their human counterparts, however, these Mandrake babies can inflict great physical harm on those trying to harvest the roots.

  But this is not all magical lore; the root of this plant really does resemble a small human body. The resemblance is rather eerie; in fact, in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, people actually used to clean up Mandrake roots and keep them as little dolls that had magical or psychic powers. They usually hid them, so it wasn’t like everyone had Mandrake dolls on their nightstands, but the practice was not unusual.

  As for the harm those roots can inflict on the harvester in the Muggle world, Roman legend believed that tiny demons lived in Mandrake roots and would shriek so shrilly at being pulled from the ground that the harvester would die. If you find yourself repotting a wizard Mandrake, perhaps it’s better to be safe than sorry—wear ear plugs.

  Mandrakes have other wizard uses besides unpetrifying, including untransfiguring someone who has been trapped in an animal’s body. Historically, Mandrake in the Muggle world has been used as a painkiller, aphrodisiac, and a narcotic.

  Mrs. Skower’s All-Purpose Magical Mess Remover

  To “scour” is to clean something by vigorously rubbing or scrubbing. Mrs. Skower’s does the same, cleaning up major messes; it’s the OxiClean or Ajax of the wizarding world. Its ingredients are unknown, but an abrasive agent, like nettles, is likely.

  Pepperup Potion

  This concoction of unknown ingredients works like an Invigoration Draught or Elixir to Induce Euphoria. It’s the wizard equivalent of a double espresso or Red Bull.

  The closest Muggles have to a true Pepperup Potion is Dr Pepper, which touts itself as the world’s oldest major soft drink, created in 1885 in Waco, Texas. Known in the 1950s as “the friendly Pepper-Upper,” Dr Pepper was not invented by someone named Dr. Pepper, nor does it contain any pepper, but instead, combines 23 different fruit flavors. One story says that the drink was coined for an actual guy named Dr. Pepper, a friend of the inventor of the drink, Charles Alderton. But the origin of the name remains unclear, so the Dr Pepper Museum in Waco, Texas, tries to sort out the rightful answer. Visit www.drpeppermuseum.org.

  Poisons

  Poisons are a type of potion meant to maim or kill, and like Muggle poisons, they can be difficult to detect if dropped in a flagon of pumpkin juice or other beverage. To make detection of poisons even more difficult, poisons can be made Undetectable by a skilled wizard.

  There are two sure-fire antidotes for poisons known to wizards:• Essence of rue: Rue is a small, woody, yellow-flowering plant that grows in Europe and Asia, but is not well known in the United States. The oil in its leaves has long been used as both a painkiller and stimulant in the treatment of digestive problems, inflammation, and general malaise, but it can also produce a reaction similar to that of poison ivy and can even be fatal in large doses. The early Greeks used it—just as in the magical world—as an antidote for poisons and to guard against malicious magical spells.

  • Bezoar: A bezoar is a small mass, found in the stomach or intestines of some grazing animals, that has long been thought to be an antidote for poisons. In the wizarding world, a bezoar is a stone (think of a kidney stone) taken from the stomach of a goat that, if put down your throat, will save you from most poisons.

  Thus, in her two most effective antidotes to lethal poisons, Rowling found her muse in common folklore.

  Rowling also mentioned Golpalott’s Third Law, which is a brain twister: “The antidote for a blended poison will be equal to more than the sum of the antidotes for each of the separate components.” Huh? Apparently, this means that when you mix two poisons together, the antidote has to be stronger than a simple mixing of the two antidotes for each individual potion. We just have to trust that Golpalott (“gulp a lot”) knew what he or she was talking about.

  Polyjuice Potion

  Polyjuice Potion makes you temporarily look like someone else; thus allowing you to take someone’s place for a few hours at a time. The potion gets its name from one of its major ingredients, knotgrass, which is from the Polygonum genus of the buckwheat family. The prefix poly-also means “more than one”—appropriate, as you are, essentially, “more than one” person after taking this potion.

  Po
lyjuice Potion takes several weeks to make and, in addition to knotgrass, requires shredded boomslang skin, lacewing flies that have been stewed for 21 days, fluxweed that was harvested during a full moon, leeches, and powdered horn of bicorn. As a final ingredient, the potion requires a single hair from the head of the person into whom you are trying to transform.

  Shrinking Solution

  A Shrinking Solution is the cure for a Swelling Solution or any spell that causes an object to enlarge. Made up of chopped daisy roots, skinned Abyssinian Shrivelfig, sliced caterpillar, rat spleen, and a dash of leech juice, the daisy is the most effective ingredient, as it has long been boiled in milk and fed to farm animals to stunt their growth.

  Lewis Carroll’s Alice drank a shrinking solution from the “DRINK ME” bottle, which undid the effects of the enlarging “EAT ME” cake. Alice’s solution was quite tasty, a mix of “cherry-tart custard, pineapple, roast turkey, toffee, and hot buttered toast.” (We can assume that Rowling’s mix of caterpillar, rat spleen, and other ingredients is far less palatable.) By taking a little cake, drinking a little solution, again and again, Alice was able to return to her normal size. By alternating a Swelling Solution and Shrinking Solution, perhaps wizards can do the same.