Harry Potter potions: types, classification, magical ingredients and potion rules, purpose and use

2024 Author: Leah Sherlock | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 05:25

Harry Potter and his friend Ron Weasley hated Potions lessons. And it's not about the subject of magical discipline, but about the person who taught Potions.

This teacher's name was Severus Snape, and he could hardly bear the presence of Potter, Weasley and the upstart know-it-all Hermione Granger in his lessons. Why? It's hard to explain, it's actually a completely different story. Our task is to explore the potions in Harry Potter, understand their meaning and discover the method of preparation.

What is Potions?

Potions are regularly used in the Harry Potter books. Properties, preparation methods, ingredients of potion tinctures are studied at Hogwarts by a special discipline.

Potionmaking explains how useful, medicinal or dangerous drinks, powders or ointments can be created from vegetable, animal components and minerals.

At Hogwarts potions were studied from the first tothe fifth year, and from the sixth year to the seventh year, students with the best performance in Potions were selected according to the results of the "S. O. V" exam to further study this subject.

Potion as an item has a number of subtleties. It is necessary to carefully select the ingredients, accurately use the right herbs and liquid substances, otherwise the elixirs will lead to unexpected, and sometimes disastrous results. In Potions, as in mathematics, correct, error-free calculations are needed. A one milligram error in the preparation of the potion can be fatal to the person who drinks the tincture or magic potion.

Harry Potter's potion ingredients are expertly selected, mostly of animal and vegetable origin: skin, wings, flowers, etc.

Famous Potions Masters

Harry Potter books don't give us many Potions teacher names. The most famous teachers are:

• Vindictus Viridian;
• Horace Slughorn;
• Severus Snape.

We know very little about Vindictus Viridian. He taught Potions at the turn of the 17th and 18th centuries and was later elected Headmaster of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry.

Horace Slughorn. We first meet him in the sixth book, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. Wonderful, kind, funny person. Close friend of Dumbledore. Slughorn was a wizard of pure blood, descended from an old family of wizards. A great specialist in potions, has great knowledge in the field of this subject. The most famous wizards were his students, including Harry Potter and the dark lord Voldemort.

Severus Snape. Taught Potions during Slughorn's absence. A very smart and domineering teacher, students and individual teachers of Hogwarts were afraid of Snape. A talented compiler of spells and potent drinks, author of the Half-Blood Prince's diary, which was found and used by Harry Potter.

Each Potions teacher at Hogwarts held the honorary title of "Potion Master".

Equipment required for potion brewing

To make a potion, you need to have a set of required items that will be needed in Potions lessons. Potions are used a lot in Harry Potter, so it's important to know what items are required to brew.

Such necessary items are the following potion master attributes, such as:

• scales;
• boiler;
• glass, crystal bottles;
• magic wand;
• textbook, parchment and pen.

Let's focus on the most important items, without which the potion is almost impossible to make.

Scales. These are two bowls on a hanging mechanism, with small weights to obtain error-free data when weighing the right materials. The simplest scales are made of brass. Harry bought the first scales in Diagon Alley, they were accurate and very attractive to look at.

The cauldron is a vessel with a wide mouth, where not only porridge or soup is brewed, but also herbal tinctures, and magicalpotions. Boilers have different sizes, there are even those that can fit a person. Made from stronger or less durable metals. The cauldron is the most important potion item. Hogwarts used the simplest cauldrons - copper, bronze or tin. The most expensive are a collapsible boiler and a boiler that can mix the ingredients itself.

Glass vials - vessels of various shapes with a narrow neck, where the finished potion was poured.

The textbooks used at Hogwarts were by Jig Myshyakoff. However, from the 6th year, students who wished to continue studying Potions studied according to Borago's book.

Potion of Transformation

You should start learning potions with a drink that is regularly used in the Harry Potter books and has the ability to change appearance. This is the name of the Polyjuice Potion in Harry Potter.

Harry, Hermione and Ron regularly use Polyjuice Potion to get the information they need.

The Polyjuice Potion allows you to turn into the person you want for a short period of time. To do this, you must have the hair or nails of the desired magician or Muggle (not a wizard). The Harry Potter books use mostly human hair to make Polyjuice Potion.

Harry Potter potion recipe is very simple. The process usually takes a month. Polyjuice Potion consists of ingredients such as:

• dried lacewings (insects, butterfly);
• algae, leeches;
• knotweed (buckwheat plant);
• bicorn horn;
• boomslang skin
• human hair.

Algae (three bunches), knotweed (two bunches) are first placed in the cauldron, it's all mixed, then lacewing and leeches are used. We mix. We heat the boiler on medium heat. We add a special amount of boomslang skin, bicorn horn, pour the lacewing tincture. We pour the hair of the person we want to turn into into the cauldron. The potion is ready.

Love Potion

The love potion in Harry Potter is known as amortentia. There are other love potions, but it is Amortentia that is mentioned in the book.

Ron Weasley ate the candy Harry was given and fell in love with Romilda Vane. According to Professor Slughorn, amortentia does not cause love, but only a terrible attraction to another person. Therein lies the danger of this potion.

Depreciation is very difficult to calculate. It has a light mother-of-pearl color and a pleasant smell of what a particular person especially loves, capable of falling under the influence of this love drink.

To prepare amortentia, you will need the following ingredients:

• 250-300 grams of pink lemonade;
• a glass of strawberries or raspberries;
• juice or carbonated drink (0.3L);
• chocolate or whipped cream.

Truth Serum

In the Harry Potter bookstruth serum is used to find out information that a person would never tell himself. In the book Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, Dumbledore uses this potion to ask the captured Barty Crouch Jr. for information about Voldemort, and in The Order of the Phoenix, the new director of Hogwarts, Dolores Umbridge, extorts information from children about where he is hiding Dumbledore.

Severus Snape admitted to Potter that he would gladly use this potion to find out all the secrets from Harry. But this was impossible. Serum was forbidden to apply to children. Official permission to use the potion must be issued by the Ministry of Magic. As seen in the book and film, the characters in Harry Potter used truth serum to bypass the Ministry of Magic. However, Snape did not risk using the potion for personal purposes.

Truth serum is a colorless, odorless liquid, three drops of which can open the mouth of the most inveterate silent. The potion is easy to make. The main difficulty is that the truth serum must be given time to infuse, and all because of the feathers of the chatterbox.

Liquid Luck

Meet this potion in Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. Official name - Felix Felicis.

Liquid luck is a potion that brings success to the person who drinks it. However, making a potion is not so easy. If you make a mistake with the ingredients, the liquid can lead to dire consequences.

In "Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince" Professor Slughorn said that he himself took liquidgood luck twice in your life:

Twice in my life, Slughorn replied. “Once when I was twenty-four, and again when I was fifty-seven. Two tablespoons for breakfast. Two perfect days.

Liquid luck is better to insist for a few more months after preparation. The inventor of the potion is Zygmunt Budge, who left the recipe for his greatest creation:

1. Mix the egg of the fireweed with the juice of the onion, horseradish, stir it all.
2. Add egg shells, thyme, grated Martwort growths.
3. Then heat the cauldron, put common rue, heat the cauldron.

That's the whole recipe for making liquid luck.

Living death

We encounter a potion called "living death" again in the book "Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince". Harry Potter brews a potion using a textbook given to him by the Half-Blood Prince, wins a competition for the best drink of living death, and Felix Felicis receives a potion as a gift.

Living death can put a person or any creature to sleep for a long period of time. In Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, a three-headed dog guarded the entrance to the dungeon, but Professor Squirrell made a living death to steal the philosopher's stone and resurrect Voldemort. To do this, he came up with a plan according to which a living death was supposed to euthanize the animal so that it could pass by the dog unnoticed. But we know he failed.

The potion contains the rootvalerian and asphodel, special beans (drowsy), wormwood tincture.

Other potions

There are many potions used in the world of Harry Potter, some of which we easily remember, and some pass unnoticed before the reader's eyes.

Here is the characteristic and name of potions from "Harry Potter":

• Pepper potion was used to treat colds, one of the main ingredients being dried and grated red peppers.
• Potion of forgetfulness - erased the memory, and the person forgot what happened to him in the past. Harry Potter used it against Professor Lockons in Chamber of Secrets.
• Potion of Aging - You can get old for a short time. The Weasley brothers in Goblet of Fire used this potion to compete, but it didn't work for them.
• Star anise extract - wounds on the body quickly heal and heal.
• Kissing potion - provokes a person to kiss.

Here is an example of the most colorful and memorable potions in the Harry Potter universe.