PTNS-501 Lessons

A poster of an ancient man is plastered on the wall, apparently manipulating multiple objects mid-air without exerting any kind of conscious effort. The objects orbit around his head, producing a sound every time they zoom to the forefront of the picture. “I know how eager you are to cast spells in my dungeons. As per my Year One warnings, I would usually scowl at that; however, exceptionally today, we are going to work more closely with spellworking during brewing”, states Professor Draekon before beginning the lecture.

History and Background of the Mopsus Potion

Today we are going to discuss a potion that tends to be somewhat neglected due to its lack of practical uses in the modern age - namely, the Mopsus Potion. However, before we delve into the specifics of this brew’s effects, I reckon that a small historical introduction to the concoction is warranted.

Our story today begins with a very famous seer named Mopsus - for those of you who are more perceptive, he is indeed the man of the poster. Mopsus was an extremely skilled seer, who became rather notorious due to his accurate predictions - some of which even defied the foresights of other skilled seers as well. Modern scholars seem to believe that Mopsus was adept at seeing the future due to a combination of natural skill with the Inner Eye and the use of an altered meditation regimen, in which he would manipulate magical energy without doing so consciously.

Some of you might have done a similar exercise in the past, if you have followed Professor Virneburg’s recommendations - for example, reading a book while receiving light exclusively from the Dancing Lights Charm. In this exercise, you have already manipulated magical energy subconsciously, as your direct concentration must be placed on reading, rather than the continuation of the spell. Mopsus took that exercise to the most extreme level; rather than create orbs of light, he opted to levitate multiple objects while meditating, without the use of a wand or any other external aid.

With time, some of Mopsus’ disciples wanted to take the same regimen, but they found it hard to get acquainted with the necessary concentration in order to learn that skill. It was around that time that Mopsus researched the process through which he was able to levitate objects wandlessly and nonverbally, working those findings into a brew that would act as a “training wheel” of sorts for his students. The brew’s intent was to acquaint the drinker with the sensation of controlling magic effortlessly, preparing him for Mopsus’ meditation practices.

Uses of the Mopsus Potion

As one could expect, this is a very simple potion with limited use - the Mopsus Potion is used exclusively to provide the drinker with the ability to levitate objects nonverbally and wandlessly. While the effects of this potion are generally not incredibly useful in a practical sense, they can be extremely valuable for those that are beginning to study wandless and nonverbal magic.

This is, incidentally, the reason why I opted to cover this brew in Year Five. Soon enough, many of you will begin studying wandless and nonverbal casting in both Charms and Defence Against the Dark Arts, and as such you ought to be prepared for the complexities of these new spellcasting modes.

That is not to say that there aren’t practical uses for this brew, especially when multiple objects need to be levitated at the same time. For those who brew their potion successfully, you will be given the chance to take your potion with you and use it in a non-academic context; reporting your uses for the potion will grant you extra House Points.

Biology and Magic

Having said that, let’s get into the biological dynamic of magic inside the human body. Most professors will discuss practical considerations about magic, or even how to visualize that magical power, but have you ever wondered what is happening inside your body when you are casting a spell? Today, we are going to get a closer view on how science and magic might be more intertwined than you think.

The first thing we need to have in mind is that the human body is constantly transforming energy. The food that you eat is used to fuel your body, and the energy you receive from it then becomes the power to help you move around (kinetic energy), to help maintain your body temperature (thermal energy), to produce chemicals in your body, such as neurotransmitters (chemical energy) and much more. This is true of both magical and non-magical people.

However, the difference between ourselves and Muggles is our capacity to convert energy obtained from food into magical energy. Although research on the topic is still ongoing, it is believed that this conversion is enabled by an autosomal gene that is only present in wizards and witches, which explains why Muggles cannot cast magic nor tolerate it after the lack of exposure to it.

You might ask what is a gene, then. Simply put, humans have a set of instructions contained in their body, and those instructions are used to “assemble” our body in a specific way. This complete set of instructions is called a genome, and the fact that we have different genomes might explain why some people have different skin colors, heights, eye colors or blood types.

Each of these factors is mediated by specific parts of the genome, and these parts - as you probably guessed - are called genes. No person has an identical genome to another person, but you might see someone that has the same genes as you do for a specific trait. These genes are located inside our chromosomes, which are structures present in the nuclei of our cells. Humans have a total of 23 chromosome pairs, with the first 22 pairs being called autosomal and the last pair being the sexual pair.

If we go back to our instruction guide analogy, the full instruction on how to build a human (genome) is divided into 23 booklets (chromosome pairs), with each booklet containing a series of individualized instructions (genes). The first 22 books in this set relate to how we build components of our body that are not related to sex, such as height and eye color (autosomal chromosomes), while the last pair determines whether a person is biologically female (XX sexual pair) or male (XY sexual pair).

A word of caution here. Although the sexual pair provides information on sexual traits, there are also non-sexual instructions listed inside those chromosomes. If you know about color blindness, or the inability to see some specific colors, you have also probably heard that men are much more likely to be color blind than women. This is a result of the color blindness gene belonging to the sexual chromosome pair, rather than an autosomal pair.

Magic, on the other hand, is an autosomal inheritance, which means that men and women are equally likely to be magical. Having said that, let’s go back to what happens to people that have the gene responsible for the handling of magical energy.

As I said before, the presence of this gene means that we can convert the energy present in food into magic, which then leaves our body and affects the external world. However, most beginner practitioners do not have enough magical energy in order to make it pass naturally through the skin of our body, as this requires a lot of willpower and concentration. This is why we use a wand in casting spells: the wand is an instrument that can receive your magical energy more easily (due to its affinity to magic), increase its potency and release the magical energy in a more concentrated way. You can visualize your wand as an instrument for focusing energy, in the same way a magnifying glass can focus sunlight on one point in order to create a fire.

Dynamics of Spellcasting with the Mopsus Potion

We have seen how we can affect the external world through a wand, but why don’t we need such a tool, or an incantation, after drinking the Mopsus Potion? There are two reasons why the Mopsus Potion is conducive towards nonverbal and wandless magic.

First and foremost, the Mopsus Potion increases our magical conductivity, or how easily magical energy can flow in and out of our magical creatures, plants or objects. However, the term “conductivity” can also be used in relation to other types of energy that are not magical.

As an example, think about a metal pot and a wood plank. If you place both materials on top of a heater for 30 seconds, which one would get hotter? Our reaction is to say that the metal pot would get hotter, and that is the correct answer - after all, metal has higher thermal conductivity than wood does. On another example, why do you think electrical wires are made of metal and not another material, such as plastic? The answer, too, is based on conductivity: metal conducts electricity better than plastic does.

Therefore, by making our magical conductivity higher, we can better release our magic from the inside - and this is how the Mopsus Potion addresses the natural barrier that contains magic within our body. However, in order to avoid random bursts of accidental magic or the caster becoming more vulnerable to external spells, the added conductivity created by the Mopsus Potion only occurs when the caster thinks about moving an object. In other words, concentrating on the effect you want to happen is necessary to trigger the potion’s effect in your body.

Furthermore, the Mopsus Potion also helps us complete a wandless and nonverbal spell by filling in the gaps required by spellcasting. As you probably extensively know by this time of your magical education, there are four elements of spellcasting - namely, incantation, wand movement, willpower and concentration. These elements vary from spell to spell and modulate the type of magical energy that leaves our body, in the same way that thinking about moving your arm and moving your leg creates two distinctive physical results.

After drinking the Mopsus Potion, however, you do not need to think about the spellcasting components for the Levitation Charm, as the focus required by the spell is already mediated by the potion itself. This is, incidentally, why the Mopsus Potion only works for levitation: since the components to other spells are not handled by this concoction, there is no way for the user of the Mopsus Potion to use any other spell nonverbally and wandlessly.

Incidentally, there are theories on whether we can create different versions of the Mopsus Potion for different spells. Although this possibility is certainly reasonable, no person has actually tried to do so until the present day - primarily because the Mopsus Potion is more of a novelty than a practical tool in most cases, and as such researchers prefer to devote their efforts elsewhere.

With that, I believe you are all adequately prepared by now. Let us proceed into brewing the potion.

Mopsus Potion

Estimated Brewing Time:
Pewter Cauldron: 2 hours and 20 minutes
Brass Cauldron: 2 hours, 8 minutes and 24 seconds
Copper Cauldron: 1 hour, 57 minutes and 57.6 seconds

Ingredients:
1.5 L of water
5 Billywig stings¹
7 mL of bat blood¹
10 g of Whomping Willow bark¹
15 g of powdered silver²
1 ruby²
22 mL of hibiscus extract²
1 standard measure of honey³

Instructions

Part One:
1. With the heat still off, add 1 L of water to your cauldron.
2. Bring the heat to 340 Kelvin (66.85°C/152.33°F), then add 12 mL of hibiscus extract to your cauldron.
3. Add 3 g of powdered silver to your cauldron, then stir the contents of your cauldron once counterclockwise. Repeat this process five times.
4. Add 10 g of Whomping Willow bark and 7 mL of bat blood to a separate vessel. Let the mixture soak for a total of 10 minutes.
5. Bring the heat to 390 Kelvin (116.85°C/242.33°F) and let the potion simmer in your pewter cauldron for 35 minutes. Do not forget to separate the soaked Whomping Willow bark from the remaining bat blood during this time.
(This would be 31 minutes and 30 seconds in a brass cauldron and 28 minutes and 21 seconds in a copper cauldron.)

At this point, your potion will be an ashy gray with some flecks of pink. The brew’s steam is cyan and heavier than atmospheric air, meaning it will fall from your cauldron rather than rising up.

Part Two:
1. Bring the heat to 300 Kelvin (26.85°C/80.73°F).
2. Add the soaked 10 g of Whomping Willow bark to your cauldron, wait until you see a golden flash of light, then stir the contents of your cauldron three times clockwise. If there is no flash, add an extra 3 mL of bat blood to your cauldron before stirring. If there is a red flash, you have soaked your Whomping Willow bark for too long and must discard the potion.
3. Levitate 1 Billywig sting with the Levitation Charm and add it to your cauldron, then stir the contents of your cauldron twice counterclockwise.
4. Let the potion simmer for 3 minutes, regardless of cauldron type.
5. Repeat Steps 3 and 4 until you have 2 Billywig stings remaining.
6. Add the ruby to your cauldron, then stir the contents of your cauldron twice clockwise.
7. Bring the heat to 333 Kelvin (59.85°C/139.73°F), then let the potion simmer in your pewter cauldron for 33 minutes.
(This would be 29 minutes and 42 seconds in a brass cauldron and 26 minutes and 43.8 seconds in a copper cauldron.)

At this point, your potion should be clear like water but make the ruby at the bottom of the cauldron look green. Incidentally, the potion should feel cold to the touch at this point - however, do not stick your hand inside the cauldron, as you might seriously burn yourself in case you did not brew all steps perfectly.

Part Three:
1. Add 0.5 L of water to your cauldron.
2. Turn off the heat for 14 minutes, regardless of cauldron type.
3. Bring the heat to 350 Kelvin (76.85°C/170.33°F).
4. Stir the contents of your cauldron twice counterclockwise nonverbally. If you do not know how to cast spells nonverbally yet, please notify me and I will do this step for you.
5. Siphon the leftover bat blood in your separate vessel to a mortar.
6. Add 2 Billywig stings to your mortar, then crush them until you obtain a smooth paste.
7. Add the contents of your mortar to the cauldron, then stir the contents of your cauldron three times clockwise.
8. Add 10 mL of hibiscus extract and 1 standard measure of honey to a separate vessel. Mix both ingredients with a wooden spoon until they form a homogeneous mixture.
9. Cast a Sunlight Charm at the mixture in your separate vessel, as strongly and for as long as you can.
10. Add the hibiscus and honey mixture to the cauldron, then stir the contents of your cauldron four times clockwise.
11. Bring the heat to 396 Kelvin (122.85°C/253.13°F), then let the potion simmer in your pewter cauldron for 48 minutes.
(This would be 43 minutes and 12 seconds in a brass cauldron and 38 minutes and 52.8 seconds in a copper cauldron.)
12. Leave the potion to cool for 7 minutes before siphoning it into its appropriate vial. Do not siphon the ruby that is at the bottom of your cauldron.

The final potion will be bright green and swirl around the container constantly, even when the vial is not moving. It has no associated smell, but tastes faintly like chalk.

Storage:

Store the Mopsus Potion in a bright, sunny area, preferably exposed to high temperatures - the potion naturally converts sunlight into magical energy, maintaining the longevity of the brew for longer. The potion can be safely stored from two to six months, depending on how much sunlight it is exposed to. An expired Mopsus Potion will stop swirling in its container.

Usage:

Drink one tablespoon of Mopsus Potion, either on its own or mixed with a non-fermented beverage, before the event in which you would like to use nonverbal wandless magic. You should see a brief flash of green around your body approximately three minutes after consumption, which means that the effects of the potion were activated.

Caution:

Children in their magical formative years (under seven years old) should not drink the Mopsus Potion, as the brew increases the likelihood of accidental magic. An overdose of the Mopsus Potion does not present danger to the drinker’s health; however, unprocessed quantities of the concoction are eliminated via sweat drops, which remain floating mid-air.

Closing

As you have probably noticed, this potion requires a series of magical steps that we do not frequently see in other brews - more specifically, not only we have to stir the contents of the cauldron with a nonverbal cast, but also drop some of the Billywig stings through the use of the Levitation Charm, as well as infuse the honey and hibiscus extract mixture with energy provided by the Sunlight Charm.

These steps are what fuel the brew with active casting energy. If you recall the principles of potioneering, we constantly exchange energy with our potions when we use our wands to stir the contents of the cauldron. In the specific case of the Mopsus Potion, however, simply exchanging magical energy through stirring is not sufficient. We also need to provide the brew with information on how to cast a spell nonverbally (nonverbal stir), the spell details for the Levitation Charm (Billywig sting addition), and an added burst of magical energy (infused honey and hibiscus extract mixture). These three steps of the process are what grant the peculiar characteristics of the Mopsus Potion.

For today’s assignment, you will have a standard quiz as well as an essay on using your brewed Mopsus Potion for a non-academic purpose. Last, but not least, I will also introduce a series of optional assignments from now on that will prepare you for your O.W.L.s this year, starting with a Year One review test.

Dismissed.

Original lesson written by Professor Vaylen Draekon
Image credits here and here