PTNS-601 Lessons

In spite of all the challenges that were in your way, you prevailed. You passed your O.W.L.s with flying colors - a feat that few could claim to have attained, if the number of people inside the classroom is any indication to that effect.

Today, class has started earlier than usual - you see the professor walk into the dungeons five minutes before the regular time, as if he has a message to relay to the people that have stuck with the course. “I shall be brief, for we do not have much time, but I’d like to congratulate you all for passing your exams. I am not one to simplify my lessons or tests for the sake of inflating grades or the number of enrolled students; for that reason, if you are still here, you can be proud of everything you have achieved so far. Do not let your pride turn into complacency, however: these lessons will get exponentially more difficult, and as such you would be wise to keep up with your studies”, states Professor Draekon solemnly before starting the lecture.

Introduction to Year Six

At this moment, I would like to discuss our topic for the present year as well as the changes in policies and procedures that will be in place throughout this N.E.W.T. level course.

Let us first start with the changes. The first change in question pertains to word counts and identifying marks - you all have had enough time to learn how to write a cohesive and full essay, and for that reason you will not receive any points for attaining the minimum word count anymore. Rather, failure to write the specified word count or the addition of an identifying mark will net you a 0 and a request to resubmit your work.

The word count rubric element has been substituted by a logical cohesion and persuasion criterion. Simply put, your essays must now present both internal and external consistency - that is to say, your statements must not contradict what’s previously written in your text, nor information that has already been covered in this course. Naturally, I know that sometimes the answer to a given question is disputable or unknown; in that case, your ability to persuade me on why your theory is correct will be tested instead.

Furthermore, I know that the content for Year Six will be quite heavy at times, and for that reason I would like to give you all an opportunity to adapt to this increase in difficulty. Thus, completion of certain Extra Credit essays (as identified by their prompt header) will net you bonus marks for that lesson’s quiz assignment in a 20:1 ratio, provided the final score does not exceed 100%. I would like to make it clear that the reason for this decision lies in how complex the asked questions will be from now onwards. At times, you will need to do external research or apply what you know from different courses in my assignments as well. I assume you all have had a taste of that throughout Year Five, but now the proverbial dragonhide gloves are off. In order to claim those bonus points, please send me an owl with the Grade ID of both your Extra Credit essay and the same-lesson quiz that you want to apply your bonus points to.

Lastly, you will notice that the recipes for the potions studied throughout the year will now be covered by a textbook, Advanced Potion-Making. Rather than explaining the recipes directly, I trust that you are capable of doing your due diligence and following instructions with minimal mistakes, and that there is no need for further hand-holding in this class. Of course, in case you have any questions about the brewing process, I am always available to answer your doubts - be it during class or my office hours.

Very well, now let us move on to the topic for this year. In your first year of N.E.W.T. level potions, we will study both offensive and counter potions, which are defined by their use for combat purposes. In a nutshell, an offensive potion creates either a direct attack against a target or the opportunity for the execution of the aforementioned attack, whereas a counter potion hinders or disallows the use of a specific ability that may be used for offensive purposes.

The definitions above may sound vague, so let us see some specific examples to better understand these ideas. For example, the Erumpent Potion - which causes an explosion when applied to another object - and the Reflex Potion - which grants the drinker increased reflexes and an uncanny ability to move - are both considered offensive potions, as they either generate a direct attack (Erumpent Potion and its explosion) or a method through which an effective attack could be made (Reflex Potion and the increase of the drinker’s ability to react in battle).

On the other hand, potions such as the Confusing Concoction and even the famous Wolfsbane Potion are regarded as counter potions, as they remove the drinker’s ability to use skills that could be employed offensively properly - for example, their decision-making speed or their werewolf psychological impulses.

As a final note, some of the potions we have previously studied may fit into either category, in spite of the fact they were not introduced as such in the past: part of your assignments for this week will prompt you to provide an effective classification to potions that have been previously studied. Having said that, you will find our schedule for the year below.

Ethics of Offensive and Counter Potions

Just because we know how to use a given tool, that does not mean we are supposed to do so. Although this is not a course on the ethics of combat, there is value in discussing when (and why) using such potions is warranted and/or ethical, as well as points of moral concern that might surface when using an offensive potion.

The first question we may entertain is when it’s ethical to make use of an offensive or counter potion. For instance, most would agree that using a Befuddlement Draught as a mean-spirited prank is not an ethical use of the brew, while using the exact same potion in order to infiltrate a Dark wizard organization and rescue a hostage is. This analysis gives us the first hint to a potential answer: the ethics in using an offensive or counter potion lies not in the potion itself, but in its application.

There are three main theories regarding ethical actions: namely, they are deontology, virtue ethics and consequentialism. All of these theories differ with regards to what they consider to be the basic source of ethical behavior - that is to say, they shine their “spotlight” onto distinctive parts of our acts in order to gauge the presence or absence of morality.

The first major group, deontology, is concerned about whether the action performed follows previously established rules or not. For a deontologist, stealing from a supermarket in order to sate the hunger of a nearby beggar is not ethical, as it goes against the law and the reasonable expectations of a society. Conversely, exploiting a loophole in the rules of a system, or following the letter of the law rather than the spirit of the law, may be considered ethical even if doing so may be at odds with what most might consider fair.

Virtue ethics, on the other hand, adopts the belief that one must not focus on the rules as they are, but on the basic principles of morality that are regarded as the core of humanity. A virtue ethicist would disagree that exploiting a rule would be ethical, but this objection raises yet another issue - given the fact that the basic principles of morality are so loosely defined and vary from person to person, how can we determine where the line between “regular right” and “abuse of right” lies?

The last theory, consequentialism, states that an action is ethical if its consequences create the greatest amount of benefit to society at large. One of the greatest proponents of consequentialism is Jeremy Bentham, who devised the so-called theory of Utilitarianism. For Bentham, morality resides in a spectrum that can be calculated: as long as the benefits of an action outweigh the harms created, that action should be reputed as valid. Some, however, strongly criticize this type of thinking - for instance, can we consider certain actions, such as killing a healthy person and forcibly donating their organs to five people who will die if they do not get a transplant soon enough, as ethical exclusively because of their consequences?

There is no specific answer to the questions above, but being aware of the thought processes above helps us create ethical justifications for our acts, as well as rule out unethical ones. As previously mentioned, an ill-spirited prank cannot be reputed as an ethical act by any metric, as it does not match the rules of our society, the legitimate expectations of human morality, nor does it cause more benefit than harm.

When it comes to using offensive or counter potions, the same type of justification used for casting an offensive spell applies - namely, the circumstances should warrant the use of that tool, with no other less-harmful method serving the same purpose. For instance, I am assured that Professors Penrose and Kwan would agree with me that using the Reductor Curse on a living target should not be done if the Stunning Spell can neutralize the opponent equally well (unless, of course, a very specific set of circumstances demands the killing of the target), and I advocate the same type of thinking when it comes to offensive potions. For that reason, if I ever see these brews being misused - either inside or outside my class - you can rest assured that you’ll receive a fate worse than death: you’ll be expelled from Hogwarts.

Another relevant concern is the potential to affect those nearby when the potion is used. Certain types of offensive potions may be environmental, as is the case with the previously discussed Erumpent Potion, and as such others might be negatively affected by its effects in spite of the ethical nature of the originally intended use. Although there isn’t a specific formula that helps us gauge whether the use remains ethical or not under these circumstances, we may still use one of the theories above in order to determine whether the use of the potion is justifiable or not.

With time, you will see that these questions are much more complicated than any chemical calculation or convoluted brewing process that a potioneer could ever dream of. Rather than cold and impersonal rationality, ethical questions require us to make use of subjective criteria - which, by definition, cannot be clearly defined as correct or wrong.

Mole and Concentration

Before we delve into our first brew for this year, let us discuss two scientific concepts that will be important in our future studies, particularly when dealing with experimental brewing: mole and concentration.

The mole (unit: mol) is perhaps the simplest of the two concepts, as it refers to a specific number with very relevant chemical applications. In the same way a dozen is equivalent to 12 and a gross is equivalent to 144, a mole is also equivalent to a specific number. That number is approximately 6.02 x 10²³, or 602 followed by 21 zeros.

Now, why is this number so important in chemistry and potioneering? In simple terms, the mole gives us an easy way to connect the weight of a molecule to the weight of a given sample, which may then be used in chemical calculations. More specifically, if a molecule weighs X atomic units, then a mole of the same molecule type will weigh X grams.

Imagine, for instance, that you have 51 grams of aluminum oxide (Al₂O₃, whose molecular weight is approximately 102 atomic units), and that you want to use the minimum amount of fire seed juice required to react with the aluminum oxide. We know that every aluminum oxide molecule reacts with two molecules of the main component in fire seed juice and that we can find one mole of such molecules in 38 mL of fire seed juice. How much fire seed juice must we use in our recipe?

The first step is to determine how many moles of aluminum oxide molecules we have. If Al₂O₃’s molecular weight is 102 atomic units (102 Da), this means that 1 mole of Al₂O₃ weighs 102 grams. Conversely, 51 grams is 0.5 mole - and, since each aluminum oxide molecule reacts with two molecules of our fire seed juice compound, we must use 0.5 * 2 = 1 mole of the primary molecule in fire seed juice. We can find 1 mole of that molecule in 38 milliliters of fire seed juice, which is our final answer on how much reagent we need to use.

In case you fare better with numbers rather than a full written explanation, the simplified scheme below may better illustrate the example given. Note that FSJM refers to the main molecule in fire seed juice, and FSJ refers to fire seed juice itself.

Another concept that we will need to use in the future is concentration, which expresses how much of a given chemical is present in a solution. If you have ever poured water into your pumpkin juice, then perhaps the concept might be intuitive for you: a glass of pumpkin juice mixed with water does not taste as strong because you have decreased its concentration by adding solvent to the mixture.

There are several ways to express concentration, with the most intuitive of them being a simple g/L fraction (or any subdivisions of these units). As one might expect, this figure directly refers to how many grams of a given solute is present per volume unit of the solution: for example, if I state that the concentration of sugar in a given bottle of juice is 18 g/L, this means that there are 18 grams of sugar in every liter of that juice. If one were to pour a 250 mL glass of that juice (that is, 1/4 of a liter), then the sugar contained in that glass would follow the same proportion - there would be 18/4, or 4.5, grams of sugar in that glass.

Furthermore, concentrations may also be expressed in molarity (unit: M), or how many moles of the solute are contained in a liter of the target solution. Expressing concentrations in molarity is very common in chemical processes of all sorts for a very logical reason: chemical reactions are dependent on how many molecules interact with one another, and for that reason expressing relationships in moles, rather than grams, can help us in calculating chemical reactions.

Let us go back to the example above. The molecular mass of sugar is approximately 180 g/mol - which means that 1 mole of sugar weighs approximately 180 grams. This means that 18 grams of sugar weighs approximately a tenth of a mole, or 0.1 mole. For that reason, the juice described above has a molarity of 0.1 mole per liter of solution, also expressed as 0.1 M.

A final way to express concentration is in molality (unit: m), which is quite similar to molarity but uses the mass of the solvent in kilograms rather than the volume of the solution in liters. For most solutions, the molarity and the molality will be very similar to one another, as one liter of water, the most common solvent, weighs approximately one kilogram. However, when dealing with liquids that are much more or less dense than water, there might be a large difference between molarity and molality; for that reason, molality is more frequently used in solutions with very high or very low density.

Theory of Garrotting Gas and Asphyxiation

Our potion for the week is the Garrotting Gas - a colorless and insidious fluid that latches onto the necks of any living creatures that approach it and strangles them to death. However, before we begin to discuss the effects of such a vicious potion, we must first study the biological mechanisms of asphyxiation.

By definition, asphyxiation refers to the lack of oxygen in one’s bloodstream, which then causes cellular death, as the required chemicals to produce ATP (adenosine triphosphate, the component that acts as the source of energy for cells) are lacking. As a general guideline, asphyxiation happens when a person is unable to breathe owing to mechanical factors; however, chemical forms of asphyxiation may also happen when the person inhales a compound, such as cyanide, that disallows oxygen from being carried through the bloodstream.

Physical asphyxiation can be further subdivided into four categories: suffocation, strangulation, mechanical asphyxia or drowning. These categories are defined by the source of asphyxiation, with drowning likely being the one most people are acquainted with. For the sake of thoroughness, let us go over its definition briefly: drowning refers to asphyxiation caused by the entrance of any fluid, such as water, into the victim’s lungs, which then blocks the oxygen and carbon dioxide gas exchanges from happening.

Mechanical asphyxia, on the other hand, refers to the presence of a mechanical pressure that disallows a person from filling their lungs. This type of asphyxiation is quite common in people who are trapped underground after natural disasters, such as earthquakes or landslides: the pressure of the ground around their torso prevents them from taking a breath, causing them to asphyxiate.

The last two remaining types of asphyxiation, suffocation and strangulation, both refer to air failing to enter the lungs because of the constriction of the airways that lead to the organs. However, suffocation and strangulation differ based on the position of the constraining object - while suffocation refers to the internal blockage of the airways (e.g., choking on a piece of food that gets lodged into the trachea), strangulation is defined by the external blockage of the airways (e.g., an attack by someone that wraps their hands around a victim’s neck).

As you may have surmised, the Garrotting Gas is - differently from most Muggle poisons, which tend to cause chemical asphyxiation - a strangulating substance with a very unique form of activation. This potion, upon contact with any heated surface (including the heat of any living creature), transforms the air surrounding the warm space into a non-Newtonian fluid with special properties.

For those that may not be familiar with the terminology, a non-Newtonian fluid does not act in accordance with Newton’s law of viscosity. In other words, it reacts differently upon being subject to mechanical stress, acting more like a solid the more pressure it’s subject to. An excellent example of this phenomenon is oobleck, depicted on the left: the fluid acts as a solid while the speaker is vibrating, but quickly retakes its liquid properties once the sound is turned off. Likewise, Garrotting Gas generates the same type of behavior in atmospheric air - the more pressure the fluid is subject to, the more it solidifies and constricts.

The biggest issue with Garrotting Gas, however, is that it is very sensitive to changes in pressure: even the pounding of one’s heart is enough to trigger the effects of the gas, this being the reason why many say that the potion catches people by the neck. Nevertheless, what is actually happening is the gradual constriction of the air around a person’s cervical area as a result of the carotid arteries’ pulsation. This constriction, as one may expect, lasts until the victim’s heart stops beating, allowing the gas to regain its fluidity and converting the atmospheric air back into a Newtonian fluid once the heat produced by the corpse is insufficient to activate the potion’s properties.

Although there are ways to interrupt the attack posed by the Garrotting Gas, such methods are frequently dangerous by themselves - and, for that reason, minimizing one’s exposure to the potion is the best way to ensure you remain safe. However, if you find yourself caught unaware by the potion, you may still be saved if a nearby person encases you in ice through the use of the Freezing Spell and then moves you to safety with the Mobilicorpus Spell, which will be taught next week in Charms. This method, however, puts undue thermal stress on the affected person’s body, potentially leading to the onset of hypothermia or even cold shock response; it is for that reason that I urge you to be cautious when handling Garrotting Gas, as these emergency measures are not to be taken lightly.

I must also mention a very dangerous trend that is somehow becoming more popular among teenagers nowadays: the use of low concentration Garrotting Gas as a drug of sorts. Many potioneers have started to produce weaker doses of Garrotting Gas - strong enough to slightly deprive the user of oxygen but not enough to cause death. Users state that the lack of oxygen gives them a temporary high, helping them to clear their minds and let go of stress. This practice, however, is extremely dangerous - as the potion may be improperly brewed and/or become more concentrated owing to improper storage, which may then lead to bodily harm or even death. No single moment of your life is worth that risk.

For our lab today, you may notice that you’re all required to wear a deep-charmed brass band around your necks. This artifact constantly cools the surrounding air, ensuring that the produced Garrotting Gas cannot alter the atmospheric properties close to your neck. No matter how uncomfortable wearing this device might be, do not remove it while tending to your cauldron at any time; furthermore, I also urge you all to not touch its external surface, as it is extremely cold and may cause your fingertips to stick to the metal’s surface. One last point I must mention is that you might still feel the constriction of the Garrotting Gas around your limbs while working with your potion, but the constriction exerted against these areas does not cause any physical harm.

In case you are ready to start, you may turn your textbooks to page 14 and begin following the recipe.

Closing

The discussion about vaporous potions, which we touched on throughout Year One, may have come to your mind at some point. However, let me state that Garrotting Gas is not a vaporous potion: that definition is reserved for the theoretical gaseous version of potions that are conventionally dispensed in liquid form. The appropriate term to refer to Garrotting Gas is either “gas-form potion” or “gaseous potion”.

Dismissed.

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