On Wednesday, fifth year Potions students were charged with brewing Draught of Peace, a potion which relieves anxiety and agitation. PROFESSOR SLUGHORN stressed more times than specifically necessary how vital it was to follow the directions precisely. "The purpose of this potion is to make calm, sedate," he told the students, "But improper brewing can very possibly result in - ahem - irreversible sedation. Death, actually, if we're not mincing words. You won't be sampling your potion or anyone else's without my express permission following a cursory inspection. Cursory will be enough, I assure you, I've been doing this quite a long time."
BREWING RESULTS
The Draught of Peace is known to be a particularly challenging potion to brew. It requires that the brewer follow both the recipe and instructions perfectly. Ingredients must be added in the exact order and amounts specified, and the potion needs to be stirred 7 times, both clockwise and anti-clockwise. Before the addition of the final ingredient, hellebore, the temperature of the flames must be lowered, and the potion allowed to simmer for seven minutes.
To win House points, comment with the following: how ACCURATE your character's Draught of Peace was (on a scale from 1, not even close, to 5, dead-on) and the TIME it took your character to brew the potion (on a range of 30 to 50 minutes, with an average of 40).
[VOLUNTEER 1] scrapes a bit of powdered unicorn horn into a line and mimes snorting it to their neighbor whose reaction causes [VOLUNTEER 1] to laugh and actually snort the ingredient. Powdered unicorn horn is a mild hallucinogenic and [VOLUNTEER 1] can expect to feel its effects for the entirety of the day.
[VOLUNTEER 2] knows that hellebore is toxic and spirits away some of the syrup to later poison someone, knowingly sacrificing the overall success of their potion because only a very specific amount of the ingredient was allotted to each student. The unfortunate ingester of said hellebore syrup will experience intense vertigo and be made to see Madame Pomfrey.
[VOLUNTEER 3] is really in the zone when [VOLUNTEER 4]'s concoction begins sparking uncontrollably. In the middle of measuring out one of the draught's sensitive portions, [VOLUNTEER 3] tuned out the fuss just long enough for their robes to alight.
[VOLUNTEER 5] shook their powdered porcupine quills just a little too vigorously, covering themselves in the stuff. They'll be breaking out in hives all week!