"Everyone likes that," he says, "or says they do. Has its points of interests I suppose, but... bloody dreary thing. I don't mind a morbid sense of humor, but Circe save me from a mournful one."
"The efficacy isn't sufficiently influenced, either way, by the condition of the stag at the time the horn is taken to be worth finding out its status," he says, grinning a little bit nastily. He doesn't have anything against real stags, the kind where you can look into their eyes and see pride but no human intelligence, but when it's just their leavings... "Anyway, it's a bit more complex than that. Velvet stripped off on trees is considerably less useful on adolescent males in this potion, while it's exceptionally potent in some treatments for pathological social anxiety in females. Has to do with the hormone levels. Likewise, the hart's vitality level at the time the antlers are taken has less of an impact than its age and the time of year. And different values for those factors are of more and less use for different potions."
He nods. "Once you've achieved a decent NEWT in potions you can be hired by any commercial brewer to follow recipes out of a book. You don't need additional education to 'get things right;' if that's all you want, a token examination and a slightly less token licensing fee will get you the title of Certified Potions Brewer and access to IAMB's library and owl network. If you apprentice to an MB, it's to learn the deeper theory and get the feel for the art. Knowing what to do is, I suppose, useful; but the soul of any craft is to know what you're doing."
"I wonder if one can," he muses, and briskly moves on to say, "Well, perhaps. Although this place seems almost as volatile as Hogwarts, so there could be complexities. Still, if you care to look into it..."
Because it's Q and therefore he can, he demands, "You're smiling. Explain." Because that's not a Quin grin, and it looks like it might lead somewhere fun.