"Oh, no," he says, a bit dreamily. "An intensive sweat bath would very likely have been salutory for him, in fact. Very," his teeth gleam, "healthful."
"He realized." His mouth is in an unhappy line. "Very likely before I did."
"Darkness is neither necessarily evil nor dishonorable," he protests. "Shadow and deep waters and void are entirely natural. The Gryffindor Death Eater I knew best was certainly aware that he had been corrupted, but the Dark Lord didn't exactly go around saying, 'Follow me and my great evil will lead you to power,' you know. He confused moral compasses, he didn't pretend they didn't matter. And the Ministry appeared, then, considerably more irrational and heartless than he did. He pretended to ideals, you see." With a reduction (but not elimination) of bitter heat, he goes on, "The Ravenclaws who served him had generally grown frustrated with Ministry red tape. He offered them the opportunity to be pure intellect, pursuing our research without an overly nice regard for its implications."
He winces. "He wasn't still trying to apply that heating charm to his own posterior, was he?" he asks with a contained note of groaning. "I thought I'd cured him of that. As for Crouch--junior, yes--he treated Lockhart in a way that anyone who had cared about the cretin would have found detestable. I've no doubt that if Lockhart had ever had a mind or piece of sanity to call his own, it would have been thoroughly twisted." He doesn't move, either, insisting in a lowered tone that threatens persons unknown, "Who."
"The two potions don't get on well," he answers, and then pauses to be amused. "Well. They do, actually. They make a rather pleasant tranquilizer. Not what one wishes to give to students--er, that is, not something condusive to learning." Returning to the first question, "Lower, actually, between mid-March and Beltane. After an initially concentrated dose, the course of maintenance can be relaxed until the influences of summer come to bear. It doesn't shut down pheromone production, mind," he cautions. "That wouldn't even be advisable. People have to learn to manage their hormones, usually slowly. It merely dulls their effect so that the mind retains a fighting chance to remain halfway in control over the developing body. A sporting chance, one might say."
He nods. "I was furious with the Hat for not giving me the option of Ravenclaw," he says idly. "It said it expected I'd do well there until I burned it down."
Or the Haagen Dasz (sp?) pineapple-coconut mmmmm. And actually the Edy's cake batter think was surprisingly good, although I only tried it out of morbid curiosity.