There was a moment, just before Gabe's yet-unnamed three-exclamation-point-worthy invigoration potion kicked in fully, when you got a tiny taste of just how much shit it was going to kick out of you later. When that came through, Gabe's knees just about gave out, his elbow hitting the desk.
But the next moment, he was standing upright and looking steady under (sort of) his own power, eyes open and much less bleary than they had been. "Right," he said clearly, sweeping the rest of the little vials back into the drawer and shoving it shut again with his knee. "If you've still got a wand and the ability to use it, we are so sorted," he told Jon, leading the way into his adjoining workshop. "It's not challenging stuff. Well, not magically challenging." Intellectually, yes, but that's why Gabe was here, along with a stack of books and enough letters from Romania to paper the walls. And possibly morally challenging as well, but that's why no one currently in this room had ever been a Gryffindor.
Along with all those stores of knowledge and a swathe of ready-prepared ingedients, the only other item on the workbench was a little glass cauldron (a Muggle might've called it a beaker) half-full of dark red liquid.
"Actually," Gabe said, "I don't even know how American wizardry feels about blood magic. I'm not asking you to, like, break commandments or something here, am I?" He sounded more curious than concerned; Jon was here, after all. Gabe had been fairly clear in the owl. Well, he thought he had been.