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"So what happened?"
"Allegedly, Eloḯsa was walking around one night when a soft blue light coming amongst a pile of rocks caught her attention; she moved near and, to her great surprise, the light turned out to be emanating from a bunch of small, bell-like flowers, that seemed to reflect the light of the moon. Wanting to share her discovery, she ran back to the camp where her father was still asleep. She did however find some of his men who, exhausted from the long wait, jumped at the opportunity to find the rare flower and return to their families. What none of them noticed was the moon."
"The moon?" Harry asked completely absorbed.
"Yes the moon. Eloḯsa only blooms under the moonlight Harry. Of course, none of the members of the group -and certainly not a little twelve year old girl- had any knowledge of that fact. It was as you understand only natural to pay no heed to the lunar eclipse that was set for that night." Harry's eyes were wide as he hung from Severus's lips.
"And?"
"The girl did lead them where she had seen the flowers but without the moonlight, the plant had retreated back into the sand. In a burst of rage, one of the men drew his wand and pointed it at the girl; the rest of the men jumped at her rescue but a stray curse hit her in the end. It is said that her father, who was awoken by the shouts, found the spot only moments after the fatal curse had hit the girl." Severus shrugged as he continued. "As you understand, the moon soon came out again and the flowers resurfaced."
"And they took them back to Europe?"
"They did; as it turned out, the flowers themselves had no healing quality. What they did was help stabilize the effect of the potion in which they were added. One drop of the oil produced from the petals of the plant is said to prolong the effect for large amounts of time; nobody ever truly measured. The point of the story however is that the flower was proven to be completely useless for the healing poison they needed. The antidote was eventually created and the flower simply passed into history as Eloḯsa. Nobody knows what happened to the girl's father. The flowers were considered a myth, until a French botanologist stumbled over them by accident three centuries ago; he catalogued the flowers and brought a small specimen back. It's his map we're following." Severus explained.
"But if this flower's abilities are so powerful," Harry stated confused. "Why isn't it used for more potions? It should be famous."
"Think about it, Harry." Severus said smiling softly at the boy's furrowed brow. Eventually, the green eyed wizard sighed as he reached a conclusion.
"Because nobody really means for potions to be permanent; they're supposed to act and then dissolve." The boy said, making Severus nod with no little amount of pride.
"If we were at school I would award you fifty points for that, Harry." The potions master assured him. "That's something wizards fail to understand about potions; they are highly dangerous if they remain inside the body for more than needed; many of the ingredients are poisonous by nature and those that are not still aren't supposed to last forever. Take the Skelegrow potion for example; because of the time it takes to act, none of its ingredients is poisonous. But can you imagine what would happen if it never stopped working?"
"The patients' bones would keep growing?" Harry asked making a grimace, gripping the reigns of his horse tighter.
"Exactly. The potion would have to do something and when it found no bones to re-grow, it would work on the existing ones. It's actually one of the problems when overdosing with said potion." Severus elaborated.
"But what about the Wolfsbane? Don't we want its effect to be permanent?" Harry asked.
"Do we?" Severus asked, wanting Harry to work this out on his own.
"I get it." The boy said after some minutes of thought. "We want the effect it has every full moon to be permanent. But the Wolfsbane does contain poisonous ingredients so it can't be active all the time."
"Once again, points to whatever House you'll be chosen for." Severus said smiling. "If I just wanted an ingredient that kept the effect of the potion going on forever, I could possibly recreate the effect in my lab back at home, thus this whole excursion would have been pointless. It's a different reason that, in addition to its ability to sustain the effects of a potion, makes this flower so special." The potions' master waited patiently for Harry to catch on. The boy didn't disappoint.
"It's the reaction it has under moonlight. If you can find a way to reproduce the flower's original reaction to the moonlight in a potion, then you will have a Wolfsbane that is only activated when the werewolf is affected by the moon, making only the desired effect permanent." Harry concluded. "That's brilliant!"
"Well thank you, Harry." Severus said with a smile as their horses reached the cliffs. "Of course that will require a lot of research and quite possibly a long list of ingredients to eventually produce the desired effect; but it's a start." They rode for a while in silence.
HI GUYS IF YOU WANT READ 100 + CHAPTERS THEN VISIT
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