![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Order Only: Bill
Bill, I'm sorry for the delay in getting back to you. I did want to speak with Pomona, but she's been consulting with Acton on ways to add extra protective magic on the greenhouses, and we obviously can't speak freely in her company.
Re'em blood is used in warming draughts to reverse severe hypothermia and in a number of quite prohibitively expensive invigoration potions (of a sort often taken by rich old goats with an eye for young witches, if you take my meaning). Together with lacewing flies, I'd say the latter is a possibility as lacewings are commonly used to catalyse engorgement broths.
Apart from the obvious applications for such a concoction, those two ingredients might also constitute the basis for a strengthening draught. Other ingredients might include salamanders, graphorn liver, or centaur dung. And possibly certain oppositional ingredients as catalysing agents--valerian root, perhaps, or aconite.
Theoretically, one might substitute Re'em blood in any of the recipes for bone-restoring potions, though there would be risks: I should think that bones healed with a Re'em mixture might turn out much stouter than is normal in healthy humans; controlling the ingredient proportions would be a desperately tricky venture.
I've hunted up the articles you mentioned, Bill, and I don't mind saying that they made me shudder. Dark, indeed. For instance, one of the papers claims to be about development of a nightmare curative, while its theoretical discussion shows that the authors' methodological bent is towards nightmare cultivation and consciousness manipulation. The literature review includes the one existing study on controlling Inferi and papers on docility, thought-direction, and dream-insertion in Muggles--the sort of stuff that the Deparment of Mysteries occasionally allows out its doors to prove that it's doing something substantial with its budget.
Of course, it's all beyond my expertise, and I do not generally pay much heed to this sort of research. However, if you think there's a reason we should know more, I'm certainly willing to pursue it.
Re'em blood is used in warming draughts to reverse severe hypothermia and in a number of quite prohibitively expensive invigoration potions (of a sort often taken by rich old goats with an eye for young witches, if you take my meaning). Together with lacewing flies, I'd say the latter is a possibility as lacewings are commonly used to catalyse engorgement broths.
Apart from the obvious applications for such a concoction, those two ingredients might also constitute the basis for a strengthening draught. Other ingredients might include salamanders, graphorn liver, or centaur dung. And possibly certain oppositional ingredients as catalysing agents--valerian root, perhaps, or aconite.
Theoretically, one might substitute Re'em blood in any of the recipes for bone-restoring potions, though there would be risks: I should think that bones healed with a Re'em mixture might turn out much stouter than is normal in healthy humans; controlling the ingredient proportions would be a desperately tricky venture.
I've hunted up the articles you mentioned, Bill, and I don't mind saying that they made me shudder. Dark, indeed. For instance, one of the papers claims to be about development of a nightmare curative, while its theoretical discussion shows that the authors' methodological bent is towards nightmare cultivation and consciousness manipulation. The literature review includes the one existing study on controlling Inferi and papers on docility, thought-direction, and dream-insertion in Muggles--the sort of stuff that the Deparment of Mysteries occasionally allows out its doors to prove that it's doing something substantial with its budget.
Of course, it's all beyond my expertise, and I do not generally pay much heed to this sort of research. However, if you think there's a reason we should know more, I'm certainly willing to pursue it.
no subject
Anyway. If you or Pomona or Minerva could leave some of those journals in the tunnel, I could come get them for a little light reading. I'm finding it next to impossible to get out during the daylight hours, but perhaps in a day or two MLE will ease off.
Does Aberforth still run the Hog's Head? I wonder if he got a look at the cloaked stranger from the other night. Course, it's not like Padfoot could go up and ask him. But he always had some scraps he was willing to part with; I might be able to convince him to take in a stray for a while.
no subject
And, yes, the Hog's Head is still Aberforth's. It's been a great while since I've been in, mind you, but one hears a story or two. He's not the most genial barkeep north of the wall.
Have you managed a look into his premises?
no subject
I did venture down there last night, in fact, and yes, Aberforth's still there. Unfortunately so were about four MLE agents. He chased me out when I tried to nose through the kitchens, saying the last thing he needed was to answer charges of improper sanitation.
You ask me he should worry more about the rats he lets in the front door than the dogs that sneak in through the back.