Wolfsbane Dosing (was: Neville/Wolfsbane/Fluffy/Filk/Snape/Time Travel)

[justcarol67]

No: HPFGUIDX 169480

 JW wrote:
> Quite the opposite, Bart.  The volatile and semi-volatile chemicals 
> would boil off over extended simmering, and would not necessarily 
> effect the first day's dosage.
> 
> Please note that the potion is SMOKING.  Smoke is a mixture (as are 
> most if not all potions we have seen), not a solution.  Smoke 
> comprises a particulate, which is a solid, suspended (mixed, not 
> dissolved) in a gas, typically water vapor.  As the boiling 
> continues, the proportion of the remaining non-volatized liquid 
> mixture is subject to change as volatized ingredients boil off.  
> Thus, the second day's potion may have a different proportion of 
> ingredients than the first day, raising the issue of possible 
> inefficacy.
> 
> If the only volatile ingredient were water, you would NOT have
SMOKE, you would have STEAM, which is water vapor without suspended 
> particulates.  Of course, the result would be even WORSE in this 
> case.  If the so-called "smoke" were actually steam (water vapor), 
> leaving everything else in the cauldron, then over time the
remaining mixture would thicken into a syrup, goo, sludge, or a caked
and partially crystallized solid. <snip>

Carol responds:

Of course, the ingredients in the potion are magical, so maybe the RW
rules don't apply. :-) Or, more likely, JKR is no more aware of
chemical processes than she is of history (I still cringe every time I
read a reference to NHN's ruff. Sorry, no one wore those in 1492.)

In any case, I think we may be reading in more than necessary into
Snape's making a cauldronful. If he were trying to poison Lupin, he
wouldn't advise him, in front of Harry, to drink it right away before
it loses its effectiveness (a fact that Lupin could easily verify were
he inclined to doubt Snape's veracity on this point).

At any rate, Lupin, who should know, tells Harry in HBP that he's
grateful to Severus for making the potion *and* making it perfectly.
Those words, for me, say it all. 

Carol, not sure that Harry, whose observations are being recorded,
would know the difference between smoke and steam in any case (I think
the potion simply looked too hot to drink, and *Harry* thought that
Snape might try to poison Lupin)