What Happens When You Mix These Two Together? [Lovino & Guinevere]

Guinevere didn’t like stasis charms very much. She believed it was like putting preservatives in to a fine wine – the flavour is ruined and they’re really unnecessary. She would prefer to simply spend the whole day around her potions and at a private lab, she would be perfectly happy to do so. However, she was a teacher and occasionally things like food and baths were necessary and sleeping in her class was considered strange.

In this instance, she had needed to go and eat as the hunger pains were starting to make her dizzy and that wasn’t safe. She often forgot to eat, though you wouldn’t guess it too look at her, she was a healthy girl with wide hips and a large bust (plus the weight she had put on during a certain ‘illness’ as a teenager and had never been able to shift), so the unhealthy habit went unnoticed. It wasn’t an intentional thing, more distraction and a devoted nature.

After her hunger pangs were satisfied, she made her way back to the classroom to return to her potions, humming lightly. She opened the door and saw Lovino, tilting her head in curiosity slightly. Of course, she knew why he was there – Lovino was as passionate as her about potions and often had questions to ask her about certain potions or modifications. Secretly, he was her favourite student, even though she knew she shouldn’t have a favourite or a least favourite; (Probably Daniel Héderváry. He was a nice enough boy but he was just so unwilling to try that he frustrated her) but she really did.

“Hello, Lovino.” She said cheerfully, “What are you doing here?” She waved her wand over the potions behind her desk to take off the stasis charms and tested them to make sure the spell hadn’t damaged them somehow. It all seemed in order.

She nodded. It was always good that Lovino wanted to try new potions and experiment. Sometimes she had to question the sorts of potions he was making and what he was going to do with them but it was so nice to see him curious and inquisitive that she couldn't tell him no. She wouldn't admit it, but she had a little bit of a soft spot for him. She wasn't sure why - perhaps it was something to do with the fact he didn't quite feel like a student, he was so mature or perhaps it was to do with the fact that the Runes teacher kept fawning over him and talking about 'his cute little grandbabies' in the staff room. "Oh?" He asked, "What's this potion supposed to do then?" Since he was being so secretive, she had a feeling that it was probably not the sort of potion that a seventeen year old should be making. She hoped it wouldn't kill anyone or irreversibly change their DNA so that they always had the tail of a cat. She shook her head, that poor research assistant...

She began to continue the work on her potions; she needed to add the crushed scarab beetles in five minutes and she hadn't even prepared them yet. She hated them so much, they had to be as fresh as possible, which meant having horrible large insects in her room for a a rather long time. The sounds they made against the jar were hideous. "Hm?" She asked, taking the jar of scarab beetles and pouring some out on to a scale where they were instantly stuck, their pincers clasping desperately at the air. She quickly put the lid on before they crawled out the jar. "Nothing too interesting." She said casually, "The first two are for the hospital wing, that is, pepper up potion and a headache potion." She waved her hand in explanation,

"The third one is amortentia for a sixth year class - not your one no, you'll be doing that next week. This class is the lower ability group, I think they need two weeks. They're still talented, just... less so than your group. They're the Exeeds Expectations group." She explained, putting the beetles in to a mortar where again, they stuck, and began to crush them. It looked rather cruel, their shells breaking and their blood starting to fill the bowl, but it had to be done. She just hoped that the students wouldn't scream or throw up when faced with the task, the girls were notorious for that and it gave females a bad name.

"And the last one," She grinned, a little proud of herself and looking forwards to showing off (just a little bit) "That is something of my own creation that I'm working on. It's a potion that tests for diseases such as cancer and HIV. It's the sort of thing that we really need as even though we have treatments, there's no real early warning system. I'm hoping that it can even be given to muggles to test as their medicine is just as lacking as hours in that area..."

What an odd potion. She could see how it would be useful, from the little muggle chemistry she knew. Making a potion that turned metal in to liquid at cool temperatures would probably be highly desirable for industry, probably even in the wizarding world. She couldn't however, see how it would work, or at least, how long for. After all, if you melt a substance then cool it down it returns to solid. "And how does it work?"She asked curiously. "Do you have to submurge it in the potion or run the potion over it? Will the effect be multiplied if you apply reflux, by which I mean, if you take a solid and pour the potion on to it, turning it to liquid, would it turn to gas unless you extracted it? How do you plan to extract it? How does it come in contact with a gas? How does it know to turn it from a liquid to a solid or a liquid to a gas?" She knew she was rambling somewhat, but these were the questions that came to mind when one was a potions master who dd a lot of research and Lovino had to learn that too. "What about safety? If you're turning substances in to gases, they could be potentially harmful to breath in and perhaps you should wear gloves. It sounds pretty caustic." She, personally, always kept a research diary to help her with all these things. It was a muggle thing and quite a beauty, with coloured pages for different projects and ways to add more paper and tear paper out incase something went wrong. She should buy Lovino one, she thought.

Putting the now thoroughly crushed Scarab beetles in to the amortentia. It was beginning to smell of bonfires and victoria sponge cake, which indicated that she was on the right track. Not quite there yet; even leaning in to it, carefully wafting the fumes up to her face she couldn't smell baby powder or any of her other favourite smells, so it wasn't fully finished. Right now if it was drunk it would cause a mild feeling of adoration, the warm feeling that one gets in their stomach when their crush says hello to them, but nothing to make the drinker completely devoted. Then of course, they would be violently sick, considering they had drunk an unfinished and thus somewhat toxic potion. "Lovino, come over here and tell me what you smell,"She asked. It was always best to have a second opinion on these matters and Lovino was there. Besides, she couldn't help but be a little nosy and wonder what he loved, or at least, what they smelt like.

It was difficult to explain about the potion. There was a lot of complicated processes and though Lovino was highly advanced and would probably understand most of it, he had not learned all of it yet, such as the Brecht Scale of toxicity which was actually a fairly recent development that deigned how the potion worked. "Hm, before I answer your question, I'll explain how it works. A small blood sample is taken from the patient. This doesn't have to be large, probably no more than a drop, even. The potion studies the blood and the DNA of the person it comes from, so it can identify cancerous genes or virus cells, even genetic diseases. If there is no defects, it will go colourless but if it detects a problem, it isolates it and turns the designated colour for that problem. There will eventually be a colour chart for reference, so that one can tell what disease one has, but for the mean time, there isn't as I'm not on that stage of testing. So far I'm trying to get it to turn colourless using my blood as I know I don't have anything wrong with me, or at least I hope. It's getting there; the colour is getting more consistent. The beauty is that it's relatively inert and since it isn't ingested it's not dangerous. All it takes is a single drop of blood and that's it. Think of how many lives this could save in Africa. If there was a discrete way for someone to test themselves for HIV without having to go to a doctor."

Her chest swelled at how proud she was of it. "This of course, is only the first stage of testing. Once I think it's working, it's being sent to St Mungos and a few muggle hospitals in the area in order to be tested on patients with known conditions. I will only be overseeing it then, going off occasionally to check on the process and make notes, see what needs to be changed. I might send it to other potion masters to see their thoughts on it. It will have my seal so they can't steal it. This is quite a common thing to do, actually. For example, if I suddenly come up with a potential improvement to wolfsbane I'll write a letter to the research laboratory who are working on improving it. Of course, sometimes they work and sometimes they're terrible. Luckily, there's pleanty of test subjects for that. She occasionally wondered if it was callous, the way they treated werewolves as lab rats, in a sense. But only they could acutally use the potion - one could not make a rat in to a werewolf. As far as she knew, nothing irreversible had happened to one of the subjects for wolfsbane, usually they were in more pain or they were less human and more violent when they transformed. Sometimes strange things would happen, such as their howl would bring any nearby creature, such as foxes, or they would transform on waxing or waning moons, not just full ones. Once, she remembered, a case of a wolf who had his human brain when he was a wolf and a wolf's mind as a human, meaning they had had to keep him locked up for a whole month before daring to give him the potion. There was that rather agressive one who had somehow bitten through the cage and attempted to mate with the female staff, including her, that hadn't been pleasant. Naturally, they had reinforced the bars after that. But, usually a dose of the established wolfsbane on the next full moon cancelled out any effects.

She realised she was starting to drift off in to her thoughts and shook her head, stirring her experimental potion, "Okay, how you make it. It's designed so it can be made with ingredients which are cheap and easy to find and so it's easy to make, which is the biggest challenge. The first thing that's needed is sand. Any kind of sand, just a handful. It focuses the reactions within the potions to centre around them, acting as a catalyst, I suppose, if you will." She began to explain.

She frowned as she saw the rat hairs going in to the potion, "Really, poor rat. Seems like a bit of a useless waste of life." But she wasn't really judging him, as such. She just felt a little sympathy for the rat. She tested things on rats all the time. "Make sure it's sleeping when you put it in. A few drops of a sleeping potion would do it nicely." That was the least they could do, wasn't it. "Although, it's very possible that it will just turn the rat's hair to liquid." She realised.

She nodded, that sounded like it was working, if he was smelling things. "Good, sounds like it's going well." It was always good to have a second opinon in these matters after all. "I never trust my sense of smell, being around potions for all these years, it's somewhat shot." She joked, though it was true. The fumes and strong smells of many potions meant subtle smells were often lost on her. They never mention that in the careers orientation leaflet, but then they wouldn't, would they.

"Well at the moment, I don't know if it works or not. Hopefully if it is correct, it should have a high accuracy, above 90% at the very least. It'll need a lot of testing before hand. So that means control tests, with healthy humans and ones that are known to be sick. Then, running the test alongside known testing methods, until we can be sure that it won't give a high frequency of false positives or negatives." She explained. She was pleased that he was asking her questions, it showed he was curious and also meant that he was learning about a potions career. It would certianly be a loss if he didn't go in to it. "Ah well the colours seperate out, rather like what you see on a chromatogram. They don't mix well with each other and so seperate in to bands of colour. They're quite vibrant, or at least I hope, my testing has been limited so far."

She kept working, looking around for the new glasses she had bought so the potion wasn't contaminated. She took a small piece of the unfinished potion with a pippette and dropped it in to the glass, doing a toxicity test. Seemed to pass so far, so she hadn't made anything she hadn't wanted to. However... hmm... She darted away to scribble something on the recipie for the potion, to try next time. "Ah, glass and sand are the same thing." She reminded him. "Sand is just ground up quicker. "It is a problem, but the potion should be specific to blood and the sand should be boiled beforehand to sterilize it." She explained.