Potion of the Month
By Trinity Langton
Yo fellow Slytherins!
Alrighty, so in an attempt to follow through with this month's theme of candy and poison, I - naturally - began to look up on the latter. As I did, a rather disturbing revelation dawned on me. There are a lot of potions which aren't labeled very well.
So what do I mean by this?
There are many which say it might be a poison.
Maybe? Freaking maybe?!
Shouldn't we have a more definite answer on this?!
I mean, really. Come on, people. It's common sense; or at least I'd hope it would be. Seriously though, we know what spells can be categorized as: jinxes, hexes, and curses. So why do we - a group of people who live in a very magical community - have so few individuals who can clearly define what is or isn't a poison?
Sorry. I know I'm probably coming off as frantic, if not worse. But this is kinda eerie. It is to me, anyway.
Isn't part of the reason we learn Potions and even Defense Against the Dark Arts at Hogwarts? To properly defend ourselves against these sorts of things? Because, trust me, there are definitely people out there who don't care about resorting to using toxins.
In fact, poisons tend to be used very often in assassinations, something that you can easily see if you research Muggle history.
Hell, it's even included in Muggle literature, such as Hamlet, for example, where the main character's father is killed by poison.
Now, before I go too much further into this article and attempting to prove my point, let's back up and review the basics real quick. A poison is - by definition - any substance that can cause severe distress or death if ingested, breathed in, or absorbed through the skin.
Going off of just that definition, wouldn't you think something such as the Emerald Potion - also known as the Drink of Despair - is deemed as a poison?
Given the side effects, I'd say yes.
Yet, that's not what it's labeled as. It's simply deemed to be "a potion".
Ummm, no. Just, no.
I dunno who anyone thinks they are - namely because the inventor is only speculated and not known for damn certain - but you sure as shit aren't fooling me. Something that causes such dire side effects and is immune to the following - being penetrated by hand, vanished, parted, scooped up, siphoned away, Transfigured, Charmed, or otherwise made to change its nature in any way - most definitely sounds like a poison to me.
And if that's not a toxin, I have no clue what is.
Okay, that's a lie. I do know what is considered to be an actual poison. In fact, I have a list of concoctions which have been labeled and/or acknowledged as a venom of some sort.
- Dragon Poison
- Moonseed Poison
- Potion No. 07
- Potion No. 86
- Weedosoros
That's it. Five potions; that's all I found. With other concoctions such as the Emerald Drink existing, this list should be much longer.
This article is a wake-up call of sorts for everyone; be very careful about messing with potions you know next to nothing about. I get that this is probably a given under any circumstance. I hope, however, that it's more of an obvious course of action to take now that I've pointed out how few, actual poisons are known.
Until next month,
Trinity Langton