Professor Skies
September 23, 2017 6:55 AM
Advanced - We have ways of making you talk by Professor Skies
“Good morning,” Selina greeted the Advanced Students. “Professor O’Malley is running a little late this morning,” she explained. As the advanced class was the first one of the day and Professor O’Malley lived off campus, it was vulnerable to such issues as over-running medical appointments, projectile vomiting infants, childcare crises and any of the other myriad things that the young mother of soon-to-be-more-than twins had to deal with.“From her lesson plan, I see that you’ve been brewing veritaserum. Her instructions for today are to check your potions, giving them any necessary maintenance.” Selina had briefly viewed the process for making the potion over breakfast but she couldn’t say it was her most confident area. It was a tricky potion, taking a full lunar cycle to complete, so the class’s cauldrons were simmering away on the back bench, part way through this delicate process. “The most likely thing your potion will need is a top up of water, to prevent it drying out. If it has started to change colour, you will need to add the unicorn tail hairs - it requires seven in total, with a seven clockwise stirs between each one. However, I am afraid I am not well-placed as a judge of which potions need topping up or are at this stage. If you are not fully confident of your decisions, I would return to the potions room at lunchtime - by which time Professor O’Malley should be here - and seek her advice.
“Once you’ve tended to your potion, you have some research tasks concerning the reliability of veritaserum. Namely, the reasons why its use in a court of law is questionable. There are several texts available to you on this subject, along with a Muggle Studies text on the use of polygraph. You will need to write a brief summary about the reliability of veritaserum, citing at least three cases - which can include Muggle as well as magical cases - where the use of veritaserum or polygraph was later called into question.
“You may begin.”
OOC - The given instructions re: veritaserum are entirely made up by me and may, in future, be eclipsed by directions from Pottermore. I figured unicorns’ association with purity made their tail hair a logical ingredient.
There is plenty on the wiki about limitations of veritaserum. For your examples, you are of course free to make things entirely up, but if you find that difficult, there is plenty of information out there on genuine Muggle court cases which you can cite directly, or use ideas from them to invent wizarding court cases.
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