Quote:
Originally Posted by
Ameh 
...wait a minute.
Raiden froze, gaze on the board, his quill pausing over his notebook. That... that couldn't be right. Surely the professor was joking.
"Professor..." His hand raised slowly, eyes narrowing ever so slightly. "Are you sure that list is right?" His hand moved, indicating the ingredients list, and pointing at one in particular. "Phoenix tears? They're supposed to be essentially impossible to get, since there's so few domesticated phoenixes in the world, and it's more difficult still to get those few to cry."
He would know. Their healing properties would have been useful when he was younger, but getting hold of a phoenix, much less phoenix tears, had proved impossible. And for them to be going into such a commonly made potion...
Of course HE would catch that... She beamed proudly. "Astute Prefect, very astute. As some of you may know my first husband, may he rest in peace, was a renown potioneer. He had many friends, one of whom owned two Phoenixs. Recently his female Phoenix lost it's mate... Phoenix's usually do not take a mate, as they do not need to reproduce, but when they find true love... they never leave them. Sad, I know..." she said shrugging, "but it's loss is our gain. As he knew I was teaching at Hogwarts now, he made the donation of the tears to the potions lab here at the castle." To be used for the betterment of students... Bloody donor intent. She would have loved to keep all the tears for her own experiments... but she wasn't using all of them in this class... some she did keep in her personal stores. "The donor has asked to be kept anonymous. This also means if you mess up your potion you will not be asked to make another."
She smiled at the prefect and summoned her ingredients to her desk. "Do retrieve your ingredients, the only one you won't find are the phoenix tears, those I will come around and administer when the time comes. Now," she said and looked into the cauldron filled with goat's milk, "Mortar and pestle out and begin working on crushing the yellow moonstone. Yellow moonstone helps with the de-aging by energizing the milk, and causing the regression in your DNA." She said crushing it. "Grind it to a powder and then sprinkle it in the cauldron as you stir."