Archive of Our Own ^beta

The Christmas holidays were nearly over. Snow whirled past the windows in cheerful flurries while Florean sat at the kitchen table, eyes narrowed, staring at two half-eaten slices of chocolate cake. Baking potion into a cake was fairly simple. He hadn’t even bothered to add extra butter to the regular cake. Butter helped imitate the consistency of a potion-infused cake, but that wasn’t the point of this exercise. The point was simply to do it. To create. To think.

There was something almost alchemical about a well-executed dessert, and its potential to buoy the heart. Of course, the effects of a lemon tart or a cream bun on one’s mood were neither predictable nor quantifiable – not in the way a potion was. This was where Florean’s interests converged.

He took another bite of cake. He felt the potion unfurl gently inside of him, and his focus sharpened even further.

It was interesting, he thought, that enchanted food was so often confectionary. In fact, he had personally seen magically enhanced food in only two places: Honeydukes and St. Mungo’s. At St. Mungo’s, of course, it was done purely for medicinal purposes. But Honeydukes traded on fun. Honeydukes’ entire stock was delightfully impractical and it was, without question, his favourite place on earth. It was quite normal for Hogwarts students to look forward to a visit on their Hogsmeade weekends, but Florean was always especially gleeful. He had never lost his childhood enthusiasm for sweets, and he fully intended to hold onto it for life.

Honeydukes’ products were generally created with charm-based magic. Sugar quills, chocolate frogs, pepper imps – all a result of clever charmwork. This was all well and good, but Florean’s brain was wired for potions. The maze of unambiguous laws and definitions, the vast array of potential ingredients, and the complexity with which everything combined was like a never-ending logic puzzle.

Sometimes, the logic was simple enough. It was quite easy to mix a standard potion into most desserts. Cakes, tarts, puddings, pies… he had found them all to be fairly straightforward.

Ice cream, however, was proving to be a challenge.

“Good afternoon, Professor.”
“Florean, my boy!” beamed Professor Slughorn. “Did you have a good Christmas?”
“I did, Professor, and yourself?”
“Marvelous! I ate a few too many mincemeat pies, but what is Christmas without a little indulgence?”
Florean grinned.
“You should have had one of my pies, sir. I infused an antidote for dyspepsia into the filling.”
“What a clever idea,” mused Slughorn. “The citrus peel would greatly enhance the effect of the valerian.”
“Exactly! It saves money, too. I didn’t need to use many as shrake spines, and they’re far more expensive than valerian.”
Slughorn clapped him joyfully on the back, with an enthusiasm that made Florean cough.
“Ingenious! Brilliant work, lad, very impressive.”
Florean couldn’t help turning pink. Slughorn’s exuberance, while flattering, also tended to leave him embarrassed. “Thank you, Professor. Although I think you’re overstating it a little – I’m not so brilliant as you’re making out.”
“Nonsense. It’s not just the potion-making, dear boy. You have a head for business; you recognised a fine way to lower your expenses, and you had the good sense to mix a cure for dyspepsia into a Christmas Day staple! Mark my words, Florean, you’ll do great things someday.”
“I’m going to open a sweet shop, Professor.”
“Oho, going to rival Honeydukes, are you? Well, if you need anyone to serve as a taste tester…” Slughorn winked.
“I’ll keep that in mind,” Florean grinned. “For now, I have a potion-making question.”
“Of course! What’s on your mind?”
“Is it possible to freeze a potion?”
Slughorn chortled. “Technically, yes. Except for igneus potions, of course. But you’re asking the wrong question, my boy.”
“What’s the right question?”
“Whether you should freeze a potion.”
Florean frowned. “What’s wrong with freezing a potion?”
“It’s a waste of valuable ingredients! Freezing a potion is an excellent way to make it completely unusable. Most potions can be cooled, of course, but not to the point where it’s no longer a liquid. By then, it’s no use at all.”
“I’ve used potions extensively in cooking,” said Florean slowly. “Cakes, biscuits, pies… I’ve never had a potion rendered inert.”
“Well, cooking is a different kettle of fish,” said Slughorn. “The effects of extreme heat and extreme cold on potions is a fascinating subject. There’s a rather good book about it in the library, it goes into the theory quite extensively. Wait a moment, I’ve got the title here somewhere…”

Florean waited politely while Slughorn riffled through his papers, regaling him with anecdotes of a past student who was now working alongside the author of this book. From the sounds of things, they were located in Hawaii, investigating the magical properties of molten rock. This would have been a rather interesting subject, but Slughorn was more intent on discussing her days in his classroom, and the correspondence they’d shared since. This was decidedly less interesting, and it took some effort to keep his mind from wandering.

“Ah, here we are!” Slughorn scrawled a name and a title on a scrap of parchment, and handed it to Florean. “Good luck, my boy. The fate of all our taste buds rests in your capable hands!”
Florean laughed.
“I won’t let you down, Professor.”

The book Professor Slughorn had suggested contained thoroughly dense information on the effects of temperature variation in potions. The content was rather difficult to decipher, and it took some time for Florean to work through it. It seemed that Slughorn was correct; potions could be cooled or chilled, but never frozen. For weeks, much of Florean’s time was spent trying to conceive of a way around this, and conducting experiments inspired by the book. However, he always returned to its conclusion: a frozen potion did not retain its magical properties.

One night, after another evening spent fruitlessly puzzling over alchemical theory, Florean was in his dormitory. He was just drifting off to sleep when he suddenly found himself fully awake and staring wide-eyed at the blue canopy of his bed, a kernel of an idea rattling around in his mind.

He’d spent so much time looking for a solution. He’d been completely focussed on finding some way to either reverse or prevent the effects of solidification on a potion. He’d gotten nowhere. But perhaps he’d been too narrow in his goal.

What if, instead of a solution, he started looking for a loophole?

The next day, he was not an attentive student. His first class was Transfiguration. This was very unfortunate, because Professor McGonagall had a sharp eye for students attempting anything other than her own work. History of Magic was next and, although Florean was one of the few students with a genuine interest in the subject, on this particular day he had other things on his mind. He spent the entire class scribbling away, covering an inordinate amount of parchment with notes, ideas, and calculations. He didn’t even pretend to be following Professor Binns’ droning lecture, and he openly consulted his copy of 1000 Magical Herbs and Fungi with great regularity. By lunchtime, he had composed a rough alternative to the standard Invigoration Draught recipe, carefully edited to account for a new ingredient: a generous pinch of scale scrapings from a dragon.

The concept was so simple. Hogwarts students learned about igneus potions in second year, and Florean was rather annoyed with himself for not seeing it sooner. Igneus potions have no freezing point. Ice cream needs to freeze, obviously, but ice cream can have all sorts of things added to it. What if Florean made a tub of ice cream with a swirl of gooey caramel sauce woven throughout? Or chocolate sauce, or raspberry… or anything at all! And if the sauce contained a potion he’d adapted to include some dragon-based ingredient, it would always maintain its liquid state and continue to work its magic.

As soon as the day’s classes were over, he headed straight to the student store cupboard. He needed to test his new Invigoration Draught recipe; dragon scale scrapings altered the balance of the potion, and he suspected that his attempt to mitigate this had resulted in a much weaker concoction – he’d greatly reduced the powdered calacta seeds, for example, as the full amount was now unlikely to dissolve properly. He planned to substitute some undiluted chlorophyll from calacta leaves, but this wouldn’t be nearly as potent as the seeds. In addition, it would create the annoying side effect of watery eyes for anybody who consumed it. Although, Florean realised, cocoa powder might absorb enough liquid to effectively counterbalance this. And if he used an indigo or violet flame, it was likely to enhance the effect of the calacta. Florean grinned. He’d always welcomed an excuse to make chocolate sauce.

It wasn’t what he’d had in mind when he began this project, and he had no intention of giving up his research just yet.

But it was a start.