|| POLYJUICE POTION: DID YOU KNOW? ||

[slytherincesss.livejournal.com]

Polyjuice Potion: J.K. Rowling's gift to kink! Have you written a Polyjuice fic? Tell us about it in the comments.

All humor aside, J.K. Rowling actually put a great deal of thought and research into the ingredients of Polyjuice potion, and each ingredient has its own unique purpose within the potion.

Polyjuice is brewed using the following ingredients: lacewing flies (stewed for 21 days); leeches; powdered Bicorn horn; knotgrass; fluxweed (picked at the full moon); shredded Boomslang skin; and a wee bit of whoever the taker wishes to turn into.

Here's what J.K. Rowling says about Polyjuice: "I remember creating the full list of ingredients for the Polyjuice Potion. Each one was carefully selected. Lacewing flies (the first part of the name suggested an intertwining of binding together of two identities); leeches (to suck the essence out of one and into the other); horn of a Bicorn (the idea of duality); knotgrass (another hint of being tied to another person); fluxweed (the mutability of the body as it changed into another); and [shredded] Boomslang skin (a shedded outer body and a new inner).

The effects of Polyjuice Potion are temporary. Canon suggests that the effects of Polyjuice last only one hour; however, depending on the quality of the brew, one can actually remain Polyjuiced anywhere from ten minutes to twelve hours. Polyjuice is an immensely difficult potion to make. That Hermione managed to brew Polyjuice Potion at the age of twelve confirms her utter brilliance as a witch. A person can change race and sex via Polyjuice, but cannot change species. Polyjuice Potion is only meant for human-to-human transformations.

And there you have it -- all things Polyjuice! Did you know?

Sources: Harry Potter Lexicon and Pottermore

Comments

[mab.livejournal.com]

All right.... I am currently writing a fic but not saying for what (as it is fest related) where one character uses the hair of another character to have one last chance to "say goodbye" after the character dies..

Now the thing about polyjuice is that it is magic.. For example when Barty Crouch Jr. uses it in book 4, he transforms into Mad Eye moody including lost limbs and scars, etc, and keeps Moody in his trunk to harvest hair... Moody is described as thinner and ill when he comes out of the trunk, but the polyjuice didn't seem to reflect that in Crouch...

So I figure that for the sake of my fic.. the hair wouldn't turn the person taking the potion into the dead body unless the hair was taken from a dead body.. If the hair was taken from a hairbrush used while the person was still alive, it should transform the person taking the potion into that person's appearance at the time of harvesting.

This leads me to wonder... could you actually like polyjuice yourself or others into a younger version of self or others if you had some hair from the younger days?

What do you think?

[celestlyn.livejournal.com]

I would think that one would polyjuice into what the hair was at the time it was harvested. If it were specifically designed to only mimic genetic coding, it would be a replica of the person, like a clone, but I have no idea how that would be reflected in age. I suppose chronological age is somehow keyed into genetics, but I know nothing of gene-mapping, so I don't really know. Since polyjuice is magic, I would guess it would simply reflect the age of the subject at the time of harvest. A hair from one's babyhood might produce a baby. It would be funny to have some sort of accident and have an age alteration of some sort. I did read a fic once where Harry found a dark artifact that could change a person back to half their age, but only for an hour or so. Of course he tried it.

[vaysh]

This leads me to wonder... could you actually like polyjuice yourself or others into a younger version of self or others if you had some hair from the younger days?
My feeling would be, no. Rowling states that race and sex can be changed by polyjuice, she does not mention age. I have a feeling the body part of the one the taker wishes to change into needs to be harvested "fresh". Otherwise it would make no sense why Crouch Jr. keeps Moody in the trunk. He could just cut of a bushel of hair and be done with him, no?

[celestlyn.livejournal.com]

I have not written about polyjuice in a fic, but I've read a few that had various characters disguising themselves with it. It's always fun.

I did have fun once creating my own potion. It was to reverse the effects of a school-girl crush that had turned into obsession. It was meant to reverse the emotions of love; to make one grow to despise the person in question. I used a rose of course to create love, but also used the thorns. One of the ingredients was bile of a Heberden's (butchered the spelling there) dragon to create near hatred. It's fun researching things to represent the elements one wants to include.