Draught of Living Death

Effect: Causes someone to fall into a deep sleep.

Ingredients

ingredients: asphodel in an infusion of wormwood (PS8); valerian roots, sopophorous bean (HBP9)

Preparation

First potion brewed in Slughorn's sixth-year N.E.W.T. Potions class. Instructions for brewing this potion can be found in Advanced Potion-Making starting on page 10, but the textbook's uncorrected instructions do not cover the most effective way of squeezing the juice out of the sopophorous beans (crushing with the flat side of a silver dagger rather than cutting) and do not indicate that a clockwise stir should be added after every seventh counter-clockwise stir. While brewing, the potion releases blue steam. The ideal halfway stage should be of a blackcurrant colour (deep purple), although at a later stage if stirred properly the potion will turn a light shade of lilac and then, eventually, "clear as water" (HBP9).

References from the canon

• One of Snape's first three questions to Harry in first-year Potions (PS8)
• In Sixth year, Harry makes the potion correctly using Snape's notations in the Half-Blood Prince Potions book, for which he wins Felix Felicis, or "liquid luck," from Slughorn, who then tells Harry he has his mother's potions skills (HBP9).
• The antidote is the Wiggenweld Potion, discovered by a wizarding Prince who put it on his lips to awaken a princess put to sleep by the Hag Leticia Somnolens (FW).