Collaboration to create full “Advanced Potion-Making”

To work the Introduction in while keeping a textbook layout and closely match the page numbers listed in the original prop, the Introduction may need to be trimmed down to one page.

This is what I have so far from provided pages without just pasting from other people's completed work, since I don't want to use other people's intellectual property without their express permission.

Welcome back!!

Thanks for that spreadsheet breakdown!

So here's what I'm thinking. Based off of my research, you don't usually count the title page, publisher/copyright page, contents and such as the actual page numbers. Usually the contents are roman numerals. The Introductions aren't technically counted either, but since it's labeled as page 4 then so be it.

Generally, "Each section of your book should start on a right-hand page. The title page is always a right-hand page, the table of contents begins on a right-hand page, chapter 1 begins on a right-hand page, and so on. " It seems the props team took liberties with how book pages should be laid out.

I tried to make each Chapter start on an odd page or the right hand page with a blank page on the left hand side, just to make it look "cleaner".

I'm attaching my first 15 pages to show the kind of flow I'm working with. Starting on page 4 with the introduction (which probably start on an odd page/right hand side), I actually start Chapter 1 on page 7 instead of 6. Now the question is how much of a stickler do we want to be? I can make the chapter start on page 6/left hand side or we can do what is "generally accepted" and leave it on page 7.

Also, this mystery section is making me crazy! Here I'm using Photoshop to try and get a clearer image of the text and I swear that last letter looks like an X.

1030638

I added the letter underneath for comparison. So if the word is not "Jinx", what other suggestions are there?

Also also, let's get some creative writers out there to help write these sections out! :) The Dangerous Potions section in my PDF is open for some love. We can also add more images to reduce the amount we need to write. I mean, we will need 347 images, so let's not be shy with the pictures!
 

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  • APM_Intro_v1b.pdf
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Hey DarkWaters, I absolutely love the work you’ve done so far as well as the research. Since we have to change some things anyways, I’m personally ok with changing some pages to ensure that all the chapters start on the right-hand side, although I don’t think the page to the left of it always has to be blank. I do think that the page showing the start of each chapter should be in a page of it's own though, so the page with only the text stating "Chapter One" would take up all of page 7 and "Dangerous Potions" would start on page 8. This will also help reduce how much content will need to be created, though only by a few pages.

Now, while I know there’s no way for this to be a “Hero” prop and still come out looking like a real textbook, I’d still like to match as many details to the actual prop that we can. So, here are some details we should work around:

The first parts of the book, according to screenshots of the film and images presented of the prop, are the cover, then the floral & symbol endpaper (also used at the back of the book):

1031315

Right after that is a (likely) blank page and a title page. This is the title page which shows the “…property of the Half Blood Prince” text:

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Beyond that, there’s the page that includes the copyright & publisher information and has the book title in a different style than the earlier page:

1031318


Somewhere after is the table of contents section. The page to the left of it WAS blank before young Snape got to it:

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The information about what’s in the book after this is sparse, but here’s what I know:

  • The “Draught of Living Death” potion recipe starts both on the left-hand side of the book and on page 10, which means that the left pages will be even numbers and the right-hand pages will be odd.
  • The 2nd ed. has “Different Methods of Potion Preparation” and “The Right Use of the Ingredients” on pages# 16-17.
  • The 2nd ed. has “Preparation of the Polyjuice Potion” start on page# 14.
  • The book contains the following recipes & information:
    • Elixir to Induce Euphoria (Thinking it should go somewhere in the "Potions for Fun" section)
    • Hiccoughing Solution (Not really sure where to put it)
    • Everlasting Elixirs (Maybe as part of "The Perfect Potion" section?)
    • Poison Antidote (including Golpalott’s Third Law) (Obviously in "Antidotes" in chap 8).
 
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Also, this mystery section is making me crazy! Here I'm using Photoshop to try and get a clearer image of the text and I swear that last letter looks like an X.

View attachment 1030638

I added the letter underneath for comparison. So if the word is not "Jinx", what other suggestions are there?

I have read and re-read the few four-letter words ending in "X" that I can find and after taking into consideration that it has something to do with potions, as well as the size and shaping of the other letters, the best options I can figure are:
  • Jinx (but unfortunately doesn't seem to be the plural "Jinxes", which would have made MUCH more sense in this context)
  • Grex (see THIS link and you'll see why I think it might fit)
  • Flax
Tell me what you think, but "Grex" looks like the closest match based on the cleaning up you did in Photoshop.
 
Hey DarkWaters, I absolutely love the work you’ve done so far as well as the research. Since we have to change some things anyways, I’m personally ok with changing some pages to ensure that all the chapters start on the right-hand side, although I don’t think the page to the left of it always has to be blank.

Now, while I know there’s no way for this to be a “Hero” prop and still come out looking like a real textbook, I’d still like to match as many details to the actual prop that we can. So, here are some details we should work around:

The first parts of the book, according to screenshots of the film and images presented of the prop, are the cover, then the floral & symbol endpaper (also used at the back of the book):

View attachment 1031315

Right after that is a (likely) blank page and a title page. This is the title page which shows the “…property of the Half Blood Prince” text:

View attachment 1031316
View attachment 1031317

Beyond that, there’s the page that includes the copyright & publisher information and has the book title in a different style than the earlier page:

View attachment 1031318


Somewhere after is the table of contents section. The page to the left of it WAS blank before young Snape got to it:

View attachment 1031319

The information about what’s in the book after this is sparse, but here’s what I know:

  • The “Draught of Living Death” potion recipe starts on the left-hand side of the book and on page 10, which does mean that the left pages will be even numbers and the right-hand pages will be odd.
  • The 2nd ed. has “Different Methods of Potion Preparation” and “The Right Use of the Ingredients” on pages# 16-17.
  • The 2nd ed. has “Preparation of the Polyjuice Potion” start on page# 14.
  • The book contains the following recipes & information:
  • Elixir to Induce Euphoria
  • Hiccoughing Solution
  • Everlasting Elixirs
  • Poison Antidote (including Golpalott’s Third Law)
None of the potions you listed after the Polyjuice Potion are in the original book.
 
None of the potions you listed after the Polyjuice Potion are in the original book.

While they aren't shown in the original prop book anywhere, they are referenced in the HP novel.
A little more information about what the APM book contains about the potions and subject on Antidotes are listed on those linked pages, which quotes the HP book.
 
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Hey A438980....We need to get you a more user friendly name :p

Thanks for your references and continual eye for detail! I updated my pdf to include the "half-title page".

(Fun fact! "The half-title or ******* title is a page carrying nothing but the title of a book—as opposed to the title page, which also lists subtitle, author, publisher and edition. The half-title is usually counted as the very firstpage (p. i) in a printed book.")

I also got rid of the blank pages before the Introduction, so if you count the first page of the contents with an imaginary page 1, then the Intro ends up on page 4 as it should. I also agree with you on having the Chapter be it's own page, so I went ahead and updated that too. I exported the inDesign pages as spreads to hopefully give a better sense of page flow.

  • The 2nd ed. has “Different Methods of Potion Preparation” and “The Right Use of the Ingredients” on pages# 16-17.
  • The 2nd ed. has “Preparation of the Polyjuice Potion” start on page# 14.
  • The book contains the following recipes & information:
    • Elixir to Induce Euphoria (Thinking it should go somewhere in the "Potions for Fun" section)
    • Hiccoughing Solution (Not really sure where to put it)
    • Everlasting Elixirs (Maybe as part of "The Perfect Potion" section?)
    • Poison Antidote (including Golpalott’s Third Law) (Obviously in "Antidotes" in chap 8).

So this is where we need to make a decision. Now we need to keep in mind that the Book prop is really only a handful of pages that repeat through the entire book. We might see pages out of order of what their page number actually says. With that in mind, I feel like the Contents is the road map we should probably follow and maybe only mimic what the movie shows us if it syncs up with the Contents page. So page 16 is supposed to have "The Use of Shrinking Potion". “The Right Use of the Ingredients” is listed as being on page 12 and “Different Methods of Potion Preparation” isn't technically in the first chapter unless we want that one to be "Different Methods of Preparation" page 21, which might be the same anyways. Just not consistent naming.

Also, adding in the other recipes you've listed may cause quite a shift in pages as recipes tend to be a two page spread and the sections you're thinking of putting them in are supposed to be about two pages. I know they're supposed to be in the APM book according to the Books, but maybe we should try to stick to purely the Movie "universe" for this. However, I do like the idea of putting Golpalott’s Third Law in "Antidotes", I feel that will work out great.
 

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  • APM_WorkingFile_v2.pdf
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I have read and re-read the few four-letter words ending in "X" that I can find and after taking into consideration that it has something to do with potions, as well as the size and shaping of the other letters, the best options I can figure are:
  • Jinx (but unfortunately doesn't seem to be the plural "Jinxes", which would have made MUCH more sense in this context)
  • Grex (see THIS link and you'll see why I think it might fit)
  • Flax
Tell me what you think, but "Grex" looks like the closest match based on the cleaning up you did in Photoshop.


I appreciate the work you're putting into figuring this out with me!

Because I can't leave well enough alone, I kept poking at that image. When I first read your post and saw Grex, I thought maybe that was it, but further investigation leads me to believe it's not the case. :(

10317661031767

More Photoshop shenanigans...I swear that looks like the word sinx and maybe practice, but sinx doesn't seem to have any relevance to anything other then math equations. At first I thought that middle word was 'used' or maybe 'said'...I feel like there is a 'd' at the end of that word.

I dunno, maybe we should just make something up and move on with our lives! lol
 
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Hi DarkWaters,
I really do not know how you manage to investigate and make those tweaks, but I like it. Yo también veía la palabra "Grex" o "Crex", but it does not convince me at all.
 
I appreciate the work you're putting into figuring this out with me!

Because I can't leave well enough alone, I kept poking at that image. When I first read your post and saw Grex, I thought maybe that was it, but further investigation leads me to believe it's not the case. :(

View attachment 1031766View attachment 1031767

More Photoshop shenanigans...I swear that looks like the word sinx and maybe practice, but sinx doesn't seem to have any relevance to anything other then math equations. At first I thought that middle word was 'used' or maybe 'said'...I feel like there is a 'd' at the end of that word.

I dunno, maybe we should just make something up and move on with our lives! lol

Ooook. Like you, this line has given me a lot of frustration but I think I MIGHT have it this time. If not, then I think one of these is at least close enough that I'm ready to just go with it and move on. First, have to say "THANK YOU SO MUCH" to the additional Photoshop effort you put into trying to figure this out. This is the clearest I've seen this and I THINK has even helped me figure out the handwritten line for this mystery section is "Aequitas Tea".

Anyways, after looking into latin and old-english options that the chapter could contain, I think that word is possibly either "Siex" or "Senex" (although "Siex" looks closer to the correct length). The meaning of the words and I believe the most likely usage in this context are as follows:

Siex: "Old English form of the numeral "Six"." The reason this makes sense in this context is because this is in Chapter Six of the book.
"Siex and Practice" could then be a short overview of the chapter or "Siex and Potions" could just be a short listing of potions or at least what kinds of potions would utilize the information from chapter six.

Senex: "Latin word meaning "Aged", though usually referring to a person." This word would make more sense if being used to describe old potions that have been left around.
"Senex used Potions" could then be a short statement on how to use, dispose of, or simply state the dangers of old and partially used potions that the reader may have around or have found.

Unless someone has personally seen or has pictures of the actual page to confirm what this line actually is, I'm good with whatever y'all decide.
 
Magician, I could greatly use your help to translate something into what I'm guessing, due to your earlier posts, is your native tongue. Libatius Borage was a South American wizard who went to a wizarding school in Brazil, although there's no confirmation as to where exactly in South America he was raised, so I think it's safe to assume he either spoke spanish or a similar language. I have an "Acknowledgements" page for the book, but I think it would be better if it were in spanish.
Could you translate this to how you would say it as if you were writing to your own parents?

"To my mother and father, who even at birth could see the potential in me and named me after a drink to the gods. I will never forget your teaching and will strive to make my potions worthy of the gods."
 
I have family coming to visit this week, so I won't be able to work on this project much until next week. In the meantime I have reworked the pages layout to include what has been donated so far and have a couple of PDF documents for the book, since Word docs can't be shared in forum posts.

The first PDF contains the pages of the book which appear before the pages are numbered (i.e. the pages listed by roman numerals). I haven't done much with this except to mostly copy-and-paste what has been presented.

The second PDF contains the numbered pages which start at "0". I have entered the text I have so far and pasted either the illustrations/diagrams for the pages or at least cropped images of the illustrations/diagrams.

The last attachment is the updated Pages Breakdown (created with Excel) that shows page locations for the content.
 

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  • APM Collaboration - Numbered Pages.pdf
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  • Pages Breakdown.jpg
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"To my mother and father, who even at birth could see the potential in me and named me after a drink to the gods. I will never forget your teaching and will strive to make my potions worthy of the gods."
"Para mi madre y mi padre, quienes incluso al nacer vieron el potencial que albergaba "after a drink to the gods". Nunca olvidaré vuestras enseñanzas y esfuerzos para hacer mis pociones dignas de los dioses."
What do u mean with "after a drink to the gods" its this sentence literal?
 
Here a page i have made.
TITLE.jpg
I ve seen the index pages that hat been created are made with hyphen, and i think that the spaces between the title and the page number are two dots.
Captura de pantalla 2019-06-25 a las 23.48.01.png
 
What do u mean with "after a drink to the gods" its this sentence literal?

The author’s first name, Libatius, comes from the word “libation” which is a drink offering to the gods. Apparently in various religions they would pour out wine or other drinks as an offering to a deity or spirit.

Basically, Libatius is thanking his parents for naming him after a type of drink that is of so perfect that it’s worth giving to a god, and then promises to live up to his that name they gave him.
 
Ooook. Like you, this line has given me a lot of frustration but I think I MIGHT have it this time. If not, then I think one of these is at least close enough that I'm ready to just go with it and move on. First, have to say "THANK YOU SO MUCH" to the additional Photoshop effort you put into trying to figure this out. This is the clearest I've seen this and I THINK has even helped me figure out the handwritten line for this mystery section is "Aequitas Tea".

Anyways, after looking into latin and old-english options that the chapter could contain, I think that word is possibly either "Siex" or "Senex" (although "Siex" looks closer to the correct length). The meaning of the words and I believe the most likely usage in this context are as follows:

Siex: "Old English form of the numeral "Six"." The reason this makes sense in this context is because this is in Chapter Six of the book.
"Siex and Practice" could then be a short overview of the chapter or "Siex and Potions" could just be a short listing of potions or at least what kinds of potions would utilize the information from chapter six.

Senex: "Latin word meaning "Aged", though usually referring to a person." This word would make more sense if being used to describe old potions that have been left around.
"Senex used Potions" could then be a short statement on how to use, dispose of, or simply state the dangers of old and partially used potions that the reader may have around or have found.

Unless someone has personally seen or has pictures of the actual page to confirm what this line actually is, I'm good with whatever y'all decide.

Yeah, this was a tough one. I like the direction you're heading in and so I'm thinking maybe somewhere along the lines of "Six usual (or maybe unusual) Potions"

Also nice catch on the hand written text, I wasn't even looking at that! :) Doesn't seem Aequitas has any real connection to Teas or wizardry....I'm wondering if the letter after the A is a g, based on the slant and angle of the loop. Maybe "Aguamenti"?

Anyways, nice researching!!
 
Yeah, this was a tough one. I like the direction you're heading in and so I'm thinking maybe somewhere along the lines of "Six usual (or maybe unusual) Potions"

"Six usual Potions" sounds good to me! About half the chapter is focused on ingredients that are found in North and South America (Brazilian green frogs, Sneezewort, Isanthus Brachiatus are ingredients and "Caxambu" is Brazilian municipality) so maybe "Six usual Potions" can name and explain six common potions that are used in North & South America or that use ingredients found in North & South America.

Also nice catch on the hand written text, I wasn't even looking at that! :) Doesn't seem Aequitas has any real connection to Teas or wizardry....I'm wondering if the letter after the A is a g, based on the slant and angle of the loop. Maybe "Aguamenti"?

I thought since we had such a difficult time figuring out what the section was supposed to be that figuring out what young Snape wrote next to it would give us some clue. Since "Aequitas" translates to "justice", I figured that if the section was about what to do with old potions ("Senex used Potions") that maybe he thought that making someone he disliked (*cough* James or Sirius *cough*) drink it by making them think it was a tea would be some kind of justice for being picked on so much. Hence "Justice Tea".
Truthfully that came to me while I was tired and getting strung out from so much research, so I can see that it was a bit of a stretch.
 
I thought since we had such a difficult time figuring out what the section was supposed to be that figuring out what young Snape wrote next to it would give us some clue. Since "Aequitas" translates to "justice", I figured that if the section was about what to do with old potions ("Senex used Potions") that maybe he thought that making someone he disliked (*cough* James or Sirius *cough*) drink it by making them think it was a tea would be some kind of justice for being picked on so much. Hence "Justice Tea".
Truthfully that came to me while I was tired and getting strung out from so much research, so I can see that it was a bit of a stretch.


It makes sense when you break it down like that! :)

"Six usual Potions" sounds good to me! About half the chapter is focused on ingredients that are found in North and South America (Brazilian green frogs, Sneezewort, Isanthus Brachiatus are ingredients and "Caxambu" is Brazilian municipality) so maybe "Six usual Potions" can name and explain six common potions that are used in North & South America or that use ingredients found in North & South America.

That all works for me! I'll update the new section later tonight.

I'm also in the process of recreating the endpages, it's nearly done, just some clean up and then I'll post it to get thoughts.
 
I think we can use this picture for Libatius Borage, but(if I'm not wrong) he is Charles Darwin image
 

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This is all I have about the Wolfbane Potion section
 

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