Truths about Veritaserum?
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deathtocapslockWhat do we really know about the Truth Potion, what can we infer, and what have we just assumed, possibly incorrectly?
*
Severus introduced Harry, and us, to it as follows:
“It is Veritaserum—a Truth Potion so powerful that three drops would have you spilling your innermost secrets for this entire class to hear,” said Snape viciously. “Now the use of this potion is controlled by very strict Ministry guidelines. But unless you watch your step you might just find that my hand slips”—he shook the crystal bottle slightly—“right over your evening pumpkin juice. And then, Potter… then we’ll find out whether you’ve been in my office of not.” (GoF 27)
Later, of course, Dumbledore instructed Severus to fetch “the strongest Truth Potion you possess” to interrogate the Moody impersonator. Snape returned with that same small glass bottle, and its contents were used in interrogating Barty Junior. So we see it in action in GoF 35.
In the next book, Dolores attempted to use Veritaserum on Harry, but as he didn’t drink her tea, we don’t know what effect it would have had on him. (OotP 28)
We do learn some more (possibly) in OotP 32, when Dolores summoned Snape to demand more Veritaserum after catching Harry in her office.
“You took my last bottle to interrogate Potter, “ he said, observing her coolly through his greasy curtain of black hair. “Surely you did not use it all? I told you that three drops would be sufficient.”
Umbridge flushed.
“You can make some more, can’t you?” she said, her voice becoming more sweetly girlish as it always did when she was furious.
“Certainly,” said Snape, his lip curling. “It takes a full moon cycle to mature, so I should have it ready for you in around a month.”
“A month!” squawked Umbridge, swelling toadishly…. “I wish you to provide me with a potion that will force him to tell me the truth!”
“I have already told you,” said Snape smoothly, “that I have no further stocks of Veritaserum. Unless you wish to poison Potter—and I assure you I would have the greatest sympathy for you if you did—I cannot help you. The only trouble is that most venoms act too fast to give the victim much time for truth-telling….”
In HBP 9, Horace presents three potions as examples of “the sort of thing you ought to be able to make after completing your N.E.W.T.s.”
“It’s Veritaserum, a colorless, odorless potion that forces the drinker to tell the truth,” said Hermione.
(But its recipe must not have been in Borage’s book, or Harry would have sought the Prince’s help in brewing it to use on Draco. Of course, neither is the formula for Polyjuice, and one hopes that neither is Amortencia’s. And if Felix had been, Hermione would have tried brewing it on general principles, don’t you think?)
Finally, in Skeeter’s book on Dumbledore, she claims—in print—to have administered Veritaserum to “Batty” Bagshot for her information on Albus and Gellert’s relationship. Which surely was not in accordance with those strict Ministry guidelines for its use, now was it?
*
Let’s turn for a moment to real-life truth sera. Which, disappointingly, aren’t. At all, actually. Sodium pentothal and the other drugs used as interrogation aids are apparently barbiturates which work to disorient and disinhibit the victim. They make it more difficult for the victim to command the presence of mind to remember a complicated lie, or even to remember the necessity of trying to hide the truth. Rather like alcohol--in vino veritas. But like alcohol, the real drugs cannot force someone to speak, do not guarantee that what’s said is true, do not even guarantee that speaker is telling what seems true to them (“The voices told me to” might be said in absolute sincerity without being objectively true. Or, it might still be said by a drugged person as a joke or an evasion.)
Veritaserum is said to be different. And certainly, in the one interrorgation we saw, Barty ignored Winky’s attempts to keep him from talking and responded only to the voice and questions of the person who’d administered the potion and spoken first when he awoke. Someone merely drunk or high would likely have pulled himself together at Winky’s repeated entreaties not to spill the beans. Not only did Barty not do so, Dumbledore had no remotest concern that he might do so, or he wouldn’t have brought Winky to be present for the interrogation. (Contrast this with Bujold’s equally fictional fast-penta—which compels the victim to babble about whatever comes into hir head—but the train of thought is easily derailed by any stimuli other than the interlocutors’ carefully-phrased questions.)
*
Let’s back up to consider Severus’s original presentation and explanation of the potion to Harry.
Why did he do so?
Harry, of course, took seriously the threat that Snape might use the potion on him to discover his secrets and/or extort a confession that could get him expelled. We know now that Snape would only have used Veritaserum on the boy on the headmaster’s orders. But really, the two Legilimens hardly needed Veritaserum to extract information from Harry. And once we realize that Snape never had any real desire to get the boy expelled, either, extorting a public confession could not be his agenda.
So maybe he’s trying to frighten Harry out of future misbehavior: Snape does say, right before pulling out that crystal bottle, “One more nighttime stroll into my office, Potter, and you will pay!”
Except… the timing is all wrong for that. In all ways.
Inside the conversation, the timing is wrong because we’d already had:
“Don’t lie to me,” Snape hissed, his fathomless black eyes boring into Harry’s. “Boomslang skin. Gillyweed. Both come from my private stores, and I know who stole them.”
Harry stared back at Snape, determined not to blink or to look guilty. In truth, he hadn’t stolen either of those things from Snape. Hermione had taken the boomslang skin back in their second year…. Dobby, of course, had stolen the gillyweed.
We get confirmation a book later that Severus is indeed a Legilimens as well as an Occlumens. Is he such an incompetent one that he really didn’t pick up on the fact that Veritaserum would simply have confirmed that Harry really hadn’t ever broken into his office? (Though Harry was trying to cover up for those who did.)
Moreover, if Severus DID believe (and continued to believe, even after “boring” into Harry’s eyes) that Harry had somehow twice (this year) broken into his office to steal, and if that was why he was threatening the boy, why did he wait so long after the offenses to threaten Harry?
This potions class was in early March. Snape had run past his burglarized office to rescue a student shrieking in agony, only to discover the noise was just Potter’s egg, in January. The second task, when Potter used stolen gillyweed to come in second, had been on 2/24. Anyone who knows anything about discipline knows that it’s most effective if consequences follow swiftly on an offence.
Why should Severus wait over a week, much less six weeks, to threaten Harry with forced exposure, if what he was reacting to was the thefts? Why did he show up in Potions class THAT day with a bottle of Veritaserum in his robes, and never before? (Do you really think the double agent with his slowly re-awakening Dark Mark kept none on hand and had to brew it fresh?)
Well, what had happened quite recently? In fact, that very morning?
Witch Weekly came out with Skeeter’s article about Hermione. And in class, Hermione confirmed to the boys that some of the information in it was accurate, but secret, and that she didn’t understand how Skeeter could have learned it. To be interrupted by “Fascinating though your social life undoubtedly is, Miss Granger, I must ask you not to discuss it in my class.”
Well, a Potions Master could certainly think of one means that an unscrupulous person might use to gain access to private information, couldn’t he?
In fact, Skeeter subsequently admitted to using that means, did she not?
Moreover, remember her inscription in Bathilda’s copy of Life and Lies? “You said everything, even if you don’t remember it?” What if that was a taunt, not about Bathilda’s supposed senility, but about the usual effect of the potion: not remembering what one said under its influence?
Like, oh, the people under Imperius “sorta coming out of trances” when the curse was lifted?
Which takes me, finally, to the reflection that started these thoughts on Veritaserum. I had speculated that Obliviate might actually be a special case of the Imperius, and I started wondering what else might be. And a certain potion came at once to mind.
*
We saw that Tom Riddle had perfected a special case of the Imperius by the time of his interview with the Hogwarts representative (HBP 13): “Tell the truth!”
He spoke the last three words with a ringing force that was almost shocking. It was a command, and it sounded as though he had given it many times before. His eyes had widened and he was glaring at Dumbledore, who made no response except to continue smiling pleasantly. After a few seconds Riddle stopped glaring, thought he looked, if anything, warier still.
”Who are you?”
Veritaserum seems simply to be a liquid form of the Verum dicere, as I called Riddle’s truth-telling variant of the Imperius. It “forces” the drinker to tell the truth. Both Hermione and Dolores use that term.
Moreover, we know from Dumbledore’s command to Snape that the WW has more than one Truth Potion (bring me your strongest, not bring me your Truth Potion). But only one of them, according to what Snape said to Umbridge, can “force” someone to tell the truth. I suspect the others are much like our truth sera, drugs that work, like alcohol (their probable model), by confusing the drinker, lowering the inhibitions, and impairing the judgment, the will, and the ability to construct plausible evasions or consistent lies when put under pressure by an interrogator. But someone stubborn enough to keep hir mouth shut could still beat them.
Further, such drugs, like alcohol, have an effect that’s greater the more one consumes. If a little is effective, a lot will be more so. Dumped the whole bottle in, did you, Dolores?
But with Veritaserum, three drops will suffice.
Or possibly not. But if not, it’s not a potion where a larger dose is a stronger dose Or Dumbledore wouldn’t have stopped with three with Barty.
If so, if Veritaserum is related magically to the Imperius, then someone who could fight off the Imperius, in theory might be able to fight the effects of Veritaserusm.
If he became aware that he was experiencing such effects.
But he’d have first to be aware that such a potion existed, now wouldn’t he?
If Snape suspected Skeeter of being unscrupulous enough to use Veritaserum on her “sources,” he HAD to put the boy on his guard. He knew that Skeeter had managed at least once to get the boy pulled aside for an unsupervised interview.
*
However, once we consider that Veritaserum might be a potions form of a specialized Imperius Curse, there are other questions that might be raised about it.
Like, who invented it?
And, when?
Just because Jo is resolutely ahistorical in her thinking, we readers need not be.
A LOT of our problems with how the Ministry handled the Imperius problem in 1981 go away if Veritaserum hadn’t been invented yet.
Or was not available to the Ministry yet, at least.
If Veritaserum IS the potions form of the Verum Dicere that Tom had invented pre-Hogwarts, the potion might well have been invented by Tom himself.
In which case, he certainly would have distributed doses to his followers to use as needed, but would he have distributed the formula?
Well, maybe. Maybe, for example, he enticed a young Potions geek to join him in part by promising to share his own innovations in the field.
Except I really don’t think that “shares nicely” ever got ticked on Tommy’s infant school reports. When it came to it, would Tom really have shared? Promised to, maybe. But delivered?
(I mean, Bellatrix boasts of having been taught personally by Tom, but all she claims to have learned from him is the Cruciatus. If Tom had shared any of his personal research with her, she doesn’t ever say so. And one would think she would. On Snapedom, when we discussed whether Tom had invented the flying spell and taught Severus, or vice versa, this was one of the biggest arguments of the Severus-showed-Tom camp. It’s obvious why Sev should have curried favor with his “master” by sharing such an awe-inspiring spell, but why would Tom—whom we never see offering real rewards to any of his slaves—share such a power with Severus?)
Even if Tom was using Severus as a brewer, well, he could keep Severus busy with published potions, and reserve the ones he wanted kept secret to himself. Or use Severus for the scut work of ingredient preparation, or even some of the more tedious steps, promising the boy he’d eventually be rewarded with the whole process/recipe. On a potion that takes a month to make, Tom could theoretically use Severus for a lot of the work as long as he was excluded from the most critical steps.
(Okay, that lunar cycle deal might have been a lie for Dolores’s benefit, but I doubt it. If it was a lie Severus could possibly be caught in, he’d be seen flagrantly thwarting Dolores to protect Harry. And as the boy never bothered to learn Occlumency, the Dark Lord could at any time drop in on the conversation. So everything he said to Dolores, had to be credible to the Dark Lord.)
If Tom invented Veritaserum and DID share the recipe universally with his Death Eaters, we would expect eventually someone with that knowledge would be captured and made to disgorge it.
If Tom invented Veritaserum and shared the recipe only with a few of his best brewers, including Severus, Severus naturally gave it to Albus when he turned. Albus, of course, had an excellent excuse to use it himself but not in turn to share it with the Ministry—to protect his spy’s cover.
Only, that reason would have continued to keep Albus from ever giving the recipe in turn to the Ministry/ the general public. Not when Albus really does think, and has Severus thinking, that Tom will eventually return. If he does, and finds Snape has turned over one of Tom’s favorite inventions to his enemies….
So the fact that Veritaserum is known and Ministry-controlled in 1995 indicates to me that IF Tom invented it, he didn’t share the secret of how to make it with Snape. Or if he did, it was not through Snape and Dumbledore that the Ministry learned of it. (Another brewer, claiming Imperius [truly or falsely], and making public the recipe as a sign of his good faith? Only that might have cast doubt on Snape’s reformation, that he had not done the same….)
However, if Tom invented Veritaserum and didn’t share the recipe at all, or only pieces of it… well, surely Severus would have worked to reverse-engineer the potion from what he knew? Which might have been only: it looks and smells like water, and it works.
How long would that have taken him? (In amongst his other duties, and all while nearly-paralyzed with his long grief and guilt….)
And once he did manage to reverse-engineer it, it had to look as though Albus had been the one to do so. Albus the brilliant could have done so merely off the vague rumor that the DE’s had had such a thing, right….
Conversely, what if Tom didn’t invent the potion, but his Verum dicere gave someone else the idea for a liquid form? How long would that take to invent?
Or, of course, the damn thing might have been invented by someone we’ve never heard of. Fleur’s second cousin Lysistrata Larpenteur, or the Durmstrang assistant potions mistress. Li Kao. Mary Sue Rostanski.
It would be very neat if Tom had invented it and Severus had recreated his formula, or if Severus had created it as the potions version of young Tom’s Imperius variant. I like either of those interpretations, but they are really sort of lagniappe.
The biggest point is, if the invention were fairly recent….
If Veritaserum didn’t exist yet in 1981 or wasn’t available to the Ministry, a lot of our (my) best ingenuity in explaining how Lucius, Rodolphus, et al. fooled it, has been wasted.
The supposed Death Eaters might have been subjected to a much cruder investigation than we’d always supposed.
Moreover, if Veritaserum had only quite recently been patented and cleared by the Ministry (for strictly controlled use) as of our introduction to it in 1995, several other discrepancies evaporate as well.
Like why, two months later, Albus (who had perhaps been in on all the testing and was intimately familiar with the properties that distinguished Veritaserum from the older, lesser truth sera) trusted it to have wrested the truth from mad little Barty, even while acknowledging that Barty was indeed mad.
While Fudge, worse informed on that score as on so many others, did not.
Real-life “truth sera” not only can’t force someone to speak or to answer questions. If you administered one to someone delusional, you’d simply get a recounting of hir delusions. Getting Xenophilius drunk or high might loosen his tongue further, but it wouldn’t improve the accuracy of his babble. Similarly, if you administered a truth serum to someone suffering from dementia, you’d expect disjointed ramblings or maybe a confabulation.
What Skeeter got from administering Veritaserum to the “nutty as squirrel poo” Bathilda was, conversely, detailed and accurate information about Albus’s friendship with Bathilda’s great-nephew, including secrets later verified by Aberforth (and some by Muriel as things Bathilda had previously spoken of): their great friendship, their identity of aims, that Gellert had been visiting the Dumbledores when Ariana died (and instantly fled the country), and that Aberforth blamed Albus so bitterly that he broke his brother’s nose at their sister’s funeral. Moreover, Bathilda remembered, and told Rita where to find, that incriminating letter.
At the same time, Bathilda stuck to the “Dumbledore family story” that Ariana had been “delicate” and that Kendra had died from a “backfiring charm.” So unlike real-life truth sera (or real-life torture), Veritaserum also hadn’t made Bathilda simply agree to all her interrogator’s suggestions.
So it seems that if a person has ever known a truth, even if s/he is now too “gaga” to consciously recall the events s/he witnessed, s/he can and will accurately recount them under Veritaserum if prompted with the right questions
Perhaps a madman will, as well, provided he was not completely lost in actual hallucinations?
Dumbledore tried to convince Fudge of Voldemort’s return by making the point that Barty confessed “Under the influence of Veritaserum” to a plan to restore Voldemort. “The plan worked, I tell you. Crouch has helped Voldemort to return.”
And Fudge responded by smiling. “Come now, come now…. certainly, Crouch may have believed himself to be acting on You-Know_Who’s orders—but to take the word of a lunatic like that, Dumbledore….”
Certainly Fudge is guilty of believing what he wants to believe. But he also believes what he does believe, and one of the things that he does believe is that truth potions can guarantee, at best, the sincerity of the speaker. Not the speaker’s accuracy. And that Dumbledore, of course, must know this. Come now!
Veritaserum is not a magic word to him.
But in 1997, it is. To everyone. That’s the only reason Skeeter can possibly have for admitting to (almost certainly illegally) dosing Bathilda with it. Why, after all, incriminate herself?
After first impugning her source’s reliability by calling her senile, her brilliance dimmed, nutty as squirrel poo? Well, because her readers already know that Bathilda was rumored to have become quite gaga, but if she was under Veritaserum when she spilled the beans about Albus’s relationship with Gellert and about Ariana’s death and funeral, her statements must be considered to be fully reliable. All true, so far as Bathilda’s knowledge went.
But this, you note, is a change.
Fudge, in 1995, didn’t believe that a Veritaserum-induced confession from a madman could be reliable. Umbridge, in 1996, didn’t believe that a mere three drops of Veritaserum could suffice to wring the truth from a confirmed troublemaker like Harry. Nor did she know even so much about its recipe as to know a fresh batch couldn’t be whipped up in a few minutes.
And yet “everyone,” in 1997, believed that Skeeter’s claim to have used Veritaserum on a “gaga” old lady irrefutably established the veracity of the shocking information thus attained.
Sounds to me like the reception of a relatively new potion whose powers are being slowly recognized.
*
Severus introduced Harry, and us, to it as follows:
“It is Veritaserum—a Truth Potion so powerful that three drops would have you spilling your innermost secrets for this entire class to hear,” said Snape viciously. “Now the use of this potion is controlled by very strict Ministry guidelines. But unless you watch your step you might just find that my hand slips”—he shook the crystal bottle slightly—“right over your evening pumpkin juice. And then, Potter… then we’ll find out whether you’ve been in my office of not.” (GoF 27)
Later, of course, Dumbledore instructed Severus to fetch “the strongest Truth Potion you possess” to interrogate the Moody impersonator. Snape returned with that same small glass bottle, and its contents were used in interrogating Barty Junior. So we see it in action in GoF 35.
In the next book, Dolores attempted to use Veritaserum on Harry, but as he didn’t drink her tea, we don’t know what effect it would have had on him. (OotP 28)
We do learn some more (possibly) in OotP 32, when Dolores summoned Snape to demand more Veritaserum after catching Harry in her office.
“You took my last bottle to interrogate Potter, “ he said, observing her coolly through his greasy curtain of black hair. “Surely you did not use it all? I told you that three drops would be sufficient.”
Umbridge flushed.
“You can make some more, can’t you?” she said, her voice becoming more sweetly girlish as it always did when she was furious.
“Certainly,” said Snape, his lip curling. “It takes a full moon cycle to mature, so I should have it ready for you in around a month.”
“A month!” squawked Umbridge, swelling toadishly…. “I wish you to provide me with a potion that will force him to tell me the truth!”
“I have already told you,” said Snape smoothly, “that I have no further stocks of Veritaserum. Unless you wish to poison Potter—and I assure you I would have the greatest sympathy for you if you did—I cannot help you. The only trouble is that most venoms act too fast to give the victim much time for truth-telling….”
In HBP 9, Horace presents three potions as examples of “the sort of thing you ought to be able to make after completing your N.E.W.T.s.”
“It’s Veritaserum, a colorless, odorless potion that forces the drinker to tell the truth,” said Hermione.
(But its recipe must not have been in Borage’s book, or Harry would have sought the Prince’s help in brewing it to use on Draco. Of course, neither is the formula for Polyjuice, and one hopes that neither is Amortencia’s. And if Felix had been, Hermione would have tried brewing it on general principles, don’t you think?)
Finally, in Skeeter’s book on Dumbledore, she claims—in print—to have administered Veritaserum to “Batty” Bagshot for her information on Albus and Gellert’s relationship. Which surely was not in accordance with those strict Ministry guidelines for its use, now was it?
*
Let’s turn for a moment to real-life truth sera. Which, disappointingly, aren’t. At all, actually. Sodium pentothal and the other drugs used as interrogation aids are apparently barbiturates which work to disorient and disinhibit the victim. They make it more difficult for the victim to command the presence of mind to remember a complicated lie, or even to remember the necessity of trying to hide the truth. Rather like alcohol--in vino veritas. But like alcohol, the real drugs cannot force someone to speak, do not guarantee that what’s said is true, do not even guarantee that speaker is telling what seems true to them (“The voices told me to” might be said in absolute sincerity without being objectively true. Or, it might still be said by a drugged person as a joke or an evasion.)
Veritaserum is said to be different. And certainly, in the one interrorgation we saw, Barty ignored Winky’s attempts to keep him from talking and responded only to the voice and questions of the person who’d administered the potion and spoken first when he awoke. Someone merely drunk or high would likely have pulled himself together at Winky’s repeated entreaties not to spill the beans. Not only did Barty not do so, Dumbledore had no remotest concern that he might do so, or he wouldn’t have brought Winky to be present for the interrogation. (Contrast this with Bujold’s equally fictional fast-penta—which compels the victim to babble about whatever comes into hir head—but the train of thought is easily derailed by any stimuli other than the interlocutors’ carefully-phrased questions.)
*
Let’s back up to consider Severus’s original presentation and explanation of the potion to Harry.
Why did he do so?
Harry, of course, took seriously the threat that Snape might use the potion on him to discover his secrets and/or extort a confession that could get him expelled. We know now that Snape would only have used Veritaserum on the boy on the headmaster’s orders. But really, the two Legilimens hardly needed Veritaserum to extract information from Harry. And once we realize that Snape never had any real desire to get the boy expelled, either, extorting a public confession could not be his agenda.
So maybe he’s trying to frighten Harry out of future misbehavior: Snape does say, right before pulling out that crystal bottle, “One more nighttime stroll into my office, Potter, and you will pay!”
Except… the timing is all wrong for that. In all ways.
Inside the conversation, the timing is wrong because we’d already had:
“Don’t lie to me,” Snape hissed, his fathomless black eyes boring into Harry’s. “Boomslang skin. Gillyweed. Both come from my private stores, and I know who stole them.”
Harry stared back at Snape, determined not to blink or to look guilty. In truth, he hadn’t stolen either of those things from Snape. Hermione had taken the boomslang skin back in their second year…. Dobby, of course, had stolen the gillyweed.
We get confirmation a book later that Severus is indeed a Legilimens as well as an Occlumens. Is he such an incompetent one that he really didn’t pick up on the fact that Veritaserum would simply have confirmed that Harry really hadn’t ever broken into his office? (Though Harry was trying to cover up for those who did.)
Moreover, if Severus DID believe (and continued to believe, even after “boring” into Harry’s eyes) that Harry had somehow twice (this year) broken into his office to steal, and if that was why he was threatening the boy, why did he wait so long after the offenses to threaten Harry?
This potions class was in early March. Snape had run past his burglarized office to rescue a student shrieking in agony, only to discover the noise was just Potter’s egg, in January. The second task, when Potter used stolen gillyweed to come in second, had been on 2/24. Anyone who knows anything about discipline knows that it’s most effective if consequences follow swiftly on an offence.
Why should Severus wait over a week, much less six weeks, to threaten Harry with forced exposure, if what he was reacting to was the thefts? Why did he show up in Potions class THAT day with a bottle of Veritaserum in his robes, and never before? (Do you really think the double agent with his slowly re-awakening Dark Mark kept none on hand and had to brew it fresh?)
Well, what had happened quite recently? In fact, that very morning?
Witch Weekly came out with Skeeter’s article about Hermione. And in class, Hermione confirmed to the boys that some of the information in it was accurate, but secret, and that she didn’t understand how Skeeter could have learned it. To be interrupted by “Fascinating though your social life undoubtedly is, Miss Granger, I must ask you not to discuss it in my class.”
Well, a Potions Master could certainly think of one means that an unscrupulous person might use to gain access to private information, couldn’t he?
In fact, Skeeter subsequently admitted to using that means, did she not?
Moreover, remember her inscription in Bathilda’s copy of Life and Lies? “You said everything, even if you don’t remember it?” What if that was a taunt, not about Bathilda’s supposed senility, but about the usual effect of the potion: not remembering what one said under its influence?
Like, oh, the people under Imperius “sorta coming out of trances” when the curse was lifted?
Which takes me, finally, to the reflection that started these thoughts on Veritaserum. I had speculated that Obliviate might actually be a special case of the Imperius, and I started wondering what else might be. And a certain potion came at once to mind.
*
We saw that Tom Riddle had perfected a special case of the Imperius by the time of his interview with the Hogwarts representative (HBP 13): “Tell the truth!”
He spoke the last three words with a ringing force that was almost shocking. It was a command, and it sounded as though he had given it many times before. His eyes had widened and he was glaring at Dumbledore, who made no response except to continue smiling pleasantly. After a few seconds Riddle stopped glaring, thought he looked, if anything, warier still.
”Who are you?”
Veritaserum seems simply to be a liquid form of the Verum dicere, as I called Riddle’s truth-telling variant of the Imperius. It “forces” the drinker to tell the truth. Both Hermione and Dolores use that term.
Moreover, we know from Dumbledore’s command to Snape that the WW has more than one Truth Potion (bring me your strongest, not bring me your Truth Potion). But only one of them, according to what Snape said to Umbridge, can “force” someone to tell the truth. I suspect the others are much like our truth sera, drugs that work, like alcohol (their probable model), by confusing the drinker, lowering the inhibitions, and impairing the judgment, the will, and the ability to construct plausible evasions or consistent lies when put under pressure by an interrogator. But someone stubborn enough to keep hir mouth shut could still beat them.
Further, such drugs, like alcohol, have an effect that’s greater the more one consumes. If a little is effective, a lot will be more so. Dumped the whole bottle in, did you, Dolores?
But with Veritaserum, three drops will suffice.
Or possibly not. But if not, it’s not a potion where a larger dose is a stronger dose Or Dumbledore wouldn’t have stopped with three with Barty.
If so, if Veritaserum is related magically to the Imperius, then someone who could fight off the Imperius, in theory might be able to fight the effects of Veritaserusm.
If he became aware that he was experiencing such effects.
But he’d have first to be aware that such a potion existed, now wouldn’t he?
If Snape suspected Skeeter of being unscrupulous enough to use Veritaserum on her “sources,” he HAD to put the boy on his guard. He knew that Skeeter had managed at least once to get the boy pulled aside for an unsupervised interview.
*
However, once we consider that Veritaserum might be a potions form of a specialized Imperius Curse, there are other questions that might be raised about it.
Like, who invented it?
And, when?
Just because Jo is resolutely ahistorical in her thinking, we readers need not be.
A LOT of our problems with how the Ministry handled the Imperius problem in 1981 go away if Veritaserum hadn’t been invented yet.
Or was not available to the Ministry yet, at least.
If Veritaserum IS the potions form of the Verum Dicere that Tom had invented pre-Hogwarts, the potion might well have been invented by Tom himself.
In which case, he certainly would have distributed doses to his followers to use as needed, but would he have distributed the formula?
Well, maybe. Maybe, for example, he enticed a young Potions geek to join him in part by promising to share his own innovations in the field.
Except I really don’t think that “shares nicely” ever got ticked on Tommy’s infant school reports. When it came to it, would Tom really have shared? Promised to, maybe. But delivered?
(I mean, Bellatrix boasts of having been taught personally by Tom, but all she claims to have learned from him is the Cruciatus. If Tom had shared any of his personal research with her, she doesn’t ever say so. And one would think she would. On Snapedom, when we discussed whether Tom had invented the flying spell and taught Severus, or vice versa, this was one of the biggest arguments of the Severus-showed-Tom camp. It’s obvious why Sev should have curried favor with his “master” by sharing such an awe-inspiring spell, but why would Tom—whom we never see offering real rewards to any of his slaves—share such a power with Severus?)
Even if Tom was using Severus as a brewer, well, he could keep Severus busy with published potions, and reserve the ones he wanted kept secret to himself. Or use Severus for the scut work of ingredient preparation, or even some of the more tedious steps, promising the boy he’d eventually be rewarded with the whole process/recipe. On a potion that takes a month to make, Tom could theoretically use Severus for a lot of the work as long as he was excluded from the most critical steps.
(Okay, that lunar cycle deal might have been a lie for Dolores’s benefit, but I doubt it. If it was a lie Severus could possibly be caught in, he’d be seen flagrantly thwarting Dolores to protect Harry. And as the boy never bothered to learn Occlumency, the Dark Lord could at any time drop in on the conversation. So everything he said to Dolores, had to be credible to the Dark Lord.)
If Tom invented Veritaserum and DID share the recipe universally with his Death Eaters, we would expect eventually someone with that knowledge would be captured and made to disgorge it.
If Tom invented Veritaserum and shared the recipe only with a few of his best brewers, including Severus, Severus naturally gave it to Albus when he turned. Albus, of course, had an excellent excuse to use it himself but not in turn to share it with the Ministry—to protect his spy’s cover.
Only, that reason would have continued to keep Albus from ever giving the recipe in turn to the Ministry/ the general public. Not when Albus really does think, and has Severus thinking, that Tom will eventually return. If he does, and finds Snape has turned over one of Tom’s favorite inventions to his enemies….
So the fact that Veritaserum is known and Ministry-controlled in 1995 indicates to me that IF Tom invented it, he didn’t share the secret of how to make it with Snape. Or if he did, it was not through Snape and Dumbledore that the Ministry learned of it. (Another brewer, claiming Imperius [truly or falsely], and making public the recipe as a sign of his good faith? Only that might have cast doubt on Snape’s reformation, that he had not done the same….)
However, if Tom invented Veritaserum and didn’t share the recipe at all, or only pieces of it… well, surely Severus would have worked to reverse-engineer the potion from what he knew? Which might have been only: it looks and smells like water, and it works.
How long would that have taken him? (In amongst his other duties, and all while nearly-paralyzed with his long grief and guilt….)
And once he did manage to reverse-engineer it, it had to look as though Albus had been the one to do so. Albus the brilliant could have done so merely off the vague rumor that the DE’s had had such a thing, right….
Conversely, what if Tom didn’t invent the potion, but his Verum dicere gave someone else the idea for a liquid form? How long would that take to invent?
Or, of course, the damn thing might have been invented by someone we’ve never heard of. Fleur’s second cousin Lysistrata Larpenteur, or the Durmstrang assistant potions mistress. Li Kao. Mary Sue Rostanski.
It would be very neat if Tom had invented it and Severus had recreated his formula, or if Severus had created it as the potions version of young Tom’s Imperius variant. I like either of those interpretations, but they are really sort of lagniappe.
The biggest point is, if the invention were fairly recent….
If Veritaserum didn’t exist yet in 1981 or wasn’t available to the Ministry, a lot of our (my) best ingenuity in explaining how Lucius, Rodolphus, et al. fooled it, has been wasted.
The supposed Death Eaters might have been subjected to a much cruder investigation than we’d always supposed.
Moreover, if Veritaserum had only quite recently been patented and cleared by the Ministry (for strictly controlled use) as of our introduction to it in 1995, several other discrepancies evaporate as well.
Like why, two months later, Albus (who had perhaps been in on all the testing and was intimately familiar with the properties that distinguished Veritaserum from the older, lesser truth sera) trusted it to have wrested the truth from mad little Barty, even while acknowledging that Barty was indeed mad.
While Fudge, worse informed on that score as on so many others, did not.
Real-life “truth sera” not only can’t force someone to speak or to answer questions. If you administered one to someone delusional, you’d simply get a recounting of hir delusions. Getting Xenophilius drunk or high might loosen his tongue further, but it wouldn’t improve the accuracy of his babble. Similarly, if you administered a truth serum to someone suffering from dementia, you’d expect disjointed ramblings or maybe a confabulation.
What Skeeter got from administering Veritaserum to the “nutty as squirrel poo” Bathilda was, conversely, detailed and accurate information about Albus’s friendship with Bathilda’s great-nephew, including secrets later verified by Aberforth (and some by Muriel as things Bathilda had previously spoken of): their great friendship, their identity of aims, that Gellert had been visiting the Dumbledores when Ariana died (and instantly fled the country), and that Aberforth blamed Albus so bitterly that he broke his brother’s nose at their sister’s funeral. Moreover, Bathilda remembered, and told Rita where to find, that incriminating letter.
At the same time, Bathilda stuck to the “Dumbledore family story” that Ariana had been “delicate” and that Kendra had died from a “backfiring charm.” So unlike real-life truth sera (or real-life torture), Veritaserum also hadn’t made Bathilda simply agree to all her interrogator’s suggestions.
So it seems that if a person has ever known a truth, even if s/he is now too “gaga” to consciously recall the events s/he witnessed, s/he can and will accurately recount them under Veritaserum if prompted with the right questions
Perhaps a madman will, as well, provided he was not completely lost in actual hallucinations?
Dumbledore tried to convince Fudge of Voldemort’s return by making the point that Barty confessed “Under the influence of Veritaserum” to a plan to restore Voldemort. “The plan worked, I tell you. Crouch has helped Voldemort to return.”
And Fudge responded by smiling. “Come now, come now…. certainly, Crouch may have believed himself to be acting on You-Know_Who’s orders—but to take the word of a lunatic like that, Dumbledore….”
Certainly Fudge is guilty of believing what he wants to believe. But he also believes what he does believe, and one of the things that he does believe is that truth potions can guarantee, at best, the sincerity of the speaker. Not the speaker’s accuracy. And that Dumbledore, of course, must know this. Come now!
Veritaserum is not a magic word to him.
But in 1997, it is. To everyone. That’s the only reason Skeeter can possibly have for admitting to (almost certainly illegally) dosing Bathilda with it. Why, after all, incriminate herself?
After first impugning her source’s reliability by calling her senile, her brilliance dimmed, nutty as squirrel poo? Well, because her readers already know that Bathilda was rumored to have become quite gaga, but if she was under Veritaserum when she spilled the beans about Albus’s relationship with Gellert and about Ariana’s death and funeral, her statements must be considered to be fully reliable. All true, so far as Bathilda’s knowledge went.
But this, you note, is a change.
Fudge, in 1995, didn’t believe that a Veritaserum-induced confession from a madman could be reliable. Umbridge, in 1996, didn’t believe that a mere three drops of Veritaserum could suffice to wring the truth from a confirmed troublemaker like Harry. Nor did she know even so much about its recipe as to know a fresh batch couldn’t be whipped up in a few minutes.
And yet “everyone,” in 1997, believed that Skeeter’s claim to have used Veritaserum on a “gaga” old lady irrefutably established the veracity of the shocking information thus attained.
Sounds to me like the reception of a relatively new potion whose powers are being slowly recognized.
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Date: 2013-05-03 03:00 pm (UTC)That said, thanks for bringing this up.
I point out, that first, this supports the idea that started me on this train of thought--that Veritaxerum is a form of the Imperius. Of the three ways Jo can think of to counter it, two are means to avoid ingesting the potion in the first place, and the third is Occlumency. And Severus told us in Harry's very first lesson that Occlumency is akin to resisting the Imperius.
Next, just how stupid is Jo, really? The MInistry doesn't use the potion because it would be unfair and unreliable to use a means that some wizards, but not all, could block? Forget maidofkent's objection that said wizard, or witch, would have to be adept at wandless, nonverbal magic (which it's canon most are not!):...
Jo wrote a scene in which a wizard took another prisoner, knocked him out, administered a dose of Veritaserum while the second wizard was unconscious, and revived him only when the potion was already in his system.
That's the way around a prisoner using sleight-of-tongue to avoid ingesting it (as Harry, employed against Umbridge, only he used non-magical means) or wandlessly, nonverbally, Transfiguring the potion to water. Or against all but the most profound Occlumency.
That should be the standard procedure for administering the stuff to a suspect. Only reason Umbridge couldn't do it with Harry is she hadn't authorization to use it on him, so she had to be surreptitious..
And Jo's objection is true of real-life truth sera--which is why they are NOT accepted as evidence in court. What real-life truth sera are used for (when they are used) is to obtain LEADS--which must be independently verified to be accepted.
So if Veritaserum were around in 1981, it should have been given to Sirius, and Lucius, and Bellatrix, not necessarily assuming that every word they subsequently uttered was true, but sifting what they said for possible truths.
Only, Veritaserum is, in canon, more powerful than real-life truth sera. Sodium pentothal could not drag a hundred-year-old story from a woman lost in senility. Veritaserum forces the ingester to speak the truth.