#apperception

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Theseus frowned briefly, eying his brother closely even as he picked up his own copy of the ingredients. “Not sure. What does ‘anoxia’ mean?”

“Water that doesn’t have any oxygen in it.” Newt and Theseus both looked at Tina in surprise. She shrugged. “What? Queenie learns the oddest things and tells me anything she thinks is interesting.”

“You can’t crush water though,” Theseus pointed out, looking between the other two. “Different things, then?”

Newt nodded slowly. “When researching Egyptian magical creatures, I came across six different species of scarab beetle, one of which was called the Anoxia Beetle.”

Tina looked at her own copy of the ingredients. “What are the chances that whoever is trying to make this noticed the difference?”

Newt smirked. “Considering how rare Anoxia Beetles are, and how much work it took for me to gain enough trust of the priests that guard the temple they’re found in…”

“Probably not that high then,” Theseus finished, grinning. “Well then, should be fun to see who tries to put liquid ‘gold’ in their cauldron full of water to see how long their set-up doesn’t last.”

At Tina’s confused look, Newt explained, “there’s no such thing as liquid gold unless it’s heated, obviously,”—Tina nodded—“but that would make it useless unless the temperature was high enough to keep it in its molten state—”

“Which this potion doesn’t,” Theseus cut in.

“—so that means the list must refer to some other type of metal. One which is a liquid at a much lower temperature, likely room temperature since there’s nothing in the potion’s details which suggests the metal is heated prior to being added to the potion.” Newt grinned sharply. “One of the only metals I know of, one I learnt about from a Muggle scientist in Germany in fact, is Caesium.”

“Caesium?” Tina repeated, curious.

“Caesium is one of a group of metals that really doesn’t agree with water,” Theseus answered brightly. “When whoever our mysterious potion-maker is adds it to their cauldron with anoxic water that finally has access to some air—”

“—we’ll probably hear the explosion from a mile away?” Tina guessed, a smile growing on her face.

Theseus laughed.