24. Nostalgia Potion
Nostalgia Potion. Popular name for the banned Regressive Youth Potion. This complex brew gives its user approximately ten hours of youth while bringing death one year closer. It was banned in 1781 after Esmeralda Torpent had fed it to bought Muggle lovers for years without informing them of the serum's drawbacks. Thirteen men, bodily aged about fifteen to twenty, were found buried all over her extensive gardens. How old they had been originally - or who they were - remains a mystery.
- Peculiar Potions II, 1978
Regressive Youth Potion. Aggressive cell poison designed to sequence the subject's DNA through an evolutionary network of self-replicating spells powered by ambient magic. Depending on the exact mixture, the network simulates the development of the subject from infancy to a predetermined stage and then employs a derivative of Polyjuice Potion to physically transform the subject into a younger version of itself. Due to the detrimental effects of rewriting DNA rather than temporarily twisting it into another form, it is estimated that the process shortens the subject's lifespan considerably. That it would shorten it by exactly a year is a modern myth. Since it is impossible to know when any subject would have died otherwise, it could be anything between a few days to several years. Undesired cell reproduction is a common cause of death in subjects.
The potion was banned in 1781 following the Torpent Affair. However, this has not stopped its use in less law-abiding circles. Many are the wealthy witches and wizards who have died young, at least in appearance. The Ministry of Magic has yet to settle on a way to enforce the prohibition.
- John Pygram, Dark Potions Dissected, 1991
Wayne Pellegrin had been in Azkaban for three years before it was discovered that it had been his father, under the effects of the Nostalgia Potion, who had committed the murder. In retrospect, all the mentions of the striking father/son resemblance in the media during the trial seem eerily prophetic.
- Infamous Murders, 3rd ed., 1962