harry potter - How in the world did Slughorn prepare the Felix Felicis in time for his class?

In the summer of 1996, Horace Sluhorn is persuaded into coming out of retirement by Harry Potter and Albus Dumbledore. Around two months later, he greets his students with potions such as Felix Felicis, the Polyjuice Potion, etc.

Felix Felicis takes six months to prepare, as mentioned later in The Half-Blood Prince:

"Blimey, it's seriously complicated," he said, running an eye down the list of ingredients. "And it takes six months... you've got to let it stew..."
_{Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, chapter 24: "Sectumsepra"}

How did Horace Slughorn manage to prepare the potion for his class?

Answer

To me this seems obvious:

The potions weren't prepared by Slughorn.

They may have been prepared by Snape the previous year. There's no reason to think Slughorn deviates much from the syllabus Snape would have followed had he continued teaching Potions, so it makes sense for Snape to have prepared these potions each year for use in teaching sixth-years the next year.

There may always be a store of these potions in the school's Potions cupboard. In OotP, Umbridge uses Snape's "entire store" of Veritaserum in order to question Harry, and Snape tells her that it takes several weeks or months to prepare. So it doesn't sound as though he brewed it for her on request, but rather as though there was a store of it which she got him to empty for her.

Either way, no contradiction (or necessity for Time-Turners as Richard suggests).

Comments

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