Violet had heated her water until it was gently simmering, and while it heated, she began to think of the photographs she owned. There were the magical ones in her family home, of course, ancestors and such. Those were magical, of course. And the one in her grandfather's study of her mother when she was a young girl--he had recently put that out on her desk, because Violet couldn't remember seeing it there before.

And then Violet had some Muggle photos--one of her father that she'd torn out of a Muggle newspaper when Miss Howard wasn't looking, the morning that they'd left New York. And a Muggle picture of her mother that she'd nicked from her father's hotel room right before she'd run off--it was the first and only picture of her that Violet owned and she didn't feel sorry one bit for taking it.

Violet was roused from her memories by the sound of the water simmering. Hurriedly, before it all evaporated, she poured in the vinegar and picked up the bowl of acid that she'd poured off of the bowl of Dransul leaves when she'd crushed them earlier. Using the dropper, she added the acid to her cauldron--one, two three, and began to stir the potion counter-clockwise three times.