Talk:Essays/@comment-4423292-20151216185718

On Love Potions
Love potions are one of the creepier aspects of the Harry Potter books. When reading them as a child, love potions didn't stand out very much to me, but looking back over the stories now that I'm older and know better, it's very different.

Anyone slightly older than Harry Potter's originally intended audience will likely recognize love potions as a date rape drugs. While the original Harry Potter book acknowledge that controlling another person like that is wrong, they never address the issue of rape. This is reasonable enough, considering the age intended audience, but the role of love potions in the wizard world seems creepy and bizarre to an older reader.

Sex under the influence of love potions is not sex without consent, but rather sex with fraudulently procured consent*. Someone under the influence of a love potion will certainly give an enthusiastic, "Yes!" at the time, but later, after the potion has worn off and their volition has returned, they will realize how badly they were violated, and be as scared as any other rape victim.

In the Harry Potter books, we only ever see women using love potions on men. Because of the female-on-male rape double-standard, these acts are less recognizable as rape and then an equivalent act would be if the genders were reversed.

When Dumbledore and Harry are discussing Tom Riddle's background, they discuss how his mother, Merope Gaunt, used magic to seduce a young a muggle man. She is though to have used a love potion, but the other possibility is that she used the Imperius Curse.

For 300 years, the Imperius Curse has been an Unforgivable Curse, and using it warrants a lifetime in Azkaban. In this instance, wizards clearly understand the severe moral implications of controlling another person and taking away their volition. This makes the apparently legality of love potions all the more baffling.

Fred and George sell love potions at their shop, Weasleys' Wizard Wheezes. They do not come across any issues with the Ministry of Magic, and the love potions in their shop appear to be being sold openly and legally.

Come the sixth book, Hermione informs Ron and Harry that Fred and George are smuggling love potions to their clients inside the castle. Love potions have been banned, as have all Weasleys' Wizard Wheezes products. This ban is created at Filch's request, as Weasleys' Wizard Wheezes products make his job unnecessarily difficult. Use of Weasleys' Wizard Wheezes products also comes in conflict with the pre-existing rule that students are not allowed to use magic outside of their classes. The moral questions of love potions are unrelated to the Hogwarts ban.

Those in the wizarding world truly do not seem particularly perturbed by love potions. When Harry takes Ron to Slughorn after accidentally Ron accidentally ingests a love potion, Slughorn does not seen panicked. He views it more as a learning opportunity than anything else, and urges Harry to brew an antidote. Slughorn doesn't ask much about the origin of the potion that Ron had ingested, nor does he think that other teachers need to be alerted.

Merope is a sympathetic and pitiful character, and this tints all her actions. It be believed that she stopped giving Tom the love potion because she hoped he had truly come to love her. I imagine that this is a common idea in love potion use — that the potion is only a catalyst, and will be used only as long as needed for it to kick-start something more real. In turn, Tom Riddle's leaving is portrayed in an almost negative light, because Merope is so pitiful, and because she's pregnant. But he was completely right in his actions. When you are kidnapped, drugged, and raped, you get out as soon as you can. Tom Riddle may have been an arrogant rich boy, but that does not mean he deserved to be raped. No one deserves to be raped.

The only way for any of this to make sense is if you think about it like the house-elf thing. Because those involved seem willing, people don't stop to think about it too much.

The traditional use of love potions is to make an unrequited love requited, and the other obvious use is to rape someone, but those are by no means the only uses for love potions.

A shipper could give a love potion to a couple they shipped in order to get them together; love potion applied to two different people, by a third party.

As a medieval parent, if you arranged a strategic marriage for your kid, if you kid was fighting you on it, it would be temping to slip your child a lot potion to get them to cooperate, at least until the wedding passed. Or in a kinder example, if you were the parent of a medieval daughter, might you give her a love potion on her wedding night, so she wouldn't be afraid? Or if you were that young bride, might you try to find your own?

A couple on the brink of splitting up might turn to love potions, to try to save their relationship. One person might slip it to their partner, or alternatively, both partners might together decide to take it. Or a child, seeing that their parents are on the brink of divorce, might be the one to give it.

Inversely, a perfectly happy couple might sometimes decide to both take love potions and have wild sex, just for fun.

Since the Imperius Curse can cost you a lifetime in Azkaban, and love potions appear to be legal, if you wanted someone to do something, a much lower risk alternative to drug them into love with you, and then asking them to do X for you.

Or like the fairies in Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream, you could use a love potion to prank someone, or get revenge.


 * Fraudulently procured consent is something of a gray area in rape. For example, if someone claims they went to a prestigious collage, or have a prestigious job, in order to seem more attractive, and someone else has sex with them on that basis, only to later find out that they in fact didn't, it would be quite a stretch to call that rape. But having sex while masquerading as someone's partner is also fraudulently procured consent, and pretty clearly rape. Fraudulently procured consent is complicated, but with that said, however, love potions are a very clear-cut example — it's brain-washing and mind-rape for crying out loud.