The Ultimate Harry Potter and Philosophy: Hogwarts for Muggles
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8 Of course, not all of Snape’s actions are good, judged either from an external or an internal criterion. From an external standpoint, Snape’s killing of Dumbledore is not objectively good, but within the logic of the books, it seems to be presented as good in at least some sense, or at least permissible. Moreover, Snape’s continued hostile action toward Sirius is clearly not good, nor is his bullying of students. But the argument is not that Snape becomes perfect through love, but that, overall, Snape eventually acts for the good of others.
9 Order of the Phoenix, p. 530.
10 Ibid., p. 531.
11 Ibid., p. 536.
12 Deathly Hallows, p. 663.
13 Ibid., p. 677.
14 Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, 1166a31.
15 Symposium, 206a, translated by Alexander Nehamas and Paul Woodruff, in Plato: Complete Works, edited by John M. Cooper (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1997).
16 Symposium, 206b. See also 208e and the following paragraphs. The general points about the nature of love cited earlier fit well with the portrayal of love in the Potter books. Lily Potter’s mother-love is the central example of love in the series. Note, too, that Molly Weasley’s duel with Bellatrix Lestrange, in which she fights expressly to protect her children (and the children of others), is given pride of place in the final battle, second only to Harry’s duel with Voldemort.
17 Deus Caritas Est, paragraph 6. Benedict continues his Christian analysis of love, claiming that this self-gift offers both “authentic self-discovery and indeed the discovery of God: ‘Whoever seeks to gain his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life will preserve it’ (Luke 17:33)” (ibid.). Harry’s sacrifice of his life at the end of Deathly Hallows appears to operate on this same principle.
18 Resigned, Dumbledore agrees: “I shall never reveal the best of you,” Deathly Hallows, p. 679.
19 Half-Blood Prince, p. 160.
20 Ibid., p. 340.
21 The Christian allusions, especially in Deathly Hallows, are unmistakable, among them the hero who conquers death by sacrificing his life willingly to save others, the Scripture verses on the tombstones in Godric’s Hollow, the affirmation of immortal souls, and the choice of King’s Cross Station as Harry’s between-worlds destination.
22 Despite insisting on secrecy about his role, Snape becomes enraged at Harry’s accusation of cowardice, presumably because of the purpose and the on-going risk of his task.
23 Half-Blood Prince, p. 161.
24 Deathly Hallows, p. 758.
5
LOVE POTION NO. 9¾
Gregory Bassham
In the Muggle world people spend vast sums of money on perfumes, body sprays, cosmetics, jewelry, pheromones, body-sculpting, skimpy clothing, gym memberships, tanning salons, diet programs, and other means of increasing physical attractiveness and stirring romantic interest. In the wizarding world there are far more powerful and reliable attractants: magical love potions. Yet there are obvious ethical issues regarding the use of such potions, particularly the non consensual use, as occurs in two key episodes in the Harry Potter stories. So, what do magical love potions have to teach us about love, infatuation, and the ethical treatment of others? In particular, what can we learn from Merope Gaunt’s use of a love potion to ensnare Tom Riddle Sr. (Voldemort’s father), and her eventual decision to stop using the potion, at great cost to herself and her unborn son?
Violently Pink Products
Love potions not only make for fascinating thought experiments, they’re also an important part of the Harry Potter plot. In Chamber of Secrets, Professor Lockhart at one point jokingly encourages the students at Hogwarts to ask Professor Snape how to whip up a love potion, and in Prisoner of Azkaban, Mrs.Weasley tells her daughter, Ginny, and Hermione Granger about a love potion she made as a young girl.
But in Half-Blood Prince, we find several significant references to love potions. The first happens in Diagon Alley, at Weasleys’ Wizard Wheezes, Fred and George’s magic shop:Near the window was an array of violently pink products around which a cluster of excited girls was giggling enthusiastically. Hermione and Ginny both hung back, looking wary.
“There you go,” said Fred proudly. “Best range of love potions you’ll find anywhere.”
Ginny raised an eyebrow skeptically. “Do they work?” she asked.
“Certainly they work, for up to twenty-four hours at a time depending on the weight of the boy in question ...”
“. . . and the attractiveness of the girl,” said George, reappearing suddenly at their side.1
So, in Harry’s world, love potions are legal, apparently work only on males (although this isn’t explicitly stated), vary in potency depending on the weight of the boy and the attractiveness of the girl, and work for only a limited time without a fresh dose.
The next appearance of love potions comes at Hogwarts, in the newly installed Professor Slughorn’s Potions classroom, where Hermione’s showing her stuff:“Now, this one here . . . yes, my dear?” said Slughorn, now looking slightly bemused, as Hermione’s hand punched the air again.
“It’s Amortentia!”
“It is indeed. It seems almost foolish to ask,” said Slughorn, who was looking mightily impressed, “but I assume you know what it does?”
“It’s the most powerful love potion in the world!” said Hermione.
“Quite right! You recognized it, I suppose, by its distinctive mother-of-pearl sheen?”
“And the steam rising in characteristic spirals,” said Hermione enthusiastically, “and it’s supposed to smell differently to each of us, according to what attracts us, and I can smell freshly mown grass and new parchment and—”
But she turned slightly pink and did not complete the sentence.2
On the next page, Slughorn reveals more about this love potion:“Amortentia doesn’t really create love, of course. It is impossible to manufacture or imitate love. No, this will simply cause a powerful infatuation or obsession. It is probably the most dangerous and powerful potion in this room—oh yes,” he said, nodding gravely at Malfoy and Nott, both of whom were smirking skeptically. “When you have seen as much of life as I have, you will not underestimate the power of obsessive love.”3
Later in Half-Blood Prince, we learn just how dangerous and powerful a love potion can be, when Ron unwittingly eats a box of Chocolate Cauldrons spiked with love potion and becomes madly infatuated with Romilda Vane. From that episode, we discover that love potions act almost instantaneously; that they cause obsessive thoughts, intense excitement, and violent emotions; that they can strengthen over time; and that they can be cured by means of a simple antidote.
So, what kind of person would actually use a love potion? In our final snippet from Half-Blood Prince, we are introduced to one: Voldemort’s mother.
Little Hangleton
Merope Gaunt, the local tramp’s daughter, harbors a secret, burning passion for Tom Riddle, the wealthy squire’s son. An unlikely pair, but Merope is a witch whose powers give her a chance to plot her escape from the desperate life she has led for eighteen years under the subjugation of her father and brother. “Can you not think of any measure Merope could have taken to make Tom Riddle forget his Muggle companion, and fall in love with her instead?”4 Albus Dumbledore asks Harry. To which Harry offers two guesses: the Imperius Curse and a love potion.
The Imperius Curse, of course, is one of the three “unforgivable curses” in the magical world; it robs victims of their will and is, as a result, a prime example of how magic in Harry’s world can but must not be used to manipulate and exploit others, especially the most vulnerable. Love potions, we’ve seen, aren’t illegal in Harry’s world. Perhaps they’re not considered as dangerous as the Imperius Curse, because they don’t last as long, produce only romantic feelings (as opposed to, say, homicidal intentions), and don’t result in total control of the affected person. But it’s instructive that Harry sees a particular effect and correctly narrows down the likely causes to either the Imperius Cur
se or a love potion, reminding us of Slughorn’s sober warnings of the love potion’s dangers.
After Harry’s two guesses, Dumbledore continues,“Very good. Personally, I am inclined to think that she used a love potion. I am sure it would have seemed more romantic to her, and I do not think it would have been very difficult, some hot day, when Riddle was riding alone, to persuade him to take a drink of water. In any case, within a few months . . . the village of Little Hangleton enjoyed a tremendous scandal. You can imagine the gossip it caused when the squire’s son ran off with the tramp’s daughter, Merope.”5
Dumbledore continues by engaging in some guesswork:“You see, within a few months of their runaway marriage, Tom Riddle reappeared at the manor house in Little Hangleton without his wife. The rumor flew around the neighborhood that he was talking of being ‘hoodwinked’ and ‘taken in.’ What he meant, I am sure, is that he had been under an enchantment that had now lifted, though I daresay he did not dare use those precise words for fear of being thought insane.”6
After Harry asks why the love potion stopped working, Dumbledore adds,“Again, this is guesswork . . . but I believe that Merope, who was deeply in love with her husband, could not bear to continue enslaving him by magical means. I believe that she made the choice to stop giving him the potion. Perhaps, besotted as she was, she had convinced herself that he would by now have fallen in love with her in return. Perhaps she thought he would stay for the baby’s sake. If so, she was wrong on both counts. He left her, never saw her again, and never troubled to discover what became of his son.”7
Harry then asks again whether it’s important to know all of this about Voldemort’s past, to which Dumbledore replies, “Very important, I think,” and “It has everything to do with the prophecy.” What does this love potion narrative add to the story, and what might it have to do with the prophecy about Harry’s defeat of Voldemort?8
Real Love or Mere Infatuation?
So, here’s a question: Did Merope Gaunt, Voldemort’s mother, love Tom Riddle Sr.? She was certainly infatuated with him, attracted to him, willing to go to extraordinary lengths to have him. But did she love him?
Dumbledore says she did, but another possible answer is no, and here’s the case for it: She didn’t love him, or at least she didn’t love him very deeply, exactly because she was willing to use a love potion on him. Presumably, a love potion, after all, robs a person of his free will. This is what makes love pills or potions an ideal thought experiment to elicit the recognition that real freedom requires more than doing what we want to do. Doing what we want to do may be necessary for freedom, but it’s not sufficient; we must also have the freedom to do otherwise. Tom lacked such “libertarian” freedom.
Some philosophers, including Harry Frankfurt, deny that the ability to do otherwise is necessary for genuine freedom. This view especially appeals to those who think that everything we do is strictly determined by the laws of the physical universe or by the sovereign plan of God. They typically accept compatibilism: the idea that free will is consistent with strict determination of all of our actions and choices. Yet even compatibilists will likely deny that Tom Riddle Sr. freely loved Merope. Why? Because even if Tom was doing what he wanted by loving her, he wouldn’t have wanted to love her as a result of a magical inducement.
How much could Merope have loved Tom if giving him the potion deprived him of his freedom? It wasn’t that she loved him too much; she didn’t love him enough, if at all. It was selfish of her. She wanted what was in her interests, not his. She may have felt amorous affection or entertained an unhealthy obsession for him, but clearly she did not feel the deep love that respects the true interests and considered preferences of the beloved.
Not only did she take away Riddle’s freedom, enslaving him by the potion, she robbed him of the chance to grow in the “relationship,” and I use that term loosely, for although love can be one-way, relationships by their nature are not. Merope didn’t create a relationship that provided a context for Riddle to remain committed despite fluctuating feelings, to grow more in love as time goes on, to attain love’s deeper reaches after the physical attraction and the initial excitement fade, or to become a better person as the rough edges of his personality get smoothed out in the mutual self-giving of a real and reciprocal loving relationship. No, she subjected him to magic that coerced his will into becoming obsessed with her. She could have treated him like dirt after that, and still he’d go on stupidly relishing and accepting whatever she dealt him, for that’s the nature of the potion. This is surely a situation that invites abuse, but it’s hardly a paradigm of love.
Incidentally, this shows us what’s wrong with using a love potion even on oneself to develop feelings for another, a person we perhaps deem worthy of loving. We’re inclined to think it’s at least not as bad to use a potion on oneself as it is to administer it to another person, because the issue of free will doesn’t arise in the same way. By choosing to take the potion, our free will is intact. This isn’t obviously correct, but suppose we grant it. Still, there’s the other issue of becoming a certain kind of person. Think how easy it would be to take the potion—rather than working hard in the relationship to remain committed despite challenges and to grow as a person through relational hardships. With all of the challenges removed, we would lose terrific opportunities to become better persons through the relationship.9
Not His Mother’s Son
I could imagine that sort of story for Merope, and it’s the direction I originally anticipated this chapter to go. It’s no shock, I had figured, that a character so thoroughly evil and despicable as Voldemort would hail from such troubled beginnings. It’s not a stretch that a man who never loved would have come from a loveless union generated and sustained by magic alone. Nor would it be surprising that a character who from his earliest years harbored such fondness for cruelty and domination would have a mother willing to coerce the will of her mate and a father who would so callously neglect his child after the enchantment lifted.
This view of Merope and Voldemort seems to make a good deal of sense. Its only drawback, so far as I can see, is that it’s wrong. Especially where Merope is concerned, the contrast between her and Voldemort is far more important than the comparison. Voldemort’s problem is not that he’s his mother’s son, which in many ways he isn’t. No, the problem is that Voldemort is more like his grandfather Marvolo Gaunt and his ancestor Salazar Slytherin. My point in excluding Merope from the list is that she illustrates how, in Harry’s world, choices—not innate talent or biological ancestry or magical pedigree—most shape characters and destinies.
Merope is a character who ought to elicit from us compassion and no small amount of respect. What she did to win Riddle was wrong, and radically so, but good people sometimes do bad things. It’s not the occasional misdeed that defines us but the habitual practice, the settled character, the persistent pattern of choices that put us on our life’s trajectory. We are what we consistently do, as Aristotle put it. Her action was wrong, yes, but I’m not convinced she was very bad at all. To the contrary, she shows a remarkable character, all the more so in the face of all the obstacles she had to overcome and the temptations she had to resist. What matters is not merely where she ended up, but also the distance she had to travel to get there.
What matters is the ultimate trajectory her life took and not merely the projected track of her worst decisions. Unfortunately, Voldemort, if anything, ended up following in the footsteps of where his mother was headed until she came to her senses. Whereas she eventually stopped going in the direction of the dark side, he embraced it wholeheartedly. The blood of Slytherin coursed through each of them, but their lives went in diametrically opposite directions. If nothing else, this illustrates, once more, the primacy of choice in Harry’s world.
Critics have sometimes complained about the shortage of redeemed characters in the Potter books, but Merope is a prime example of one: a character whose background was as tragic as anyone’s, whose
capacity for misusing magic was as great as anyone’s, whose temptations to engage in the Dark Arts were as strong as anyone’s, yet whose life showed that not even a person like that is destined for darkness. And if even she wasn’t, then Voldemort wasn’t, for his upbringing was no more tragic than hers. If his destiny ended up beyond redemption, it was because his own choices, over time, forged a mutilated character from which there was no escape. Character may be destiny, but this makes more sense and is more just if character is the culmination of a truly free set of choices, rather than the inevitable outcome of “blood” or fate. This possibility of true freedom, of goods potentially but needlessly lost, imbues the Potter books with an element of tragedy that’s often a feature of great literature.
Consider again Merope’s tragic home life: physical, verbal, and emotional abuse; a condition of virtual domestic slavery; an absence of love and affirmation; an abundance of violence and meanness. None of this makes her ensnarement of Riddle right, but—and this is part of Rowling’s nuanced moral analysis—it ought to soften our critical judgment of Merope, especially since, of her own volition, she eventually gave up using the potion. At the risk of losing the love of her life, her unborn child’s father, and perhaps the first happiness she ever experienced, at the risk of rejection and terrible pain—pain that did in fact practically kill her with a broken heart—she did the right thing, choosing character over power, reality over appearance, forgiveness over resentment. And she chose love over hate, letting Riddle leave because that was his choice, despite her continued love for him, indeed, because of her love for him. And despite Riddle’s abandonment of her, she still named her son after him, so gracious was her character, which reminds us of Dumbledore’s eventual gracious response to Muggles, despite their cruel and devastating mistreatment of his sister. Voldemort, in contrast, chose to exact revenge for his father’s abandonment by killing both his father and his grandparents and by rejecting his Muggle name and heritage.