Amortentia and re The morality of love potions/Merope and Tom Sr.

[dumbledore11214]

No: HPFGUIDX 152364

Carol:
<SNIP>

> All I am asking is a little understanding and compassion for Merope,
> who does not fit the pattern of a rapist or even a seductress. She,
> too, was a victim, and it's clear to me that what she wanted was not
> sex or even necessarily marriage but love. I am afraid that certain
> members of this list would have burned her at the stake if they had
> discovered her "crime." (How dare a woman use power of any sort on a
> man? She must be an evil seductress, no, a rapist, and a witch at
> that! Send her out to die of starvation with her unborn brat! That's
> the mentality I'm seeing here, and I don't think it's the view that
> JKR wants us to have.)

Alla:

That's the problem, Carol. Rapists and abusers do NOT necessarily fit 
any patterns, they come in all shape and forms, IMO. This one came in 
the form of the woman, who was abused herself and who chose to do the 
same to the innocent man, whose only crime was IMO to fall under her 
wishful eye.

Someone made a great analogy IMO that Merope never had any toys and 
the moment she realised that she can have one, who can "love her", 
she went for it and she broke it forever. The only problem is that 
toy had a feelings too.

And, rephrasing your analogy - certainly, how dare this woman made a 
man an object of her will, since contrary to Pippin's argument I see 
no evidence in canon that victim of love potion has ANY choice in the 
matter, especially that such "obsession" can be distinguished from 
love and to be overcome.

Merope did not deserve to die. Nobody deserves to die ( well, except 
maybe Snape), but neither did Tom deserved any misery this woman 
inflicted upon him.

JMO,

Alla