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

[pippin_999]

No: HPFGUIDX 152508

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "festuco" <vuurdame at ...> wrote:

> 
> Tom consented while drugged. Now in a Muggle court of law this would
> have been inexplainable. But I bet it would have held with the
> Wizengamot. 

Pippin:
Would it? Wizards invented the Goblet of Fire, which seems to reflect a 
moral philosophy very much like the one informing the old idea of marriage.
Just as the Goblet chose the best person to compete in the contest regardless
of that person's desire  to compete, God was supposed to choose the
best people to be married to one another. As interfering with the Goblet's
choice was taboo, so was interfering with marriage.  Lack of desire
to compete did not invalidate the Goblet's choice, and lack of desire
to be married did not invalidate a marriage.

The marriage was made as soon as the partners gave free consent
in a recognized way...and the law in 1926 did not recognize persuasion by
means other than force as coercion. Annulments were very rare and
not given on grounds of emotional bondage, period. There was a
time earlier when annulments were only given for consanguinity or
prior contract, so even if someone were holding a weapon to your head
when you said, "I do" you were still legally married. Think of it! Things
had progressed some by 1926, but not as far as you seem to think,
from my admittedly internet-based and non-expert research.

I am not so sure that if a court were told (in 1926) that Merope had 
dosed Tom with some exotic South American herb that had made him
desire her so much that he wanted to marry her, they wouldn't have 
thought it was God's will. After all, it isn't against the law to feed people 
compounds  that aren't illegal or poisonous. "Go on taking the herb. Next!"

It sounds completely off the wall to us, but our way of thinking would 
have sounded just as mad and immoral to them. 

Pippin: 
> > 
> > Canon suggests that had he been willing to wait, Merope would have 
> > tired of his make-believe passion and revealed herself before she 
> > became pregnant.
> 
> Gerry
> Can you quote that? Because I cannot find any canon that suggests
> that. It might even have been her pregnancy that made her stop giving
> him the potion, believing that now she was having -their- baby he
> would never go away. 

Pippin:
"Again this is guesswork," said Dumbeldore,"but I believe that Merope, who was
deeply in love with her husband, could not bear to continue enslaving
him by magical means." --HBP ch 10 

> Gerry (responding to the idea that Tom should have waited:
> Why would that be relevant? He was obsessed, believed she was the love
> of his life. Why should he have waited? To me this is a very backhand
> way of blaming the victim. He acted in good faith. She knew differently. 
> > 

Pippin:
The exchange in chapter 5 where Molly explains why she thinks Bill
and Fleur have hurried into their engagement and should delay 
reflects a view most people would have held in 1926. It also
may reflect JKR's own personal experience and her first disastrous
marriage.

Tom would have been been taught long before he met Merope
that even if he and his future intended were sure they were meant for 
each other, they'd be expected to wait if they hadn't known each other 
for very long. The potion made Tom desire someone whom he 
never would have thought suitable without it. But did it produce
the  urgency to consummate the relationship that (presumably)
made him rush into marriage? Or was that his own headstrong
nature?

Ron becomes very eager to see Romilda, and Harry becomes reckless 
under the spell of the Veela, but in both cases, they only seem  reckless 
to get their attention, not to possess them. 

I utterly agree with you that Merope took advantage of her husband-
to-be. I'm just pointing out that in 1926, the discovery of that would
not necesssarily have invalidated the marriage, even if a crime had
been committed in the process,  just as the discovery that Harry had 
been forced to  enter the contest through criminal activity did not invalidate
the goblet's choice. He was still bound by the contract. So was Tom.
So much for the good old days.

Pippin
glad to find some reason for the goblet of fire besides a plot device