Harry Potter: Love Potions, Explained (2024)

Some people have wished for a love potion at some point in their lives, but the Harry Potter series demonstrates that something so powerful can also foster great evil. It’s not hard to see why someone would want a love potion, especially when someone has unrequited feelings for another person. The issue is that forcing someone into a situation in the Harry Potter universe is never the thing to do if love is truly felt.

With how sought-after love is, it only makes sense that the wizarding world would have some kind of solution to such a common problem. It was a creative and interesting decision to make sure love potions were an immensely double-edged sword, one that many fans of the series may not be aware of. There may be plenty of fantastic potions for wizards to get their hands on in Harry Potter, but they might just want to steer clear of love potions.

What Are Love Potions In Harry Potter?

A love potion in the Harry Potter series is, on the surface, comparable to many of the other kinds of love potions that can be found across fantasy media. One witch or wizard gives the potion to, whether openly or in secret, the person they fancy in order to gain their unrequited love. While there are multiple different kinds of possible love potions to brew, one that is often regarded as the absolute strongest is Amortentia. Rather than any kind of ordinary love, Amortentia was said to cause a startling level of obsession in the person who received a dose of the potion.

The history of love potions, likely similar to Polyjuice potions, goes all the back to the 1800s when a witch named Laverne de Montmorency managed to create a variety of dangerous brews all by herself. While the particular potions she invented are not widely known, the wizarding world may just have her to thank for the horrors it would end up facing more than a hundred years after their initial creation. While the many love potions in existence may have unique effects, one thing should be made clear about the potions – they don’t actually produce real love.

Instead of a potion creating powerful feelings of love within a person, love potions simply heighten a person’s desire and obsession specifically for the person who administers the potion to them. While some wizards may have had dark intentions with the potions, and younger witches and wizards had even more foolish intentions, whoever the user was, they would be forced to continuously give new doses of love potions in order to maintain the effects. Luckily, there are known antidotes for love potions, the most simple being a hate potion which could negate the effects.

Why Are Love Potions Forbidden?

Something that may surprise many Harry Potter fans is that love potions aren't outright illegal in any sense, but instead, they are forbidden for use within Hogwarts grounds. The exact reason for why they are banned is never stated outright, but it is possible to make a few solid educated guesses. First and foremost, the last thing a school already filled with magical teenagers needs is those with hormones going wild dosing each other with a potion that forces obsession upon the person taking the drink. Considering love potions could be administered in a variety of ways, allowing them on school grounds could be a recipe for disaster.

Despite how fierce the Hogwarts staff rally against the potions on Hogwarts grounds, they aren’t left with much to do since brewing or purchasing a few potions seems relatively easy. For example, upper-year Hogwarts students should be capable of brewing at the very least some kind of rudimentary love potion if Professor Slughorn’s potions curriculum is standardized for all years. At the same time, the Weasleys were able to start their own little shop that offered a variety of different love potions, and based on the students who checked them out, they likely weren’t all that expensive. There is, of course, another much darker reason why love potions are banned…

Voldemort and Love Potions

While Voldemort never made use of a love potion himself, he is said to be a product of one. Dumbledore himself has some suspicions that the greatest dark wizard to ever exist was conceived with the help of a love potion. The fact that Voldemort is said to be unable to feel love due to the nature of his conception makes the use of a love potion a truly dangerous and terrible thing for more than one reason.

Long before Voldemort was ever a twinkle in his father’s eye, his pure-blood mother, Merope Gaunt, hatched a horrific plan. At some point, Voldemort’s muggle father, also named Tom Riddle, had garnered the affection of Merope. Sadly for Merope, it seems the affection wasn’t returned so she took it upon herself to continuously dose Tom Riddle with Amortentia, eventually becoming pregnant as a result. Whether due to her being hopeful the love potion would have changed something within Tom and had him truly loving her, or due to Merope simply being foolish, she stopped using the love potion and Tom Riddle abandoned her.

It’s a sad history for the Riddle family, but it goes to show that fiddling with powerful magics is never a good idea. With his father abandoning him before his birth and his mother dying shortly after, Voldemort was left with a horrific set of circ*mstances. Not only could he never truly understand love thanks to the love potion being used, but he also couldn’t hope to understand it from a peer-to-peer level thanks to having no one to care for him. If ambitious and jealous witches and wizards aren’t careful with their use of a love potion, another Voldemort could be created, just like that.

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