Grab your favourite potions book and start brewing: Follow along as Ev, Irvin, Karoline, and our guest Gilad bottle fame, brew glory, and even put a stopper in death.
In this episode:
- Bacon is the essence of an Irvin sandwich
- The age-old question: how are wizards okay with love potions?
- How do you keep your mind during werewolf transformations?
- How do you spritz a restorative draught?
- Aging Potions would be a doctor’s best diagnostic tool
- Voldemort side-quest as a farmer
- Ev’s grandma and Voldemort have so much in common!
- Voldemort has to do something a little bit extra
- It’s so exciting for Voldemort to touch Harry!
Resources:
- Episodes 82-89 in our Potions series
- Episode 64 on the topic of Disbelieved Deaths
- Potions by Pottermore
Pub’s Jukebox: “Potions Yesterday” by Draco and the Malfoys
On the (off-)topic of magic systems:
I think that there do need to be rules for how magic works in a fictional universe, but they shouldn’t be communicated to the audience unless necessary for the story. (I like the note that Hermione knows all the rules better, but – alas – Harry is our point-of-view character.)
It’s similar to character details/backstory – even if something never gets mentioned, it will colour the way things happen, and the audience will notice the consistency.
The rules of magic don’t have to be as rigid and scientific (though, if that’s your jam, by all means); it’s more important that they capture the nature of magic. Is it wild and dangerous? Subtle and difficult? Whimsical? Eldritch? Can anyone learn it, or only a chosen few? Etc.
Yes, I completely agree. I think that’s where Jo hits the sweet spot – her magic clearly has rules and logic to how it works, but no one ever sits Harry down for a twenty-page exposition on it. Bonus: then we get to spend hundreds of hours reverse-engineering how it works, which is way more fun than reading it as given to us!
First and foremost, thanks for the shoutout from the last episode! It’s a pleasure posting the comments and an even bigger pleasure having them read and discussed. On the subject of love potions, they defintiely toe the line in terms of the danger of use and abuse. I think it’s cute that Molly and the girls giggled about the love potion that Molly brewed as long as it was just that–an assignment or an experiment in potion making. Hopefully Molly was mature enough to pour the contents down the sink rather than testing it on an unsuspecting student a la Romilda Vane pouring love potion onto Harry’s chocolate cauldrons, but the unintended target was Ron.
I loved your discussion of the other potions of the series I believe that werewolves who were innocent victims can definitely benefit from wolfsbane and they can integrate into wizard society. Similar to ADA acommodations in a muggle workplace, werewolves can take their potions leading up to the full moon and go into their safe space until the moon wanes and then return to their regular activities. Up until the night of Peter’s escape and the reunion with Sirius, Lupin was an excellent candidate for proving that werewolves can be teachers, healers, or any other vocation they want to pursue as long as they take precautions.
Last but not least, I’m stealing Irvin’s mom’s favorite saying about directing energy to worldlier goals and I plan to use it on my teenage son incessantly! I love you all and I’m looking forward to another great episode soon.
Thanks Irene! Glad you enjoyed it.
Maybe it’s the pessimist in me, but I don’t see what the story or the giggling would be in that scenario. “You guys… this one time… I brewed a potion in class. But it was a love potion! *dissolves into giggles* ” If there’s a story or giggling, there must have been some application (or even intended application) of the love potion.
Please convey my sincere apologies to your son, and tell him he’s owed a butterbeer from us.
I wonder if we need to do an “Odds and Ends” type of episode, where we discuss some “random” questions that don’t necessarily warrant an entire episode.
I always thought love potions were really more of lust potions. I understand why JKR didn’t name them as such, but might be a more fitting name given the potion isn’t actually creating love.
The Draught of Living Death not showing up again in the series is something I’d noticed before, but I hadn’t heard the theory of the lake water being the potion before. Unfortunately, I don’t think I subscribe to it. I like Irvin’s idea of the potion having a delayed effect, but we have no examples of potions acting that way in the canon so it’s hard for me to wrap my head around this one potion being the exception to that rule. It’s not impossible, I just think it would’ve been discussed if it was truly that exceptional. I also think Dumbledore (and/or even Harry) would’ve recognized the lake water as the potion and said something prior to drinking the potion in the lake. (Harry did see the potion in Slughorn’s class earlier that year.)
The idea of the aging potion being used for medical purposes is fascinating! I think the only way that works is if the potion is a temporary effect though. Otherwise, the potion is essentially a death sentence for anyone who consumes so much of it that they end up discovering what they die of. So I subscribe to it, but with the caveat that only if the potion is indeed temporary.
Spritzing the potion for Nick makes perfect sense to me. I had never heard that theory before, but had often wondered how they administered the potion for him. I wonder if Amortentia could also be used as a perfume of sorts? So I always smell good to whoever is around? Would that be a more ethical use case?
YIKES. The only thing more creepy than a love potion (which creates infatuation) is a lust potion, which sounds like it turns the sexual assault implications into the intended result. No thank you.
Whether or not it could be, I’ll guarantee there are Amortentia perfumes in the wizarding world that purport to do just that!
I feel the need to clarify…I hate hate hate love potions and lust potions both. But I guess I was under the impression that the sexual assault was the ultimate desired outcome for anyone using them. In no way am I justifying or defending their use in any capacity whatsoever.* If I were Minister of Magic, love potions would be Unforgivable Curse-d on day one.
*With the possible exception of use in a fragrance, with the caveat that the love potion used needs to be for fragrance only, and any other magical properties from the potion need to be dispelled prior to market.
When it comes to the question of why love potions are not seen as particularly concerning to most people in the wizarding world, I think a lot of it comes down to gender. I think Rowling is playing off of a true history of people going to their local witches to get love spells or potions or talismans, etc. In the wizarding world, we see that love potions are mainly associated with women. Fred and George are marketing them in “violent pink” and have them in their WonderWitch section. And, like everything associated primarily with women (and especially teenage girls), that means that they are painted with the brush of “silly and probably a waste of time, but harmless.” Dumbledore says that Merope probably chose a love potion to use on Tom Riddle because she would have seen it as “more romantic.” Culturally, women are generally seen as the ones who care about romance, whereas men are seen as caring about sex. Love potions, because of their association with women, are allowed to be seen as “romantic.” But can you imagine people’s reactions if Fred and George were marketing their love potions specifically toward teenage boys? Everyone would immediately see it as essentially a date drug. It’s the same potion, with the same ability to be abused, but the people seen to be the main buyers and users affects whether it is taken seriously or not. I think this is a really fascinating way to use this potion as a social commentary. Wizarding society as a whole see the potion as frivolous, but we’re inside Harry’s head as one of the potential targets of the potion, and we see what he thinks: that it’s crazy for it to not be seen as dark and dangerous and that anyone overheard plotting to use it should be reported on at once.
That’s a really good point – and, as you say, some remarkably incisive commentary from Jo about how society dismisses girls’ pursuits.