Love potions and double standards in Harry Potter and fandom

[jademoonleader.livejournal.com]

It was mentioned on a previous thread that there is a creepy double standard in the series about how love potions are considered to be somehow OK if a witch uses them. For instance, we get Molly whom JKR wants us to love, giggling about brewing a potion that turns people into lust fuelled zombies. Did she actually slip the potion in question to someone? I really do wonder what JKR could have been thinking (if she thought at all).

The author of this fanfiction (link below) clearly adopts JKR's idea that love potions are alright for witches to use. The character Daphne Greengrass (who is only mentioned in the books, but never appears) slips Harry a love potion and then rapes him in order to curry favour with Voldemort, but bizarrely, all the characters, including Harry himself, blame Harry. What is stranger still, is that the author tries to curry sympathy for Daphne even though she had violated Harry for Voldemort. I discovered the fanfiction on the tv tropes double standards webpage.

https://www.fanfiction.net/s/8499608/1/Fun-with-Potions

The author actually writes in an author's note at the end of chapter 2: "I don't see why people are getting on my case for Daphne raping Harry. If anything it is just repeating how Merope Gaunt conceived Tom Riddle."

Does this series convince many that rape using love potions is not really rape?

Comments

[guardians-song.livejournal.com]

Eh, all the uses of love potions that I've seen in fanfiction portray them as straight-up rape potions*. I'd say the above author is the extreme exception to the rule (and thank heavens!).

*There is a ludicrous-but-fairly-common plot with Ginny dosing, or attempting to dose, Harry with love potion in order to force him into an actually-loveless marriage and Harry breaking free in order to run off with Hermione/Draco/Voldemort/partner-of-your-choice. I cannot remember seeing a SINGLE fanfiction in which this is portrayed as anything but High Villainy, unless you technically count the few in which she was actually being mind-raped into it by the Real Villain of your choice.

Re:

[vermouth1991.livejournal.com]

All canon examples of someone actually ingesting a Love Potion (Ron—Romilda and Thomas—Merope) had been disastrous, to say the least.