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Harry Potter: Where Was the Sex at Hogwarts?

Don't tell me that teenage wizards are not interested in sex.

By Charlotte PoitrasPublished 6 years ago 8 min read
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Via Clevver

In seven books by J.K. Rowling and eight Harry Potter movies, we followed three teenagers and their friends who grew up to be young adults. They all fell in love one or two times in this story, but there was always one thing missing: they kept kissing and never had sex. Potterheads can't believe that with all these hormones and this boarding school, no wizard ever tried to have sex in a closet while Filch was not there. This is why we are going to be talking about what is wrong with the sex at Hogwarts.

No Sex Before Marriage

Via Bustle

Wizards do become pregnant and have kids, which means that they do have sex. However, all the parents have one thing in common: they were all married. One of the greatest examples is Harry Potter's parents, James and Lily Potter. They fell in love at Hogwarts, and both got married at only 18 years old. Lily became pregnant two years after, at 20 years old, and gave birth to a beautiful baby who would become the boy who lived. This is quite young to start a family when you think that Muggles usually got married at 24 years old at that time.

Remus Lupin and Nymphadora Tonks were also a great example. Even though they were both older, getting married was really important to them. Their wedding was celebrated with only witnesses from a local tavern, and this is all they needed to be ready to have their baby, Teddy. Bill Weasley and Fleur Delacour also got married shortly after during the Second Wizarding War even though they were in great danger. Once again, their relationship looked platonic before they tied the knot. Even Hagrid's father married a giant before having a baby with her, even though we don't understand how they did it. There is absolutely no sign of sex before a marriage.

While many people still don't want to have sex before their wedding, it wasn't the norm at that time in the Muggle world. There is barely any sign of any sexual activity between teenagers and parents are believed to all be husbands and wives. Does that mean that some grown-ups never had sex? There could be only one exception: Bellatrix had an illegitimate baby with Voldemort, as we can see in Harry Potter and the Cursed Child. But this is still their way to show that sex is bad. It is hard to believe that every teenager can resist the temptation if no one tells them that they should wait before being intimate with someone. This leads to our second point.

(We don't want to imagine Hagrid's parents or Bellatrix and Voldemort in bed. If he's missing a nose, what does he have down there?)

There is no sexual education.

Via Mary Sue

In Harry Potter, there was no sign of any sexual education, either it was in class or with their parents. Teenagers did talk about dating, but it was only about their relationships and sex was not involved. For example, Harry and Ron talked about girls while they were lying in bed. Hermione also talked to the boy who lived about how bad she felt when Ron and Lavender were dating and he also talked to his friends about his first kiss with Cho. However, there is no sign of anyone asking if they are ready to have sex or if anyone ever did it.

We understand why no one ever dared to ask McGonagall what a clitoris was or tell their parents about the curse that makes their sex grow in their pants. But we can still criticize that a boarding school where teenagers spend seven years of their lives should have taken the opportunity to give them a little sexual education. As a teenager, it is really important to understand the changes that are happening in your body, including menstruations and the spell to stop the flow. The only thing we saw was McGonagall teaching kids how to dance with their date. As young wizards will feel the need to be closer to someone, they also need to know how to protect themselves. But this is missing in the Harry Potter series.

With no sexual education, it is hard to believe that all the teenage wizards behaved well and never tried to discover sex by themselves before marriage. The only explanation is that J.K. Rowling obviously thought that it was not appropriate for kids and skipped this part, making education in Hogwarts totally unrealistic. In reality, teenage wizards would have come up with spells like "fetus deletus" to have an abortion, and it probably wouldn't have ended in the best way.

(Imagine just how many sexual spells wizards would like to use, in the best or the worse way...)

The Date-Rape Drug

Via Harry Potter Wiki

J.K. Rowling really thought that kids could only have the best intentions when they used a love potion to make their crush fall in love with them. But this needs to be recognized as a date-rape drug. Romilda Vane had such a big crush on Harry that she tried to drug him without his consent. But Ron is the one who ended up being obsessed with her, and it almost killed him. Voldemort's mother, Merope Gaunt, also used a love potion to seduce her husband, Tom Riddle Senior, and we know that it didn't end well. He left her and her unborn baby when he found out.

And they are not the only ones. In the store, we can see Hermione and Ginny looking at love potions. They see nothing wrong with this and are quickly seduced as it is marketed towards them. Molly Weasley also admitted that she used to have fun with these potions when she was a teenager. However, people who use love potion are criticized, just like Hermione when Rita Skeeter said that this is the reason why Viktor Krum was interested in her. Love potions are probably banned at Hogwarts, but that didn't keep it from being portrayed as something fun.

The problem is that when women drug a man, people think that this is romantic and she just desperately wants him to fall in love with her. But if a boy would have done the same thing, people would quickly think that this is a sexual assault. There is a double standard in the Harry Potter world that lets young women take advantage of men. While this is not portrayed as the best thing they can do, it is still seen as something that every teenage girl wishes she could do.

(And just imagine how people could use Polyjuice in a sexual way.)

No Promiscuous Characters

Via MuggleNet

If you ever read the Harry Potter series, you already know that book Ginny is really different compared to movie Ginny. In the book, the young girl was actually really popular, mostly with boys. She didn't wait around for Harry but started dating other guys instead because she had other things on her mind. She wasn't even desperate when Harry had a crush on Cho and tried to help him. Ginny was also a hero at Hogwarts while the trio was hiding from Voldemort. However, in the movie, she doesn't have a personality anymore, and it is hard to understand why the boy who lived ever fell in love with her.

In the movie, Ginny was just a girl who used to fantasize on Harry Potter until she had the chance to awkwardly kiss him at the Burrow and at Hogwarts. For the rest of the movie, she was just a weak princess waiting for her Prince Charming to save her. They turned a confident girl who loves to dates guys into a boring girl who could fit their standard. And she is not the only girl who changed. Cho used to be a desperate girl who kept crying over the death of her ex-boyfriend when she was on a date with Harry. Maybe it was a good idea to show a better side of her in the movie. The sexiest scene we ever saw in the movie was the vision of Harry and Hermione naked and kissing. But once again, it was not portrayed as beautiful, but something that we should fear.

No matter what, no promiscuous characters have their place at Hogwarts in the movie. Women have to be good girls if we want the audience to like them and they are turned into nothing but a love interest that the hero wins at the end of the movie. J.K. Rowling did better than that and the director made a bad decision when he ruined movie Ginny.

(Do promiscuous wizards ever get some kind of magical STD?)

The Rules at Hogwarts

Wizards and Whatnot

We still know that Hogwarts did try to make sure that boys weren't too intimate with girls. For example, boys are not allowed in girls dorms. When Harry tried to meet Hermione in her room, Gryffindor girl's staircase turned into a slide when he was on the sixth stair. However, the same thing doesn't happen if a girl tries the enter the boys' dormitories as Hogwarts founders believed that women were more trustworthy than men. Not only boys and girls shouldn't be too close to each other, but they underestimated them when they thought that girls wouldn't want a young teenage boy in their bed.

Dolores Umbridge is another character who tried to make sure that wizards stayed apart from each other. One of the rules forbade boys and girls from being within six inches of each other. However, gay couples must have been laughing at this one, as the new principal didn't simply ban public display of affection. This heteronormativity is another thing that J.K. Rowling got completely wrong.

This rule didn't keep teenagers from being more intimate. For example, on the Marauder's Map in the credits, you can see two people so close to each other that they must at least be making out. In one of the Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire deleted scenes, we can see some couples making out outside. As we can only hear what is happening in the carriages before Severus Snape stops them, we can imagine that they are going a little wild. However, they cut the scene so we can imagine that they regretted this decision.

(We know that some wizards found a way to make love in the room of requirement when they really wanted to do it.)

Will we ever get the chance to see queer characters in the Harry Potter universe? Make sure you read Fantastic Beasts: Are We Ready for a gay Dumbledore?

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Charlotte Poitras

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