would you consider it sexual assault if in the hp world, you used polyjuice potion to look like someone you have a crush on and then masturbated? cause it is technically like using their body without permission.. sorry I just read something like that in a fanfic and it didn’t come with a rape/non-con warning so I was wondering what you think.

avantgaye:

yeah, honestly one of the HUGE flaws that i’ve found with the wizarding world is the apparent lack of consent/rape laws. i mean love potions??? essentially magical date rape drugs – they force consent (something that was touched on in the books with merope and tom riddle sr. but not nearly explored enough to not be super problematic) and the fact that they’re LEGAL and AVAILABLE FOR MINORS TO PURCHASE is NOT COOL

the imperius curse is illegal and unforgivable but that’s the only spell that i can think of that forces any kind of consent that is actually illegal in the wizarding world. there don’t seem to be any polyjuice potion regulations and oh my god, i could honestly see something happening where some male student gets ahold of polyjuice potion and some girl’s hair or fingernail clipping or something and takes the potion to look at himself naked and he takes pictures and spreads them around the school and totally shames the girl. and then when she protests and says it’s polyjuice potion, she gets shamed by the community because how could she be so foolishly unaware that someone was plucking a hair off her robes?

i mean, it’s a worst case scenario (because how would a student just stumble upon polyjuice potion? he could make it of course but what a ton of effort that is just to sexually harrass a girl) but it’s so plausible because it’s the kind of thing that does happen in the muggle world (granted, with less magic involved)

the regulations on potions and hexes has always perplexed me though. i mean veritaserum exists but there seem to be regulations on it that prevent it from being used in court (which confuses me because isn’t a perfect court system an honest one? if you swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, why wouldn’t you be made to take veritaserum? especially because wizards who are deemed guilty are given the cruellest of punishment – emotional torture, essentially, and isolation – so why wouldn’t the court system want to utilize the technology at hand to make absolutely sure that the person they think is guilty is definitely 100% guilty)

harry potter is a great series but the worldbuilding, while so intricate in some ways, is so flawed in so many ways i can’t