harry potter - Hogwarts: So why aren't the kids "doing it"?

So you've got Hogwarts, with several hundred adolescents obviously suffering from raging hormones, living in sexually integrated housing, and the incidence of hanky-panky beyond snogging is apparently zilch. Huh? How can this be?

The out-of-canon answers are more than adequate:

JKR simply didn't want to write That Kind of Story (and I'm not convinced she could have if she tried). The author's choice is final.

Adding sex to the mix would have complicated the story horribly.

Adding sex to the mix would have cast the moral incoherence of the wizard world into unbearably sharp relief.

JKR's core readership (preadolescents) wouldn't have stood for it. The cries of "Eeeeew!" would have been deafening. And the sales would have reflected that.

As far as I know, JKR dealt with the whole thing by simply and comprehensively ignoring it, so there's not likely any explanation within the books (although I could be wrong). Is there a mention of a "Sal Petrus" spell worked into the wardings of Hogwarts?

So. Has the subject come up? Has anyone had the chutzpah to ask JKR?

Answer

As you can see from the Marauder's Map (seen in the end credits of "Prisoner of Azkaban") certain elements of the student body are clearly up to naughtiness.

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That being said, the creator of the end-credits is adamant that they're not having sex.

"Maybe it was meant to be Harry, but we've all been kids, we've all been in school and stuff ... It was just a sort of little peck on the cheek," assured Wetherell.

In Wetherell's mind, the couple's feet "are in an embrace" and "not having sex as everyone says."

Out of universe, JKR spoke about the apparent lack of ('ahem') physical intimacy in her books;

"The thing about fantasy—there are certain things you just don’t do in fantasy. You don’t have sex near unicorns. It’s an ironclad rule. It’s tacky." _{^{New Yorker Interview 2012}}

Comments

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