A/N: This is in response to a scandal in the Harry Potter RPG Beyond Stone Walls. A Slytherin male has impregnated a Ravenclaw female and Snape took the brunt of the blame. We will assume that there is such a thing as a birth control potion for the sake of this article.
On Contraception
Perhaps since before the establishment of orderly civilization, young men and women alike have exploited areas of solitude and privacy, whether it be behind closed doors or under the shade of natural foliage, to sate their natural, carnal desires. However, despite these natural urges, methods to prevent accidental conception have changed and advanced over the centuries to become so convenient that one merely has to drink down a small sip of elixir. Moreover, despite this convenience, the unthinkable has happened within the hallowed halls of Hogwarts.
Unlike the more permissive Beauxbatons and Drumstrang, Hogwarts has not had a case of pregnancy scandalise its halls since the middle ages. It is curious, then, that our first instance of student pregnancy did not happen during the Hipster Movement of the sixties, but rather in the generation of their children.
Such a strange occurrence, however, is not to be blamed upon bad parenting entirely. Most of the blame rests upon the individuals involved, the soon to-be-parents. The acquiring of the drug needed to prevent contraception before marriage is fairly simple to get within the halls of Hogwarts. One merely has to either walk into the Hospital Wing and procure it from its carefully labeled shelf or fetch it from the compartment in the Slytherin Common Room.
Keeping the latter location in mind, one must then wonder why it was a Slytherin, a notoriously experienced Slytherin, who is now to become a young father. Surely there is no doubt that the individual has a brain and has been involved in sexual congress before, and yet, he has made a slip so close to the closing of his schooling.
One cannot blame his Head of House and one certainly cannot blame the school itself for this lapse. Professors can only see so much.
If anything, one has to blame a lack of communication between the two responsible parties. It is no secret that the female in questions has also been with many partners. In such an experienced coupling, one would think that such a thing wouldn't happen at all! One cannot blame the potion for not working as the potion was brewed by the Potions Master himself, not by some bumbling idiot of a student!
However, this writer digresses. The point of this article was merely to outline the three most effective ways to avoid such accidents from ever happening within Hogwarts again.
The three ways are to:
1) Drink (if female) the potion the day intended for such congress to occur. The potion lasts approximately twenty-four hours.
2) Ask your partner if she had taken the potion yet. If not, have one ready for her.
3) Keep your trousers zipped, buttoned, and belted and just say "no" to any offers.
The three methods above are the safest ways to avoid conception and ought to be common knowledge amongst the student body by now. The potion, like sexual intercourse, is not esoteric knowledge amongst the general wizarding population.
In brief, if you wish to make a child, make it outside the castle.