Ok, here’s something that confuses me. To cast a curse, do they actually need the document it’s written on as part of the curse itself? Regina destroyed the parchment for the Curse of the Empty Hearted, and I doubt burning it symbolically would have had the same effect — if the parchment itself wasn’t needed, then she could just whip up another batch of potion (if she could remember it) and cast it anyway. Rumple remembered the ingredients, after all, so technically he could cast it at any time if he didn’t need the parchment. In the past, when Rumple wrote the curse, he applied “True Love” to the paper so that it could be broken, and when he was bound in Snow’s cell, they used the squid ink to do it, so it seems like the written instructions are part of the curse as well.
If that’s the case, then Tamara couldn’t have Neal under the Curse of the Empty Hearted, but I wonder if the writers would go in that direction and give her access to something else — maybe something she stole a potion that does the same thing from another magic man or something? A little Love Potion #9, so to speak…
Revision: I was sort of thinking of this a minute ago, but remembered some other stuff. “Love Potion #9” was an early 90s movie with Sandra Bullock where these two scientists experiment on a love potion the guy gets from a gypsy.
The first thing Tamara wanted to do was experiment and test the potion she got from the Dragon, and Greg Mendel is the name of a scientist. I can’t recall what thread it was in, but someone mentioned something about GOAT (yes, I love that!) combining magic and science, which is what Dr Frankenstein/Whale did. His reanimation scheme wouldn’t work until he had the enchanted heart, so maybe that’s what Tamara did to bewitch Neal — used some scientific “attraction perfume” or whatever and then supercharged it with the magic potion.