Detection of Underage Magic

[caliburncy at yahoo.com]

No: HPFGUIDX 23256

This is basically in response to one of Amber's question from the 
summary, although I am expanding it to something more general.


--- In HPforGrownups at y..., "Amber ?" <inviziblegirl at h...> wrote:
> 
>And they obviously had to use magic to start it up (Ron uses his 
wand to 
> start the ignition in Chapter Five). Why didn't the Ministry send 
them a 
> warning for using magic during holidays?


For necessary pretext, what follows are all the holiday underage magic 
use instances I know of (with book and chapter in parentheses).  
Please bear with me; I do have a point, but must have this list first 
in order to make it.

1) Dobby levitating and crashing the pudding, which was blamed on 
Harry (COS2)
2) Small explosions from Fred and George's bedroom--MAY OR MAY NOT BE 
MAGIC (COS4)
3) Ron using his wand to start the car's ignition (COS5)
4) Harry blowing up Aunt Marge (POA2)
5) Fred and George's inventions, the Weasley's Wizard Wheezes (GOF5)
6) Hermione's use of the "lumos" charm in the woods at the Quidditch 
World Cup (GOF9)
7) Use of various curses on Malfoy, Crabbe, and Goyle (GOF37)

I am sure there are others, but this is what I can remember off the 
top of my head.

Anyway, out of these instances only one is punished, the first one.  
I think some people naturally assume that the ease with which 
the Ministry found out about this instance would also apply to all 
other instances.  I have yet to see any corroborating evidence to this 
(though perhaps now that I've joined this group I will ;) ).  But I 
really don't think that the Ministry posses this sort of omniscient 
awareness of any magic that goes on.  For them to have the ability to 
automatically detect such occurences seems unlikely (imagine the 
power they'd have if they could detect every spell that was cast).  
Still, for the moment, let's assume this sort of thing were true, 
that the Ministry knew about all of the above instances.  The 
following then would be some corresponding explanations for why they 
didn't issue any warnings:

1) This, of course, they did issue a warning on so it's not relevant.
2) Maybe they didn't consider this serious enough an offense, taking 
place in a wizard house.  Or maybe it didn't involve magic at all 
(though a passage much later in GOF5 implies it did)
3) Maybe they overlooked this since they were already being punished 
by the school.
4) We know that they did know about this and overlooked it because 
they were relieved that Harry was okay (since Black was on the loose).
5) Same as 2, more or less
6) Maybe they considered this part of the "emergency situation" 
section Ron mentions in COS5.  Or maybe they cut Hermione some slack 
based on her spotless record.
7) Maybe (since this was the last chapter of the book) they do get 
punished and we just don't hear about it.

These are resonable enough explanations, but we might be viewing it 
through the wrong filter, assuming that just because they detected 
the first occurance, they have the means to detect all the others.  
Maybe the Ministry simply didn't know about all those other instances 
(excepting 1 and 4).  In my opinion, that makes things much simpler.  
The warning letter Harry recieves in instance 1 says that the Ministry 
had "received intelligence that a Hover Charm was used . . ."  What 
form did this intelligence take?  Maybe Dobby simply turned him in 
(probably anonymously)?  After all, Dobby did that expressly for the 
purpose of getting him in trouble.  Maybe the Ministry can't detect 
these things at all and only find out about these things in the same 
way our own law enforcers might.

My apologies on not having explained this well.  Perhaps if there is 
confusion I will be able to elaborate on this in a way that is more 
concise.  Perhaps someone will refute this entirely in a single post. 
 Only time will tell.

-Luke