underage magic, fifty years ago

[Scott]

No: HPFGUIDX 18187

Steve wrote:
"If he was underage, and if there was a law at that time, I don't 
think we can judge the enforcement procedures for that law by what we 
see happen to Harry. The law seems to me to be practically 
unenforceable -- how do they know that the spell-caster was the 
underage person at that address, for example? More than likely, mom 
or dad do the enforcing. In Harry's case, however, the Ministry is 
monitoring VERY closely. They want him protected from Voldemort and 
his supporters and they know that an instance of magic in a Potter-
related place where no magic should be would be a dead give away. I 
think that part of the protections set up by Dumbledore involve close 
monitoring of Harry's actions when he's away from school, and that 
includes magic use."

--I think it could be likened to laws requiring kids to wear bicycle 
helments, it's not always observered and can't be enforced so it's 
often broken. As we see at the QWC there are many kids that do magic, 
but they do use Dad's wand (right?) so one regulation for underage 
magic might be that they can't get a wand until starting Hogwarts, 
after that though...

Harry is indeed a special case, and I'd think that the MoM had set up 
either a "magic detector" to make sure that Harry didn't do any magic 
or (and IMO more likely) to make sure no one did any magic to Harry.

Scott