Can Muggles do Magic? In *one* of the cases you mentined, yes.

[aldrea279]

No: HPFGUIDX 41400

Uncmark:
>>Now if a Teaset would work for Muggles, wouldn't an invisibility 
cloak? Could Dudley fly a broom? Agreed Dudley's stupid, but could 
you picture him finding Harry's potion book and trying to brew 
something to make him lose weight?>>

No, I really couldn't pictue Dudle willingly going off to mess with 
anything of Harry's just because he's curious.  Nope, not at all.  
Dudley's had some pretty *bad* experiences with magic(pigs tail, Ton-
Tongue toffees)- plus, not to mention how much his parents hate magic 
and how much that has been installed in him.

But...What about...hmm.  Harry gets back from school, and Dudley is 
still on his diet, worse than ever.  One night, Harry feels the need 
to sneak down to the kitchen and get some food.  He uses his 
Invisibility Cloak.  Dudley sees him.  After that, I can picture 
Dudley thinking about how useful a Cloak like that would be
(especially in getting food! =P) and trying to get to it...  And I 
can see him trying to use it, but the Cloak wouldn't be big enough to 
cover him- and he'd then get busted.

I think the Cloak is the only thing I see Dudley using of Harry's.


Rosie:
>>The reason Mr Weasley was involved with the tea set was, I think, 
because it
was originally a Muggle-made tea set enchanted before the witch died, 
tea set
got sold, and so on. Otherwise it wouldn't have been in the realm 
of "Misuse of
Muggle Artifacts". Looking at this another way - shrinking doorkeys. 
They can
obviously be used by Muggles and similarly they are Mr Weasley's 
concern,
implying that they are of Muggle origin.>>

I don't recall exactly which book the tea set thing is in, otherwise 
I'd go look it up to see exactly what that tea set did.  But, IIRC, 
the tea set was enchanted to pour and prepare tea on it's own.  But I 
think the Muggle owners freaked out, and started messing with it, 
causing havoc.  So I do agree that if something is enchanted just to 
do something no matter what, than it would work for muggles.  i.e.: 
Like the Invisibility Cloak- makes things invisible no matter what, 
or like the Ford Anglia- it flies, because it was enchanted, not 
becauase the wizard is making it fly.

But I *don't* think this includes brooms, or Potions  Why would you 
need to study Potions for seven years if anyone can just throw the 
ingrediants in a cauldron and have a working potion? And we know some 
people aren't as good at Potions as others- Lupin admits he isn't 
that great, and that's why Snape prepares him his Wolfsbane Potion.  
So I do think Potions involves some wandless magic, which is probably 
why some people can be so much better at it than others, and why you 
can have so very many different potions.

And brooms- I think it takes the wizards own maigcal ability to fly a 
broom. In their first flying lesson, the students try to get control 
over their broom by having them jump to their hands themselves.  
Harry's is one of the very few that do so.  Now, when Neville falls 
off his broom, it does keep going...but that can be explained away, I 
think.  

The broom was made to do so?  It's a school issued broom, and it 
sounds to me like those have certain charms on them.  Vibrate if they 
go to high, etc.  Maybe that broom had a charm on it that made it 
easier to get up in the air.  

Or maybe Neville's own force kept the broom going.  When a normal 
wizard flies a broom, I don't htink they are quite as terrified as 
Neville was.  And so maybe he was exerting *alot* more magical energy 
while he was on the thing, and when he fell off, the broom had enough 
magical energy to keep it going for a bit.


Peppermintfatty:
>>This leads 
me to believe that a wizard broom, at least in the beginning, is 
nothing more than a muggle broom, with a charm on it. <snip bit about 
Harry's broom flying on it's own, cause that didn't happen> In this 
case 
all of these facts lead me to believe that a muggle could fly a 
broomstick the same as they could the ford Anglia, with the 
difference being that they probably would not be very skilled at it.>>

Now, in QTtA, I think it does imply that the first broom were just 
enchanted/slightly enhanced Muggle ones.  But that was before wizards 
were so skilled at outing Muggles, and so they had to hide themselves 
by not being so obvious.  But nowadays it's obvious they've moved 
well past that, because Harry's Firebolt would never be mistaken for 
a normal Muggle broom.  The only purpose wizard brooms serve now is 
to make them fly, they in no way can be mistaken for a Muggle one.

But, QTtA also states that the first brooms could only go forwards 
and backwards, and at a fixed speed.  So maybe in the very beginning 
they were only enchanted peices of wood...but then wizards got into 
the whole broom thing, and they really improved on the idea.  I think 
brooms are something like wands, only not quite so personal.  Brooms 
help wizards focus their magical abilities on flying, like wands help 
focus/enhance a wizards magic, only not quite on that level. Which is 
probably why Harry is so good at flying- we know the boy is just 
*teeming* with magical abilities.  Which might also be why in CoS(I 
think) Harry was able to outrun Malfoy, even though Malfoy had the 
faster broom. So I don't think a Muggle could hop on a broom and do 
much of anything.

~Aldrea