Sirius' Motorcycle, Licenses (was "Re: Harry's 16th birthday")

[princesspeaette]

No: HPFGUIDX 77758

> > Vik: 
>But wouldn't a flying motorbike be illegal as a charmed muggle 
>thing, like Mr Weasley's car and flying carpets? I'd assume that 
>wizards do need to drive (ministry cars) so they would probably 
>have licenses, and the age for driving would probably be the UK 
>one, which is 17 I think. That's when my brother started learning.
>I wonder why the ministry gets away with having charmed cars and 
>ordinary wizards don't. Such double standards. < <


sax_maniac81: 
>I think that's a good point to make, Vik.  When the Weasleys had 
>the Ford Anglia, they weren't supposed to fly it as it would be a 
>violation under the Use of Muggle Artifacts.  How does Sirius get 
>away with this?

Marianne: 
>Perhaps at the time Sirius had his motorbike, it was not a violation 
>of the use of Muggle artifacts.  



Margaret (me):

I don't think it was at the time.  In CoS chapter 3 'The Burrow' Mrs. 
Weasly says:

"Yes Aurthur, cars.  Imagine a wizard buying a rusty old car and 
telling his wife all he wanted to do with it was take it apart and 
see how it worked, while really he was enchanting it to FLY."

"Well dear, I think you'll find that he would be quite within the law 
to do that, even if- er- he maybe would have done better to , uh, 
tell his wife the truth...there's a loophole in the law, you'll 
find....As long as he wasn;t intending to fly the car, the fact that 
the car could fly wouldn't --"

"Aurthur Weasly you made sure there was a loophole when you wrote 
that law!"

>From this we know Mr Weasly wrote the law (probably recently or Ron 
would have mentioned a flying car in SS/PS when he told Harry his 
father was interested in muggle things) but defenitly after the 
attack on Harry as an infant. It says somewhere (I've looked in vain, 
but I'm sure I read in a book) that Aurthur was a junior officer in 
the Department of Magical Law Enforcement when Pettigrew framed 
Sirius and killed all those muggles.  And he wouldn't have been 
drafting muggle-artifact laws from that department.

~Margaret