11 Year Old Dark Wizards / Reasonable Restiction of Underage Sorcery

[Kirstini]

No: HPFGUIDX 68886

Dave wrote:> I'm also wondering if Snape possibly delved into the 
Dark Arts in the first place in order to counteract bullying...>

Then Les wrote:
> Like Dave I wonder if Snape's very early knowledge of jinxes and 
 curses came from an effort to counteract bullying.  Probably not 
James and Sirius's specifically, because they probably didn't know 
each other before Hogwarts.  But I really wonder about the 
motivations of a 9, 10, 11 year old to invest real time and effort 
into studying how to cast these spells (while avoiding being nailed 
by the MoM for underage magic usage).> 

Now I write:
1 - I think we may have done abused children to death (perhaps an 
unfortunate turn of phrase...)on the list this week, but anyway, I'm 
going to plunge on gaily in. Why couldn't he have learned all those 
curse in order to deal with his father, the aggressive shouty man we 
saw in the Pensieve?
2 - When MWPP, Snape and Lily were at Hogwarts, there wasn't a 
restriction on underage magic out of term time. One of the first 
things we learn about Lily is that Petunia remembers watching her 
trying to Transfigure things during the holidays. Also, Snape 
wouldn't have been able to get away with shooting down the flies 
either. Why was the restriction introduced? I wonder if we're going 
to learn more about this later. It does seem to be significant.