Underage magic enforcement

[justcarol67]

No: HPFGUIDX 94836

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, Ms Mo Me <fauntine_80 at y...> wrote:
> Message: 25
>    Date: Wed, 31 Mar 2004 21:48:02 -0000
>    From: "JoAnna" <pt4ever at y...>
> Subject: Re: Underage magic enforcement
> 
> Carol:
> <<<If, as others have speculated, the underage magic
> is detected by identifying the wand, then a child under eleven would
> be using someone else's wand or no wand at all, and the MoM
> could not identify the child who cast the spell. 
> 
> <snip>
> 
> 
> Mo:
> 
> Didn't Harry get an official warning when Dobby made
> the cake fall on the lady's head?  No wands were being
> used then, because Uncle Vernon had HP's wand locked
> away.

Carol:
Yes. Which is why I said "if" and attributed the theory to other
posters. I've always had doubts about the wand theory but wanted to
suggest that *if* it's true or partly true, children under eleven
would not have bought their wands yet and wouldn't be traceable. Also
there were about 100,000 wizards and witches at the Tri-Wizard
Tournament and the MoM was trying to control detectable magic (from
purple fires to children on toy brooms and failing miserably.
Something similar seems to have happened at the MoM--a large number of
people, some of age, some not, performing a variety of spells,
including at least one successful and one unsuccessful Crucio, and no
one was detected performing underage magic.

So I think we're back to specific areas being monitored more closely
than others and by different methods. Certainly Harry's house is most
closely watched, and not necessarily because he lives with Muggles.
I'm back to the theory I started out with, that the MoM detected the
spell itself (Dobby's hover charm), not the wand, and assumed that
Harry performed the magic because he was the only (known) wizard in
the neighborhood. They also detected Harry's wandless "blowing up" of
Aunt Marge (but for reasons of their own, didn't punish it). But then
we have to explain why other magic, such as Arthur's "sorting out" the
Tont-tongue toffee incident, wasn't detected. (True, it's not
"underage magic," but neither was Dobby's. Maybe the Order has ways of
concealing its spells from the MoM. But how about Sirius appearing as
a dog in Little Whinging in PoA? The MoM was on the lookout for him,
too. Are they just inept?

Carol, who knows we've been through all this before but still can't
find a single, consistent explanation that would make everything clear