Caring about people

[Carol]

No: HPFGUIDX 184615

Zanooda:
> > When Moody explains the plan, he also doesn't say that Thicknesse
and the DEs can track Harry, if he Apparates, only that Thicknesse
made it "imprisonable offense" to Apparate from or to Privet Drive
(p.46). I don't know what this means exactly, but it seems obvious
they can't trace an apparating wizard, only to put a spell on a place
(a house in this case) which lets them know that someone *did* Apparate. 
> 
> > Maybe the spell even shows *who* Apparated, otherwise how would
they know whom to "imprison" :-)? If Harry's apparition was traceable,
I believe Moody would have said so, instead of ranting about
"imprisonable offense" :-).

<snip>

> Geoff:
> I wonder whether there's a tie in with underage magic spells here. I
think I'm right in that underage magic is only picked up by the
Ministry - when it's looking for it - as a spell being performed in
that location and hence the reason Harry was detected and reprimanded
was because he was the only wizard in the vicinity and obviously underage.
> 
> There was some discussion a long time ago about this and also about
the use of spells including Unforgiveables at an incident such as the
battle at the Ministry in OOTP where it was suggested that it was
impossible to detect who threw which spell.
> 
> By the same token, is the "imprisonable offence" only workable when
one wizard is involved? Can Thicknesse's minions actually identify 
individuals who have been wicked enough to want to Floo, Portkey or
Apparate to number 4? Or are we going to be mulling this over for the
next x posts?
>
Carol responds:

I can't fully answer your question, but as far as the Floo Network is
concerned, 4 Privet Drive is a Muggle residence and not normally part
of the Floo network. Only a Ministry official in the Magical
Transportation Department could connect it, and even Mr. Weasley's
unnamed friend who did it as a favor to him in GoF is unlikely to risk
imprisonment for it now. In any case, the Floo Network is being
monitored. We saw how that worked in OoP: Umbridge very nearly grabbed
Sirius's head by the hair. Whether she could actually see him or only
magically sensed his presence is unclear--certainly, the hand she
stuck in the fire was blindly groping. If she's placed her whole self
in the fire, she would probably have caught the guilty head and maybe
Sirius himself along with it. Given all that, the Floo Network is
clearly out of the question even if the Weasley fireplace hasn't been
boarded up again.

Apparition, I'm not so sure about. So what if it's an imprisonable
offense to Disapparate from that location if Apparition can be
detected but not traced to its destination and the Apparator can't be
identified? Maybe the've come up with a new spell that can identify
the wand that cast the spell (Apparition being a sort of nonverbal
spell that requires a wand) and therefore the owner of the wand (who
is probably the caster of the spell though, of course, there are
exceptions). Or maybe Apparition, including Side-Along Apparition, is
now Traceable (capital T) from a watched location if it involves an
underage Wizard. I don't mean simply detectable, which wouldn't matter
if Harry and his escort were gone before the MoM could arrive (seconds
would matter in that case, even if Harry's departure removed the
anti-Apparition protection on 4 GP), but actually traceable in the
sense that their trail could be followed, their destination known,
because of the Trace on Harry. Whether the MoM could break through the
protections to catch the "criminals" who Disapparated from that
location, or *would* do so before the DEs took over the MoM and Harry
himself became Undesirable  Number One, I don't know. In fact, I find
the reasons for not Disapparating while the protections were still in
place the least convincing part of the Seven Potters chapter.

Carol, who thinks that JKR is like Dumbledore, telling us only what
she thinks we need to know