I'm trying to figure out loopholes when it comes to underage magic and the trace. So far, the only generally accepted loophole is using magic in an area heavily warded like Grimmauld place or at the place of residence of a couple of adults to that the trace cannot pinpoint who it was that done the magic.

But would the trace work outside the country? I don't think it would because it's no longer Wizarding Britain.

 

I think it would work, but the Ministry would not be able/allowed to punish you for it.

 

How so?

 

Outside of their jurisdiction? If you steal a car in New York, chances are you'd land in a NYPD jail instead of a Scottish one.

 

That's kinda what I was thinking. I also don't think they can trace under-age magic used in other countries because they have no power there.

 

Nothing in canon says that the Ministry of Magic can't detect magic done in heavily warded place like Sirius's House. The fact that Mrs Weasley doesn’t let the children use magic to help them clean may be considered as a proof that their magic will be detected.

The Trace, as I see it, is not able to tell who has done the magic, only that magic has been done around a minor. Since the Ministry know where most of the wizard lives, they won't send a owl to, let say, Draco Malfoy if they detect someone using magic in his proximity during the summer, because it's highly probable that the magic was done by his parents or an adult friend of his parents.

On the other hand, since Harry is the only wizard in Privet Drive, Surrey, all magical acts made in his proximity will be attributed to him and considered to be in violation of the statute of secrecy.

I believe that the Trace will work in other country. The reason the Ministry put the Trace on all young wizards to control their use of magic is because they are signatory of the International Statute of Secrecy. So while the Bristish Ministry of magic may not be able to prosecute, nothing stops the local Ministry to do so. No loophole here.

EDIT: Nothing stop the Ministry to demand the extradition of the offender to allow them to prosecute him.

 

Just like the USA can't use GPS to track people all over the world?

Of course they can, the Trace is cast on the person, not the area they are standing on, that would be impractical.

Another theory is that magical governments are working together with this and if an underage Brit cast a spell in France, then the French Ministry would gladly hand him over to the British one.

 

How would the Trace work in Grimmauld Place then? Everyone who doesn't know about it won't know about it unless the secret keeper clues them in.
And since I don't think that the Order would choose a HQ where no one can use magic without one of the minors staying there getting blamed for it, I think its pretty likely that the Trace won't work there.

Also, demanding extraction because someone might (it could have been a wizard native to the country they were staying in) have used magic when he wasn't supposed to? Unlikely. Maybe if muggles were around, but otherwise no one is going to care.

I think the Trace is something muggleborns get settled with to keep up the SoS, but for the general public its probably not as invasive as it is for Harry. Remember, the Ministry was slandering him at the time.

 

There are two cases where it doesn't seem as though the ministry detected Harry doing magic. Harry blew up Aunt Marge using accidental magic without receiving a letter. Perhaps in this incident we can say they already had an exception for Harry due to Sirius Black's escape. But certainly, we didn't see any indication that the ministry knew Harry did magic in the graveyard in the GOF.

Plus, there are the cases where Arthur came in GOF and the Order in OOTP to Privet Drive. They both did magic but Harry did not receive a letter. It is likely that they informed the ministry that they would be there and that they would be doing magic. Perhaps this can be used to trick the ministry into giving permission for magic to be done (by forging a letter for example).

Edit: Other people have mentioned Grimmauld Place. That is very interesting as any magic done there would give away Harry's location - unless there was some way of preventing the trace from functioning. I think the Fidelius Charm may have just caused the location to come up as empty. Either, the Ministry knew this location was under the Fidelius charm then, or they still had to be informed that Harry would be in a magical location.

In terms of extradition, the Ministry has no claim to do so in other countries unless they had agreements in place. Specifically, how do foreign governments monitor magic of foreign underage wizards visiting - do they apply their own trace? Or does the Ministry cooperate with foreign governments for them to have access to the trace's information (is cooperation even needed)? Then they may or may not have an extradition treaty in place (where Britain would handle the crime instead of the foreign country). It does seem odd that Britain would want to take responsibility for "crimes" committed in another country - in fact, if it isn't even a crime in that country it is very unlikely that they would.

The only international agreement is preventing muggles from finding out about magic. Different countries may go about this in different ways. Britain has strict laws concerning this, other countries may only care if a muggle finds out (although this would be much harder to enforce, so Britain's route seems reasonable).

Those two paragraphs don't add up. Other people are doing magic in Grimmauld Place. So the Ministry cannot detect magic there, or knows that there are adult wizards there. In either case, since the Ministry cannot detect that the minor performed magic, they should be allowed to do magic. I think it is just a case of a parent taking some rule seriously.

 

In the first case, Fudge could have stopped the letter from coming.

In the second case, Voldemort (being an experienced wizard and all) could have cast some sort of protection capable of negating the effects of the Trace.

 

Voldemort was certainly prepared for Harry's arrival. Depending on how difficult this protection is, it could provide a loophole. Although, putting the protection in place when you can't do magic at that location is another problem.

Perhaps, all magical homes (and, generally, magical places) have this protection and this is why the Ministry cannot detect magic being performed around minors at these locations. Then it is not a case of not being able to pinpoint who did the magic - this would be a breach of privacy. For example, the Ministry could know whenever magic was being performed in Malfoy Manor (or some subsection of it).

Edit: It occurs to me that one could start in say Hogsmeade, and then cast the protection charms in a series until you have it over the location you want.

 

I thought the trace was put on the wand? Although the Dobby/CoS incident suggests not. Interestingly, House Elf magic is supposed to be fundamentally different to a Wizards magic, so I'm surprised the trace even registered it. Perhaps it's done just on areas for muggle borns? Although, Hermione said she'd done simple spells prior to PS, and clearly 1. didn't have a problem with the underage magic rule then, 2. didn't get a warning for it.

I also suspect Molly Weasley just feels it's better for the trio to not use magic - she didn't seem too insistent in stopping Fred and George from doing their thing, which would have clearly involved underage magic to come up with some of their 'tricks'.

 

I mentioned this in my thread, the evidence that we have points to Voldemort knowing how to negate the Trace, he used magic outside of Hogswart before he was 17, including killing people and making a horcrux (someone please verify the horcrux thing, not sure about that)

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If the trace was active around Riddle, Ministry would have known that stunning spell was used at Marvolo's place and Riddle was there, then 3 AKs and Riddle was there, and a memory modification spell too, before AKs or after, not sure. Don't you think that should have raised some eyebrows? But of course, Ministry sucks and they didn't bother. Or the trace was not there.

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In GoF, if the trace was active, Ministry would have known the spells used around Harry. But another question that needs to be asked is how much area the trace covers, because the spells used around Harry will depend on that. Also, if it's small, it would have created more trouble for Riddle when he killed the Riddles.

If the ministry had the information about the trace, they could have investigated the veracity of Harry's version on basis of that, and as that was an international event, the facts should have been released in the newspaper. People might have asked for it, but we have no evidence that that info was released. Ministry sucks, people didn't bother asking for that information as they are careless and Dumbledore didn't bother to push the Ministry to reveal facts like the spells used around Harry and the last spells performed from the wands of Harry and Cedric to the public and make them realize that Harry is definitely telling the truth. Or, the trace wasn't there.

 

Regarding the graveyard in GoF: nobody knew Harry had been kidnapped, and he was in the middle of the Third Task, so they'd be expecting to see offensive and defensive spells. Further, it was during the school year so I don't think anyone would be paying any particular attention to what the Trace was picking up.

So the lack of Ministry response doesn't seem to indicate much. Kidnapping Harry during the third task was actually pretty clever.

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Even should Voldemort have the ability to block the Trace, pre-resurrection he was a weak and stunted baby. And we don't know if the method of breaking the Trace on yourself (his murders seem to indicate that he can avoid it or trick it at the least) is transferable to other people.

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The spells being cast that night don't prove much. I mean, we had the dead body of Cedric Diggory. Using the Trace to show that the Killing Curse was cast -- something that could be discerned from his dead body anyway -- doesn't add to the evidence much.

The important thing is who cast the magic, not what magic was cast.

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The Ministry appears to have special powers to pierce protective enchantments that private wizards do not -- even groups of powerful wizards like the Order and the Death Eaters. In DH we see this twice: the protections around the Burrow fall the second the Ministry is taken over, and then later, when the Ministry is able to remotely drop the protections around Harry, Ron and Hermione when Harry triggers the Taboo.

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You don't necessarily have to permanently break the Trace to subvert it in some sense. In fact, breaking it may be undesirable if someone later notices that you're using magic but nothing is being sent to the Ministry.

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Avoiding the Trace is generally depicted as a spell you cast on yourself or your wand, removing some active magic ("The Trace Spell"). I'd like to see someone do it via a potion, or maybe through some other indirect means. I've always wondered if an aging potion would be able to trick the Trace. An indirect way to trick the Trace might be not to do anything to the Trace itself, but rather to cast your normal spells with some special technique which hides them from the Trace.

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Most people assume that the Trace is some kind of active spell cast upon children that tracks them which is removed at 17.

It seems to me that an alternative could be that the Trace is a spell or object in Ministry possession that is able to track people.

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People shouldn't forget that the Ministry not Tracing people after 17 isn't a magical law, but a societal one. In DH, when it is suggested that Harry still has the Trace after 17, Ron says it's Ministry law to stop at 17. So if the Ministry were willing to break their own laws, or change the law, could they Trace adult wizards?

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We know very little about the Trace in general. Most people in this thread are considering absolutes: a person either is fully "Traceable" or fully invisible. It seems to me that there's plenty of room between the two. Maybe different types of magic, or even individual spells, react to the Trace in different ways.

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Cooperation between magical governments appears to be high. In HBP the British Ministry of Magic was quite easily able to arrange for Bill Clinton to forget to call Tony Blair to welcome him to office.

 

Does anyone need to pay attention to trace? What is system regarding Trace? Is it all computerized, I mean, magical? Or manual, or magical with supervision? Do they store information for some days? I think Wizards can learn a few things from muggles.

If the area of trace is large enough, and all the spells would have been picked, they would know two AKs were used and none of them were from Harry's wand. It's about letting the public know so that no doubt remains except in the heads of the absolute cynics, at least, in my country, even with all crap systems, the information available is given to the public. Gives the proceedings a more realistic feel, detective work is always conducted. Magical Scotland Yard. Also, the location might have been important.

Also, Dumbledore could have taken a memory from Harry's mind and shown it to the Minister at least, that would have mattered, but penseive wasn't invented till then.

Didn't trick the magic around the GoF. But maybe better aging potions might, which really increase or decrease biological age, but I doubt they exist, or if they exist, anyone but people like Dumbledore or Voldy can make them. We don't have any mention of people born 200 years ago still living.

 

It seems that treating the books as a full description of the entire knowledge of the magical world is a mistake. Just because something isn't explained in the book doesn't make it impossible. Just because something doesn't appear to jive with your own approach doesn't mean that your way is necessarily superior, because we don't possess full knowledge, the books don't provide that.

It's just the perspective of one kid, and the occasional interlude into what could actually be a huge world. For example:- With just the knowledge of the first book, you can't predict the new rules and magic that were introduced in the second and so on. So it makes sense that what we know is probably just a small piece of the whole.


Now coming to the points you brought up

Yes I am sure someone pays attention to the trace, they after all respond to them with varying degrees of force and use it to set traps.

I don't think it matters if it's computerized or not, after all computers are just highly efficient clerks, magic can certainly substitute.

Wizards think muggles are fucking barbarian sub-humans, I'm not sure you got the fact that a central tenet of the stories is racism?

Did you even read what Taure said, it doesn't matter if the spells were cast, the dead body shows someone did commit murder, but who? Was it Voldemort like Harry claims or someone else?

BTW, Pensive memories can be faked, which is shown in book 6 but the events we speak of have happened in book 4, so Dumbledore as someone knowledgeable about this world would know that the minister would deny their validity.

Again you fail to accept the point that you are in fact not knowledgeable about this world, therefore making comparing it your own experience and finding their methods inefficient is pointless.


It seems to me that all you are doing is just posting the first thing that pops into your mind without filtering the ideas down, and expecting the board to do it for you.

 

Whether or not this is relevant depends on how the Trace is recorded. If the Trace is recorded on paper, there must be a line on the spectrum of dectable and undetectable where everything that falls on one side gets written down, while everything on the other side passes. But--completely unfeasible, I know, but for the sake of argument--if the Trace was recorded in, say, flashes of coloured light in a room that Ministry workers watched, flashes could be, well, flashier depending on how detetable the type of underage magic performed was. Or even if the Trace was recorded on paper, but with differing font sizes--that could work, but it seems unlikely too.

Besides, then the line on the spectrum would move depending on which Ministry worker was recording, or in what mood Mafalda Hopkirk was that day--if they/she was angry that day, they/she could go out of their/her way to be vindictive and magnify the little squiggles that they/she would normally pass by.