- and then, all at once, it had been ripped away from her, like a tenuous dream. No, you are not allowed to do magic. She could do little more than turn matches into needles and levitate feathers; parlor-tricks at best, and ones she wasn't even allowed to use! You had to have school credentials, the headmaster explained; you had to be seventeen and have passed at least one of your OWLs, that was why Hagrid the gamekeeper wasn't allowed to do magic. Once she was seventeen the Ministry wouldn't be able to track her, they wouldn't show up at her house in an instant and arrest her and snap her wand in half - but without OWL accreditation it's still be illegal for her to do magic.