Wands and Magical Ability, Part Two

[linman6868 at aol.com]

No: HPFGUIDX 24169

W H A T  W A N D S  A R E

Well, the good thing about being so slow to follow up is that other people 
come up with cool ways to say what I'd been going to say.  Thanks to the 
people who posted on Wands and Genetic Magical Ability in the past 24 hours - 
good stuff!  And thanks to Rita for pointing me right about the 
dominant/recessive slip. :)

Discussion questions are embedded in the text.

STUFF FROM CANON: WAND IDIOSYNCRASY AND POWER

The best place to get information on wands, of course, is from Mr. 
Ollivander, the premier British wandmaker.  He explains to Harry on his first 
visit to Diagon Alley that his mother's wand was a "nice wand for charm 
work," while his father's had "a little more power and excellent for 
transfiguration."  He gives Hagrid the third-degree stare when Hagrid tells 
him that he's still got the pieces of his snapped wand, but doesn't use them. 
 Then he tells Harry, "Every Ollivander wand has a core of a powerful magical 
substance, Mr. Potter.  We use unicorn hairs, phoenix tail feathers, and the 
heartstrings of dragons.  No two Ollivander wands are the same, just as no 
two unicorns, dragons, or phoenixes are the same.  And of course, you will 
never get such good results with another wizard's wand." (PS/SS, Ch. 5).  

The wand also chooses the wizard; so clearly a wizard's wand has some sort of 
magical affinity with the personality of its owner.  James Potter, the 
Animagus, has a wand that is good for Transfiguration; Lily Potter's wand 
(and presumably Lily) is best at Charms.  Ollivander doesn't tell Harry what 
his wand is best for…but he does tell him that it shares its magical 
substance with Lord Voldemort's.  Does this mean that features of Harry's 
personality are like Tom Riddle's?  This is a question that haunts him in 
CoS; and it never got fully answered, despite Dumbledore's reassurances that 
Harry belongs in Gryffindor.  Some listmembers think this is a clue to 
Harry's unrevealed relationship to Voldemort, but no one knows what the clue 
actually signifies.  Any fresh guesses?

Hermione tells us in GoF that it is magical law that only wizards can carry 
and use wands; she wants to change it so that house-elves can use them too.  
However, is it clear that house-elves need a wand?  Dobby sent Lucius Malfoy 
down a staircase with one finger, and can pull appearances and disappearances 
that are not hindered by the no-Apparition barrier at Hogwarts.  In CoS, as 
they rescue Harry from the Dursleys, the twins explain that house-elves have 
great magical power, but can't usually use it without their masters' 
permission.  If a house-elf were to use a wand, would it have greater results 
than that of a wizard?  Or is it merely that the characteristics of 
house-elf/wizard magic differ laterally?  After all, Winky's claim for not 
using the wand is that she doesn't know how.

There has been much speculation about Ron's wand in CoS.  It gets broken 
during his and Harry's tumultuous arrival at Hogwarts by flying car, and 
throughout the book backfires on him, causing throbbing green boils, purple 
bubbles, whistles, slug burping, and other mishaps, before finally exploding 
when Lockhart tries to Obliviate them with it.  So why does it do this, when 
Hagrid's wand seems to work for him okay?  Several answers have been 
suggested for this, among them being that Hagrid's wand is actually his own 
whereas Ron's is a hand-me-down in the first place; Hagrid's had lots of time 
to practice and make a truce with his broken wand; it's a Flint; it's a 
natural anomaly; etc.  Or, I wonder, is Ron's wand just showing that like 
most Weasley things and people, it's characterized by longsuffering about to 
explode?  

Some people have posted about wands being used as a focus, or a lens, for the 
wizard's power; and clearly they serve some function of the sort.  Harry 
believes that his biggest disadvantage in his fight with Tom Riddle down in 
the Chamber of Secrets is that Riddle has taken his wand; in the fight in the 
Shrieking Shack, the fortunes similarly follow the people who can cast 
Expelliarmus fast enough.  When Harry loses his wand in the Death Eaters' 
riot after the Quidditch World Cup in GoF, he feels naked.  Examples of 
people not using wands include Animagus transformations (although it's not 
explained how the original spell is worked), Quirrell's deadly curse (I 
suspect, made using Voldemort's power), and various things that Dumbledore 
does like conjuring sleeping bags for the student body in PoA.  Wands don't 
appear to be necessary for potion-making, Divination, Herbology, Astronomy, 
or other classes that don't require charms of some sort.  Finally, there is 
the Priori Incantatem scene in GoF.  If ever we needed evidence that wands 
are important to a wizard's life, this is it.  

What seems to make the subject of wands the most fascinating is that wands 
are, even more than the Hogwarts Houses, a sort of wizardly Myers-Briggs Type 
Indicator.  This indicator speaks the most to the wand owner him/herself, 
rather than to everybody else who can look up whether you're a Hufflepuff or 
a Gryffindor.  Fleur Delacour has a veela-hair wand, made possible by her 
veela grandmother; Ron's wand is a unicorn hair made of willow; we don't know 
what Hermione's wand is; Voldemort's wand has a feather from Fawkes in it.  
Wands both reveal and conceal the most essential things about a wizard; and 
no matter how many times we discuss it we never completely settle whether 
wands are a clue to a wizard's destiny, personality, character, potential, or 
all of the above.  But discuss it anyway.  :)

H A R R Y  A S  F O C A L  P O I N T  

We learn about wands and magical ability most through Harry's own learning 
experiences.  So I'm including a section about Harry and his magical ability. 
 From Hagrid's introduction in Chapter 4 of PS/SS, we learn (sort of) what a 
wizard is; how wizards happen (sort of); what kind of world they inhabit; and 
how they do things.  

We also find out that whether he knows it or not, Harry is a talented wizard. 
 From the beginning, he doubts the fact:  

**
Hagrid looked at Harry with warmth and respect blazing in his eyes, but 
Harry, instead of feeling pleased and proud, felt quite sure there had been a 
horrible mistake.  A wizard?  Him?  How could he possibly be?  He'd spent his 
life being clouted by Dudley, and bullied by Aunt Petunia and Uncle Vernon; 
if he was really a wizard, why hadn't they been turned into warty toads every 
time they'd tried to lock him in his cupboard?  If he'd once defeated the 
greatest sorcerer in the world, how come Dudley had always been able to kick 
him around like a football?

"Hagrid," he said quietly, "I think you must have made a mistake.  I don't 
think I can be a wizard."

To his surprise, Hagrid chuckled.

"Not a wizard, eh?  Never made things happen when you was scared or angry?" 
(PS/SS, Ch. 4)
**

Apparently, wizard power manifests itself most during moments of urgent 
emotion, fear and anger being the most common types of urgency.  The 
competitive excitement of a Quidditch game is another, and so while people 
respect Harry for being a good Quidditch player, Harry intuitively discredits 
that strength as being another one that he only has in reaction to 
circumstances.  In fact, Harry doesn't believe that his power has an internal 
locus of control; note that he attributes his success in learning Accio to 
his fear at confronting the dragon (GoF Ch. 20).  He is surprised later in 
that book to discover that he can cast an accurate Banishing Charm on a 
cushion.  He seems to forget, or never notice, that the Patronus Charm which 
he masters is difficult even for his teachers; that no-one, not even 
"powerfully magical" Barty Crouch Sr., can resist an Imperius Curse as 
successfully as he can; and even when he flings a gnome off his finger in 
CoS, he passes it off as accident that it goes fifty feet and impresses the 
Weasleys.  Harry doesn't notice this, but we do, and it's the source of great 
debate.

THERE'S SOMETHING ABOUT HARRY

So is Harry Super?  Many listmembers don't want him to be.  They reason that 
since Lockhart's books would be stupid and boring even if Lockhart had 
actually done the feats in them, that the HP books would end up being boring 
if Harry turned out to be someone who can crook his little finger and rule 
the world.  But Dumbledore, being arguably super, is also arguably not 
boring, because he's wise, odd, and delightfully irreverent.  And even 
Dumbledore can't solve moral conflicts with a wave of his wand, much to 
Harry's dismay in PoA.  Three things seem clear:  there's something about 
Harry, and we don't know what it is yet; these books are (arguably) more than 
anything about Harry's coming of age; and being super doesn't solve moral 
conflicts, as Dumbledore shows.  So whether Harry is Talented, Super, a Sham, 
or a Regular Joe, the story arc is still about his personal transformation, 
just as the story of alchemy is about the Philosopher's personal 
transformation, and Voldemort's story is a story of (horrible) personal 
transformation.  This is what makes us want read more about him, because so 
far he is like Shroedinger's cat, and his fate is sealed in a box.  Still, it 
doesn't hurt to debate some more.  So what sort of person IS Harry?  Could he 
conceivably make a Philosopher's Stone?  Is his periodic flirtation with 
rebellion a teenage thing, a character thing, or a thing that shows his 
power?  Is he really, as Hermione says, a "great wizard" in her sense? In any 
other sense?

Ladies and Gentlemen, the floor is yours.

Lisa I.



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