Various comments/ponderings/questions on Voldemort and his wand (really long!)

[grey_wolf_c]

No: HPFGUIDX 42933

Richelle Votaw asked a few questions, which I'm tackling secuentialy:

>>>> 1) First, let's go back to the night Lily and James were killed.  Who took Voldemort's wand from the scene?  Voldemort has said himself that he was torn from his body and could not hold a wand in order to perform any spell to help himself, so it can't be him. As I see it there are two possibilites.  a) Someone was with him and took the wand as he fled after Voldemort was vaporized (for lack of a better word).  b) Someone went to the house (probably before Hagrid arrived as he said he got Harry out just before the Muggles starting swarming the place) and found the wand and took it then.  Logically speaking I'd say for now the first is more likely, due to a couple of things.  One being that finding a wand in all that mess would've been like finding a needle in a haystack.  Unless you can "accio wand" or something.  Second, if someone on Voldemort's side had come wouldn't they have done something about Harry?  Either kill him or steal him, surely.>>>>> 

There is a third possibility you haven't considered: that Hagrid took 
the wand, and then told no-one for years and years because he wanted to 
have a working wand (which he camouflaged in the pink umbrella). Peter 
was hiding as a rat someplace nearby and saw him take it. Years later 
(in PoA, when he spends some time in Hagrid's shack, he discovers where 
it is, and when he flees from the shack scene, he goes for it. I don't 
really believe this theory, but it's workable.

Also, it's not as difficult to find a wand in between all that rubble: 
the wand should be lying more or less at the center of the explosion, 
since it was centered either at Voldemort or at Harry (my money's at 
Voldemort). Unless it was knowcked off by the explosion, it should be 
at "ground 0", which I assume it's quite free from debris (everything 
exploded *away* from that point). 

>>>> 2) So if someone *did* take the wand, who?  I'll operate on the premis that it was taken by someone already present.  The most logical person to be there would be Wormtail, as he was the secret keeper.  But whether he grabbed it and ran or whatever, if it were him he must've hidden it someplace immediately.  Or else he'd have still had it when he was cornered by Sirius and turned himself into a rat and went into hiding for the next 12 years.  Other possibilities?  Help?  Snape perhaps, if he were there?  But if it were him he'd almost have to be double crossing Dumbledore.  Lucius?  He has all sorts of dark art things he hides anyway, though I don't see how he could've gotten it back to Voldemort.>>>>

My own version is that Peter grabed the wand just after the explosion, 
when Voldemort had turned into a pile of ash. At that point, Peter 
realized that he was going to have to hide, and possibly thought of 
faking his own death. The best proof in that sort of cases is leaving 
behind something no wizard would ever voluntarily leave behind: his 
wand. But Peter could do it because he had a spare wand: Voldemort's. 
Thus, he could drop his wand and transform into a rat, safe in the 
assumption that he still had *another* wand if he ever ran into 
trouble.

>>>> 3) Who killed Cedric Diggory?  I get the impression, though Harry's not looking for us to know (blinding pain from his scar, wand slips from his hand, knees buckle and he hits the ground), that it was Voldemort with the "high cold voice" saying "Kill the spare."  And Wormtail was the second voice screeching "Avada Kedavra."  But why?  Voldemort says he killed Bertha Jorkins (he's got his ugly baby body [whatever] by now) and we know he killed Frank Bryce.  Why not Cedric Diggory?  He could hold the wand by now, I just found it odd.  Not sure what that means, if anything.>>>>

Cedric was killed by Peter, possibly because at that point it was Peter 
the one holding the wand. Voldemort oredered him to do it because if he 
had asked for the wand, then fumeled with it until it pointed in the 
right direction, etc, it would give Cedric time to throw himselves into 
cover (in other words: it's mroe eficient to ahve Peter kill him). It's 
also possible that the potion requires particuar strength (which he 
does not want to deplete by doing magics that Peter can do) or that, 
like in some medical procedures, you have to be "clean" no magic during 
the previous 24 hours, for example. I myself believe is more a matter 
of eficiency.

>>>> 4) Jumping ahead a few years, to GoF graveyard scene--prior incantatum.  Does light always come from a wand when performing a spell?  It's not usually mentioned.  Except there's always a green light with AK.  And in the dueling club when Snape shouts Expelliarmus there's a *flash* of scarlet light.  Back to the graveyard scene, Harry shouts "Expelliarmus" as Voldemort shouts "Avada Kedavra" and a red light comes from Harry's wand, it meets the green light from Voldemort's and becomes *gold.*  Get it?  Red/gold=Gryffindor?  Is there a meaning there?  Is that why the priori incantatum starts on Voldemort's wand and not Harrys?  If it had met and become *silver* what would have happened?  Would spells have come out of Harry's wand?  How does the priori incantatum choose which wand to work with?  Does it look at the spells just cast?  Expelliarmus being a defensive spell and AK being aggressive?  Or was Harry's leg locker and jelly legs stuff a bit boring? >>>>

There is always some kind of magical energy coming out of the wand, if 
nothing else. That magic is the one that has to be directed towards the 
objective. Sometimes, however, is more than energy: Draco manages to 
produce a snake in CoS and Snape ropes in PoA. In this case, 
Expelliarmus produces a red light. Since it travesl at the seed of 
light, though, it looks like a flash (I've got reasons to believe that 
AK's light travels more slowly than that, but that's better reserved to 
another thread). However, when both lights meet, due to the priori 
incantatem effect, neither spell takes due curse, but join in the 
middle and form a permanent energy bridge between the two wands, and a 
magical net envolving both of them (once there is enough free space for 
the net to exist).

Now, the rest of your questions are reduced to what happened during the 
priori incantatem effect. If you read the descrition, you see that 
everything happened in Voldemort's and because Harry won a mind duel 
between them, and pushed the globules into Voldemort's wand. The sort 
of spells used and the colour of the priori incantatem have nothing to 
do with it. Harry wins the will match, and that means that Voldemort's 
wand gets to be done the prior incantatem.
 
>>> 5) More Priori Incantatum.  Okay, we start with the very last spell performed.  Why don't the Cruciatus curses Voldemort kept doing to Harry come out as anything?    First thing we get is the hand for Wormtail.  I would assume only dead people come out, but there's that hand, which throws that off.  Then you've got Frank Bryce, Bertha Jorkins, then straight to Lily and James.  Why isn't there anything for the failed AK?  It blasts back at Voldemort, so I'd almost expect something from Voldemort to come out.  But there's nothing at all.  No lightning bolt, no bright light, no Voldemort/ Riddle--nothing.  This could mean one of two things.  a) No one was actually killed so nothing came, but this doesn't make sense since the Wormtail's silver hand came out.  b) Voldemort used a different wand.>>>>>>

There is no reason to believe that *all* curses have a visible priori 
incantatem effect. Maybe cruciatus comes out as a scream, or maybe 
there just isn't anything that's left in the wand to indicate that a 
cruciatus has been used. Notice that the things we *have* seen come 
from a wand are always visible: the death mark, the hand. The AKs, too, 
have a particular effect: they show us a refection of the person's soul 
(some people think it's *the* person's soul) that was killed by the AK. 
This, of course, rules ut the failed AK from appearing, since it 
destroyed no soul: not Harry's, who's still alive and well, nor 
Voldemort's who's "soul" (or what was left of it after years of dark 
magic) was forced to separate from his body and flee to Albania.

> Well, I think I've covered it all.  I do, however, have nothing
> better to do at the moment then come up with far fetched ideas. 
> Which I've done a fine job of, I do believe. :) 
> 
> Richelle

Hope that helps,

Grey Wolf