[HPforGrownups] Various comments/ponderings/questions on Voldemort and hi...

[eloiseherisson at aol.com]

No: HPFGUIDX 42935

Richelle asks lots of pertinent questions about Voldemort's wand.
It's a lot harder to answer them in this orderly fashion, I think as answers 
overlap.

Oh, I see Grey Wolf's got there first with his reply. Apologies for any 
overlaps. I'm not editing again,or someone else will post everything else 
I've said!

> 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.

Eloise:
That thorny question! 
Yes, how did Voldemort get his wand back?
I don't see why you shouldn't 'accio wand'. As you say, either someone with 
Voldemort took it with him/her, or it was discovered in the ruins. I have 
already suggested that it must have been imperative for the MOM to remove all 
the magical objects from the site somehow or other before the Muggles got 
there.

Why didn't s/he do something about Harry?
Well, if s/he knew what had just happened to Voldemort, s/he might have 
thought Harry a little too hot to handle, so to speak.
If it were Pettigrew, I think he'd just run. He wouldn't bother about Harry.
If it were someone from the MOM, then we're into conspiracy theories.

Richelle:
> 
> 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. 

Eloise:
He could have had it with him then; we don't know that he didn't. Clothes and 
wands, etc. transform along with the animagus, so he could have regained 
human shape to hide it later. (Someone suggested a little while ago that one 
of the reasons he chose to hide in Hagrid's hut was that that was the place 
he had hidden Voldemort's wand.)

Richelle:
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. 

Eloise:
If it were Snape, he would '*definitely* be double-crossing Dumbledore, IMO.
I have no problems suspecting Lucius. Perhaps he was with Voldemort on the 
night of the attack (as I suggested on the evidence of Harry's dream). OTOH, 
as you say, getting it back to Voldemort would be a problem, Particularly in 
the light of their conversation in the graveyard. Surely Lucius would have 
mentioned it, if he had been the one to restore Voldemort's wand.

Richelle:
> 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." 

Eloise:
Agreed.

Richelle:
 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.

Eloise:
I think that, 
1) by now, he's only concerned with Harry and
 2)  because he now has his body and is not *dependent* on Wormtail's help, 
he can enjoy commanding him from a position of strength, rather than 
weakness.

>From a literary point of view, it makes the killing of Cedric even more 
chilling, as it shows Voldemort's utter disdain for his life.

Richelle:
> 4) Jumping ahead a few years, to GoF graveyard scene--prior incantatum.  
> Does light always come from a wand when performing a spell? 

Eloise:
No, I don't think so. Sometimes it's sauce! (cf Molly's cooking).

Richelle:
 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? 

Eloise:
Quite possibly, although I'm not the person to discuss colour symbolism (are 
you there, Caroline?).

Two other possibilities:

Phoenixes are red and gold, so possibly it has something to do with the 
wands' common cores.

More prosaically, if you mix red light and green light, you get yellow light 
and there's not a lot of difference, I would venture, between yellow and gold 
when we talk about a light beam.

Richelle:
> Is that why the priori incantatum starts on Voldemort's wand and not Harrys? 
>  

Eloise:
No, I don't think so. I think it starts because Harry has *forced* the bead 
of light onto Voldemort's wand tip by his sheer force of mind and magical 
power. The wands were forced to duel and Harry's won.

Richelle:
>If it had met and become *silver* what would have happened?  

Eloise:
Dunno! I don't know that it would have turned silver.

Richelle:
Would spells have 
> come out of Harry's wand?  How does the priori incantatum choose which wand 
> to work with?  
> 
Eloise:
By which wand has the upper hand in the duel. If Voldemort's had won, then, 
yes, as I understand it, Harry's wand would have been forced to regurgitate 
its spells.

Richelle:
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?

Eloise:
As I understand it, it just works its way back through the spells cast in 
reverse order, but how some of these would manifest themselves is a moot 
point.

Richelle:
> 
> 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.

Eloise:
Now this is a very intriguing question and something that I have wondered 
about.
How *would * a Cruciatus manifest itself?
Although, you know, the wand does emit screams of pain, before the shadow of 
the hand appears. Perhaps that was the memory of the Cruciatus curses.
OTOH, as my own copy attests, JKR did get things wrong about this scene.
The lack of any memory of the curse that failed is odd, I agree.

Richelle:
> 
> 6) Let me expound for a moment on the "different wand" theory.  Someone (no 
> idea who, sorry) mentioned a while back something to the effect of a wand 
> being "overheated" such that it couldn't perform too many AK's back to 
> back.  All right, so Voldemort grabs another wand.  Who is there with a 
> wand?  Let's take a couple of guesses.  a) Wormtail, if he's around.  
> Voldemort could've changed wands with him which would've gotten Voldemort's 
> wand from the scene anyway.  Then Voldemort could've tried to AK Harry with 
> Wormtail's wand. 

Eloise:
This is true. We only have Ollivander's word for it that it was the twin wand 
that gave Harry his scar and how would he know?

(Now *there* would be a good place to hide a wand, with a conniving 
wand-maker.)

Richelle:

> b) Any other misc. death eater who may have been hanging out there.  c) Lily 
> or James' wand.  How horrible could it be to kill someone's baby with their 
> own wand?  If it were Lily's, could this be part of the ancient magic?  
> Something done to her wand?  
> 
> 
Eloise:
That's definitely Bangy! 

Richelle:
Here's where it gets fuzzy, stay with me here.  *If* (big if here) the scene 
in the film 
> is accurate, it took Lily a few seconds to die.  Not long, right?  But for 
> an AK, an eternity.  

Eloise:
As you say, this is a big *IF*. All the canon information we have is that AK 
is instant and unblockable.

Richelle:
IF this is remotely accurate (big if, I know, but possible) she was somehow 
fighting 
> the AK.  For what?  It added to her pain.  That would mean she didn't just 
> die, but suffered doing it.  Perhaps *this* could "overheat" a wand.  So 
> Voldemort can't use his wand to AK Harry, unless he stands around waiting 
> for it to "cool down" which wouldn't be smart.  So instead he grabs Lily's 
> wand, which is lying around somewhere and tries to AK Harry.  But it 
> backfires and he is pratically AK'd himself.  Torn from his body at least.  
> Since we do know that a wand can backfire (Ron's spellotaped wand) it's a 
> remote possibility.  I'm picturing an AK coming from *Lily's* wand to 
> *Lily's* baby and saying "Nope, not gonna do it," and bouncing back.  Yep, 
> far fetched. 

Eloise:
Not exactly far-fetched; it has its own internal logic and a deal of pathos, 
but it does rest on the two unproven premises that you *can* fight the AK and 
that wands *do* overheat if you get AK-happy (if that's what you're saying. 
I'm afraid I missed that theory first time round).
I'm afraid these would probably invoke a yellow flag. ;-)

In fact, we have canon evidence that you *can* perform several AKs on the 
trot and that Voldemort's wand did so, right there on the first page of GOF. 
Tom Riddle AK'd both his grandparents and his father, didn't he?

To be truthful, I think that the curse that failed just got missed out of the 
scene.

Eloise




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