Wand cores

[jodel at aol.com]

No: HPFGUIDX 44376

Dave Hardenbrook writes;

>>One thing about Ron -- When exactly do we learn about Ron's wand? Is it 
before or after it snapped in _CoS_?  And if before, did he get another with 
the same core?


Another question: Do two wands have to be from the same individual animal to 
be "brothers"? -- In other words, if Harry and Voldy's wands had come from 
*different* Phoenixes, would Priori Incantatum still have happened?>>

We know that Ron's original wand (Charlie's old wand) had a unicorn hair core 
because he was poking the hair back into the core on the Hogwarts express in 
Stone. That wand had clearly been through the wars and it's no wonder Charlie 
replaced it before going off to work with dragons. Ron's own wand was 
purchased at the beginning of Prisoner and he was showing it off to Harry as 
soon as they met up. It was also a unicorn hair wand. 

We are given the impression from Mr Ollivander's speech to Harry that unicorn 
hair is the best core for Charms work. All of the Weasleys appear to be very 
strong at Charms, leading me to suspect that most of them probably are using 
unicorn hair cored wands.

And, yes, in order for two (or more) wands to be "brothers" the cores must be 
taken from the same animal. Olivander states quite clearly that he ONLY uses 
unicorn hair, phoenix feather and dragon heartstring cores in his wands, 
which means that there are a lot of each of them out there. If all that was 
necessary was for the cores to be of the same type there would be Priori 
Incantitums going off just about whenever two wizards had an argument.

If Harry and Voldemort's wands' cores had come from two different phoenixes, 
at best we would have seen a repeat of the duel with Draco in the corridor of 
Hogwarts with the spells coliding and richocheting in different directions. 
At worst (and given that AK is "unblockable") the AK would have overridden 
the Expeliarmus and gotten Harry if he didn't get out of its way in time. 

Now, what we DON'T know is whether Olivander is the ONLY wand maker in 
Brittan or whetrher he is just the one in Diagon Alley that Hagrid took Harry 
to. There is a good chance that his establishment is the oldest, but we have 
no information as to whether he is the only one. (That he was the "expert 
witness" called in to perform the Weighing of the Wands for the Tri-Wizard 
Tournement only establishes that he and Dumbledore have some degree of 
association, which was further confirmed by Dumbledore's statement that 
Olivander had alerted him when Harry was chosen  by the second Fawkes wand.) 

-JOdel