[HPforGrownups] Voldemort's wand (was Re: Wormtail's Wand)

[Patricia Bullington-McGuire]

No: HPFGUIDX 54767

On Fri, 4 Apr 2003, Alex wrote:

> But isn't it odd that Wormtail can use it to kill Cedric? I would think that spell 
> would be pretty difficult and need some power behind it, but Wormtail uses it 
> to kill Cedric, the gardener and Bertha Jorkins. Maybe Pettigrew's a much 
> more powerful wizard than we suspect if he can use a suboptimal wand to kill 
> three people.

I'm still waiting for some evidence that there is any sort of negative 
effect from using another wizard's wand.  Normally I would trust 
Ollivander's word on these things, but we keep seeing wizards using each 
other's wands with no problem.  I'm kind of wondering if that was just a 
line JKR threw in without really thinking about the consequences.  

> And it still leaves me wondering who's wand he used when he was "guarding" 
> Crouch Sr. and subduing the real Moody.

Possibly he was using Crouch Jr.'s wand.  IIRC, the younger Crouch was
freed before Moody was subdued.  Crouch Jr. could even have done all the
nasty magic to Moody himself.  Then, when he took Moody's place at
Hogwarts he presumably would have used Moody's wand instead of his own
lest someone notice the difference.


The only prior spells we see during the Priori Incantatem effect are Avada
Kedavras.  I don't think this necessarily means, though, that those are
the only spells cast by Voldemort's wand.  After all, what would an
Imperius Curse or a Memory Charm look like?  It may be that very few
spells have an obvious visual representation (in the case of AK, the echo
of the person killed), but that the other spells are also released in some
sort of non-visual form.  A trained auror might be able to distinguish
them, but not Harry.

----
Patricia Bullington-McGuire	<patricia at obscure.org>

The brilliant Cerebron, attacking the problem analytically, discovered
three distinct kinds of dragon: the mythical, the chimerical, and the
purely hypothetical.  They were all, one might say, nonexistent, but each
nonexisted in an entirely different way ... 
                -- Stanislaw Lem, "Cyberiad"