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

[Patricia Bullington-McGuire]

No: HPFGUIDX 54782

On Fri, 4 Apr 2003, Alex wrote:

> Patricia Bullington-McGuire:
> > I'm still waiting for some evidence that there is any sort of negative 
> > effect from using another wizard's wand. I'm kind of wondering if 
> > that was just a line JKR threw in without really thinking about 
> > the consequences.  
> 
> Indeed, which leads to another weakness on the following idea:
> 
> > > 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.
> 
> I'm sure Crouch-as-Moody was using Moody's wand, but if Pettigrew's using 
> Crouch or Crouch Jr's wand for day-to-day stuff, why isn't he using it in the 
> graveyard scene to kill Cedric?

<shrugs shoulders> I don't know.  If he is carrying around two wands,
neither of which is his, maybe he just grabbed the first one he found in
his pocket and it happened to be Voldemort's.  Maybe Voldemort's wand is
particularly good at killing curses.  (It's made of yew, and traditionally
yew trees are associated with death.)  Maybe he left it behind at the
Crouch home, either because he's forgetful and/or incompetent or so Crouch
Jr. would know where to find it if he needed his own wand in a hurry.

We really aren't given satisfactory answers to these questions, but I can 
imagine several workable possibilities.

> Patricia Bullington-McGuire:
> > 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.
> 
> But we do also see the silver hand that Voldemort creates for Pettigrew. 

Good point.  I had forgotten about that.  Still, I didn't claim only AK's
can be seen, just that some spells can be seen clearly and some others may
not be visible.

> I agree that Harry's POV might not have picked up more subtle use of
> magic, and there could be other spells that were just glossed over, but
> it still goes back to the problems I pointed out in my original post
> (54751) on this thread.

It's a troublesome issue, I admit.  I think, in the end, it doesn't matter
how Voldemort got his want back or where it was while he was gone, only
that he does have it now.  Any dark wizard worth his salt should be able
to keep *some* secrets from the good guys, and this may just be one of
them.  My personal theory is that Voldemort had managed to bind himself to
his wand so it would always be available to him, but I freely admit there
it nothing in canon to back this up.

----
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"