Harry's wand and priori incantatum

[Grey Wolf <greywolf1@jazzfree.com>]

No: HPFGUIDX 51460

Julie wrote:
> Hello.
> I have a burning question, that probably can't be clearly answered, 
> but might be speculated on.
> During the fiasco at the Quidditch World Cup, Crouch Jr. steals 
> Harry's wand and sends out the dark mark. When the ministry wizards 
> come and preform priori incantatum on the wand the shadow dark mark 
> comes out proving it was his wand that preformed the spell.
> My question is:
> If during the end of GF during the duel between Voldemort and Harry, 
> Voldemort had been stronger and forced the priori incanatum on 
> Harry's wand, would we have seen that shadow again? Or perhaps since 
> it had already been expelled, it was deleted from the wand?

The short answer to your question is: we don't know. There isn't canon 
to prove either way that spells, once Priori Incatatum'ed, are 
"deleted" from the pile and are never seen again.

However, the short answer is no fun, so I'm going to give you my own 
theory. No, the spells aren't deleted, and if Harry had lost,  we 
would've seen the ghostly skull once more. Why? It just fits better 
with my understanding of the way wands work. That theory, however, 
takes a little too long to explain - you can probably find it in the 
archives, though. If *really* interested and cannot find it, e-mail me 
and I'll look it up for you.

> If the spells were deleted, it might explain why some of the spells 
> Voldemort preformed (AK on Harry for example) didn't come back out of 
> his wand. Perhaps, whomever had the wand did Priori Incantatum to 
> make sure it was Voldemorts wand and the spell came out then and was 
> deleted from the wand.
> Or perhaps it did come out, but in a way that was unnoticable. After 
> all the crucios were only heard as screams, and the we don't know 
> what actually happened with the spell, so perhaps something did come 
> out, even a silence, which we didn't notice.
> Just a few thoughts.
> Discuss?
> 
> Julie

This has been brough out before, but it was some time back, so I'll go 
through my theory again - it's a way of keeping it fresh. The way I see 
it, each spell responds to priori incantatem effects differently. The 
AK, thus, displays an "image" of the soul it desrtroyed (another 
version states that it *is* the soul, not just its image) [note: by 
soul I mean whatever the ghosts are made of - I'm not trying to start a 
religious debate]. However, in Harry's case, the AK was unssuccesful - 
it destroyed no soul, so there is no reason for the spell to be 
displayed (maybe it did, but since there was no soul it couldn't be 
apreciated). From that, I induce that, in general, unsuccessful spells 
are not displayed (i.e. if your "jelly-legs" curse hits my "shield 
charm" and then we perform a priori incantatem, we would see or hear 
nothing).

Why do I say this, anyway? Because not all spells have an image. The 
skull, the silvery hand and the AKs do have a visual remanent, but in 
the case of cruciatus, only screams came out of the wand. I'm not sure 
of what is the priori effect of the Imperio - maybe it has none, maybe 
is more screms, and thus it is confused with the cruciatus.

Hope that helps,

Grey Wolf