Harry & Voldemort, wands and similarities/differences

[Diana]

No: HPFGUIDX 104253

"Diana" <dianasdolls at y...> wrote:
> > Fourth, Harry kills Tom Riddle by 'killing' the diary.  Maybe 
the way to kill Voldemort is by not attacking him directly, but by 
> > attacking his source of power which is separate from him?  I 
can't remember anything Voldemort might own that would be considered 
a source of power to him, but it's an idea, anyway. 
> > Sixth, Fawkes saves Harry's life with his tears just moments 
before Harry dies from the basilisk venom.  Maybe Fawkes [or some 
other magical object/person/spell] will do this again and save Harry 
after he suffers a mortal wound that would otherwise kill him 
without this  aid?   Whether this miraculous cure would happen 
before or after Harry defeats Voldemort is anyone's guess. 


Julie ["jastrangfeld"] replied: 
> Well, I am wondering now about the "Phoenix Song"  and how they 
both have the same feather from Fawkes in their wands.  And the 
wands can't attack each other, without one being incredibly 
stronger.  What kind of connections can you draw from this?  I'd 
like to hear more opinions.  I remember reading something about 
wands really being a point where the power is just concentrated.  So 
what exactly do the feathers do.  I mean if a feather from the same 
Phoenix doesn't want to attack itself . . .

Diana L.:
I'm thinking that Harry and Voldemort both having wands with 
feathers from Fawkes suggests how connected they really are, more so 
than they even know, especially since Fawkes gave only two 
feathers.  They are connected by fate and ultimately must battle to 
the death.  It seems poetic justice to me that both their wands 
contain feathers from Fawkes, the loyal pet of the only wizard 
Voldemort every feared and the wizard who witnessed the prophecy and 
has guarded Harry's life since hearing it.  Dumbledore may have 
hoped [or known?] that Harry (being *the one* in the prophecy after 
Voldemort's attack) would have ended up with the other wand with 
Fawkes's feather because he knew that those wands would meet again 
one day.  Harry having a wand that would at least give him a 
fighting chance if he and Voldemort cast a spell against each other 
at the same time is a bonus and could have been part of fate's plan 
from the beginning.  As for Harry being able to force those beads of 
light back into Voldemort's wand...I believe that this indicates 
that Harry is a more powerful wizard than Voldemort, but he just 
hasn't reached his full potential yet.

I would guess that the magic item in the wand focuses and directs 
the magic inside the wizard so that spells can be amplified and 
directed to a specific target.  How strong the spells are depend 
entirely upon the level of power within the wizard casting the 
spell.  I would also speculate that the magic element [all from 
living creatures - unicorn hair, phoenix feather, dragron 
heartstring, etc.] inside the wand chooses an owner based upon it's 
own compatibility with that wizard.  Fawkes is very compatible with 
Harry based upon their various interactions throuhout the books.  
Fawkes actually LIKES Harry.  As for Voldemort having the other 
wand, well both he and Harry are similar in may ways....  

Harry and Tom Riddle/Voldemort are *a lot* alike beyond their muggle 
backgrounds and jet black hair.  Both have spent their early 
childhood years living in a harsh environment they detest.  I don't 
know how Riddle was treated in the orphanage he lived in, but I'm 
guessing it was not great otherwise why would he hate it so much?  
We know Harry found out he was a wizard when he got his letter from 
Hogwarts and I'd be shocked if Riddle didn't find out the same way.  
Both never knew their parents.  

Harry and Voldemort are both very angry deep down inside.  We got to 
see Harry unleash his long-bottled-up anger at the injustice of his 
circumstances several times in OotP, most especially at the end.  
Harry keeps his anger in check usually, but it's always under the 
surface and available at the slightest push.  This is why JKR writes 
repeatedly about a powerful anger surging through him as his knee-
jerk reaction to many different events, whether overhearing insults 
against Hermione or feeling left out of the loop or facing the man 
who he believed killed his parents.  Harry gets angry, a lot.  
Voldemort also gets angry at anything that doesn't go his way, from 
receiving incorrect info to failing to kill Harry to feeling 
forgotten by his DEs.    
The difference between Harry and Voldemort, so far, is what Harry 
does with his anger. Harry mostly yells, then calms down and shoves 
the anger back down inside.  Harry doesn't torture or kill people 
when he's angry....but Harry asking Hedwig to peck Hermione and Ron 
until they gave him answers, and his later satisfaction at seeing 
the cuts Hedwig has inflicted upon them strikes me as a dangerous 
Voldemort-like way to act out upon his anger.  Voldemort gets angry 
and people are tortured and/or killed.  Maybe Harry will have to 
finally unleash his deep resevoir of anger against Voldemort in the 
end in order to kill him?   
For differences between them, the biggest is that Harry has the 
capacity to love and be loved in return.  Voldemort loves no one and 
no one loves him, fears him, yes, loves him no.  Harry can also feel 
compassion, sympathy and pity, which Voldemort can't or just refuses 
to.  Another major difference is that Voldemort is terrified of 
dying and Harry is not.  In fact, Harry has embraced the idea of 
death several times and actually been surprised when he doesn't 
die.  On one occasion, Harry even welcomed death [when possessed by 
Voldemort at the end of OotP] because the pain of living was worse.  
Welcoming death is something Voldemort will NEVER do.  All their 
differences are emotional and come from how they feel about other 
people around them.  Voldemort sees all other beings as either his 
servants or his enemies.  Harry sees other people like an average 
person does - a mixture of friends, enemies, strangers, 
aquaintances, pests, etc., but with a great gift for observation and 
reading body language.  

Julie ["jastrangfeld"] again: 
> Along those lines (wand lines), I posted this the other day, and 
still
> haven't seen a response . . .
> 
> Is it at all possible that Voldemort used Lily's "excellent for 
charm
> work" wand to try to kill Harry? And that's why the rebounded spell
> did not come out in GoF? I guess I should say I know that the
> reference of the charm wand was actually reference to Lily's first
> wand, however, it would seem to stand to reason that a subsequent 
wand would also be "charmed"?
> In this, could it also be that the wand belonging to Lily would 
indeed backfire as it would "know" her son?
> Perhaps there was a struggle of some kind and then Voldemort had to
> grab a nearby wand. It seems we've seen evidence of other struggles
> where wizards and witches use other's wands. And then there's the
> reference where another wizards wand can never be used as 
effectively
> as your own?


Diana L.
This is an interesting idea, but I couldn't see it being true.  
Several times throughout the series another character has had their 
own wand used against them (Sirius using Snape's own wand to suspend 
the unconscious Snape along the hidden tunnel in PoA, for just one 
example].  If wands "knew" their owners and their owners' relatives 
and refused to perform or softened spells against that former owner 
and their family if used against them, then I couldn't see how used 
wands would ever be sellable.  Most wizards wouldn't want a wand 
that could possibly choke up on them if they unknowingly faced the 
wand's previous owner or family member in a duel.  Especially given 
the previous wizarding war during Voldemort's time when unknown 
wizards were a true unknown danger.  I don't see wands being 
intelligent in that regard, I'd say they were just most-compatible 
with their owner (or owners, for a previously owned wand) and 
compatible to lesser degrees with other wizards it would not have 
chosen as it's owners.   
Someone else asked this, but I'm going to ask it here as well.  Why 
is it assumed on the list that Lily had more than one wand?  
Granted, Olivander said that he remembered Harry's parents when they 
came in to buy their "first wands", but that use of 'first' doesn't 
mean there was ever a second visit for either to buy another wand.  
The first could mean just that, their very first wand at the age of 
11.  Has there been any mention of Harry's parents having had more 
than one wand?  
Oooh, sudden inspiration!  What if Ginny's used wand was once Lily's 
wand?  Wouldn't that be interesting?  Nearly impossible, but an 
interesting speculation for fun nonetheless.  ;)  After all we have 
no idea what happened to Harry's parents' wand after they were 
killed.  I would be very surprised if the Magical Catastrophe Squad 
(or whatever their called) hadn't removed James' and Lily's wands 
from the scene before the muggle police came to investigate their 
deaths and the destruction of their house.  

As for the rebounded killing curse that ripped Voldemort from his 
body, I can offer a few simple reasons that it didn't kill him.  He 
directed this curse directly at Harry through his wand in a thin 
beam from his wand tip.  Well, when it hit Harry's forehead and 
bounced off, the bounce was not returned in the same concentrated 
beam, but bounced back like a waterdrop bounces off an umbrella - in 
a spray pattern.  When it radiated back it was spread out and only a 
part of it hit Voldemort (a large part, but not quite all of it), 
which, combined with Voldemort's own spell preparations to prevent 
his own death, resulted in Voldemort's body dying but his essence 
and intellect [I'd hesitate to use the word soul in his case] 
surviving.    
I'm speculating, partly based on what Dumbledore has said about this 
subject and some of my own ideas, that Harry didn't die from the 
curse because of his mother's love for him.  Her sacrifice of her 
own life in the hopes of sparing Harry and her immediate proximity 
to Harry upon her death wove a spell around Harry that protects him 
from harm from Voldemort.  Whether Lily actually cast a spell [a 
shield charm upon Harry using that great-for-charm-work wand, 
maybe?] as she waited for Voldemort to hunt them down, we don't 
know, yet.  To wildy speculate further, maybe the spell Lily cast to 
protect Harry requires the life of the one casting it in order to 
work?  Lily would rather die than see Voldemort kill her child, so I 
could easily see Lily giving her life for this powerful protection 
spell for Harry.  As Lily and James most likely knew about the 
prophecy and Harry's importance to the wizarding world and they went 
into hiding because of it, maybe Lily performed some sort of spell 
to protect Harry long before Voldemort ever found them?  

The books, through Dumbledore, emphasize choice over destiny or fate 
or blood, but I don't think this contradicts the prophecy about 
Harry and Voldemort.  In the prophecy, either Harry or Voldemort 
could win in the end, but who ultimately wins will be decided by 
what choices each makes leading up to the final confrontation.  
Harry, using the emotions Voldemort doesn't have [or refuses to 
acknowledge?] will make very different choices than Voldemort right 
up until the final duel.  And Harry's choices will be the better 
ones in the end, IMO.

Diana L.