Survival of AK / Occam's Razor, etc.

[carolynwhite2]

No: HPFGUIDX 114482


--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "scoutmom21113" 
<navarro198 at h...> wrote:
> 
> Carolyn:
> Wondering how and when you grow out of wands (if their length is
> related to your height, as is widely speculated). Surely all 11-year
> old children must need new wands by the time they are grown up? So
> what is Voldie doing with his old schoolboy wand anyway?
> 
> Bookworm:
> Well, Harry's wand is the same length as his father's (11 inches) 
so either they don't need to change, or James was still using his 
> school wand.  Can you imagine wizards running around waving wands 
15 or 20 inches long?

Carolyn:
I guess the explanation is that children magically choose a wand that 
suits their eventual adult height. Ron, for instance, had a new 14 
inch wand in POA, and he is supposed to be tall and gangly, taking 
after his father. Harry ends up with a wand the same length as his 
father's because he will grow up to look very similar to him (a 
factor which DD and Ollivander presumably took into account when 
commissioning it). 

Now, if my theory is correct, how would DD know what length of wand 
to commission containing the first Fawkes' feather? Did he have 
inside information about Tom Riddle's parentage and potential powers? 
Did he know all about Tom's mother (last descendent of Slytherin) 
marrying a muggle in Little Hangleton? He does, after all, keep up 
with the muggle newspapers and a marriage between the local 
landowner's son and a village girl might have attracted a paragraph 
or two in the early 1920s.

BTW, it looks as though Ron is going to be taller than Voldemort 
eventually, if V's old wand (13 1/2 inch) is anything to go by. 
Trivial fact for the evening...

Carolyn