Voldemort's Wand - how did he get it back?

[justcarol67]

No: HPFGUIDX 129040

Tiffany wrote:
> My best guess  is that Petegrew picked it up and then took off
before Sirius found the Potters. I can't imagine one of the order
being careless enough to give it bakc to a death eater, or leave it
lying around if they were first to discover the potters. i think that
wizards do retain their wands when they transorm into animals, so
maybe Wormtail's been caryying Voldemort's in a pocket all this time.
> My other best guess is that DD or the ministry had it stored
somewhere and Wormtail or Crouch JR disguised as Moody stole it.


Carol responds:
I agree that Pettigrew found and hid Voldemort's wand before Sirius or
Hagrid arrived at Godric's Hollow. I believe that JKR herself says
exactly this in one of her interviews (which can be looked up using
the Quotes section of the Lexicon). However, I don't think Pettigrew
kept either Voldemort's wand or his own. He certainly didn't have a
wand with him when Black and Lupin forced him to resume his human
shape in the Shrieking Shack.

I think he had only his own wand with him when he and Sirius Black had
their confrontation and that he dropped his wand in the street--part
of the evidence of his death. If neither the wand nor bits of it had
been found, his disappearance might have been questioned, at least by
Dumbledore and other thinking persons. The wand lying in the street
along with his finger and bloody robes would have been very convincing
evidence of his death. (Don't ask me how the robes got there, but
Fudge says they did. I think it was probably a cloak--I doubt that he
was naked when he transformed.)

As for Voldemort's wand, Pettigrew didn't have it with him in the
Shrieking Shack, but he certainly knew where it was, and he returned
it to Voldemort after finding him possessing rats and other small
creatures in Albania. (I think Pettigrew was in rat form when he found
him but switched to human form to apparate back to England, find the
wand, and return to Voldemort.)

That, at least, is how I make sense of the situation. It's been
discussed on this board several times before and you *can* find it if
you're willing to spend hours struggling with Yahoo!mort (our very
inadequate search engine). Not wanting to spend that kind of time, I
just repeated ideas I've already expressed rather than hunting up old
posts.

Carol