A Flaw in the Plan (was: DD and LV)

[Carol]

No: HPFGUIDX 178352

Carol earlier: 
> > <snipped> I think that Pippin must be right--DD intended for Snape
to destroy the wand or hide it so that LV could never get it. (Snape
could use Occlumency and cunning to protect himself from detection.)
It's even possible that DD wanted Snape to kill LV if Harry failed
though, admittedly, there's no direct evidence to support that
particular speculation. Certainly, DD didn't want the wand buried with
him where LV could obtain it by grave robbery.
> > <snip> 
> > 
> > Carol, certain only that Snape's death was not part of DD's plan,
as indicated by his words and attitude in "King's Cross" and the
necessity for Snape to be alive to deliver his message to Harry 
<snip misplaced line from my previous post, which was supposed to
follow the second link, not the sig line! :-0>
> 
Potioncat responded:
> So....do you think Snape knew the wand-lore of the Elder wand? Did
he catch on what LV was getting at in those final moments? It doesn't
look as if Snape knew he was supposed to destroy the wand, but then,
he didn't have a chance to, did he?
> 
> I'm still confused about what should have happened. Carol, you think
the wand would have lost all magic. Why do you think that?
>
Carol:
I'm confused, too, and am only speculating as to why DD wanted Snape
to keep the Elder Wand and how that might have prevented his death.
Maybe everything went wrong from the moment Harry was unable to fetch
Snape after DD drank the potion because Draco showed up and disarmed
DD, but DD still had to go on with his plan to have Snape kill him to
protect Draco's soul and keep Snape from being killed by the UV, and
hope for the best. As for what Portrait!DD told Snape after the fact,
it's impossible to say.

I think that Snape did *not* know about the Elder Wand, or, if he did,
he didn't care, because he was focused on the snake being magically
protected and the need to get the message to Harry immediately.

As for why I think that the wand would lose its powers altogether
rather than becoming just an ordinary wand, it really was already just
an ordinary wand for anyone who wasn't its master (even Voldemort
though exactly how he knew it wouldn't do extraordinary magic is
unclear; it certainly killed people and created that protective bubble
for Nagini just as effectively as the yew-and-Phoenix-feather wand
that created the Horcruxes and chose Tom Riddle in the first place).
I'm basing my supposition on Harry's words near the end of the last
non-epilogue chapter: "If I die a natural death like Ignotus, its
power will be broken, won't it? the previous master will never have
been defeated. That will be the end of it" (DH Am. ed. 749). It
doesn't sound to me as if it will just become an ordinary wand. It
sounds as if it will just become a stick (a branch from an elder tree
with no magical core, if there's any truth to the Three Brothers
story). And the power of attracting rival wizards who will fight and
steal and kill for it will be ended as well. 

Surely, that's what DD was trying to do by having Snape kill him and
choosing his own death--unless LV is right that DD intended to make
Snape the true master of the wand (743), in which case, DD must really
have trusted his desire to defeat Voldemort and not be tempted by the
wand himself. (If he were the wand's master and had it with him when
LV tried to AK him, the AK would have failed, perhaps deflecting onto
LV.) But Harry says that Snape never defeated DD, not because of Draco
but because the death was planned between them: "Dumbledore intended
to die undefeated, the wand's last true master! If all had gone as
planned, the wand's power would have died with him because it had
never been won from him!" (742).

Just where Harry gets this idea is unclear since DD only states that
he intended for Snape to have the wand, and Harry knows about the
planned death not from "King's Cross" but from "the Prince's Tale," in
which DD gives Snape several reasons for wanting him to kill him but
does not include the wand among them. But again, "the wand's power
would have died" sounds to me like something more than the Elder Wand
simply becoming a wand like any other. It sounds as if its magic would
"die" altogether. 

If that's the case, Snape could simply hand over the wand when LV
demanded it, demonstrate that he can't work it either, and state that
it had somehow lost its power. Then there would be no reason to kill
snape; LV would simply need to find some other solution to the Harry
problem--for example, having a DE disarm him and then using his own
wand to kill him.

It's all very confusing and complex. As the narrator, voicing the pov
of the hobbits, says somewhere in LOTR, "The explanation did not seem
to explain."

But there has to be a reason why DD wanted Snape to have the wand and
why his keeping the wand would have kept him alive. "Poor Severus....
That bit didn't work out."

Carol, thinking that Snape died because JKR wanted that particular
death scene and not as part of Dumbledore's plan