CHAPDISC: DH27, The Final Hiding Place

[Carol]

No: HPFGUIDX 184151

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "Jen Reese" <stevejjen at ...> wrote:
>
> Chapter question:
> > 3)  Harry's vision of Voldemort killing everyone within reach at 
> > Malfoy Manor is a first-hand view of Voldemort using the Elder
> > wand.  Do you believe Voldemort exhibits extraordinary magical 
> > power in this  scene or were his powers about what you expected he
> > was capable of  regardless of the wand?   Any thoughts on Bellatrix
> > and Lucius '[throwing] others behind them in their race for the 
> > door'? 
>  
> > Pippin:
> > "[G]reen light erupted through the room" sounds enough like "green
> > light filled the cramped hallway" (from  chapter 17) that it could
> > be just a more vivid description of the same phenomenon, ie, 
> > reflected light from an Avada Kedavra curse. 
> > 
> > But  the reaction of the watching wizards gives the lie to that. Why
> > did they scatter and flee when  only the goblin had been killed,
> > before Voldemort raised his wand to strike again? 
> <snip>
> > There must have been  something about the eruption of green light
> > that made them realize that they were all meant to die, not just
> > the bearer of bad news.  If green light not only struck the goblin
> > but literally "erupted" throughout the room, that might account for 
> > it. 
> > 
> > Without the full power of the Elder Wand, the curse might touch but
> > not kill the watching DE's, just as it would later fail to kill 
> > Harry in the forest. As Fake!Moody told us in GoF, the Avada 
> > Kedavra curse needs a fair amount of magical power behind it. 
> 
> 
> Jen: I thought of how powerful the AK toward Harry was that it 
> destroyed the Potter house.  It wasn't the love sacrifice that made 
> the magic powerful; it was LV's power rebounding against him & 
> everything around him.  So what occurred at Malfoy Manor didn't show 
> me Voldemort had more power with the Elder wand than he'd shown 
> previously. He was enraged & that fueled his powerful AK, but the 
> wand didn't do anything extraordinary imo. 
> 
> This is likely the moment Voldemort determined the Elder wand wasn't 
> working any better than his old wand, giving rise to his belief that 
> Snape must be the true master.
>
Carol:
I don't think so. an AK is an AK, and most people's don't create as
much green light as Voldemort's do (though I must say that Wormtails'
AK of Cedric, using the yew wand, seemed unusually powerful, too).
What more could LV want besided the person he was aiming at to fall
dead (and terror among his followers)? The wand certainly did not fail
him or he would not have had a dead goblin and a pile of dead wizards
at his feet. Nor did his thoughts turn to the wand at all; he thought
only of the Horcruxes and thwarting Harry. He uses that same wand to
turn the green potion clear and to make Nagini a bubble cage to float
in, and he uses it against its supposed master, Snape, to draw him
into Nagini's bubble--which ought to have been a clue. I doubt that
the wand would have been so eager to betray its master.

At any rate, there is, IMO only, no evidence whatever that the Elder
Wand is failing LV, who is as congenial a wizard as it could have
found. I think it serves him well until Harry's self-sacrifice creates
a love magic that defeats it *and* it discovers that LV is its true
master.

I know that most people on this list are unwilling to grant a wand the
degree of sentience that I grant it, but it's magical on two levels,
the wand and the core; the wand chooses the wizard; the wand can
*choose* to "bend its *will*" to that of the person who defeats its
master (but by implication, it can also choose *not* to do so). Some
wands, like the blackthorn wand, are so incompatible with a wizard
other than their owner that even a reasonably gifted and powerful
wizard like Harry has trouble with them (he has less trouble with
Hermione's even though he's not its master, either). A wand learns
along with its master (I think there's more to Hermione's horror of
Bellatrix's wand than that it was used in horrific crimes; something
of Bellatrix's sadism is in the wand itself). I think that Harry could
comfortably have used Draco's wand even if he hadn't won it because
they've learned and cast (or attempted to cast) much the same spells.
(An aha! moment--maybe the fact that he was using Draco's wand enabled
Harry to cast a semi-successful Imperius or two without having done it
before?). A wand can read its master's mind, not only in casting
nonverbal spells but in doing his will without an actual spell, as
when DD simultaneously Confunds Mrs. Cole, causing her to see what
isn't there, and creates a bottle of gin and glasses. (Simply thinking
Confundus and Inanimatus Conjuris could not have achieved that
complicated result. The wand needed to understand exactly what DD
wanted.) To take a simpler example, both DD and McGonagall conjure
chairs out of thin air, but the wand understands the caster's
personality and his or her idea of a chair--in DD's case, comfy and
purple; in McGonagall's case, stiff-backed and wooden and hard,
reflecting her stern personality. (Perhaps the wand itself is "stern,"
given that it chose her!)

Carol, who sees no evidence whatever that the Elder Wand failed LV
until Harry's return from "King's Cross"