Mistakes made in Deathly Hallows? The Elder Wand

[Carol]

No: HPFGUIDX 181515

Lee wrote:
> It's hopeless. The logic of this whole sequence is irredeemably 
convoluted. A simple Disarming counts as a defeat. But how many times
have we seen Disarmed wizards scrambling for the wands and rejoining
the fray? <snip>

> And then there's the whole Dueling Club problem, where Disarming 
> apparently DOESN'T count as defeat. Why?
> 
> And of course, there's the added complication that Harry "disarmed"
Draco simply by grabbing wands out of Draco's hand. Apparently that
DOES count. But let's see: Ron disarmed Wormtail by grabbing his wand
but then was forced by Bellatrix to relinquish it (does THAT count,
too? or does the wand need to be physically wrested away?). Then later
Molly defeats Bellatrix. So is Molly now master of Wormtail's wand?
> 
> The logic bears all the earmarks of something JKR ill-advisedly
pulled out of her hat at the last minute to try to rescue a plot that
had gone badly awry. It just can't be made sense of.

Carol responds:

First, Bellatrix doesn't succeed in getting Ron to relinquish his
wand. she orders him to put it down and he does, but Bellatrix never
takes possession. Draco picks them up, but he hasn't defeated Ron, so
he's not the wand's master. Then Harry snatches the wands from Draco's
grip, which makes him master of any wands that Draco was master of,
that is, Draco's own wand and the Elder Wand (and, arguably,
Bellatrix's wand), but since Draco wasn't the master of Wormtail's
wand, his picking it up on Bellatrix's orders has no effect on its
loyalties. So when Harry gives the wand back to Ron, he (Ron) is still
its master.

Bellatrix's wand is trickier. Harry did disarm her, but Draco picked
it up to return it to his aunt. Harry never tries to use it; he gives
it to Hermione, who has no sympathy with it or for it at all. My guess
is that the wand was so much in sympathy with Bellatrix and had
performed so many evil spells that it was not about to relinquish its
loyalty over a simple Expelliarmus even after it had been snatched by
the caster of the Expelliarmus from a boy who was not its master.

Dumbledore, in contrast, was already dying, and Disarming by a boy who
intended to kill him (or thought he did) was clearly a defeat,
especially with Death Eaters on the way.

Contrast the DA, in which the kids practice Expelliarmus on each other
with no intention of keeping each other's wands. The act of picking up
your own wand or being handed your wand by the person who Disarmed you
apparently cancels any change in ownership, assuming that the wand has
so easily changed its loyalties. (Wormtail's wand, BTW, was quite new
and had probably not had time to form much of a bond with him; hence,
the easy transfer of ownership to Ron.)

Quite possibly, Lockhart's wand would have transferred its ownership
to Snape in CoS given the powerful Expelliarmus that Snape used, but
since he didn't take the wand away and claim it but allowed Lockhart
to keep it (until Harry, copying Snape, used Expelliarmus on him),
Lockhart remained master of his own wand, if not the master of the
spells he attempted to perform with it. <wink> Quite likely, that wand
did transfer its loyalty to Harry, but since he never picked it up and
Lockhart was defeated by his own idiotic action (via *Ron's* wand), it
doesn't really matter.

I think that wands and wand ownership are rather complicated, and that
wands, being powerful magical objects that can understand not only
spells but intentions and can, evidently, understand conversation
involving them (Harry's discussion of the mastery of the Elder Wand),
I don't think they would lightly transfer ownership from the Witch or
Wizard that they chose and with whom they have developed a
relationship, in some cases, of many years or decades, to any person
who casts an Expelliarmus. Draco's wand may, for all we know, have
sensed that he was now the master of the Elder Wand and transferred
ownership for that reason. Or it may have simply been more compatible
with him than Bellatrix's would have been because of the similarity in
age and the kinds of spells that Harry was likely to cast (similar to
those it had cast for Draco), whereas Bellatrix's wand would have
sensed him as an enemy, Expelliarmus or not.

At any rate, Grindelwald was careful to *defeat* Gregorovitch, not by
Disarming him but by Stunning him before he stole the Elder wand. I
assume that Dumbledore somehow tricked his clever antagonist and
former friend in some similar way despite the "unbeatable" Elder Wand.

At any rate, I agree that JKR didn't fully think through the matter of
wand ownership (or perhaps transfer of loyalty would be more
accurate), but we do at least get some hints that another Wizard's
wand won't work as well as one that has chosen that wizard. Ollivander
says so himself, and we also see Neville having trouble using his
insane father's wand. (Ron also has trouble with the wand he inherited
from Charlie, but that's because it was first old and then broken. I
don't think it was a matter of wand loyalty since Charlie probably
willingly passed it on to his little brother and they were similar
enough in personality and abilities that the wand would have no
objections.)

Okay, that's my attempt to explain why an ordinary Expelliarmus (or,
for that matter, a duel in the corridors between reasonably
well-matched schoolboys) would not result in a transfer of the wand's
loyalty to another person. To reiterate, a wand that's well-suited to
you and has developed a relationship with you, each learning from the
other, as Ollivander says, will not lightly abandon you just because
an opponent has Disarmed you. There has to be more to it, either
possession of the wand after the Expelliarmus or an actual defeat of
an enemy. Wormtail, Dumbledore, Grindelwald, and even Draco were most
assuredly defeated. The first two died, the third was imprisoned for
life (how that happened, I can't guess), and the last was left
wandless and helpless. How he escaped being murdered by Voldemort, I
don't know.

Carol, giving wands, which have "brains" of a sort, credit for a bit
of common sense