The Elder Wand not working for Voldemort? Say what?

[Zara]

No: HPFGUIDX 181713

> Carol:
> What I want to know is how Voldemort "knew" that the Elder Wand 
wasn't
> working for him and that, therefore, he wasn't its master. the wand
> seems to me to be working just fine. It certainly killed a lot of
> people (not to mention the soul bit in Harry) and it created that
> floating cage around Nagini. Where do we have any indication that 
the
> wand has failed him?

zgirnius:
We don't have any indication. But we don't need to, for this 
statement by Voldemort to make sense with the canon we do have. We 
have the examples of Harry and Hermione using wands they obtained 
from others without defeating them. Harry has trouble with basic 
spells, but can sometimes get them to work, with Hermione's wand, for 
example. Voldemort, a much more powerful, skilled, and experienced 
wizard, may notice that spells require more concentration, or may 
have tried something new and powerful that did not work, which would 
give him the same feeling. He does have the wand for about two months 
before he calls for Snape, plenty of time to develop a bad feeling 
about it.

> Carol:
> (snape says that Voldemort has done
> "extraordinary things" with the wand, though what they were and how 
he
> knows that, I have no idea,

zgirnius:
It's those two months. Now that Voldemort is done searching Eastern 
Europe for clues of the Elder Wand, I presume his right-hand-man is 
seeing him on a regular basis. Enough to see him using the new wand. 
As to the 'extraordinary things' what they are is apparently not 
important, or else Snape is practising a typical DE flattery, as we 
see him also do, for example, in "Spinner's End", when he calls the 
Dark Lord the greatest Legilimens ever (or some such).

> Carol:
> (which also
> raises the question of how Snape was supposed to find out about 
Nagini
> in her bubble so that he could pass his message on to Harry).

zgirnius:
Again, just because we rarely see them meet, does not mean Snape or 
other DEs from whom Snape might hear about the snake bubble do not 
see Voldemort more often. I presume the opposite, that meetings like 
the one in Ch. 1, and visits to Snape and Hogwarts such as the one we 
see when Voldemort comes for the wand, are the norm when Voldemort is 
around, and so Snape sees him regularly.