Wand allegiance

[Carol]

No: HPFGUIDX 182054

Lealess wrote:
> OK, that makes sense. I just sort-of saw an analogy with Draco's
"winning" of the wand in the first place. Essentially, Dumbledore
seemed to be giving himself up to be killed by Draco, no matter what
Dumbledore thought of his powers of persuasion or Draco's nerve. When
Draco lowered his wand, what happened to the allegiance then? Why
wouldn't the wand switch its allegiance back to Dumbledore? 
> It's hard for me to see Draco as the more powerful wizard, in any
event... he just had the element of surprise.

Carol responds:
I'm pretty sure that DD still firmly intends to be killed by Snape and
knows perfectly well that Draco isn't going to kill him. But the wand,
which is on the ground outside, doesn't know any of that, only that
Draco has disarmed the great DD. And being the Elder Wand, not forming
a bond with any owner and concerned only with power, it's giving its
allegiance to the presumed victor. (No doubt if Draco had actually
caught the wand, which perhaps DD prevents through sheer will power,
it would soon have seen just how unworthy he was, but it never got
that opportunity. And if it had tried to give its loyalty back to
Dumbledore, surely it would have discovered that, less than an hour or
so later, he was dead.) BTW, young Grindelwald might not yet have been
more powerful than Gregorovitch. He, too, had the element of surprise.
(How Gregorovitch became master of the wand, I don't even want to know.)
> 
Lealess:
> Confusing the matter for me is that the Harry/Voldemort meeting in
the forest was predicated on what Harry should have known were false
premises, that Voldemort would spare others in exchange for Harry. It
seems futile, to give your life for a lie and loyalty to Dumbledore. 

Carol responds:
I'm not sure what you're talking about here. Harry goes to his "death"
because he knows that Voldemort has to destroy the soul bit. If Harry
tries to kill LV, the soul bit (and the as-yet undestroyed Horcrux in
Nagini) will keep LV alive; he'll just become Vapor!mort again. Harry
thinks that the best he can do is die, destroying the soul bit, and
hope that someone else (Ron, Hermione, or Neville) will kill Nagini,
making Voldemort mortal. So Harry is sacrificing himself for the
greater good. DD knows the power of this act of love and hopes that it
(plus the shared drop of blood) will save Harry, but neither Snape in
the memory nor Harry, who thinks that DD has betrayed him, has any
clue that Harry will survive the AK that kills the soul bit. (It's not
loyalty to DD that motivates him; he doesn't call up DD to accompany
him to his "death," only his parents and their closest friends.)

Lealess:
It seems the wand would have transferred its allegiance to Voldemort
the moment Harry gave himself up to be killed. Did it then switch back?
> 
Carol:
Why would it do that? LV was not its master to begin with, and he
didn't really kill Harry. Moreover, LV himself is near death at that
point, the tattered remnants of his soul going along with Harry's
spirit to King's Cross to lie untouched under a bench while Harry
converses with Dumbledore. Both Harry and LV are out cold, suspended
between life and death. The wand doesn't even know at this point that
its true master is Harry. It probably still thinks that its master is
Draco until the "resurrected" Harry explains the situation to LV in
the wand's hearing. At that point, IMO, it transfers its loyalty from
Draco to Harry. LV was never its master, either before or after he
"killed" Harry. (I'm not sure whether the near-proximity of the three
Hallows played into the outcome at all, nor am I sure exactly why LV's
soul went along with Harry's on its journey to King's Cross, but I
think that they were tied together by the shared drop of blood.)

Lealess:
> Wand Lore obviously makes me go gaga. And as you say, the whole
"plan" to have Snape possess the Elder Wand presents thorny questions.

Carol, who wishes that the Elder Wand had never entered the plot at
all, for Snape's sake and that of the story as a whole