CHAPDISC: DH36, THE FLAW IN THE PLAN

[pippin_999]

No: HPFGUIDX 185273


> Carol responds:
> But the wand has worked perfectly well for Voldie up until that point.

Pippin:
Not so. 

It worked, but it didn't give Voldemort the  special powers of the
Elder Wand. We did see one of them demonstrated in DH: it allowed its
owner to perform spells with increased power, witness Harry's repair
of the holly wand. Others are told of in ToBtB. Voldemort would have
known about these from his own researches.

Carol:
> I don't think the wand knows that Harry is its true owner (how could
> it?) until he tells Voldemort and the wand hears what happened. 

Pippin:
How does a stick of wood know anything? But it has to know when its
master has been defeated, and who defeated him. 

Voldemort is quite sure that the wand can recognize Snape as its
master, even though  Snape has never held the wand or possessed it. He
also expects that the wand will know when he has killed Snape, even
though he isn't going to use the wand, which he must think won't work
properly against its own master, to do it. 

Carol:
If the wand already knew that Harry was its rightful
> master and had already chosen him, it wouldn't have tried to kill
him with that first AK. <snip>

Pippin:
Which explains, partially, why Harry didn't die. The drop of blood
helped too, of course, but I think if that was all, then Harry could
still have been ripped from his body, like Voldemort earlier, and
would have found himself unable to rejoin it but still tied to earth,
though with a whole soul, not a damaged one. 

That didn't happen, IMO partly because, as Moody told us, the AK needs
a powerful source of magic behind it. The AK had that power for the
soul bit, it was ripped away and destroyed, but not for Harry. 

JKR has said she didn't want Harry's survival in the forest  to be
reducible to a formula. I think there's supposed to be something a bit
mysterious, maybe even ineffable, about how he survived.  

According to Dumbledore the drop of blood would continue to protect
Harry as long as Voldemort lived in his current body:

"His body keeps her sacrifice alive, and while that enchantment
survives, so do you and so does Voldemort's one last hope for himself.

This ensures that the prophecy was fulfilled: neither can live while
the other survives. Like all good prophecies, it is properly ambiguous
and would have come true whether Voldemort or Harry had won.

The key is that "life" has two meanings in the Potterverse. There's a
spiritual life as well as a physical life. 

Harry cannot live (spiritually) while Voldemort survives, because,
tied to the drop of blood in Voldemort's body, he will be unable to
"go on".  The Dark Lord cannot live  while Harry survives because
Harry will vanquish him -- he will either cease to live physically or,
if he comes to understand the power of love, he will cease to be a
Dark Lord.


> Carol responds:
 BTW, was it Harry's Love magic that enabled
> the defenders to fight LV in person?

Pippin:
Yes, Harry says so. 

"I've done what my mother did. They're protected from you. Haven't you
noticed how none of the spells you put on them are binding? You can't
torture them. You can't touch them."

Voldemort didn't kill them because he couldn't. He couldn't kill or
hurt anyone that Harry had protected. That's also why neither Neville
nor the Sorting Hat was harmed.

Pippin
hoping this answers some of Carol's questions.