a whole lot of parts of the chapter discussion

[Carol]

No: HPFGUIDX 185321

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "pippin_999" <foxmoth at ...> wrote:
>
> Carol:
> > The Elder Wand does not seem to know that Harry is its master
until he says so. Otherwise, it would not have tried to kill Harry. It
would have backfired on Voldemort the first time.
> 
> Pippin:
> It never backfired on Voldemort, not if you mean the way Ron's
broken wand backfired on Lockhart with the magic coming out the wrong
end. The green jet from Voldemort's wand leaped towards Harry, met the
jet of the Expelliarmus spell coming the other way, and then both
spells struck Voldemort, the one killing him and the other sending the
Elder Wand high into the air to be caught by Harry.  
> If the Expelliarmus had not been in the way, then the green jet
would have continued towards Harry, just as it did in the forest, with
what effect we cannot say. 

Carol responds:
I knew when I wrote the post that "backfired" was the wrong word. I
meant "rebounded." Granted, there was no Expelliarmus for the Elder
Wand to encounter the first time around. But Harry was counting on the
Elder Wand's accepting him as master and not killing him the second
time around. As I read the scene, it *chose* to deflect the AK onto
Voldemort rather than kill its master. The question is what it would
have done if Harry were wandless and it knew that he was its master. I
think it would either have found some way not to kill him, perhaps not
working in some way (that was my original thought). But given the
wand's notorious lack of loyalty, it might well have accepted the evil
and powerful Voldemort as its master over the wandless, luckless
"weakling," Harry. That *could* be why it had no qualms about trying
to kill him the first time. 

You seem to be saying that it made no difference in the end that Harry
was the master of the Elder Wand. It was only Harry's Expelliarmus
that prevented the spell from striking him. *I* think that the Elder
Wand, unwilling to kill its master, deliberately struck the
Expelliarmus (which managed to strike its rarget and Disarm LV
anyway), deflecting the AK onto its caster. Since that was a real
Expelliarmus, not a weakened one (it killed Voldemort), we know what
the effect would have been if it had hit Harry. It would have killed
him. He no longer had any protection from the Love magic or the drop
of blood because his connection with Voldemort was destroyed along
with the soul bit.

So, unless the wand chose not to kill Harry by striking the
Expelliarmus instead of its master, Harry's being the wand's master
makes no difference.
>
Pippin: 
> I will certainly concede that if Voldemort got his wandlore from
you, he would never have believed that the Elder Wand would serve him
better than the yew wand!

Carol:
LOL. (But I got my wandlore regarding the yew wand from Ollivander and
from JKR, not counting the symbolic implications of holly, yew, and
phoenix feather, which I am quite sure JKR had in mind, however little
knowledge LV had of them.

Pippin: 
> But Voldemort got his wand lore from Ollivander. 
> 
> "He is determined to possess it because he believes it will make him
> truly invulnerable."
> "And will it?"
> "The owner of the Elder Wand must always fear attack," said
> Ollivander, "but the idea of the Dark Lord in possession of the
> Deathstick is, I must admit...formidable."

Carol:
You're quoting Ollivander's words to *Harry,* which are not the same
as Ollivander's words to LV.
> 
Pippin: 
> We don't know exactly what Ollivander told Voldemort.

Carol:
Exactly.

Pippin:
> But Voldemort was seeking a wand that would make him more powerful
than the yew wand,  he wanted to know everything that Ollivander knew
about the Elder Wand, and nothing he learned from Ollivander dissuaded
him from thinking that the Elder Wand would do the trick.
> 
> If Ollivander did not think that the Elder Wand would serve
Voldemort better than the yew wand, or any other dark wizard's wand,
he would not be ashamed of having told what he knew  under pain of
torture, and he would not have been so especially enthralled with the
thought of what that wand could do in Voldemort's hands. 
> 
> That, right there, is enough to convince me that Voldemort's
expectations of additional powers were realistic. And since the Elder
Wand has immense powers, there's no reason to assume it didn't do what
JKR says it did, and recognize its true master in the forest.

Carol:
Ollivander himself was a bit obsessed with the Elder Wand, which he
had read about but never seen (rather like DD and the Hallows). He had
read and was fascinated by its history. It would never have occurred
to him that a wand of his own making, the yew wand (which created the
Horcruxes, etc.) might suit Voldemort better than the legendary Elder
Wand. And Voldemort would have rejected that information, anyway. He
had tried to use Lucius's wand against Harry to get around the Priori
Incantatem. He had discovered that Harry's wand was unbeatable (for
him, at any rate) with any ordinary wand, so he needed a wand other
than his own (so he thought) that would defeat it. Only when
Ollivander started talking about the Elder Wand did he start caring
about its (supposed) immense powers.

You're assuming that the Elder Wand did indeed have the powers that
Ollivander attributed to it, that it was in fact unbeatable (despite
the fact that DD defeated Grindelwald, its true master). I think that
those powers existed in the minds of the people who sought it (with
the exception of the malice within it and the strife that it stirred).

And if the wand recognized Harry as its true master in the forest, why
was it so willing to kill him?

Pippin: 
> I agree there doesn't seem to be any way of predicting whether a
wand left free to act will choose an individual. 

Carol:
I'm glad that we agree on something!

Pippin:
> But a wand that has been beaten is not  free -- it's been captured.
I don't think wands are stupid. I think they can tell the difference
between practice duels or playground scuffles, and  an  attempt to
capture a wand for keeps.

Carol responds:
I agree with the last part of this paragraph: wands can distinguish a
real duel or fight from a practice session or playground scuffle. In
fact, I made the same point in some detail in another post. But I
disagree that a captured wand has no will of its own. Do you really
think that if Harry had Disarmed Bellatrix and taken her wand, it
would have bent its evil will to him? Or that Harry's holly wand would
ever have served a Death Eater (let alone Voldemort, against whom it
had some sort of vendetta even when he wasn't using its brother wand)?
If so, then we might as well lay down our keyboards and abandon this
fruitless discussion.

Pippin: 
> It makes sense that if you capture one wand, you capture all the
wands that owe that wizard their allegiance -- it explains why they
wouldn't just carry spares.

Carol responds:
It makes sense to you, not to me. As for spares, the DEs must have had
them. Otherwise, how did the arrested DEs end up with wands to use at
the MoM and the Battle of Hogwarts? But, then, Bellatrix somehow ended
up with her own wand, as did Lucius after his arrest at the end of
OoP. Yet another inconsistency or unexplained bit of illogic. Surely,
those wands would have been confiscated. In any case, even if they
didn't have spares, I don't see any reason to suppose that it's
because they'd lose the allegiance of the spares if they were
disarmed. There's nothing to that effect anywhere in the books. (And
Sirius Black must have had a spare; he couldn't go out and ask
Ollivander for a new one when he returned to 12 GP.)

Pippin: 
> The wand's failure need not have been apparent to Harry. Voldemort
does not get angry when he thinks fate is against him, or when he
feels that he himself has made a mistake. The Elder Wand was simply a
puzzle to be unlocked, like the Chamber of Secrets, or the protections
around the Stone. It was not a servant who had sworn eternal loyalty
and then failed to deliver. 
> If JKR had shown the wand failing Voldemort,  it would have
telegraphed his intentions towards Snape to the reader, and maybe to
Snape himself. That is not to make excuses for Rowling. Examining what
would happen to the story if it were changed is one way to understand
why it's constructed the way it is.

Carol responds:
You're just trying to find explanations for why JKR never showed it
failing him. Voldemort was on edge, worried about his Horcruxes,
facing battle with Harry. We saw exactly how angry and irrational he
was becoming. IMO, if he thought that the wand was failing him in any
way, he would have reacted furiously. But it did everything he told it
to. Exactly how he was supposed to cast a spectacular AK or
spectacularly clear away the potion in the cave, I don't know. The
only spectacular spell he asks it to cast is Nagini's bubble, with
which he is perfectly satisfied.

As for why she constructed the story as she did, we know that she
needed that scene with Snape, and it was necessary to kill him before
Harry's eyes in some way that did not involve an AK and would allow
him to deliver his last message and perform that last bit of magic. If
she had to claim that the wand was failing Voldemort (or have him make
that claim) without evidence, so be it. But my point is, the wand did
not fail him.

pippin:
> It seems to me that maybe you think it would have been a better
story if the wand's failure *had* been telegraphed to Snape. It might
have given him a fighting chance.

Carol:
No. This discussion has nothing to do with my feelings for Snape. I
have argued that he died bravely serving an essential purpose and that
he's probably happier in the afterlife (he is certainly redeemed) than
he ever was in life, especially after he realized that he had
endangered Lily and failed to save her. Of course, I'd rather that
Snape had lived (not died some other way or been given a fighting
chance), but this discussion isn't about Snape. It's about the lack of
evidence supporting Voldemort's claim (and the properties of the Elder
Wand)

Pippin:
> It doesn't seem, at first glance, that virtue was rewarded and evil
was punished in Snape's case. It doesn't seem fair that he did
everything he was supposed to do, and died for other people's
mistakes, while the chastened but unrepentant Malfoys lived on. 
> 
> I didn't want Snape to die myself. I especially didn't want him to
die to show that he was redeemable, like Darth Vader, or repentant,
like Boromir. And thank goodness, he did not.
> 
> He died, IMO, to show that what he told Dumbledore in GoF was true:
he was ready. He was prepared. He wasn't only ready to die a traitor's
death if he couldn't manage to swindle Voldemort into accepting his story.
> 
> He was prepared to die as Cedric had: a brutal, senseless, pointless
death. That is the kind of death that will find most of us -- maybe
not at the hands of a serial killer, but because of something we
couldn't control.
> 
> It's the genius of Rowling's writing that on first reading death
seems to have caught Snape flat-footed -- it's only when you realize
how carefully the memories must have been chosen, and understand what
 his last words meant that you realize he was indeed prepared.
Certainly he had a "well-organized mind"! <snip>

Carol responds:
I agree with every word. But this post isn't about Snape (except as
the need to kill him in a certain way determined JKR's handling of the
Elder Wand motif). 

Pippin:
> Voldemort *was* right to fear death, but only because he never tried
to prepare for it. He lost his innocence, but never gained wisdom. <snip>

Carol:
I agree.

Pippin: 
> In the WW as in real life,  few  can honorably choose the hour or
the manner of their deaths. They must therefore find the courage to
live every hour as if they were prepared for death, and what is more,
the courage to help others to survive until they are prepared also.
> 
> The Malfoys, being unrepentant, are not prepared to die. The happy
ending for them is being allowed to live, in the hope that when death
finds them they will be better prepared than they are now. But Snape
was prepared, so the happy ending for him was to "go on".

Carol:
Exactly. But he could have "gone on" if he'd died in some other way.
It was specifically necessary for him to die in this particular way so
that he would have time to pass on his memories to Harry.

Really, we don't disagree about Snape's heroism or his willingness to
meet death or any of that. You don't need to defend him to me. He died
a hero performing a necessary service without which Harry would not
have defeated LV. And, as you say, he was not afraid to die (only to
fail in his duty to deliver that message to Harry). It's the use of
his death as a plot device not even justified by any real failure of
the Elder Wand that annoys me. And you at least agree that we do not
see the wand failing Voldemort (whatever rationalizations you want to
make to defend our not seeing it. *I* think it didn't happen).

Carol, hoping that Pippin at least understands her position now even
if she doesn't agree with it and ready to abandon the thread