Wand allegiance.

[sistermagpie]

No: HPFGUIDX 187272

> > Magpie:
> > In DH it seemed like they really couldn't choose exactly, since the whole plot depended on them pretty much switching alliances over power. In the first book--and all the way through HBP--I thought it was implied that wands had certain qualities due to their wood and core that were naturally sympathetic to different people. The wand chose the wizard because you found "your" wand, basically, and then the bond was strengthened as you learned together. Thus a Wizard who was shy would have a wand more suited to their personality than a person who was aggressive. I think DH completely overwrote that with the later addition that all wands respond to strength. 

> Pippin:
> One doesn't have to overwrite the other. In the end Harry prefers the wand that chose him over the two that he won, even though both of them allowed him to do magic that he couldn't do with the holly wand.

Magpie:
Harry gets his pick of wands because nobody ever won his holly wand. The former owners of the two he won have wands that chose them and then abandoned them when they were won away. 

Pippin:
It shows that Harry learned something since HBP, where he commanded Kreacher to serve him and didn't think of asking Dobby

Magpie:
I don't think the two things effectively say anything about the other. The main reason Harry seems to use Kreacher in HBP is for plot reasons. But if we search for the character's reason for using him, I suppose he just does it because he can and he doesn't want to bother Dobby by ordering him around until Dobby begs him to do that. That it's a lot easier to work with Kreacher when Kreacher isn't trying to thwart him at every turn is not lost on Harry. It's not like Harry in general had a problem with preferring to make people to do things by force over having them do things for him willingly out of friendship. He always knew it would be difficult to get Kreacher to do something for him and so already usually avoided asking him for stuff. His choosing his own wand in DH doesn't indicate to me that he would choose differently in that same type situation in the future.

But that lesson is pretty elementary. Even more so when it comes to wands. Why would anyone except a person with an incredibly stubborn need to overpower choose to work with a wand that's defective in his hands? Harry actively dislikes working with the blackthorn wand because it doesn't work right, just as he finds it unpleasant dealing with Kreacher when Kreacher's being rude. 

None of which says anything about what the wand prefers, which is the issue in DH. 

Pippin: 
> If there's a choice, IOW, a weak but willing servant is preferable to a powerful one who serves only by constraint. Voldemort made the opposite decision, sacrificing  a wizard that had served him faithfully (as he thought) in order to secure the Elder Wand's allegiance by force. 

Magpie:
A weak but willing servant being preferable to a powerful one that serves by constraint is a totally different issue than wands choosing the person they're compatible with based on subtle personality issues versus wands choosing the person who overpowered the other in a duel. A wizard might prefer the wand s/he has grown fond of through working together (as Harry does--and his wand in fact shows more special powers than any of his others so demonstrates itself the most powerful of the 3 as well), but the wand switches to the stronger wizard. The wand, whether weak or powerful, becomes the willing servant of the winning wizard. 
 
> Magpie:
> > 
> > Ollivander's "well, it's very subtle..." could be considered an out but frankly it seems more like a handwave to me.
> 
> Pippin:

> If so,  Ollivander would have had no reason to raise the issue with eleven year old Harry during their first meeting, and it would sound contrived if he did. The situations in DH would never arise under ordinary circumstances.  Unless a wizard is seeking  the Elder Wand, or has lost the wand that chose him and for some reason has no access to a wandmaker, he would doubtless prefer to continue to use his own wand rather than replace it with one  taken from  a demonstrably inferior wizard.  

Magpie:
Seems to me situations like the one in DH would happen fairly often and it would be a basic thing every wizard should and would know about wands. Wands choose based on personality until they can compare strength, it seems.

-m