Wand allegiance.

[Carol]

No: HPFGUIDX 187291

Carol earlier:
Carol, who sees lots of plot holes
> > in the Elder Wand story  

Eggplant responded:
> I only see one plot hole, not lots.

Carol again:

As I said, we'll never agree on this one. :-)

Carol earlier: 
> >[I see] no evidence whatever that the Elder Wand isn't working for LV before Harry's self-sacrifice

Eggplant: 
> Nobody said the wand wasn't working for Voldemort, just that it was working no better than his old wand; it would have if he was the master of it.
> 
Carol responds:
But where's the evidence that it isn't working absolutely perfectly? We never see it not doing exactly what he wants it to do. He just suddenly starts thinking that he needs to kill Snape to make himself master of the wand with no reason whatever for doing so. We don't even know if Ollivander talked to him about wand behavior as he did to Harry. If he knew how the Elder Wand "thought" and remembered something that Ollivander had said, or if we had seen it not working, fine. Instead, we see it kill a lot of DEs, create Nagini's bubble, clear the green potion in the cave and so on--it couldn't possibly work better than it did because it worked perfectly.

As for other plot holes, the wandlore is inconsistent between DH and the other books. The only thing that works *for me* is Ollivander's statement that wand behavior is complex. He talks about what *usually* happens but makes allows for the possibility of variation. And only variation can account for the inconsistencies. A few wands, such as the Snatcher's wand that Harry tries to use, don't work at all for those who aren't their masters, yet Hermione can use Bellatrix's still hostile wand with no problem other than psychological discomfort? but most of the time, whether or not a wand has been "won," wizards seem to have no great difficulty using other wizards' wands. Black uses Snape's and Wormtail uses Lupin's in PoA with no problem at all. Inconsistency, thy name is JKR.

Carol earlier (overly snipped so that I'm not quite sure what I said here):
> > but sees no problem at all with keeping that evil weapon out of circulation 

Eggplant: 
> Not defending that wand with everything you've got is a poor way to keep it out of circulation. And Dumbledore used that "evil" wand for half a century and certainly did a lot of good with it in that time. Harry should be able to do at least as well because even Dumbledore admits that Harry is the better man. 

Carol:
Using it against opponents isn't keeping it out of circulation at all. Dumbledore was careful not to kill with the wand because he knew what it could do to the mind of a master who used it to seek power, not to mention that *every single master of that wand before Harry* was either killed or Disarmed, including Dumbledore. The wand doesn't make a wizard unbeatable. It just makes him a target for others who are equally deluded. You'd think the WW would learn that lesson and leave bad enough alone.

 Carol earlier: 
> > I'm not sure that "everyone" knows what happened  with the Elder Wand. [
] The anti-Voldemort faction probably didn't go around spreading the story of the Elder Wand.

Eggplant: 
> Hundreds, probably thousands of people just witnessed an incredibly dramatic event and you expect every single one of them to remain silent about it forever? That just isn't going to happen. 

Carol responds:
Yes, but of those hundreds of people (I don't think there were thousands, all were either DEs (now dead or imprisoned) or supporters of Harry who are not about to fight him or challenge him. If they think about the Elder Wand at all, they probably think of it as Harry's just reward. And witnesses of events like that are notoriously unreliable. If the story spreads, it will probably take the form of legend and be about as accurate as accounts of what happened with Sirius Black and the twelve Muggles. Rita Skeeter, who wasn't present, will probably publish her version. Harry will probably refuse an interview and state that he's said enough. (You know how accurate accounts in the Daily Prophet are--not accurate at all, even when Rita Skeeter isn't the reporter.)

Carol earlier: 
> > No one need know that he put it back in Dumbledore's tomb

Eggplant: 
> Everybody knows the wand was once in Dumbledore's tomb and if somebody is looking for it again that would be the first place they'd look. 

Carol responds:
"Everybody" knows no such thing. True, Voldemort said that he took it from there, but only a few hundred people heard him, and, as I said, none of them has both the motive and the opportunity to find it. Most people would either assume that he would use it or they'd assume that he'd hide it in some other place, for example, his Gringotts vault or Hogwarts. Besides, maybe Voldemort with his supposed loyal DE as headmaster can just enter the Hogwarts grounds to desecrate DD's tomb, but normally the grounds are protected. Unless you count Sirius Black, who was an Animagus and knew at least one still-secret passage into the castle, no other hostile person ever got into the school. (Lucius Malfoy was a school governor and the parent of a student, not an active DE, when he entered the school in CoS.)

Carol earlier: 
> > someone (McGonagall?) could put a protective spell
> > on the tomb so it could not be broken into

Eggplant: 
> If it's so easy why didn't they do it the first time? Even Dumbledore admits that he can't cast an unbreakable protective spell. 

Carol responds:

No one saw the need. Only Dumbledore, who was dead and hadn't expected to be Disarmed by Draco, knew that his wand was the Elder Wand. He thought that it would have lost its powers when he died undefeated. So no need to put extra protection on the tomb. No one dreamed that Voldemort or anyone else would break into it.

And I don't recall Dumbledore saying that he couldn't cast an unbreakable protective spell. Can you show me that quotation, please? (I do think that the protections he personally put on the castle ended when he died just as the freezing spell he put on Harry ended then, but that doesn't mean that anyone else, even Voldemort, could break them. And it took the Ministry and all the DEs to break the protections on the Weasleys' house after the wedding. The one protection they didn't include was the Fidelius Charm. All Harry needs to do is make some trusted person whom no one will suspect the Secret Keeper (not to mention not advertising the Fidelius Charm, so no one even knows there's a Secret), and no one will ever know where the wand is hidden. If the Fidelius Charm works the way I think it does, everyone who once knew that the wand had been buried with DD will forget it.

But who in the WW has a motive to take the wand from the hero who defeated Voldemort? Everyone believed Harry was special even when he "defeated" Voldemort as a toddler. Now they know that he survived *another* AK and vanquished Voldemort permanently. They undoubtedly attribute powers to him that he doesn't have. Who's going to volunteer to fight him? Not Draco, that's for sure. And not Lucius Malfoy, either. And any other Dark Wizards that we know of are dead or in Azkaban.

Honestly, I'd do the same thing if I were Harry. But I'd find a career other than Auror because there aren't any bad guys left to fight.

Carol earlier: 
> > The only way to break the power of the wand and end the cycle is for Harry to die a natural death.

Eggplant: 
> Historically a great many people are more than willing to kill to get that wand, so if Harry wants to die in his bed of old age he'd better have the most powerful magic available to defend himself.

Carol:
Historically, one or two people per century were willing to kill to get the wand, and all of them ended up dead or defeated themselves. Even Gregorovitch (who, I hope, didn't murder to get the wand--wonder how it came to him?) and Grindelwald ended up being murdered by the same maniac, Voldemort, after they had both lost it to someone else. Who in their right mind would want a wand with that bloody history? It only killed Voldemort because it backfired on him, unwilling to kill its rightful master. But it acted in that instance of its own accord.

With Voldemort dead, where's the Dark Wizard willing to take that kind of risk?

And Harry doesn't need the most powerful wand available. His holly wand, of course, had a special connection to Voldemort that no longer exists and it wasn't involved in the final battle, but he won that battle with *Draco's* wand. All Harry needs (aside from an opponent) is a wand that works well for him. He doesn't need a more powerful wand than anyone else. All he needs is more practice with nonverbal spells and a few spells besides Expelliarmus, Stupefy, and Protego in his arsenal. (Okay, I know those aren't the only spells he uses, but they're the main ones.) He doesn't even need to kill, only to outduel his opponents. As long as he can do that, he'll have no problem dying a peaceful, natural death. And if the time ever comes when he wants to retire because he's lost his skill (always assuming that anyone wants to kill or defeat the savior of the WW, which I find unlikely in the extreme), he can always retire to a cottage on the ocean protected by a Fidelius Charm.

Unbeatable Wand? How is it that everyone who advertises that they're using it ends up dead? He has to let the thing go unused and allow it to be forgotten, meanwhile making sure that he has backup so that if he's ever disarmed, he gets his own wand back. (I doubt that his wand would switch loyalties in any case. It's been through too much with Harry!)

Eggplant:
> 
> But I just don't understand why a writer would even want to try to convince a reader that any of these crazy logical convolutions were realistic. Why not simply have Harry keep the wand? If that means that Harry is condemned to lead an interesting life and the 19 years before the epilogue have not been completely uneventful then so be it.

Carol:
And I just don't understand why any reader would want Harry to use the Elder Wand. It's not quite the One Ring, but its bloody history needs to be ended, and Harry wants a peaceful life with his family. The last thing he wants is to spend it fighting to keep the mastery of the Elder Wand.

Carol, who sees nothing convoluted in JKR's solution to the problem (but lots of problems in the rest of the Elder Wand plot)