Why Harry would not use Elder Wand? WAS: Re: Wand allegiance.

[Carol]

No: HPFGUIDX 187329

Alla wrote:
> 
> Oh, **now** we are talking. :) Sure, if Harry is concerned that he is not unstoppable and it is simply dangerous to allow the possibility of elder wand  to pass to somebody else, I can see him doing it. However, I have to put a qualifier, if Harry is doing that, I think he is doing that realizing that he is sacrificing his own defenses to a degree. That would be totally in character for Harry to do, martyr as he is, but  I still think that for his own self defense elder wand would have done just fine.

carol responds:
I agree with Pippin that carrying the Elder Wand greatly increases the chance that it will get into the wrong hands and that the new master, whoever it might be, would be much less safe as a guardian than Harry. Even Grindelwald and Dumbledore lost the Elder Wand for all their skill and power and precautions, and both of them were far more brilliant and powerful than Harry. If you're not carrying the darn thing, no one else can get hold of it. And I don't think that the general public will suddenly become aware that you can become the master of a wand you've never seen by Disarming that wand's master. Nor would a person who knew that, had the skill to disarm Harry, *and* had the desire to be the master of the Elder wand be able to obtain it if it were hidden at Hogwarts under proper protections.

But what I wonder is why anyone (other than someone like Grindelwald who knew it was a Hallow and wanted to rule the world or a psychopath like Voldemort) would even want the Elder Wand. A Wizard doesn't need the Elder Wand to kill or torture. The DEs managed just fine with their own wands and the Unforgiveable Curses. Any fool can cast a Dark curse. Even Crabbe and Goyle learn to cast the Cruciatus Curse; Harry almost accidentally casts Sectumsempra (not that he's a fool, just that he didn't need an special knowledge or any wand other than his own); and Crabbe casts Fiendfyre with no difficulty. Grindelwald could probably have built his fortress and killed and imprisoned people without the Elder Wand. Hogwarts was built without it; Salazar Slytherin built the Chamber of Secrets without it. Voldemort created his Horcruxes without it and set up the protections around the ring Horcrux and earned the reputation as the most powerful Dark Wizard in a century that includes Grindelwald without it. His own wand, as Ollivander points out, is extremely powerful. Had he not tried to kill Harry with the Elder Wand, using his own instead once he understood that he wasn't the Elder Wand's master, he would probably have succeeded in killing Harry, who was using Draco's wand.

All the Elder Wand does is choose the master it thinks is most powerful and inflame passions of people who want to own it, thinking that its the most powerful wand in the world. It kills no more effectively than any other wand, and its master can be defeated or even killed, as its bloody history shows.

Carol, noting that Dumbledore performed astonishing magic while he was still at Hogwarts using a wand that must have chosen him and defeated Grindelwald using his own wand and suspecting that he would have been just as great had he not used the Elder Wand