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

[Ken Hutchinson]

No: HPFGUIDX 187334

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "Carol" <justcarol67 at ...> wrote:
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> 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. 
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It is just human nature to want the best/most powerful gadget. You see this in real life as well as in the Potterverse. In any pursuit which involves using a piece of equipment a certain percentage of people involved in the pursuit will constantly upgrade their equipment to the latest and greatest. Or the oldest and finest in those rare cases where modern gear is judged inferior to the work of the old masters. Violins are a good example of that. Voldemort is surprised to learn that the Elder Wand does not help him much. Should he be? Part of the problem is that he is not its true owner but even if he were it is doubtful that it would help him much. And that is simply because he is at such a high level of skill already. Voldemort's expectations of what the wand would do in the hands of someone of his skill level are undoubtedly completely unrealistic. Poor equipment can hold a person back while they are learning, excellent equipment can enable you to rise to your natural potential. Oddly enough people who have honed their skills to a fine edge can often do nearly as well with poor equipment as with excellent.

I think the power of the wand is undoubted. As has been pointed out it certainly helps Harry perform the "impossible" task of repairing his own wand and that with a simple schoolboy spell. So it definitely helps a somewhat mediocre wizard a great deal. Harry treats it as a thing to be handled with extreme care and Dumbledore does not contradict this attitude. I think the implication is that the wand itself is somewhat evil in nature and it probably tends to corrupt anyone who uses it. Dumbledore was immune to this and Harry probably is too. Generally it is a thing to be kept out of the wrong hands though and why they don't just snap the thing in two as you suggest or "unmake" it in some more spectacular magical fashion is beyond me. I think its attraction to a certain type of person is as undoubted as its power, otherwise there would be no need to "defuse" it.

Remember too that in addition to the individual wizards and witches who might seek it out for the ordinary human reasons given above there is a cult of hundreds, thousands, or more who are seeking the Hallows for effectively religious reasons. These are the types of people who would eventually puzzle out Harry's comments to Voldemort at the end and reach the correct conclusions about their meaning. It is no great leap of intellect to posit that great dark wizards would seek out the Death Stick and it would be startling if the greatest of them all did not obtain it. So it is rather obvious to suspect that Voldemort would have the Elder Wand under his control if not on his person. This makes it all the more important to deal with it. I find Harry's solution poetic but rather weak as a practical solution. Too much like keeping the Ruling Ring as a memento of Sauron's defeat.

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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.
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Well, that assumes he had his old wand on his person, which he might not have. He did not learn who the Elder Wand's true master was until seconds before his death so he had little time to switch wands even if he had the other in his pocket. Doing so in a deadly faceoff would expose him to attack so it wasn't really an option. But technically you are right, I guess. I guess because this "unblockable" curse has been blocked by so many different means by the end of the book that it seems rather ineffective on someone who is prepared to deal with it. In magical stories in general curses are things that are called down upon a person and which seek the target out with the unerring accuracy of a laser guided bomb. In the Potterverse curses are fired like bullets from a gun and can be avoided by the simple expedient of stepping aside and letting them pass harmlessly by. Harry certainly has the reflexes and physical agility to do that.

So, on a completely different subject am I the last person to discover that Fenrir is a character out of the Elder Edda? I just started on the latest Tolkien book, *The Legend of Sigurd and Gudrun*, and in stanza 13 of the first section I read:

The wolf Fenrir
waits for Odin,
for Frey the fair
the flames of Surt,
the deep Dragon
shall be the doom of Thor--
shall all be ended, 
shall Earth perish?

Could the flames of Surt be anything like FiendFyre???

Ken, a visitor from the past