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

[pippin_999]

No: HPFGUIDX 187341


Eggplant: 
> No, according to canon the only person who can be entrusted with great power is someone who doesn't want it; somebody like Harry. Love of power was Dumbledore's weakness but even so he did OK with that wand, Harry could do better. He is after all a better man.

Pippin:
He's the better man *because* he doesn't want it, doesn't think he could do better with it, and, unlike Dumbledore, isn't egotistical enough to think that it's going to be safer in his pocket than anywhere else. 


>From Dumbledore's notes in ToBtB on the Elder Wand:

A full century later, another unpleasant character, this time named Godelot, advanced the study of Dark Magic by writing a collection of dangerous spells with the help of a wand he described in his notebook as 'my moste wicked and subtle friend, with body of ellhorn, who knows ways of magick most evile.' (*Magic Moste Evile* became the title of Godelot's masterwork.

As can be seen, Godelot considers his wand to be a helpmeet, almost an instructor. Those who are knowledgeable about wandlore will agree that wands do indeed absorb the expertise of those who use them <snip>
Nevertheless, a hypothetical wand that had passed through the hands of many Dark Wizards would be likely to have, at the very least, a marked affinity for the most dangerous kinds of magic.

Most witches and wizards prefer a wand that has "chosen" them to any kind of second-hand wand, precisely because the latter is likely to have learned habits from its previous owner that might not be compatible with the new user's style of magic. The general practice of burying (or burning) the wand with its owner, once he or she has died, also tends to prevent any indiviual wand learning from too many masters. Believers in the Elder Wand, however, hold that because of the way in which it has always passed allegiance between owners -- the next master overcoming the first, usually by killing him -- the Elder Wand has never been destroyed or buried, but has survived to accumulate wisdom, strength and power far beyond the ordinary.

---
(a footnote identifies ellhorn as an ancient name for elder)

Dumbledore goes on to say that while every man who claims to have owned the Elder Wand (no witch has ever done so) has insisted that it is "unbeatable" the known facts of its passage demonstrate that it has not only been beaten hundreds of times, but that "it attracts trouble as Grumble the Grubby Goat attracted flies."
 

Pippin