More thoughts on the Elder Wand subplot - Owner?

[Carol]

No: HPFGUIDX 187383

Eggplant: 
> Good point. Harry didn't have to defeat anybody to become Master of his Phoenix Wand, it's just that the wand had no master at the time he walked into Oleander's shop and the wand apparently rather liked Harry and thought he'd make a good master. <snip>

Carol responds:

The holly and phoenix feather wand must have been made at about the same time as its brother wand (I can't imagine Ollivander leaving that second phoenix feather lying around unused for fifty-plus years before using it). If that's the case, the holly wand must have rejected (not worked for) a number of young wand buyers until Ollivander began to think that it wasn't suitable for anyone at all. He certainly considers it a long shot when he hands it to Harry, knowing that "its brother gave [him] that scar." And yet, in contrast to the wands that Ollivander snatches away from Harry because they're clearly not "the perfect match" (he calls Harry a "tricky customer"), the holly wand feels right to him. He feels "a sudden warmth in his fingers" and he instantly knows what to do. Instead of just standing there like an idiot or "foolishly" waving the wand around, he swishes it through the air and produces a shower of red and gold sparks that shoots out from the end of the wand like a firework. Clearly, that wand has chosen him and both Hagrid (who claps and cheers) and Ollivander (who claps Harry on the shoulder and cries "Bravo!") know it. It's not a mere matter of the wand sort of liking Harry. It's an case of perfect compatibility between wand and wizard even before Harry develops a relationship with his wand. (True, he does struggle later with certain spells, but there's usually a reason, either they're too advanced or he has some sort of mental block.)

My question is *why* that particular wand chose Harry. Of course, there's a kind of immortality or Christ symbolism attached to its components (immortality for the phoenix feather and Christ for the holly, in contrast to the more sinister kind of earthly immortality attached to yew, which also happens to be both strong and flexible--longbows were made of it--and poisonous. So we have the good witch--er, wizard--and the bad wizard with similar yet contrasting wands. But there's also a sense of that wand actively and enthusiastically choosing Harry after sitting on the shelf unchosen and unchoosing for some fifty years. Has that wand already developed an antipathy to its brother wand instinctively knowing what "great and terrible things" that wand ended up doing? That seems unlikely, however much personality and will we (and Ollivander) attribute to wands. Did it sense that Harry was the Chosen One who could defeat Riddle/Voldemort, the wizard chosen by its brother wand? Or did it sense the bit of Voldemort in him, the power and the desire for immortality, that must have attracted its brother to young Tom Riddle?

Anyone have any theories (besides JKR's plot needs) as to why that wand chose Harry (in contrast to all those other wands that did not exhibit the same strong and obvious initial and mutual attraction)?

Two things that I find of interest. First, its not just a compatibility between Harry and phoenix feathers in general since one of the wands he tried out was made of maple and phoenix feather. It's this particular phoenix feather, or rather, a feather from this particular phoenix (Fawkes), the same phoenix whose feather was the core of Voldemort's wand. (I think the yew/phoenix feather combination symbolizing poison and immortality was important in that wand, which, BTW, must have been more than usually powerful to begin with and would have become much more so after working with Voldemort for nearly sixty years, in contrast with, say, "Lucius Malfoy's poor stick.") Ollivander expects Harry to "do great things" because that wand's brother chose him.

Also interesting to me--Ollivander says in GoF that he doesn't use Veela hair as a wand core because Veela-hair wands tend to be "temperamental"--more testimony from Ollivander that wands have personalities. (I suspect that Fleur's wand was made for her rather than choosing her. I'd have liked to see Harry trying to use it so we could see how a "temperamental" wand performs--or fails to perform.)

BTW, Eggplant, oleander is an ornamental shrub that grows in my yard and happens to be poisonous. Tea brewed from its flowers will kill you. You wouldn't want to fall on a sharp oleander twig, either, or you'd be sent to the emergency room. I don't suppose it would work well as wand wood, unlike yew, which is also poisonous. I don't even know whether it grows in England. I'm not sure, but I've always suspected that the "vander" part of "Ollivander" had something to do with "wandmaker." Maybe the original Ollivander had an olive-wood wand?

Carol, wondering why JKR included the detail of the magical measuring tape when it seems to serve no purpose