More thoughts on the Elder Wand subplot - Owner?

[Carol]

No: HPFGUIDX 187384

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "eggplant107" <eggplant107 at ...> wrote:
>
>  "pippin_999" <foxmoth@> wrote:
> 
> 
> > Snape would be ideal, if he weren't dead.
>  
> I disagree. If I were a wizard I'd sleep more soundly in my bed knowing Harry was Master of the Elder Wand rather than Snape;
> he may not have been Voldemort's man but I still don't like him.
> 
> By the way, what was Dumbledore's original plan? How exactly
> did he intend Snape to become the new master of that wand?
>   
> Eggplant
>
Carol responds:

I don't think he did. I think he intended to end the power of the wand by dying at Snape's hand by his own choice. The only way for that to work, as far as I can see, would be for the wand to lose its powers altogether and become a useless stick of wood. (I don't think that Snape would have been tempted to use it even if he knew what it was; he was perfectly happy with his own wand. But if it didn't lose its powers and Voldemort learned that he had it, he'd have been in great danger. I suppose that as the Elder Wand's master he could have killed Voldemort using it, but would he have had the opportunity and would he have done so at the right time, knowing that *Harry* had to face Voldemort and be "killed" by him to destroy that last soul bit? That wouldn't have worked.) As I said, the Elder Wand subplot is full of flaws. I would like to hear, though, what JKR thinks DD thought would happen after Snape killed him. Maybe Snape, as its master, could have destroyed it; or, if it lost its powers, he could have burned it. And, being the superb Occlumens that he was, he could have pretended ignorance as to its fate when LV tried and failed to find it in DD's tomb, assuming that LV succeeded in tracing it before Harry found the Horcruxes. Of course, there was always the alternate possibility that Harry would take it as a Hallow, but I doubt that DD seriously thought that might happen. Harry breaking into DD's tomb? I would hope not!)

Anyway, DD can't have expected LV to kill Snape to get the Elder Wand or his plan to have Snape tell Harry about the soul bit in his scar would have fallen through. Or maybe he thought that LV would try and fail to kill Snape using the Elder Wand--or Snape as its master could kill LV, revealing his loyalties after Harry was "killed"? Surely, if Draco hadn't disarmed DD and accidentally become the Elder Wand's master, Portrait!DD would have told Snape what he wanted and expected him to do with the thing and Snape would have done it, but since Snape could do nothing about it under the circumstances, he kept him in the dark, with (to Snape fans) extremely unfortunate consequences.

None of it makes sense to me, and I wish that Dumbledore had simply destroyed the Death Stick the moment it entered his possession. Or better yet, JKR had come up with some better way to end the books (and distract LV while Harry looked for the Horcruxes).

Carol, who considers the Elder Wand merely a plot device to enable Harry to defeat LV the second time (and give LV an implausible motive for murdering Snape without using AK)