The Elder Wand / the Elder Wand / Dean Thomas / Snape

[Catlady (Rita Prince Winston)]

Jo wrote in <http://groups.yahoo.com/group/the_old_crowd/message/5038>:

<< Draco disarms DD at the top of Hogwart's tower but abandons the
wand in his flight. However, the Elder wand has given its allegiance
to Draco. How the wand recognises its true owner is never detailed and
the only canon we have is that "the wand chooses the wizard". >>

I think it was on The Other List (where I am about 1000 posts behind)
that someone suggested that, because Draco never touched the Elder
Wand after disarming DD, the Elder Wand didn't know from Draco; it
only knew the hawthorne wand that had cast the Disarming Spell on it.

<< Harry overpowers Draco in Malfoy mansion and removes Draco's
`everyday' wand. In doing so the Elder wand changes its allegiance to
Harry, presumably because Harry has defeated Draco and disarmed him,
as Harry says in his final confrontation with Voldy "So it all comes
down to this, doesn't it? 
Does the wand in your hand know its last
master was Disarmed?". Meaning, I take it, disarmed of his everyday
wand, the proxy as it were. >>

So the way the Elder Wand knew that it was opposing its Master is only
that it recognized the hawthorne wand. If Harry hadn't been using the
hawthorne wand in the last duel, the Elder Wand wouldn't have known to
protect him. That Harry was using the hawthorne wand is a great
co-incidence, authorial intervention, divine intervention, or fate.

If the Elder Wand had never encountered the hawthorne wand, would it
never again have recognized a master? In which case, if Harry had
instead destroyed the hawthorne wand and used a different wand for the
final duel, the danger of the Deathstick would have been removed. Or
would the Elder Wand eventually have chosen someone who defeated its
*wielder* as its new master?

Snow wrote in <http://groups.yahoo.com/group/the_old_crowd/message/5046>:

<< As for the reasoning of how Harry was able to vanquish the bit of
Voldemort in him without harm to himself, I envision that Harry did
possess all three of the Hallows on or about the time that Voldemort
attacked him the first time in the forest: (snip) Harry possessed the
essence of the elder wand, who acknowledged Harry as the rightful
owner, even though Harry did not brandish his wand at the time; >>

If true (and it may very well be true), that destroys the above theory
about the hawthorne wand. I would prefer it was the blood protection
that saved Harry, but I don't understand the blood protection. For
example, what if a Death Eater AK'ed Harry?

<< At Kings Cross, Harry could have decided not to go back to reality
and Voldemort would still have been destroyed when Neville slain the
remaining Horcrux, which was Nagini. >>

As Ashley replied in the next post: << And of course, Voldy did not
die when Nagini was killed, he only lost his last Hx. He may have been
mortal, but he remained the most magically powerful person in the
world. >>

To me, once LV's last Horcrux was gone, it didn't have to be Harry who
killed Voldemort.

I would have liked if Harry had not been given the choice to return,
DD explaining to him that now he is dead but his death did all that
great stuff, and then Neville had killed not only Nagini but
Voldemort. Or Colin Creevey had killed Voldemort, presumably with the
assistance of numerous powerful wizards and witches also attacking LV
at the same time, perhaps because somehow it was Colin using the
hawthorne wand then.

Pippin wrote in
<http://groups.yahoo.com/group/the_old_crowd/message/5044>:

<< We know of at least four descendants of DE's at Hogwarts: Malfoy,
Crabbe, Goyle and Nott, with Dean Thomas a quasi-canonical fifth. >>

Is there new canon on Dean Thomas's missing late father? My impression
from the Extra that's been on her website so long was that Dean's
father, who didn't tell his Muggle wife he was a wizard on purpose to
'protect' her, disappeared because he was killed by DEs (for marrying
a lowly Muggle or for fighting against LV), not because he was a DE.

<< There were no Reguluses or Snapes in Generation H because (duh)
Regulus and Snape didn't get a chance to produce them. >>

Even in the Potterverse, I hate to think that a person has to always
make the same choices as his/her parents.

Anyway, Snape had years of Voldie-free Hogwarts professorship in which
to procreate, but his obsession with Lily prevented him from doing so.
If he had got over that obsession and fell in love with and/or married
someone else, would that have caused him to drop his loyalty to DD's
plan? He might, I suppose, have lost interest in protecting HP's life
for Lily's sake but continued to oppose LV because of viewing LV as a
threat to his own children. Could he have returned to LV's side, with
pureblood wife and sprog, believing they would be safer there?

Perhaps your argument is that Snape's feelings about Lily would not
have turned into obsession if LV hadn't killed her? But if his
feelings about Lily had not turned into obsession, would he have
changed sides?

<< They may have had bravery, but Voldemort had made sure they would
be leaderless (apart from Snape, whose advice would surely have been
no different than Molly's.) >>

Snape's advice to his Slytherins -- that's an interesting question. He
certainly seemed to want to protect all their lives, which might well
lead him to advise "Sit out this battle, then join the winning side"
(as you hinted). 

Certainly there is no sign of him having used them to help his mission
of protecting HP's life and getting revenge on LV. I'd like to think
that was because he didn't want to endanger them, not because he had
no use for them nor because he did use them, but off-page.

But suppose he faced a conflict between his two goals, 1) hid mission,
2) protecting the Slythie kids?  "My dad says I have to come along and
help kill some Muggle-lovers. What should I do, Professor?"