No, the animal or the tree doesn't matter. What is important is if the wizard has an affinity with the wand, not one of the materials that it is made from. It'a a case of the wand choosing the wizard, it doesn't matter what the wizard feels about a certain material.

 

I think you are misunderstanding Ollivander's method. He takes the best cores and best woods, and matches them together to produce the best wands. These best wands are then matched to the wizards who can best use them. This maximises every stage of the process.

Under the old method, this is far harder. To give an example.

Alice the Witch brings the heartstring of a dragon she killed to Ollivander's great grandfather and asks for a wand. We hit problems right away. Alice doesn't know much about wandlore so she may not have chosen the best heartstring, but let's say she gets luck. She gives some A-plus heart string to granddad Ollivander, who we will call Bob from here on out.

Bob looks at the heartstring and sees its good, but now he needs to match it too a piece of wand wood. Based upon his years of experience, he can tell that this heartstring will create an A-plus wand if matched with this piece of willow he's been saving. This would be a very good wand but won't match well with Alice. Willow matches well with insecurity people and Alice just killed a dragon. She's got personality to spare. If Alice was to use the dragon-willow wand it might only work half as good as it should.

(This is, of course, a simplification. Each wand is unique and more than the sum of its parts. Unfortunately for Bob, this only exasperates the problem he faces. He has only a rough idea about how well a wand will match until after he makes it. The new method removes this problem too).

Under book-Ollivander's method, Bob would make the dragon-willow wand and wait for someone to come along who could perfectly match it, who could utilise its full abilities. Unfortunately, he can't do this. He's making a wand for Alice only. He has to use a different method.

Using his years of experience, Bob is fairly sure the dragon heartstring would match well with a length of Fir he found last week, and that Alice would work well with a Fir wand. Unfortunately, the resulting match would produce an inferior wand, B-minus instead of A-plus. This leaves Bob with a choice. Does he make the A-plus wand Alice can barely use or B-minus she can? Either way, she's getting a worse wand than the new method.

 

While that's a pretty good explanation of the benefits of the new system over the older system, I can't help but feel as though you're missing the point of my question a bit. Of course, it's also possible I'm just missing the point entirely - it's 3am, after all. My apologies if that's the case.

However, what I was insinuating is that given the example Pottermore gives of a kneazle fur wand being used, a personal connection to a wand core seems to have some benefit that allows a better connection between wizard and wand.

Of course, this is working under the assumption that a kneazle hair isn't actually an amazingly powerful and quality wand core (which I think we can agree is highly unlikely) and that it gave passable if not amazing results. From what we know of the wizarding world history, it seems likely that the wands they had gave at least decent results.

In your case, Alice might get an okay connection because she is using 'A-plus heart string' (like Neville could still do magic with an unsuitable but quality wand) - but what if you replaced that with a kneazle hair or an owl feather or something instead? If she wasn't especially suited to that wand, well then she really shouldn't be able to do much magic with it would she? Yet from what we know wizards did seem to get working results from wands made of these materials, that they weren't especially suited to - and apparently it was because of their personal connection to the core?

Anyway, I think my point relies too much on assumptions and I'm frankly pretty tired so I'll just leave this here.

 

While this is certainly true, there's also the very real possibility that the "b-minus" wand is still better for Alice than any of the current wands in his shop.

I also posit that in the realm of magic (and RL), belief, conviction, and suggestion play a huge part. If Alice believes that a wand of any kind with this heartstring (which she herself, say, carved out of a dragon she killed) will work splendidly for her, then it's perfectly reasonable, plausible, and arguable that it will, in fact, work very well for her.

It's true that the finished wand is more than the sum of its parts, since they (wands) are quasi-sentient according to JKR, and the fact that I've never seen any evidence that Harry could just start blasting out spells after picking up a Fawkes feather and a sprig of holly. I mean, Voldemort's wand uses the same core as Harry's, and phoenixes (phoenices?) are supposedly "good" creatures, in addition to the rebirth aspect connecting HP and LV.

[Off-Topic: It's my belief that while Voldemort connected with the rebirth aspect of the core and *all* the aspects of the Yew wood, Harry, when looking for a wand, connected with the Holly part most, while connecting with the Phoenix aspects thru his connection to LV (Scarcrux) as well as the "good" aspects. Of course, the rebirth aspects apply to both, but for Harry they're mostly as a result of the LV connection. I've said before that as long as Harry is the BWL, there's no reason - at all - for him to have any wand other than the canon wand, and that if he *isn't* the BWL, there's pretty much no reason for him *to* have it.]

Anyway, my point is that while Ollivander's method is best when the customer has no pre-existing affinity for any particular magical item (or wood), there's no reason to completely discount the other methods when it comes to a different person. After all, Fleur seemed to get along just fine with her Granny-hair wand, if her being the B'batons champion is any indication. In fact, I'd go ahead and also posit that Ollivander was doing pretty much the same thing when he presented Harry with the Holly/Fawkes wand - he had already tried Harry with a *different* phoenix feather wand that didn't cut it, and then took a step back, asked himself, "What item could this kid have a connection with?" and then brought out the only other Fawkes-feather wand in existence.

I mean, do you not think that Ollivander probably skipped all the really short wands and went straight to some extra-long ones back when he first met Hagrid? It's trial-and-error, certainly, but old Ollivander has no doubt managed to pick up a few wand-choosing-wizard trends in his years of selling them.

Oh, and there's also the fact that wands and wizards work better together the longer they're... together. IIRC it's stated in the wands part of Pottermore that over a lifetime, a wizard/wand team becmes more attuned to each other.

 

The point is that there is no such personal connection between the person and the substance they bring along. It's a wizarding wives tale that Ollivander corrected.

 

I wondered recently why Sirius's mother and called him a blood traitor when she is supposed to have died 4 years after he was incarcerated for being a death eater. Perhaps she didn't once he returned to the house but did once the Order arrived?

Also while checking to see if I was right about Walburga's death, I remember reading awhile back, I think it was Taure's post about Dumbledore's age not being that spectactular, and I check the other Blacks and the majority all died from their 50's to 70's. I suppose what I am saying is that we only know of 4 wizards who aged well (minus the Flamel's) so perhaps they were exceptional. It is rare but humans can live past their hundreds it's just the get problems that could be fixed with magic if found. Although, I tihnk that could be a counter to what I just argued. Meh.

Edit - Just thought some more and thought of some that may count and that I may as well list them. Muriel, Albus Dumbledore, Aberforth Dumbledore (I assume he is in his hundreds), Slughorn (maybe, though I think he could be in his 90's, depends how old he was when he taught Voldemort), the OWL examiner, Bagshot.

 

I'm trying to remember the times Harry really pulled his head out of his arse to actually study and practise for a change. From the first four books I can only remember:

• Third Year - practising a Patronus. He managed to learn it better and earlier than just about anyone.
• Fourth Year just before the first task - practising the Accio spell. He managed to raise his skill with the spell from useless to being able to summon a broom from over a mile away in about 24 hours.
• Fourth Year again before the third task - practising spells for the maze once he knew about it. While he did have the help of Crouch Junior, Harry had a similar level of skill to at least Cedric Diggory, who was chosen as the best of Hogwarts and had trained specially for this.

Unfortunately I really can't remember much else. I mean he worked hard and studied during 5th year to teach the DA, which had the result of those he taught did very well in the OWLs and those he brought to the Ministry could stand up to Death Eaters who were taking it easy on them.

So what other examples of Harry actually working hard and training are there?

My thinking is that Harry is a very competent and skilled wizard, but only when he has the need rubbed right in his face to make him study, either by Dementors rubbing his worst memories in his face, or the knowledge of death the next day if he doesn't train, or the sight out of the window every day of a large maze with monsters that will kill him if he doesn't practise.

 

Heh, cue "Bellatrix/Narcissa actually died at birth, so a mudblood's baby was swapped with the baby's corpse" story.

Andromeda is the oldest, over Bellatrix, right?

Bellatrix died at birth, so they use some material from Andromeda to 'clone' her, giving the Black family 'Bellatrix', only it was imperfect - hence the lack of children, and her even more than usual Black instability.

 

Much of Harry's learning takes place in the background. In fact, unless a specific spell is needed for the plot, Harry's magical education is almost completely behind the scenes after the first book.

But of course, that doesn't mean it doesn't happen. He is at a school for magic, after all. His primary activity there is learning magic. All the stuff we see is between lessons.

For example, at the beginning of DH Harry is chucking around several powerful spells that we'd never seen before or heard about him learning, and he is also capable of erecting the protection spells around their campsite. He's a pretty capable wizard. By the end of DH he's using non-verbal spells pretty well, too, and he managed to figure out by instinct some bastardisation of occlumency. We just don't see his lessons, and the narrative never really focuses on Harry's thoughts about magic.

 

To be fair, if the narrative spent a lot of time on harry's thoughts about magic the books would probably have been a whole lot more boring.

 

For some people, maybe

 

I personally would have loved to see some more studying/lessons thrown in here and there. But knowing Rowling, in-book explanations of her take on magical theory probably would have made canon even more convoluted and conflicting than it already is.

 

In the Triwizard Tournament, Champions were able to skip exams to train etc. Fine for Harry and Cedric; as fourth and sixth years they only had internal exams, which matter squat in the outside world. What about if a seventh year had been made Champion though? Would they still have had to take their NEWTS, or would being Champion been taken as a sign that said wizard/witch was a pretty skilled person anyway?

 

Bellatrix is the oldest; Andromeda is the middle child.


One thing that doesn't make sense to me is how Hagrid was framed in 1943.

"Nobody missed me even when I was alive. Took them hours to find my body- I know, I was sitting there waiting for them. Olive Hornby came into the bathroom- 'Are you in here again, sulking Myrtle?, she said, 'because Professor Dippet asked me to look for you-' And then she saw my body...ooooh, she didn't forget that until her dying day, I made sure of that..."

So she immediately turned into a ghost upon dying, so she would've been able to tell people how she died.

"No idea," said Myrtle in hushed tones. "I just remember seeing a pair of great big yellow eyes. My whole body sort of seized up and then I was floating away ..."

She remember a pair of great big yellow eyes, and nobody thinks maybe it was a basilisk? She died looking into eyes, how many monsters in the Harry Potter universe can do this exactly? I'm not sure if basilisks are recorded as having yellow eyes, but the powers of their gaze must have been.

Furthermore, in 1992 nobody thought it was a basilisk? The first two things I think of upon hearing "Petrify" is Medusa (a Gorgon) or a Basilisk from greek mythology (I guess you could argue that its an alternate universe, so that muggles aren't aware of Greek Mythology since its real and hidden, but if that was the case, then all witches and wizards would've been brought up hearing stories about how basilisks have petrifying powers. And, I guess you could also argue that in Harry Potter universe they don't have petrifying powers; they have killing powers with their eyes but if you're going to argue that, but death happened in 1943.)


Dumbledore knew Hagrid wasn't the culprit, and he also knew that Tom Riddle was a parselmouth from when he went to the orphanage; how was he not able to convince anyone of this?

Not to mention, the monster that was said to kill the girl was an Acromantula. When you die; your body stays the same (Nearly Headless Nick for example).

I'm pretty sure Acromantula's do not have yellow eyes, they have black eyes. I am, however, positive that their eyes do not have killing powers; if an Acromantula killed Myrtle her body would've been eaten.

So even if she didn't say anything (which I find highly unlikely), it would've been extremely obvious that Aragog and Hagrid weren't the culprits.

This has probably been pointed out before, but it was the first time I've seriously thought about it. Does anyone have any explanation? (Other than "Wizards don't have an ounce of common sense" and "Everyone was just looking for a reason to keep the school going and Hagrid was the easiest way" )

 

In short: The Starscream method.

I didn't really have a problem with the way he was portrayed in DH. Voldemort went from being the leader Lucius funded with the interest on whatever he had in the bank, to the unwanted house guest who was sucking him dry and could kill him and/or his family at any moment.

Narcissa had the brains and brass to see the opportunity to fuck Voldemort over and she took it (and, let's face it, she knew she'd be a dead woman the moment Harry turned up alive, after she'd said he carked it), but was otherwise in the same pathetic boat the rest of her family was in.

However, what I do have a problem with is how he apparently got off Scot free for all the shit he pulled. There's no mention of even a token stay in Azkaban.

I guess maybe JKR thought that flat out stating that he bought his way out of prison yet again, even in a post-Voldemort world, would cast a pall on her OBHWF ending, but come on... She could have even mentioned, when we see Draco and Scorpius at the train platform, that Lucius cut a deal so that he went to jail but Draco did no time, or something.

Anything would have been better than getting through the crap-ilogue with all the Malfoys apparently having gotten a complete pass on all the shit they either perpetrated or facilitated. We're left to assume the powers that be, after the war, just let it slide because the Malfoys realized they'd signed up for far more than they had bargained.

Last time I checked, buyer's remorse wasn't a legal defense.

 

To be fair, there is legal precedent: the case of Snape. A proven Death Eater (and thus, presumably, responsible for some crimes) but not prosecuted on the basis of mitigating factors (i.e. having turned before Voldemort's fall). The same applies to the Malfoys, I suppose. Maybe Harry vouched for them, as Dumbledore did Snape.

 

And, the number of DH book burnings would have increased exponentially beyond what there were. :fire

Sadly, I could actually see DH!Harry, who named one of his kids after two of the four men who had the biggest hands in ruining his life, doing some stupid shit like this. :facepalm