An interesting thought that came to me earlier. What would have happened if Draco died in DH, perhaps in the Room of Requirement? Would Narcissa have betrayed Voldemort in the Forbidden Forest? Also, what if Malfoy died before Dobby's rescue? Does this mean that the Elder Wand's power is "broken", if Malfoy's death was through a "non-magical" accident (e.g. tripping and falling, a tree landing on him) or through suicide?

 

I'd like to think Harry would be smart enough to lie if Draco had died in the RoR. But if he hadn't, I don't see any reason for Narcissa to betray her Master. I wouldn't be surprised if her emotions had given away that something was going on either way.

Why did she actually betray him in the first place? Did she wanted to get out of the game and hoped Harry would be able to beat Voldemort? Or did she thought Draco would get killed as well if Voldemort killed Harry on a second try and assaulted the castle?

As to your second question. Yeah, I think if Draco had died from natural causes, a self caused accident or suicide, the Elder Wand would have stopped working (or would have become a normal wand). That's what Dumbledore seems to have believed anyway and his guesses are quite often correct.

 

That's what canon says, yes, but there's no justification for it aside from "oh, this is what the new wand-lore in book 7 says".

If it was accepted wand-lore that a wand's power "breaks" after its owner dies outside of battle, then nobody would ever think of using an inherited wand, as presumably it wouldn't be capable of choosing the new owner as its own, or even functioning properly.

Perhaps it's just the Elder Wand, but more likely it's JKR spouting inanities.

 

Considering a lot of the new wand-lore in book was invented specifically for and applied only to the Elder Wand, it's entirely possible that the Elder Wand runs by some different rules. It, far more so than any other, seems to rely on passing on from one wizard to another (I think there is a reason why the fanon-loved Merlin's wand etc. aren't really superwands in canon) so there seems to be no reason to believe that there can't be special rules governing said passing.

 

There is one piece of evidence for the wand-lore in the Deathly Hallows that shows up before DH. The first wand Neville has - his father's - never works properly for him, as either his father still lives, or, presumably, because it is now allied to one of the Lestranges. He begins doing better after he gets a wand that chooses him.

Its an indication that Rowling had at least a proto-idea of what would become DH's wand-lore.

And can we please cut the 'JKR is [teh gay/stupid/not-as-good-a-writer-as-me]' crap. Stories change in the telling, the worlds of those stories change in the telling, especially long for long stories - even if they are plotted out. Of course things would change between the books, especially after she was put under a microscope. I envy her her fortune, I envy her the ease in which she builds a world that draws you in, I do not envy her the second guessing that must have plagued her after the popularity of the first book.

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I think it does run by different rules, simpler ones in fact. It is the only wand that seems to change its allegiance no matter how its master is bested, as the story goes that after the elder Peverell brother was stabbed to death in his sleep, it changed allegiance to his murderer. All other examples require one to overcome a wand's master through magic.

 

Surely not? The amount of times that expelliarmus is used, even in canon, (Shrieking Shack - PoA, The DA - Ootp, etc...), then nobody would own their own wands anymore.

I reckon, that like you said, the elder wand has special rules. Normal wands work for one wizard (The wand chooses the wizard, Mr Potter) exceptionally, but can be used by the majority of wizards for at least some spellwork.

 

Harry sat down next to Ollivander. He still was uncertain of his victory and wished to know if his guess about the Elder wand was the source of it.

"Mr. Ollivander, how could the Headmaster have predicted that I would gain its allegiance?"

"What allegiance?"

"The Elder wand's- y'know, the Deathstick. If it only obeyed its last victor, how could anyone have guessed that I wouldn't have been defeated, say, by the goblins, or on the battlefield or--"

"The Deathstick? My boy, we in the wand-making business call that by an entirely different name- the Whore wand. It's legendary fickleness had nothing to do with duels or combat. I'm absolutely sure that Albus knew the wand would be yours because it had been telling him how it found you much more attractive."

Harry noticed out of the corner of his eye the broken wand inching into the room, twitching and vibrating at the sight of its 'master'.

"Holy shit. HERMIONE! I NEED YOU TO CAST FIENDFYRE!"

 

Like I said, it probably wasn't all nailed down. But for argument's sake, I can say that the examples we have seen have had the disarming not be a defeat, in the sense of actual deadly combat. This may indicate that wands other than the Whorewand require a stronger 'break' in their allegiance. And from what I remember (I don't have the best memory), any other time has had the 'victor' freely give the wand back - which could negate any weaker kind of victory.

Although I agree that these arguments are tenuous at best.

 

This.

OT: I've always viewed the passing of the Elder Wand(and many other scenes in DH) as something attributed to the stroke of luck or destiny the 'hero' has. We see that in many stories. So, when the wand conveniently passed to Harry, I didn't think it was that big of a deal. Many do (with good reason, Harry got awfully lucky), which is perhaps why DH is not exactly well liked around these boards.

Regarding the wand itself, yes, the rules that govern it's passing can be viewed as exclusive to it, but I'd like to entertain the theory that the rule applies to every wand, and it only exerts it's effect proportional to the wand's own power. Yes, the wand is only as powerful as the wizard...blah blah, but I like to think that the more 'potent' a wand is with the relative wizard, the more directly will it be effected(positively or negatively) on it's passing. Nonsense maybe, but that's all I can think of right now.

 

Fuck you guys for drawing me into this, because even the ret-conning is shot so full of holes it makes me facepalm.

Rowling made a ham-fisted attempt to address the wands-switching-allegiance-upon-defeat thing, in which she said something to the effect of "only proper duels between adult wizards will cause the defeated wizard's wand to switch allegiance."

I don't know if I buy that, but she also said (again, I'm paraphrasing from what I remember), "the Elder Wand is a special case, and more prone to switch allegiances, while normal wands aren't so fickle."

In some ways, I think Rowling did a good job of foreshadowing both the Horcruxes (and Harry's being one) and the wand-allegiance thing. I mean, "the wand chooses the wizard" and old Ollivander being so mysterious was a good if very vague clue. Then with Ron's and Neville's hand-me-down wands and their less-than-stellar prowess, etc. we got a glimpse of wands being fickle or whatever the right word is.

We got Dumbledore, IIRC, commenting on how unheard-of were the effects and capabilities of the Diary, and the ominous similarities between Harry and Nagini when Harry rode shotgun and got a front-row seat to Nagini munching on Arthur. We even got that vaguely creepy "triumphant look" from Dumbledore after LV used Harry's blood to rise again. There's also the fact that Harry's a Parselmouth, and Ginny, under the Diary's influence, uses Parseltoungue to open the Chamber.

Sure, everything is much clearer in hindsight, and even from that vantage point, I think too much was shoehorned into DH, making it look even *more* deus ex machina that perhaps it should. There are still pleanty of unexplained bits, like why Moody's magical eye sees right through this supposedly incredible Invisibility Cloak, and why, if Horcruxes are destroyed only when their containers are damaged so thoroughly as to be "beyond magical repair," the Resurrection Stone still manages to call up echoes of whoever Harry cares to see.

Was Grindelwald really the master of the Elder Wand, when all he did was steal it from Gregorovitch, never "defeating" the older man in any sense? If so, then it stands to reason that the wand's "power" (whatever that means) *can't* be "broken," whether Harry dies as its master or not. If Grindelwald never was the master of the wand, how can Dumbledore have subsequently become its master, unless defeating whoever happens to be holding it is good enough to win its allegiance. Again, in that case, it stands to reason that its so-called power can't be broken.

So, if Draco had been dead by the time of the forest scene, I would certainly hope that Harry would have sense enough to lie his ass off and say he'd saved Draco eight times, and that id she ratted him out he was gonna tell old snake-face how little Draco told the Aurors everything and had agreed to become a Horcrux for Harry *and* Dumbledore.

If Draco had died before Harry "defeated" him - by dint of yanking a bundle of wands out of Draco's hand, no less - then I'd hazard a guess that the Elder Wand would have worked quite smashingly for Voldemort, assuming he/she/it *knew* that its former "master" - who won it only by dint of disarming a weakened and unsuspecting Dumbledore - was, in fact, dead. After all, we know it's a fickle wand, if it picked Grindelwald simply because he snuck in and stole it from its previous "master" - a man who was apparently not even using it, else why would it have been in his back room while he was out and about, doing whatever?

That right there seems to me to be simply more evidence to suggest there's no "breaking" the Elder Wand's "power."

 

I'm actually semi-serious with the theory that the Elder wand had 'wood' for attractive wizards. Consider that Gregorovitch never quite commanded it, but the young Gellert made it his own. Over time, the wand might have soured on Gellert and took a shine to Albus through Gellert's memories. Thus, Albus won a fight that in theory shouldn't have been winnable (if one assumes the wand is an Irresistable force).

So Albus took it for himself, caring for it and keeping it safe for decades (also note that he never seemed to date, historically). Once Dumbledore was cursed by the ring, 'Wanda' knew it was time to go shopping again. Draco made an alright choice, but the wand was never (physically) passed to him.

Riddle (an ugly and despicable thing) retrieved it, the wand was brought closer to its 'master', Draco, but he seemed to be weak and powerless. The wand found out about Draco being pwned by Harry and it knew whose hand it wanted to be held by, oh yeah!

BTW- this interpretation lends itself easily to making the Elder wand the Horcrux of some otherwise dead wizard/witch that wasn't versed in wandless possession. 'The wand chooses the wizard', indeed!


Back to the thread- Draco lost the wand because he was already beaten. His chosen lifetime nemesis was already Harry Potter, and Harry by his nature (striving despite unwinnable odds) had him beat by the time Draco was dragged out of Hogwarts by Snape at the end of book six.

 

see, my problem is that grindelwald just took it from gregorovitch. which is exactly what voldemort did, from dumbledore's tomb. I never really felt that it mattered if draco knew about the wand or not. voldemort stole it, so it should've transfered to him.

 

The difference is that Grindelwald stole it from the master of the wand (as far as we know, Gregorovitch is the master), which I suppose for the Elder Wand counts as besting him. Voldemort on the other hand took it from the tomb of Dumbledore, so while Voldemort could be said to have bested Dumbledore, he did not actually defeat Malfoy, the current master, in any sense, and so the transfer never happened.

 

But then, shouldn't we assume that whoever took the Elder Wand after the battle and placed it in Albus' tomb (I don't remember how it went in books) technically stole it from Draco and hid it? And then when Voldemort got it he technically bested this person by finding it and taking as his own.

 

I have the theory that whoever stole the wand couldn't get it to work "properly", and whoever defeated the thief after could.

So - Grindelwald couldn't (since he stole it) and Albus could; Draco "defeated" Albus and was defeated by Harry in turn, thus Harry won its allegiance.

If Voldemort getting the wand count as stealing it, he wouldn't get the wand to work properly either, but whoever defeated him could still be the Eldar Wand's master.

 

It seems ridiculous that a regular old wand could just switch allegiances at the drop of a hat, as it were. If that were the case, then in any sort of duel, a stronger wizard could easily amass a collection of allied wands through just defeating any number of weaker opponents. Not that it's likely, but it would be a common occurrence if dueling competitions are at all common. I could imagine that as a wizard grows, a wand becomes less than completely compatible with the wizard, making it less likely to work perfectly for that wizard and more likely to be prone to switching to another wizard. Or not. This whole thing is pretty weakly worked out.

Oddly enough, I think that the whole thing would make a lot more sense if Draco's wand wasn't allied to Harry midway through book 7. The whole thing just makes it all not make sense imo.

 

If you go on the Harry Potter wikipedia and search "Elder Wand" there's a link to an interview with J.K. down the bottom of the information page that explains the whole thing with the wands.

 

Well if Draco died it would lead to Harry realizing his repressed love for him. He'd use the resurrection stone to bring Draco back and then find out he could bring him back to life using their uber-soul-bond of course. Then they'd morph into their creature forms which Draco remembered to tell Harry about and they'd somehow get pregnant and kill Voldemort with the power of their bad-boy love.

Seriously though, as previously said hopefully Harry would have the wits to lie to Narcissa and say he was alive, from where the rest would occur normally.

Regarding the Elder Wand, it could be said that all regarding it's power being broken was conjecture and not necessarily certain as despite that towards the end when Harry was thinking that its power would die with him, Harry is by no means an expert on the Elder Wand, or wand lore in general. Furthermore, I'm loathe to accept the idea of the Elder Wand acting in some special way because it's the Eldar Wand 111!!!1 and normal rules don't apply to it. This is an area where Canon isn't entirely clear, so it can go any way you want it to really.

 

Grindelwald did slightly more than simply steal the wand from Gregorovich.

It's not much, but you can certainly make the argument that stealing the wand from under Gregorovich's nose, with Grindelwald being aware of it and possibly hitting Gregorovich with an incapacitating spell counts as "besting" him.

To me the more interesting part of the wand's ownership chain is how Gregorovich became master of it in the first place. Did he kill for it (as it seems that many wizards have done), or did he merely forcibly steal it?

 

It seems Grindelwald actually waited for Gregorovich to arrive, so he could actually beat him in a 'duel'.

Makes me wonder why he didn't use the Killing Curse. Would he be afraid people would connect the murder to the Elder Wand? It's not like anyone would have known it was him, he wasn't well known yet.