Dumbledore had already lost the wand to Malfoy so Voldemort stealing it from Dumbledore's grave doesn't prove that theft doesn't work. If theft is a way of gaining mastery over the wand then you would have to steal it from the current master i.e. Malfoy or Harry.

Maybe the Elder wand considers allowing the wand to be taken from you as a form of defeat similar to a disarming charm.

Also Antioch Peverell lost the wand to theft (though the thief also slit his throat) and Hereward took the wand from his father Godelot (before leaving him to die in his own cellar). This doesn't really prove anything but it's interesting that theft has been involved and the possibility of the murders being unnecessary.

Edit: Just after Pressing submit I read this

 

Nope. It isn't that Voldemort stole it that stopped him claiming it, it was that he stole it from the wrong person. Gellert won the wand, perhaps not fairly, but legitimately - he proved his worthiness, or at least his superiority to Gregorivitch, but being able to steal it from under his nose. It doesn't have to be won in a duel, just won. If Dumbledore had treated the wand as Gregorivitch did, leaving it aside for study rather than keeping it on him, then Voldemort could have strolled into Hogwarts and stolen it, and the wand would have been his.

If there is a plot hole in this aspect of the wand, then it's Voldemort not thinking the thing through to realise that mastery of the wand a) wouldn't be conveyed to him by stealing it from the grave, and b) wouldn't have been with Snape anyway. But then, it's Voldemort and thinking logically. We all know how that goes.

 

There might be a problem of disappearing up your own asshole. Or committing unintentional suicide...https://www.fanfiction.net/s/7250343/1/Ill_Shoot_the_Shot_Bang

For stuff like this, when potentially gamebreaking power isn't abused mercilessly, I tend to assume that those in universe, instead of being drooling idiots, are instead acting upon damned good reasons. Like avoiding obscene levels of danger and disaster. If the only knowledge, mostly, granted about the use of Time as a weapon is "Don't fucking do it", I tend to go with that explanation and be perfectly happen being somewhat ignorant. Perhaps someone documented the existence of entire parentage and heritage lines that never happened along with histories that never occurred, because some brought history books back that read as legitimate when scanned with magic.

I get the strange feeling that instead of mass protests, you would have mass open revolt and betrayal from within if Unbreakable Vows became mandatory. Wizards seem much more capable of simply surviving without government maintenance of infrastructure than Muggles and so have less to fear from total collapse, even if temporary.

Not to mention Magicals can launch assaults upon their central governance with far greater speed and brutality than Muggles, and the fact that 100% of all Witches and Wizards are, by default, heavily armed and dangerous.

Also known as the moment JK Rowling just plain gave the fuck up and started rolling in her piles and piles of money. Its the one moment that is still honestly difficult for me to accept as canon, partially because of the Jesus metaphor. I prefer to think of that even as both Voldemort and Harry dying and being granted Heaven/Hell/Whatever. It seems too perfect, that end, that Epilogue. But that's another argument entirely.

That's a lame ass cop out and everybody knows it. It's why that section is so difficult for anyone to accept. At first, I thought the reason Harry survived wasn't even the Horcrux, but because of the Deathly Hallows giving him one more chance. Then I re-read it and it made some sense but....it still seems like the Deathly Hallows doing it just as much as burning through the False Horcrux.

Any, at all, over thousands of years, and there would be documentation of such miracles.

Strangely, this doesn't get brought up as often as it should, I'm guessing because it makes some ACTUAL FREAKING SENSE.

The only time I remember reading something like this in a fanfic, was a Lucillia crossover with Labyrinth where Jareth the Goblin King is Lily Potter's biological father and thus it was a Faery bargain made.

But even outside that, the explicit offering of a deal, a sacrifice, a willing? human sacrifice, and the taking of such may mark a covenant of sorts.

While interesting to read, it forgets a couple things. Like all the other ingredients for that crazy ass potion, and the fact that Harry is incredibly difficult to kidnap right under Albus Dumbledore's nose.

And the Blood Protection might kick in, since until after he returns, Crouch!Moody is nothing but a teacher and ally.

Not to mention Voldemort wanted his return to be somewhat of a secret. And so needed a way for Harry to disappear without triggering massive, confirmable suspicions. Had Harry died in that graveyard and neither he nor Cedric returned....well then it might have been chalked up to the Portkey Cup gone wrong, if it was meant to be a Portkey, or quite simply nobody fucking knows.

Harry disappears anytime before then, and everybody goes on high fucking alert, and Fudge might make a complete 180 from canon and start going down a very short suspect list.

So yes, Crouch Jr had access to Potter all year. But the moment Potter disappears early, is the moment everybody knows something major is up. Voldemort wanted to wait and for whatever happened to be a secret, at least somewhat. Possibly covering up Harry's murder as a tragic accident then sending him back along with Cedric's body. Or not. Either way, Voldemort wanted to keep it a secret.

That and it may have taken Crouch Jr a while to figure out how to enchant the Cup into a Portkey and get past whatever defenses there were against such a thing happening in Hogwarts.


_____________

As far as the Elder Wand is concerned, I'm guessing that you also need to accept Death in general, otherwise the Wand may very well simply reject you. Voldemort never accepted Death, he never Mastered it, and thus had entirely the wrong mindset when approaching the Hallows. Which I think may have been the real determining factor in the Wand ownership. Or something.

 

Accepting death? You think Draco fucking Malfoy accepted death?
I think it depends on how you view 'Defeat'
Magic is also about intent, interpret that as you will
P.S. weren't you ban hammered?

 

I always assumed that either a) Harry survived using the same method Aslan did in Narnia 1 or b) Harry wasn't the first person to survive the AK, but since most survived AKs don't rebound (eg HP book 7) the would be killer used a different spell (or dagger or something) to kill the survivor. Any other tales of AK survival would have been less reliable than Beedle's tales to historians and quickly forgotten.

 

I'm just going on some of the things that Dumbledore said....sorta. And yes, I think Draco Malfoy accepted that one day, he was going to die. Voldemort never did and tried to reject it.

True and tempbanned.

 

The reason Malfoy killed Dumbledore was for his life and his families life,

 

You guys are getting rather mixed up.

Mastery of the Elder wand and the title "Master of Death" are two entirely separate concepts. Mastery of the Elder wand is a real magical property with real effects. The title Master of Death is a fairy tale power.

The Elder Wand

All wands react to the defeat of their master in different ways. This is referred to as a wand's loyalty - the readiness with which it abandons its old master and takes on a new master. Most wands fall somewhere along a "loyalty spectrum". The Elder wand, however, is ultimately disloyal, following only strength. It switches to a new master totally when its previous master suffers a defeat of some kind.

This is the only requirement for mastering the Elder wand: defeating its previous master. Even a trivial defeat will do it, but you can't defeat someone by proxy.

The Master of Death

The Deathly Hallows were three magical artefacts created by regular wizards - the Peverell brothers. They are powerful, but fallible. The Elder wand doesn't make you unbeatable, the Resurrection stone only brings back a kind of shade, and the invisibility cloak does not make you completely undetectable.

The Tale of the Three Brothers is a myth that has grown up around these three powerful magical objects. There is no such being as death. The myth of the Deathly Hallows is a fairy tale, the moral of which is acceptance of death. According to the myth, the Master of Death is the one who accepts death and "greets it like an old friend".

Harry's survival

Two things happened in the forest in DH.

Firstly, Harry survived the Killing Curse, the fragment of Voldemort's soul in his scar being destroyed in the process.

Secondly, Harry sacrificed himself for the inhabitants of Hogwarts, granting them protection from Voldemort.

Harry's mastery of the Elder wand is relevant to the first. It was one of two important factors, the other being Harry's blood, which carried Lily's protective power, living on inside of Voldemort. Harry's survival of the Killing Curse was a combination of these two factors. Voldemort's lack of mastery of the Elder wand weakened the Killing Curse so that it didn't completely kill him; Lily's protective magic gave Harry a route back to life from the limbo the "semi-Killing curse" put him in. The fragment of Voldemort's soul had no such route back to life and so did not return with Harry.

Harry being the Master of Death is relevant to the second. Not because being Master of Death granted him special powers, but because the qualities that "Master of Death" describes are the same qualities which enable someone to sacrifice themselves. This is also why Dumbledore, via Snape, had to trick Harry into thinking he was really going to die. It would only be a genuine sacrifice if Harry went fully intending to die. That's also why he couldn't fight back. In reality, Dumbledore knew since his "triumphant look" in GoF that Voldemort having Harry's blood would allow Harry the potential to survive death.

Sources:

Ollivander and Dumbledore in Deathly Hallows.

Tales of Beedle the Bard, Dumbledore's notes.

JKR's old website, still accessible via the Way Back Machine:
http://web.archive.org/web/20081231104945/http://www.jkrowling.com/textonly/en/faq_view.cfm?id=122

JKR's Pottercast interview, part two:
http://www.the-leaky-cauldron.org/2007/12/24/pottercast-131-rowling-along/

As for this:

You've managed to get seriously confused. What I'm talking about there is Harry's survival in 1981. In fact, what I was proposing was the exact idea wordhammer then agreed with, which you went on to praise -_-

 

I was talking about mastery of elder wand