Wand creation is, as of concurrent in fanfiction, an absolute freaking joke. They mostly resolve into two main points;

1) Used as a random, "oh, so and so has a wand with this and that, which is good at that,"

2) Used as a power-up, "Dis omega wand w/ dragon soul & phoenix feather' and so and so on.

I actually made this topic to see if there's an actual way to make wands more... interesting. Quirkier, perhaps. Are there FFs with interesting wand concepts, like maybe a wand having a soul or an interesting ingredient that nobody would've thought of(and no, dementer ___ and basilisk ____ does not count)?

Would the regents actually be more expensive than the prices shown in the market? I mean, 7 gold coins for a phoenix feather? I dunno...

Also, staffs. Some fictions have touched lightly on the concepts of staffs, for example, some being clumsier, larger wands, or stronger, heavier wands. Or just what the other dimension uses in a xover. Would staffs actually be used in society? How would they compare to wands? I mean, they're obviously larger, bulkier, and more inconvenient, but with magic and being capable of sticking cars in pockets and making weight null, I'm not too sure.

Would it be stronger? Practice an entirely different string of magic than wands?

 

The Elder Wand, nuff said.

 

I find canons wandlore from Pottermore plenty interesting to be honest. Not as a hook for a story, but as a constant characterpiece.

 

I don't think any sort of staff has a place in the HP verse, except maybe an ornamental kinda thing (I think Moody used a staff in the Order movie). Best to stick with the wands and the info we have about them.

Ollivander shows reluctance to use "exotic" cores, and since he seems to be the foremost wandmaker in Britain, I suppose any other would likely look to him for advice. Maybe he plays it safe by sticking to unicorn hair, phoenix feather, and dragon heartstring, or maybe those are just effect for most practical purposes (or perhaps just easier to obtain, since I don't think a veela would give up a strand of her hair unless someone important to her would get the wand it powers).

I've always found it strange just how cheap Ollivander's wands are. Seven galleons for such an important tool every witch and wizard will use throughout their life. That's like £35 or something according to JKR's exchange rates. My first pair of glasses cost three times that amount, and I only had them for two years before I got a new pair.

 

I'm really interested in the staff part. I would like to see what DLPers think about it. They are so awesome, and the potential,. Such a same book canon completely ignores them. I don't know Pottermore wandlore, but I quite like the onesmfrom the book. Simple and interesting, except the Elder Wand, I didn't like that,

 

I've been compiling a bunch of ideas about wands for a story. I'm trying to make a cohesive theory that takes into account what we know from the books and Pottermore, along with some (a lot, actually) interpolation and extrapolation of the value of wands in the story.

Some of it I already posted in a Reddit thread:

 

Well... perhaps staffs are more like a better, larger conduit.

A wand is more focused, and takes the power from the 'magic core' into a sharper funnel. Seeing as wizards seem to never ever get bloody tired, I presume that it's something like magic core chooses how much power you can dish out at once. Thus, perhaps a staff is like a larger conduit, with more room to gush out. The Elder Wand, I liken to be like a really big conduit with great precision and basically god-mode.

 

Oh right- the staff thing. Here's more notes:

Here's how the evolution of the wand began; a wizard tried to influence his nearby reality but couldn't make it happen. He gained the assistance of a magical creature who enchanted a piece of themselves to respond to a command word. When the wizard wanted that specific effect, he would hold the charm and his spell would have a wider or longer or more reliable effect. Medicine bags of an Amerind shaman are collections of these totems.

Let's say a unicorn gave a hair and told the wizard a word to call the lightning, and later gave him another hair with another word to cleanse the water. It might occur to either wizard or unicorn that the original hair could do both things if it was fashioned to understand both commands. This is also the origin of runework- a way to emplace a charm long term, in a standard arrangement with consistent results. (Proper transfiguration is permanent anyway, so runes are really about sustaining charms)

The Staff was developed when it became cumbersome to write more than a few commands onto a particular object; the nature of wood is that it has layers of bark that when unrolled provide a large surface for instructions to be written.

Over time, the heavily-instructed and enchanted objects began to develop a personality of their own; Mr. Weasley inadvertently rediscovered this in enchanting the Ford Anglia- so many different enchantments coalesced into a semi-sentient being with the purpose of being a vehicle for Arthur's family. It did its job well, even interceding on behalf of the smallest boy and his friend when they were lost in the forest.

Staves became the standard, but as manufacturing techniques and the instructions to be written became more complex, it was possible to reduce the necessary size to something you could move with one hand and still maintain control.

Nowadays, wands use a highly-tested and complex collection of rune diagrams that will ensure a personality emerges. Part of that process is providing a base language that the wand will listen for and respond to.

Staves may be coming back in vogue for wand-makers that wish to instill more knowledge in the fledgeling instrument. Moody's staff might know several different source libraries, and have a couple of pre-set spells besides.

 

I see the issue of staves as similar to technological advancements for the muggles: everything is getting smaller. Not to mention, if staves were objectively better for a wizard (similar to the OP magical trunks that stop time or whatever), then everyone would use them.

 

Numbers were never JKR's strong suit. Just look at school population and extrapolate that for the magical population of Britain, for instance.

I think wands should be more expensive, purely to make losing them a bigger deal, and just say Ollivander has to pay money for the cores. Since Slughorn made a big deal of harvesting some of Aragog's venom and other such things, we can assume ingredients should be hard to get by and cost significant money.

 

I like the idea that you can't really aim or do sophisticated wand movements with a staff, so you use a wand, which is a lot better in 99% of anything you'd like to do and good enough for the rest. You would only use a staff for some serious wide area enchantment where finesse and precision isn't as important as raw power, let's say against an attacking barbarian horde or casting city wide protections.

I also like the idea of custom wands (and they are at least somewhat canon as far as Fleur's wand is concerned), but there should be some personal relevance with the parts, not just some weird shit found on the storage cupboard of an "exclusive wandmaker in Knockturn Alley". I also see a wand more as a power limiter than a power multiplier: a well matched wand from Ollivander might give you a match up to, say, 95%, so even a perfect match wouldn't gain you more than a fraction of advantage over that.

The differences in wands are also intriguing. We know that some wands are good in transfiguration and others in charms; it might be interesting to see someone like a healer to have multiple wands for different uses. Again the differences wouldn't really matter outside the very best of a narrow field, and a normal wizard would be perfectly fine with the first wand they got. Also aurors and other law enforcers seem like people who might be going through wands pretty quickly (accidents happen and so on), and having "disposable" wands might make sense for them.

BTW. do you know if Ron's first wand that is said to be Bill's (?) old one was originally matched for Bill or if that was passed down even further? That might be an example of someone choosing a profession where their old wand just didn't cut it for one reason or another.

 

Maybe the Ministry subsidizes the cost of wands. There are many cases when governments will do similar things in order for the population to be able to afford whatever it is they are subsidizing. The wands could be super fucking expensive. The Ministry believes that if you have magic you should be able to afford a wand, and as such keep it cheap.

 

I suppose I like to think of it like Dresden Files staves. You could do the same thing with a different instrument, sure, but staves also double as a good old fashioned hittin' stick when you need them to. If only for that, assuming all magical benefits are equal, I'd prefer a staff.

 

One of my favorite movie-based added details is from Order of the Phoenix:
When Harry first goes to Snape's office for Occlumency lessons, Snape pulls out a toolkit roll and lays it out on a table. From the dozen or more wands within, he selects the one he uses on Harry for the lesson.

- It shows that those differences Ollivander mentioned are more than idle babble
- Also shows that Snape has won, bought or salvaged a variety of wands over the years
- If you accept the idea of wands having personalities and assume Snape wouldn't keep a wand in that collection that wasn't useful to him, he gets along with many more wands than he does people. Possibly this is another benefit of Occlumency

 

I think it's a horrible cliche when people start bringing in staves. They don't fit HP.

It is tempting to write about Harry getting a staff - but such stories fall prey to special snowflake marty stu shit when that happens. If you guys are going to write about somebody using a staff, it has to read better than, "Staves are super special awesome and stuff!"

If Harry/somebody uses a staff, it should be for a good reason:

-Harry can't use wands (why?)
-The staff has a special magical significance (is it the staff of some ancestor?); maybe there's a magical rule, "Heads of ancient houses must use staves! It's a tradition!" Or some law requiring Harry to carry one? There needs to be a justifiable reason at least, for him to be using it over a wand.
-It's required to do a special spell or ritual or magical discipline/teaching
-Harry is using it to intimidate others (Well, a staff is way more intimidating than a wand, simply because of its size and rarity)
-Harry loses his wand and is forced to use it instead

I think if anyone is to take staves seriously in a story, it has to come at a huge cost. Harry can use staves, but not wands, or Harry can use both, but only because he has some magical defeciency of some kind. There needs to be a trade off, or it feels very twinkish and fake.

I could see wands being better for modern spellcasting and staves being better for older spellcasting. And that doesn't necessarily means it's powerful, it could just mean you have a limited number of useful spells when using a staff, but that perhaps using a stave gives you an advantage of surprising people. Staves should probably be slower at casting magic, too? Bigger movements are necessary, afterall.

Also, wands can be concealed on the body. And perhaps staves are easier to disarm because of their weight/bulk? They require two hands, probably. There are lots of potential downsides that need to be pointed out to the reader if they're to be used in fanfiction. They might have some upsides to their use, but since they aren't used in HP canon, there needs to be a big reason not to use them over a wand.

 

A staff? No, sir, that's just my walking stick, honest! A young teenager like me needs his walking stick to, uh, walk around the castle and, uh stuff. Come to think of it, doesn't Smeltings has a mandatory stick?

A staff has that big, heavy, majestic feeling to it, if someone swings or point his staff at you, it's a lot more impressvie then with a tiny wand. But plotwise, it's just a big wand so I don't see much place for it, except when it's 'The Staff Of Merlin' or 'The Staff Of Stonehenge'.

Sounds kind of interesting. Now have this Idea were the Dursleys treated Harry alright, Dumbledore died, the wizarding world forgot Harry and Harry went to Smeltings, only to discover the long lost art of staff wielding ^^

 

It also ties into the whole allegiance part. He probably defeated the previous owner of said wands and as such, they are now his and he uses them when he deemed it necessary (high risk of losing his wand/being identified by his wand/etc.)

 

Regarding staff use, two things immediately come to mind.

In the movies, I remember Moody using a staff. Now, he's already a talented and a powerful wizard, so whether the staff improves his spells' potency is debatable. But he's also missing a good chunk of one of his legs. I can't imagine supporting oneself and casting at the same time is easily manageable, so why not just combine the two? In this way, it could be argued that a staff is the exact same thing as a wand, just bigger and serving an additional purpose that most people don't need.

The second thing I remember from the movies (I can't remember if it's the same in the books) is how Lucius keeps his wand concealed in his cane. Is the cane actually needed? Doubtful. Is it cool to unsheathe a wand like a sword? Fuck yes it is. Could the wand be used while still in the cane, effectively turning it into a sort of half-staff? Like tapping the cane on the ground to cast a Protego? Maybe, and also pretty classy.

 

Talking about the movies. Dumstrang delegation was using staves in their entrance dance thingy. They were flying sparks and burning the floor every time they thumped against it.