And I really don't think blood or pieces of Voldemort have anything to do with it. Both of them went to King's Cross, both Voldemort's accidental Horcrux and Harry could have perished if Harry had decided to move on.

It's clear this is a gaping vagina-esque plot hole.

 

Page 655: "All this long night, when I am on the brink of victory, I have sat here," said Voldemort, his voice barely louder than a whisper, "wondering, wondering, why the Elder Wand refuses to be what it ought to be, refuses to perform as legend says it must perform for its rightful owner..and I think I have the answer."

He then offs Snape.

Page 702:

"Voldemort's expression did not change. The red eyes seemed to burn in the firelight. Slowly, he drew the Elder Wand between his long fingers."

Page 704:

"Voldemort raised his wand."

However, at this point, he has the Elder wand in his hand as two pages earlier showed.

It shouldn't of worked, therefore a plot hole.

 

I always assumed that the reason Harry was in King's Cross was not because he magically had the power to choose between his own soul or Voldemort's being killed, but because Voldemort wasn't the master of the Elder Wand when he used it, and so the Killing Curse wouldn't obey Voldemort, but Harry.

In the Great Hall, same situation, Harry came in with the intention of killing Voldemort, so the wand does it, but in the forest, he came with the intention of dieing, so....

Jeeze as I'm typing this out, I realize what a giant plot hole it is, unable to explain it. Oh well

 

Perhaps because Voldemort killed the Horcrux and not Harry, the Elder Wand worked?

I don't have a clue, but that's the theory my friend puts out.

 

It's weak, but I'd suggest that Harry accepted the first strike- he believed that submitting to death would enable his opponent to die, so he wasn't resisting the effect. Depending on how sentient you see the wand, it may have been 'complying' with his intent.

Having submitted but not stayed dead, Harry retains mastery of the Elder wand through their next confrontation, where he intends to win and his opponent to die. He wouldn't commit a murder but his intent was for Voldemort to lose, and he was flinging around the AK as usual.

There may be something about his never having tried to kill anything and still being a virgin that made Fate or whatever take pity on him, fudging the results in his favor.

 

I wondered about this a while ago and this was the only thing I could come up with that made any sense at all. Of course, this then points to perhaps wands having some form of sentience, but that's a whole different thread of speculation.

 

Only thing is, did Voldemort's horcrux die before or after King's cross? After all, there is something of Voldemort's there. So if it didn't die until after King's Cross, then Harry would of been dead and Voldemort would of took over Harry's body.

 

This is what makes the most sense in my mind, even though the whole 'wand mastery' is a shitty plot device anyway. Voldemort could kill himself with the wand, but not Harry the true owner, and that is why the AK killed the horcrux first.

 

My hypothesis:

"The wand chooses the wizard." Harry wasn't armed at the time he was struck and the Deathstick didn't regard Voldemort's atack on its master as warranting a shift in allegiance. (Anthromorphizing wands in this fashion provides a way around the Dueling Club plot hole as well). Besides, Voldemort was struck down as well at the time, so there was no clear victor in the exchange.

We already know that defeat in magical combat isn't necessary for a wand shift its allegiance--Gellert Grindelwald merely stole it from Gregorovich, after all. I'd guess that Harry could sense somehow that he was still master of the Elder Wand when he faced Voldemort in the Great Hall. The reasoning he gave at the time for why he was still its master may have been specious, but that doesn't change that he knew he was its master and could use that in his battle against Voldemort.

 

Jesus. Deathly Hallows sucked.

 

Deathly Hallows did suck balls though.

 

Not sure about that Sree, he killed Snape using the same wand with the damn Killing curse.

There was a massive difference between the two occasions; At the forest he had just learned he's a horcrux and deduced that he had to die if Voldemort can ever be killed. He had accepted his death then and was even talking to ghosts using Resurrection stone.

Accepting his death he had finally defeated the 'fear of death' which so many men failed(Voldemort included). I guess that's the exact point where he became the Master of Death. The King's Cross scene had something to do with this. It gave him one last opportunity to either move on or go back to the fight. It gave him a choice of deceiving his death or accepting it for having mastered the Death.

In Great Hall Harry no longer had to sacrifice, he had already screwed up Voldemort's royal ass. He speculated a theory and was fairly sure that he was right(Note:This is the one of the very few scenes in DH where Harry did something on his own without Ron or Hermione's help). He knew he had some sort of say over the Death stick and tried his luck.

And it all boils down to luck. Let's face it guys there's no fucking way Harry could defeat Voldemort in an ultra super epic duel.

I blame JKR for this fuckery.

EDIT: shinysavage just clarified Snape was killed by Nagini. Totally forgot that part

 

No, he sets Nagini on him - he specifically doesn't use the Wand because he's realised that he's not the true master of it, so he knows, or at least suspects, that it won't work against Snape...although it probably would have done, in fact. Which could have royally fucked Dumbledore's plan, in fact. If Snape had died instantly, Harry would never have found out he was a horcrux. Although I suppose they'd have met in battle eventually, and the end result would have been the same.

As for whether it's a plot hole...I've always thought along Rehio's lines - the Killing Curse took down the Horcrux, but there was a backlash against Harry since it was inside his body. Throw in the fact that he's the Master of the Wand, and he doesn't die. When they get to the final 'duel', the Wand just doesn't work; it's allegiance hasn't been won, and there's no Horcrux to take down.

 

And yet I didn't clarify WHY it is that Deathly Halllows sucked - and I'm sure that's been talked about to death. It sucks because we can have this long and fruitless discussion regarding whether or not this is a massive plot whole and it isn't even close to being the biggest problem with the book!

 

The whole wand issue is a clusterfuck in DH. I never understood why Harry's holly wand was able to preempt Harry's defeat on that bike with Hagrid. The Elder wand passing to Draco? I don't think so. I'm quite certain that Dumbledore could have resisted being disarmed by Draco. I always assumed that he willingly submitted to that situation.

I think the only thing that makes sense is that Harry submitted himself to death and purposefully didn't arm himself in the forest. It wasn't a duel and so the Elder wand obeyed the wishes of its true master.

 

Because this isn't a thread dedicated to how much the book sucked, I thought it was pretty good in my opinion. This is a thread dedicated to the discussion of what some perceive as a massive plot hole. Or did you somehow miss the point of the thread in your attempt at adding to it--read: not at all.

Personally I believe there was ambiguity about Harry's dying then, so the wand was confused. So it just cast the spell and hoped for the best.