Really, if Dumbledore wanted to give control of the Elder Wand to Snape, he could have just had Snape disarm him any time during a random day, since disarming is apparently enough to trigger the allegiance thing.

 

He didn't want snape to get the Elder Wand's allegiance. He thought that if Snape killed him, the elder wand would never work properly for anyone else.

 

That just doesn't make sense to me. The wand is supposed to change allegiance when the owner is defeated. Disarming counts as defeating while killing does not?

-edit- Or is this some sort of Mirror of Erised moment?

 

Killing counts. Assisted suicide (with the assistant having given his consent to, uh, assist) apparently doesn't count. Or something like that...

 

I understand why Snape didn't get. Dumbledore wasn't the owner of the wand when he killed him. I don't understand why Dumbledore thought that dieing would prevent anyone else from using the wand.

 

Having a pre-arranged defeat or death does not count as defeat. It must completely unwilling on the part of Dumbledore for Draco to gain allegiance. It is.
Originally he wanted Snape to fake-defeat him*, so no one would ever have the full power of that wand ever again(especially Voldemort).
Instead, Draco unexpectedly disarms Dumbledore, which counts as a defeat.

Draco "defeats" Dumbledore, Harry "defeats" Draco, therefore the wand is Harry's. Harry decides to not use the Elder Wand, and put it away(in Dumbledore's grave). This means that if Harry dies of old age or sickness(something that someone else didn't do) without anyone taking the wand away, it'd be impossible for anyone to ever use the wand to it's full potential(because it'd be impossible to defeat someone who's dead, and you need to defeat the previous owner to use it's full power).

Of course, this brings up the point of what happens if someone defeats him in a duel when he has his other wand.Does that person become the master of the Holly wand, or the Elder Wand?

 

That does make sense. I would think the allegiance thing is specific only to the elder wand and would not effect the holly wand, but it has been awhile since I have read canon book 7.

 

The Elder Wand, since that's what happened for Harry to "defeat" Draco. Draco never touched the Elder Wand, despite being its master.

It's like magical rock-paper-scissors, I reckon: Elder > Matched wand > Using someone else's wand > some other shit > Elder Wand (since one can become master without directly defeating it)

 

The reason I was confused about the consequences is because Harry puts the wand away because he doesn't want anyone to ever become master of it again. That was a pretty major point of the book, and I guess he failed at that(preventing anyone else from becoming it's master).

 

We don't know that. IIRC, the idea is that if Harry dies a peaceful death, then no-one can claim mastery of the Wand - and as far as we know, there's no reason he won't die a peaceful death (although if that's his aim, joining the Aurors probably wasn't the smartest move).

EDIT: Related question - why can't Harry (or indeed anybody) just snap the Wand? We've seen from canon that a wand can be patched up to an extent, but it won't work properly, or fixed entirely but only by using the Elder Wand. I've got a vague idea for a post DH fic, and this is a stumbling block...

 

The only reason I can think of is, uh...

Story-internal: Harry's "instincts" tell him that he might actually want the wand to deal with a new crisis at some point in the future, and therefore is reluctant to snap it.
Story-external: Rowling wanted to keep the wand in play in case she caught the Potter-writing bug again.

Almost any other reason I can think of would be extremely lame, IMO (the first reason is lame enough as it is).

 

Yeah. I've got a vague explanation for it should I ever get round to writing it, but it's a handwave at best. There really doesn't seem to be any reason other than plot.

 

Lol booooo - please don't 'go' there. That strays dangerously into the "muggle > wizard" and "RATIONALITY SCIENCE LOLOL" spectrum - which is auto-fail.

The Elder Wand can't break. Extapolate how and why that is, but just accept that it cannot be easily snapped and keep it moving.

 

I thought it was because he thought of it as Dumbledore's and it'd be kinda mean to do that to something of his. But yeah, now that I think about it, why didn't Dumbledore or Harry snap the wand? Maybe it subtly influences the holder into not destroying it?

 

I think that it's probably not what Blaise said(being unbreakable). There's no evidence that it's in the least anything other than a extremely powerful wand. Wands don't have self-defense mechanisms, so why should a powerful wand have one? it's still a wand, just a very powerful one.
I think either Rowling said it in an interview or someone said it in the books that the wand was made by a group of powerful wizards(the brothers), and not by a supernatural entity.
While I like the fanon idea of it much better(like in Perspicaity's or Silens's fics), in canon it's not an end all to every problem. Therefore I don't think it's unbreakable or more resistant to damage than a regular wand.

Also, who said that wands can't be repaired? I remember Hermione saying they couldn't fix it, but she's not a wand-maker so why should she know?

 

Well, snap was probably the wrong way of putting it - hell, look at an ordinary wand. All the shit they go through in the series and the only two wands we see break are broken by a collision between car and Whomping Willow and a direct hit with a blasting curse respectively. It doesn't seem unreasonable that you can't just snap a wand like a twig. So yeah, I'm probably worrying about this too much.

@GardenofPotter: IIRC, Ollivander says he hasn't a clue how to repair Harry's wand in DH.

 

ShinySavage:I'm gonna look at my Deathly Hallows book in the morning so I'll respond then.

 

In all seriousness, there seems to be a mental block among wizards when it comes to snapping wands. It happens by accident/inadvertently a number of times, it's done on purpose by a non-wizard or two (a centaur stomping Umbridge's wand in half with his hoof), and it's the punishment for being a disciplinary failure at Hogwarts. But I can't think of an instance where a wizard takes another wizard's wand during a fight, and snaps it. I'm not even sure we ever saw a goddamned Death Eater do it - I'm assuming that Dolohov was just aiming for Neville's face, not his wand.

I think the vast majority of wizards are grossed out by the concept of snapping another wizard's wand. They seem to rank it up there with chopping off another wizard's dick (or witch's breasts, to be gender-neutral about it).

Actually, you could start from that to explain why the Elder Wand wasn't snapped, if you wanted to. You could say that it has some magical property that prevents people from even conceiving of snapping it...though that may have a bit of a One Ring vibe to it.

 

So what ? That sort of thing is canon:

- A musical box in Grimmauld Place that lulls listeners into inaction
- The horcrux locket makes the wearer act on their insecurities
- The horcrux ring that compels people to wear it - and get cursed
- Notice-Me-Not Charms
- A mirror that compels the person to stare at it for hours on end, to the detriment of their health
- A potion that manipulates chance, happenstance, and fate in the drinker's favor (Felix Felicis)
- A (magical) animal's blood knowing that it was taken unwillingly, and cursing the consumer. It's fucking blood, it shouldn't be able to tell a stabbing from being cut by an errant rock or branch, and yet it does.

Canon magic is extremely good at making things happen or not happen. It's not that hard to believe that the world's most powerful wand - that no one aside from maybe Dumbledore can even begin to understand how it came to be crafted - has unnamed protections built in to keep any/all wielders from intentionally snapping it. Just assume that the wand has been bathed in a potion similar to Felix Felicis, but focused solely on preventing it's intentional destruction. Or variation of the Notice-Me-Not Charm: the Break-Me-Not. Or whatever.