Deathly Hallows Chapter 35

[montavilla.livejournal.com]

King’s Cross

I dislike the picture of Harry at the beginning of this chapter (in the U.S. edition). He doesn’t look like himself without the scar or glasses. And he appears to be a disembodied head floating in space. Yuck. But perhaps it was difficult trying to find an image for this chapter that doesn't give away too much.

Now, as I’ve said elsewhere, I came into this book fully expecting that at some point Harry would have a near-death (or beyond death) experience. So, it came as no surprise when this chapter rolled around.

It starts promisingly enough, with a long, slow discovery by Harry of being, then slowly figuring out that he can feel, that he is naked, and that he can, in fact, see.

He finds himself in a misty nothingness, and realizes that 1) he no longer has glasses on, and 2) that he isn’t alone. There is a sound of something small struggling. He finds the noise both pitiful and indecent. He describes it as furtive and shameful. And he wishes that he was clothed.

No sooner does he wish it, then the clothes appear, as though provided by Hogwarts elves. They are soft, clean, and warm, and he finds it miraculous that they have done this, the moment he wanted them! How is this different from his experience at Hogwarts, except that instead of taking it for granted, Harry appreciates it?

Harry wonders if this is another Room of Requirement. As he looks around, a huge glass dome is created before him. The space seems to spring into being before his eyes—the more he looks, the more there is.

And the only thing that detracts from the wonder of it all is that pitiful whimpering, flailing sound. He finally finds it, a small, naked child with flayed skin curled under a bench, where it had been left, unwanted, stuff out-of-sight, struggling for breath.

It’s curious to me how often Voldemort appears as a baby. This is the second time—and the third time that the baby is shown to be horrible. In GoF, the baby was so ugly that fans dubbed it Fetalmort. In HBP, the infant Tom was described as odd. Here, the baby again seems unfinished or… what’s that word they use? Unviable.

On top of making me queasy, it makes me wonder if JKR has some issues with babies. I would assume she doesn’t, since she’s had a number of them. But these Voldemort babies are just grotesque. They seem more like fetuses than actual babies. And there’s always this revulsion towards the baby Voldemort—as much or more than there is when he’s an adult.

As Harry hesitates, thinking he ought to help the suffering child and yet grossed out by it, Dumbledore arrives to let him off the hook. “You cannot help,” he assures Harry.

So, they turn their backs on the flailing, whimpering baby and Dumbledore proceeds to praise Harry for being brave. The shower of praise continues as they walk away and go sit on a bench where they aren’t bothered by the noise.

Harry’s first question is if Dumbledore is dead. Dumbledore assures Harry that he is. Harry then asks if he, Harry, is dead.

“Ah,” Dumbledore twinkles, “That is the question, is it not?”

Harry third question is, “Shall I kick you in the ass, or would you prefer to do that yourself?”

Okay, no, it isn’t. But it ought to be. Actually, Dumbledore says that he thinks Harry is not dead and eventually that, because Harry meant for Voldemort to kill him, only the soul bit was destroyed.

Which doesn’t make a lot of sense.

So, what, Harry asks, is that furtive, shameful baby thing that we’re currently doing our best to ignore?

Something that is beyond either of our help, Dumbledore replies. So is expired milk, Albus. Could you be a bit more specific?

(But apparently it’s not the soul bit from Harry. Which means, I guess, that it’s Voldemort’s remaining eighth of a soul.)

Then it turns out that Harry is still alive because of the blood Voldemort used in reconstituting his body. That blood was related to Lily and meant that while Voldemort lived, Harry would also live.

So, wait a minute. I thought the blood protection thingy was tied to family and home. Does this mean that Harry can’t be killed at all while Dudley and Petunia are alive? They were eaten by dragons! Otherwise Voldemort wouldn’t have had a chance to kill Harry!

And that the whole business about Harry having to live at the Dursleys was nonsense.

Okay, okay, I know. It’s magic. But I wouldn’t put it past Dumbledore to sell everyone on the myth that Harry had to stay at the Dursleys in order to 1) discourage ex-Death Eaters from trying to attack the Boy Who Lived and 2) reinforce the lesson that Hogwarts is where people treat you nicely and Muggleland is where they treat you like crap.

In trying to puzzle over this conundrum, Harry is distracted by the icky baby, but Dumbledore once again assures him that there is nothing to be done. Perhaps Dumbledore is still testing his little puppet to make sure that even the basic human instinct to help a suffering child can be overcome with enough training.

Explain… more, Harry asks.

Dumbledore beams, for this is his favorite activity in life… or death.

You’re the seventh Horcrux, Harry! (Yes, we know that part already.) When Voldemort was vaporized the night he tried to kill you, he lost more than his body. (Duh.) He lost part of his soul! (Okay, now you’re just repeating stuff over and over again, Dumbledore!)

His knowledge is incomplete! (Easy to conclude.) He comprehends nothing of which he does not value! (Can we get to the explaining part?) Love, loyalty, innocence, children’s tales, and house-elves! He knows nothing about their special properties.

House-elves. His biggest flaw is that he doesn’t understand House-elves? Why isn’t Ron Weasley running the world, then? Ron gets House-elves like no one else! He knows they like to serve people and yet shouldn’t be killed arbitrarily!

But perhaps this is JKR’s essential message when Dumbledore says the things he listed have power beyond Voldemort. Power beyond the reach of any magic. And that is what Voldemort never appreciated.

So, the things that are more powerful than any magic are Love, Loyalty, Innocence, Children’s Tales, and House-Elves. Which are purely fictional magical constructs. Or magical talking dogs. Take your pick. In either case, they are magical, which puts them squarely within the reach of magic.

Voldemort, in taking Harry’s blood, kept Lily’s sacrifice alive and, as long as Voldemort lives, so will Harry—and Voldemort’s last hope. (Which, I guess is the hope of restoring his soul through remorse?)

As Dumbledore congratulates himself for guessing all this, the baby whimpers and trembles behind them.

You have to admire the sheer cussedness of JKR in continuing to push this creepy baby on the reader. (I keep imagining it looking like the Simpsons at the end of that episode where they all turned inside out.) When a character deserves punishment, she’ll take it far past the tolerance of anyone to observe it. It’s like Marietta. It’s not enough to give her acne. We need to know that the acne is permanent. Like acid scars.

Harry then makes the mistake of asking why his wand broke Lucius’s wand. Dumbledore doesn’t know, so he makes up some nonsense about Harry and Voldemort wandering into unexplored magical wand territory.

You know, much as Snape isn’t dead, I could almost wish he were so that he could have this conversation with Harry instead of Dumbledore. First off, it would be a lot more satisfying to have the Harry/Snape relationship resolved than this stupid Harry/Dumbledore relationship (which, if anyone needed it, was more elegantly summed up in the whole “I am with you” exchange in HBP).

Secondly, it would mean that Dumbledore’s final appearance in the book would be as the portrait being dismissed by Snape as he takes the sword to Harry—which is really how things should go. Dumbledore was long past dead at that point, and it was time he stopped trying to run things.

Thirdly, it would mean that Snape had finally stepped into the role he seemed to want throughout the series—the wise man. Wasn’t that what he was really searching for, with his library of books and his Dark Arts obsession? And his jealousy that Dumbledore might be sharing knowledge with Harry that he was denying to Snape?

Plus, Snape wouldn’t have tried explaining stuff that’s unexplainable. He would have given Harry detention, instead.

But… since it’s there, let’s look at it. The explanation is that with the binding of Voldemort to Harry with blood, and with the connection of the wand-cores, when the wands fought each other, they didn’t just do the Priori Incantatem effect, Harry’s wand actually absorbed some of Voldemort’s power. That, combined with Harry’s courage, created a superwand that Lucius’s “poor stick” could not possibly withstand.

Riiiight.

How come Hermione was able to break it in half? Harry inconveniently asks.

Oddly, Dumbledore doesn’t blame it on Steve Kloves, but replies that the superpowers of Harry’s Courageous Wand only worked against Voldemort.

Riiiight.

But he killed me with your wand, Harry points out.

But he didn’t, Dumbledore replies, because you’re not dead.

So then they look around, and Harry decides that they are in King’s Cross station. Dumbledore nearly wets himself because this is just so great an after-life metaphor.

Why, oh why did JKR decide to turn Dumbledore into Peter Pettigrew? Even Harry finds him infuriating at this point, and punishes him by asking about the Deathly Hallows.

At which point, the resemblance to Peter Pettigrew grows stronger as Dumbledore takes on the look of a small boy caught in wrongdoing and starts begging Harry for forgiveness.

He asks Harry to forgive him for not telling him about the Hallows. Then he calls them a dangerous lure, a desperate man’s dream. Then he asks if he’s any better than Voldemort, since he wanted to become the Master of Death.

Harry assures Dumbledore that he was better than Voldemort, since he never killed if he could avoid it.

Dumbledore agrees, although I do not. (He murdered Snape!) But he insists that he tried to conquer death. So, was all that “next great adventure” stuff just bullcrap?

But, Harry insists, there was a difference. Hallows are better than Horcruxes! My fictional magical construct is better than your fictional magical construct!

Okay, okay, you don’t necessarily have to kill anyone to obtain the Hallows. And you definitely have to do that to get a Horcrux. So, I guess Harry has a point there.

As if to prove this moral superiority, Harry hears the baby whimpering but no longer feels any urge to look at it.

Dumbledore now goes on to explain his relationship with Grindelwald, leaving out the part about being in love with him. According to Dumbledore, their relationship was based on cleverness and arrogance, and a shared obsession for the Deathly Hallows quest. Grindelwald came to Godric’s Hollow to look at the grave of Ignotus Peverell, who just happens to be….. Harry’s ancestor!

Remember how fans thought that Harry might be descended from Godric Gryffindor? Well, isn’t this so much better? Godric was just a buff warrior with a penchant for Goblin-made swords and ratty headgear. Ignotus Peverell had an invisibility cloak!

So, the legend is true. Sort of. Dumbledore doesn’t believe the Peverell brothers actually met Death, but were “gifted, dangerous” wizards who happened to invent three powerful objects. Which would argue to me that there’s nothing particularly special about having all three of them.

Also, it sort of makes them sound like Fred and George plus one. Just think, in hundreds of years to come, there could be a story about a pair of brothers who met Death on a lonely road, and he bestowed on them food that was delicious but deadly, and a wand that turned into a rubber chicken.

Then Dumbledore explains that he had James’s cloak because he had borrowed it a couple days before James was killed. JKR hinted in a pre-book interview that the question of how Dumbledore came to have the cloak was an interesting one. It might have been an interesting question, but the answer turns out to be quite dull. Borrowing it so that Snape could spy on the Death Eaters was a lot more interesting.

Dumbledore laments that he held two of the Deathly Hallows in his hands at once, but that James had died, so it wasn’t that great. Harry points out that the Cloak wouldn’t have helped James—he was killed too quickly to even pick up the wand that was six inches away. No responsibility for Dumbledore in their deaths! Not even indirect responsibility. It was Snape’s fault. It was Peter’s fault. It was Sirius’s fault. It was James’s fault.

None of it was Dumbledore’s.

But Dumbledore insists that Harry ought to despise him and finally gets to reason why: Because he resented taking care of his sister after his mother died.

Oh my God. That’s it?! Harry shouldn’t despise Dumbedore raising him like a lab monkey, putting him through tests and mazes, and giving him a steel monkey replica like Petunia as a mother figure? He shouldn’t resent Dumbledore for repeatedly lying to him and ordering him to refuse the help of loyal people who were dying to help out and had the necessary expertise? He shouldn’t resent Dumbledore for engineering events so that Harry would commit suicide by Voldemort? No, no. The reason Harry ought to hate Dumbledore is because, for a period of roughly two months, one hundred years before Harry was born, Dumbledore had to take care of his sister and he didn’t want to!

So now Dumbledore retells the story that we’ve now heard fifty million times before—with no practical difference from the version Aberforth told. Granted, there are a few additional details. We learn, for example, that Albus and Gellert had prosaic reasons for looking for each Hallow. The wand, for example, was basically them looking for a 10x vorpal sword of doom.

Gellert wanted to use the stone to create an army of Inferi. Does that mean that the Lily, James, Sirius, and Remus that appeared to Harry were Inferi? They didn’t look or act anything like the Inferi in HBP. They were somewhat substantial, in that Harry heard them approaching—but it seems like Gellert would have been pretty disappointed in his army had he gotten it.

Of course, if Voldemort had used the stone to create his Army, that would have been cool and creepy. It would also explain why he didn’t make any in the second war. But that’s definitely not touched on in the book.

Dumbledore wanted to bring his parents back so that they could look after Ariana and he could go back to being brilliant and famous. Ghost parents. I can’t help but find that a pretty fun concept (which apparently forms the premise for Neil Gaiman’s new book The Graveyard). I think it would make a good sitcom.

But he didn’t need his parents, really. All he needed was a house-elf. But the Quest for a Good House-Elf wasn’t as attractive as the Deathly Hallows Quest.

And the Cloak! Gellert wasn’t really interested in that one, and Albus just wanted it to drape over Ariana so that he could ignore her more easily. Sort of like that whimpering baby under the bench. You know, I don’t think Harry should be taking advice from Albus Dumbledore about ignoring people. Not after this big confession.

But, even though he believes that the Hallows were simply three over-powered objects, Albus did believe that if they were joined together, they would make him the Master of Death and he interpreted that to mean “invincible.” Which wasn’t exactly what Voldemort was after. Voldemort started out invincible.

After two months of this madness, Aberforth returned and the whole fight started and Ariana died and we’ve heard this before. Albus manages to subtly blame it on Gellert, by saying “Grindelwald lost control. That which I had always sensed in him, though I pretended not it, now sprang into terrible being.”

This sounds a bit like Snape losing control with Petunia—rather than someone deliberately trying to torture or kill someone. And, as with Snape, it seems like the “terrible” thing was inherently within him, and all it took was the right circumstances for it to come out—instead of the act being terrible, the person is terrible. Choices do not make us who we are, they show us who we are.

Grindelwald fled, and Dumbledore was left with his shame and grief. Years passed and Grindelwald was rumored to have a really powerful wand that no one recognized as the Elder Wand, including Gregorovitch, wandmaker extraordinaire, who had owned the thing previously.

Meanwhile, Dumbledore was offered the Minister of Magic position, but declined, realizing he was not to be trusted with power. Except for the power of molding the minds of each new generation.

But you would have been tons better than Fudge or Scrimgeour! Protests Harry, who seems to have forgotten that Scrimgeour held off Voldemort for over a year with no help from Dumbledore, thank you very much, and withstood torture to protect Harry. Something Dumbledore was too scared to do.

But Dumbledore disagrees with Harry. His ambition to have power meant that he was unworthy of it. People like Harry, who have no desire for power at all, would make the best leaders.

That would be Fudge, wouldn’t it? Fudge wasn’t into power. He was almost the opposite. He wanted Dumbledore to tell him what to do until the end of GoF, and he happily gave up the Ministry at the beginning of HBP. His big flaw was an inability to face hard truths. A trait he shares with one Harry Potter, who preferred to think that Sirius had died because of Snape taunted him, rather than face the truth that his own actions had been responsible for his godfather’s death.

Dumbledore believes he was safer at Hogwarts, and Harry assures him that he was the best teacher. I would point out all the flaws in that statement, but there’s a limit to how much Live Journal will allow you post, so I’ll content myself with Dumbledore neglecting to tell Harry how to detect a Horcrux, or what to do once he found one. And that one homework assignment that consisted of taking drugs, getting a teacher drunk and emotionally manipulating him.

Dumbledore then confesses that he delayed dealing with Grindelwald (which is essentially what Fudge did with Voldemort, no?) because he was afraid. Not, Dumbledore assures Harry, of death. No, no. Dumbledore was pretty sure he was more skillful than Grindelwald. Never you fear that Dumbledore wasn’t the biggest badass wizard in the world! No, he was afraid that Grindelwald would accuse him of casting the curse that killed Ariana.

Because you’d feel even more guilty, Albus? You’re dead and you’re sobbing all over Harry’s shoulder already. Would you really feel more guilty than that?

So, people were dying and Albus was too chicken to fight Grindelwald, because Grindelwald might… taunt him or something. And then they met and Dumbledore whipped his ass. End of story.

You know, Dumbledore’s stories are never as thrilling as he likes to pretend.

A silence follows the story in which Harry reflects that Dumbledore was really sorry about Ariana and would probably have seen her in the Mirror of Erised. And then the baby whimpers again, and Harry barely even notices.

Because what’s the whimpering of a baby with raw, flayed skin compared to the guilty sobs of a dead old man?

Then they talk about Grindelwald and Harry tells Dumbledore about Grindelwald lying to Voldemort and they agree that this was maybe a sign that he regretted killing and torturing millions of people. Or thousands. Or dozens. It’s always hard to tell with wizard numbers.

And then they confirm that Dumbledore’s dead arm came from him putting on the ring with the Resurrection stone. Alas, Jodel, it’s pretty clear from the text here that Ariana, Kendra, and Percival didn’t actually appear. What isn’t explained is how Dumbledore got back to the castle, or whether he was in the castle when he put the ring on, and how it was that Snape even knew to come help him. But I’m sure there are a bunch of fics out there to cover that.

So then Dumbledore declares that he himself was only worthy to hold the Elder Wand, to tame it—not to use it to kill. And only because he took it to save others from it. Which I don’t buy at all. Because why would the Elder Wand, even if it is sentient, care about the motive of the person holding it? If it cared that much, it wouldn’t go around killing people, would it?

The Cloak was beyond Dumbledore’s worth, he says, because he took it out of vain curiosity. It could never work for me, he says, as it works for you, its true owner. Vain curiosity is not as noble a motive as being able to sneak around without Filch catching you. If only Dumbledore had used it to get sweets from Honeydukes!

Dumbledore tells Harry that he, Harry, is the only worthy possessor of the Hallows. I would like to point out right here that, as of this conversation, Harry has only ever held two of the Hallows. So, he’s not Master of anything yet.

After that bit of outrageous flattery, Harry decides he can’t be angry with Dumbledore and smiles at him, asking, “Why did you have to make it so difficult?”

Dumbledore explains that he was afraid that if he told Harry outright about the Hallows, Harry would try to seize them with his hot head, for the wrong reasons. Again, I just don’t buy this, because there was no need to tell Harry about any of it. Harry already had the Cloak. Whether or not he knew what the Stone was, he could have safely used it at the proper time. And he never had and never will have a pressing need for that wand.

Had Dumbledore never left clues with Hermione Granger, then Harry would never have sought the Hallows at all. And, since it’s the seeking that makes one unworthy of them, then the entire quest was counterproductive. The only reason to bring them up at all was to give Harry the opportunity to refuse the quest.

So, the way to win the quest is never to start it in the first place. I doubt this was what Joseph Campbell was getting at. Maybe this is what JKR means by subverting the genre?

But let me quote the moral: You are the true mater of death, because the true master does not seek to run away from Death. He accepts that he must die, and understand that there are far, far worse things in the living world than dying.

By this criteria, Snape is also the master of death. So is Fred, and Lupin, and Tonks. And pretty much everyone else at Hogwarts that night, including the Death Eaters. Just about the only person who doesn’t get that simple concept is Voldemort.

Harry and Dumbledore establish that Voldemort probably didn’t know about the Hallows and wouldn’t have cared about them in any case, because two of them were pretty lame. The only one he would (and did) care about was the Elder Wand.

Harry asks if Dumbledore thought Voldemort would look for the Elder Wand, and Dumbledore confirms that he did. He then explains how Voldemort would come to seek the wand, including some events that took place after Dumbledore’s death—and thus couldn’t really have been part of Dumbledore’s conclusion, but let’s not quibble.

So, Harry goes on, you intended for Snape to end up with the Elder Wand. Dumbledore admits that that was his intention.

So, Dumbledore’s plan was for Snape to either become the master of the wand (provided the wand didn’t care that Dumbledore didn’t fight back) or that the power of the wand would die with Dumbledore (should Dumbledore’s passive acceptance of his death make a difference). Either way, it would have been nice to let Snape know, yes?

But, of course, the wand didn’t care whether or not Dumbledore fought back, because he wasn’t fighting Draco either. So, presumably the power would have passed to Snape, who would have been in no position to use it, since he would have been in Azkaban or soul-sucked.

And Voldemort would have had exactly the same motive for killing Snape.

I really can’t come up with any scenario where Snape doesn’t get targeted for death because of Dumbledore’s actions. And where very simple steps by Dumbledore couldn’t have prevented that from taking place.

Either Dumbledore wanted Snape to die, or he didn’t care enough to either 1) snap the wand before his death, 2) have the wand burned after his death, or 3) tell Snape to retrieve the wand after his death and keep it hidden.

Is that really any better than asking Voldemort to spare Lily without also asking him to spare a couple other people? I guess so, because Snape is disgusting.

Harry and Dumbledore sit for awhile longer. The baby moans and cries.

Harry realizes that he needs to go back, although Dumbledore says that Harry gets to choose. If he wants to go on, he can. If he goes back, he may be able to finish Voldemort for good. “But I know this, Harry, that you have less to fear from returning here than he does.”

Harry glances at the baby, and Dumbledore says, “Do not pity the dead, Harry.”

Excuse me a moment. Bwhahahaha! Then what did we spent half the book about, but some pitiful dead girl? Weren’t we supposed to weep tears over her sad fate? Why didn’t the world stop when Fred breathed his last? But do not pity him.

No, the problem with people dying isn’t the people who die. It’s the people who love them who will miss them. That’s the bad part about death.

While I’ve been gasping and rolling on the floor, Harry has been thinking about his decision. He decides it won’t be as hard waking to his life as walking to his death had been, but it’ll be less pleasant than sitting in an imaginary train station, listening to a baby choke to death.

He and Dumbledore stand up and look at each other. Is this real, Harry asks, or merely in my head?

Dumbledore replies, “Of course it is happening inside your head, Harry, but why on earth would that mean that it is not real?”

Whereupon the small, naked suffering child gets up, crawls over to Dumbledore, and kicks him in the ass.

Not really. But don’t you wish that it had?

Fan Service:
Another naked Harry scene!
Dumbledore comes back and explains things! Those were the best parts of the first five books!

Fan Slappage:
These are the stupidest explanations ever.


DVD Extras:

INT: AFTERLIFE KING’S CROSS STATION

Harry tearfully turns away from Dumbledore and begins walking to the entrance of the station. He has a determined look on his face.

In the background, a train slows to a halt, exhaling steam. An old man steps down from the train. Albus Dumbledore turns to look at him, surprised.

MAN
Albus?

DUMBLEDORE
Gellert?

Gellert Grindelwald smiles, a bit of that wild handsome child peeking out from behind the wrinkles and hobbles forward, his arms outstretched.

GRINDELWALD
Albus! Albus! It’s been so long!

DUMBLEDORE
Where have you been?

GRINDELWALD
Filling out the paperwork. Who knew the afterlife would have so much?

DUMBLEDORE
But that shouldn’t have taken more than a few hours….

GRINDELWALD
Please. I’m German. It took weeks.

They move to sit on a bench as the train pulls out.

GRINDELWALD
You’re looking very well.

DUMBLEDORE
I had a good life. But I did miss you.

GRINDELWALD
And I, you. So this is death, eh?

He cranes his neck to examine the station.

DUMBLEDORE
Part of it.

GRINDELWALD
I assume one could take a train to any destination one chooses?

DUMBLEDORE
Where shall we go?

GRINDELWALD
Some place warm. Morocco?

DUMBLEDORE
Good choice.

They stroll arm in arm to the train that suddenly appears. As they pass a bench, the flaying, whimpering child underneath it cries out. Grindelwald glances down and does a double-take.

GRINDELWALD
Tortured soul?

DUMBLEDORE
(nodding serenely) Nothing to be done.

Grindelwald shrugs and climbs the train steps. Dumbledore follows him.

DUMBLEDORE
To the next great adventure!

GRINDELWALD
To mastering death!

They clink the champagne glasses that magically appear in their hands and smile. As the train pulls away, they lean forward and touch their lips in a kiss.

IRIS OUT IN A HEART-SHAPE.

Comments

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

But I assume Harry having his wand after that undoes it. Harry's been disarmed a lot by different people, but it didn't count. So best I can tell you have to disarm the person and then they can't get their wand back. Since Dumbledore died before getting his wand back (or having it placed in his hands) it went to Draco.

[duniazade.livejournal.com]

Aaah!

So the person who disarmed Hermione before taking her to Malfoy Manor is the master of Hermione's wand since she never got it back. Isn't he/she also master of Harry's phoenix wand since Hermione beat that wand by slicing it in two?

I wonder why they don't teach wand-lore/wand-rules at Hogwarts, since it's very complicated and can get one killed out of the blue.

I also wonder how Voldemort and Snape, those experts in the DA, had no inkling about all this. But that's a different keg of fish.

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

It's really hilarious when you realize that it should be the most important thing in every wizard's life. Their wand is the most important thing they own, a part of themselves, yet they can lose it if anyone disarms them the slightest bit. But we're supposed to think none of them know that???

[oryx_leucoryx]

Before DH people got disarmed and usually got their wands back within minutes or hours: dueling practice, POA in the Shrieking Shack, DOM battle in OOTP, Tower battle in HBP, hexing of Slytherins on train in GOF and OOTP (don't tell me they could hold their wands in slug form). We saw no evidence for losing control of wands after such a recovery - whether it's Harry after HBP, Hermione after the Ministry battle or Severus who was disarmed by the kids, had his wand used against him by Sirius but later recovered it and used it successfully to bring all the injured to the castle. In those cases where between losing the wand and recovering it the wand was used by another it worked well enough (Sirius using the wand the kids took from Severus). So does the wand change allegiance to whomever holds it and back to the original owner when it is recovered or does it remain the wand who chose the original owner? How can one tell?

There are also places where people use other people's wands with permission - successfully. Ron used Charlie's old wand successfully until it broke (was good enough to hit the troll on the head with its own club). Draco used a wand bought for him by Narcissa - the fact that the wand never chose him personally wasn't a problem. Peter used Voldemort's wand to kill Cedric. Harry used Hermione's wand when he was on guard duty for several days in DH.

So what about losing a wand for more than a few hours?

Well presumably Barty Jr disarmed Moody and took his wand, used it all year as he was impersonating him. Then Dumbles defeated Barty. Did Moody need a new wand or could he recover his ownership by being given the wand by Dumbles? If the latter is true then the whole business is meaningless: Your wand conveniently stops being yours when you don't have it and is yours again when you get it back. (And if it is that meaningless it would explain why hardly anyone knows this.)

What about Azkaban prisoners? Do their wands shift allegiance to the Auror who captured them? And if the prisoner is released at the end of hir sentence or escapes does s/he need a new wand, or would recovering the original wand work? Ollivander recognizes Bellatrix's wand and Harry later thinks of it as the wand that tortured the Longbottoms but was it really? Why would the Ministry let a life-prisoner's wand go back to her family? And would the wand work for Bellatrix if it was the one?

And to the big question: In GOF Peter gives Voldemort his original yew wand. In fact, Voldemort already wielded that wand in his Babymort form and used it to interrogate Bertha Jorkins and to kill Frank Bryce. But wasn't Voldemort defeated in Godric's Hollow - whether by Lily or by Harry? So how come his wand worked for him?

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

This is a nitpick, but I'm not sure we're supposed to think Narcissa bought Draco's wand for him just because he said she was looking at wands when he met Harry. He presumably could have gotten to Ollivanders when he was finished and his mother might have had some ready for him to try based on knowing him etc. JKR did have a thing on her site saying that hawthorn was right for Draco etc., so I think it was supposed to be "his" wand and had chosen him unlike Ron's original hand me down.

As for everything else thought, who knows? The more you think about the wand allegiance the more confusing it gets. Why does a wand become yours if you yank it out of someone's hand or expel it from their hand, but if they drop it and you pick it up the wand knows it's not yours. And of course you'd have thought we'd hear something about how Ron had a hard time with Charlie's wand, and Neville with his dad's, etc. Draco's using Narcissa's wand after Harry takes his and there's no focus on how that's hard for him. (Granted I don't know if he ever tries to use it before he loses that one too.)

[the-bitter-word.livejournal.com]

And of course you'd have thought we'd hear something about how Ron had a hard time with Charlie's wand, and Neville with his dad's, etc.

Given the close personal relationship wizards are supposed to have with their wands, dumping a second-hand wand on a fledgling wizard is essentially child abuse... not that child abuse is a huge problem in this series.

But I was thinking: if Harry's pwnership of the Elder Wand was accomplished by proxy through Draco's wand, and if Snape was the master of Harry's wands due to the outcome of their duel, why wouldn't Snape's mastery transfer to Voldemort when Voldemort killed him and thus make Voldemort the master of the Elder Wand after all?

More evidence for Lucius' plan working, I guess.

[oryx_leucoryx]

Until DH we have never seen a non-broken wand not work for its wielder, regardless of whether it was that person's own wand, a wand expelled/taken by force (see the example of Barty using Moody's wand, Barty using Harry's wand at the QWC, Sirius using Severus' wand in POA), a wand expelled/taken by force that was returned to its original owner (Harry in POA, GOF, HBP) or a borrowed wand. If the wands changed allegiance when taken from their owner they changed it back when they had a chance. So IMO in practice the allegiance-change regarding regular wands, whether it happens or not is meaningless. The only examples we saw of people performing below their normal level because of a change of wand were Harry with the Snatcher's wand in DH, possibly Harry with Hermione's wand in DH and for a short while Hermione with Bellatrix's wand in DH (but within hours that wand starts working just fine for her). IMO These irregularities are exceptions that show not a change in wand allegiance but a difference in the style of a person's magic. Harry's magic is more compatible with Draco's than with Hermione's.

The only case where allegiance matters in canon is regarding the Elder Wand. It is the only case where a wand can be held by one person while actually 'wanting' to be controlled by another.

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

But canon explicitly states otherwise, presumably to set us up for the Elder wand (though there was no reason to do that--why not just make the Elder wand unique in the way it switches masters based on forced? It fits it more thematically anyway). It's not that Harry's magic is more compatible with Draco's, it's that Harry won Draco's wand. Hermione did not win Bellatrix's wand, so the wand is still Bellatrix's. And it's still giving her trouble, she just doesn't complain about it every time it does, just as the snatcher's wand never became Harry's, there was just no point in always complaining about it not working the way he would have liked. It's not that it didn't work--Hermione thought Harry was imagining it. It just never felt "friendly" in his hand or worked as smoothly as his real wand. Likewise, the Elder wand worked for Voldemort, he just could sense it didn't work the way it could.

[oryx_leucoryx]

And it's still giving her trouble, she just doesn't complain about it every time it does

Does it really? Where do you see evidence that the wand doesn't work as well for Hermione as her previous wand did? Her performance in the Room of Requirement and later appears up to her typical level, including transforming the stairs to a slide and conjuring the flask for Severus' memories.

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

It's still giving her trouble because she mentioned she didn't like working with it, which was hitting the "you didn't win it!" note again. She could work with it, but she wasn't its master. Just as Harry could work with the blackthorn wand.

[oryx_leucoryx]

When is the last time she says anything along those lines? And why does the "you didn't win it" explanation work better than "it didn't choose you" which was around all the time?

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

It's not that it works better, it's that in DH it seems pretty obvious that that's the point being pushed. Hermione says she doesn't like working with Bellatrix's wand once that I can remember, but that's enough since that theme gets hit on so much: Ollivander suddenly telling us this happens, and Harry's mysterious problems with the blackthorn wand that Hermione claims are in his head. Nobody ever says anything about wands choosing to switch allegiances based on their magic being more compatible, or Harry's magic being compatible with Draco's.

I actually think your idea--that it's just easier to work with the wand of someone with whom you're compatible (even if you wouldn't have thought you were compatible as with H/D)--works better. It saves us having to figure out why it's never come up before, or why plenty of disarmings in the past didn't seem to cause a problem. (We never, as far as I remember, see somebody get back their old wand and find they have problems with it because they're not longer its master.) It doesn't kind of destroy that whole really nice idea of a wand and wizard being unique and compatible and growing even more so over time. And we don't feel compelled to look for signs that a person isn't a wand's master when they're usually using the thing just fine.

So it's not that I think it works better to say "you didn't win it," it just seems like the book's telling me that's the answer. Looking at DH as a standalone book, Harry has trouble with the blackthorn wand that he found when the owner dropped it. Hermione doesn't believe him but Harry knows he's right. Later he yanks 3 wands out of Malfoy's hand, and finds the one that actually belonged to Malfoy feels different than the other wands. When he asks the one wand lord expert about it he talks about wands switching allegiances because they're won. Then the whole victory rests on the Elder Wand seeing Draco and so then Harry as its master. Voldemort's mistake was that the Elder wand acted more like a regular wand than he thought it would.

[oryx_leucoryx]

I no longer trust the books, so I ignore what they seem to be wanting to tell me. I stick to Watsonian explanations.

[oryx_leucoryx]

You know, if Rowling had planned this she could have made it work like this: being disarmed for a short time (say, up to an hour or so) doesn't matter if you regain your wand within that time (would apply to Severus in POA and Harry in GOF), but being disarmed for a long time does change your wand's allegiance permanently. In OOTP when Moody complains about his eye sticking since 'the creep' had used it he could also say his old wand no longer worked and he had to get a new one. Perhaps say something about the wand Sirius used in OOTP.

Also, she could have Voldemort complaining to Ollivander that his yew wand was never the same after his return (that's because that wand belonged to Lily, or maybe Harry).

[jodel-from-aol.livejournal.com]

Harry didn't just "find" the Blackthorn wand. Ron got it off of a Snatcher who tried to take him in (i.e., ROn *won* it). And Ron *handed* it to Harry. So it bloody well *ought* to have obeyed Harry according to the rules that Rowling is suddenly trying to invent. But she can't seem to keep herself from telling us things that undermine what she's trying to convince us of.

[oryx_leucoryx]

I agree this does not work. For the purpose of my theorizing I take it as proof Ollivander was lying. I think what happened was Ollivander was having conflicted feelings about leading Voldemort to the Elder Wand. He feared what Voldemort might do with it and was feeling guilty about that, but at the same time he was curious about what Voldemort might do with the Elder Wand, how advanced the magic he would do with it might be, and he was feeling guilty for being curious about such a thing. So he started talking about winning wands to lead the conversation to the Elder Wand. He could have said, look, not all wands work equally for every wizard because some wands are better aligned to some wizards' magic than others, you saw that in my store. But he wanted Harry to think in terms of winning wands in order to bring up the Elder Wand. And Ollivander does hedge and mention 'subtle laws' to cover himself in case what he says does not match Harry's experience because he doesn't expect a perfect match - he is lying. Fortunately Harry already heard about the Elder Wand from Xeno, which makes Ollivander's life a bit easier, but he would have gotten the conversation there eventually anyway.

[oryx_leucoryx]

Why exactly am I supposed to believe what Ollivander gives as an explanation of events when the explanation does not fit other canon events? Why does Severus' wand work for Sirius in POA when Sirius wasn't the one who disarmed Severus? Why does Harry's wand work for him again after Barty stole it from his pocket?

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

Oh, I have no idea how to make it easy to swallow! :-) I'm just saying it seemed like that's what DH was saying. Ollivander's set up as the wand expert and we've suddenly got all these clear examples of how it works with the snatcher's wand. It seemed to me that all that attention was paid to it in DH (like with Harry noticing that the hawthorn wand was friendlier and then Ollivander explaining to him that this was because he won it from Draco, which also validated his feelings about the blackthorn wand) was because it did go against everything we'd seen in canon before. It was a completely new rule we'd never seen any sign of before, but it was important suddenly. The Elder Wand wasn't supposed to be unique in switching allegiance.

[oryx_leucoryx]

All I need is a Watsonian reason for Ollivander to lie. Because applying the 'winning' rule to normal wands is superfluous to explain Harry's sudden wand troubles.

[seductivedark.livejournal.com]

I'd go with Hermione's explanation - it's all in Harry's head. It isn't his wand, he doesn't do well with it, he has a complex or something.

Too bad the rest of the story wasn't in Harry's head, too. What I wouldn't give to, at the end, have Aunt Petunia Ewing (sp?) tear open the shower curtain at Privet Drive for a drugged or deranged Harry!

[lissa2.livejournal.com]

Like I said at FAP, this is the equivalent of someone who lives in a football (soccer) loving country, goes to a football school for six years and doesn't know that the purpose of the game is to put the ball in the opposing team's net.
And I don't think I'm exaggerating at all with this comparison.