Inconsistent Magic in HP Part 23: How Wands Work Now

[sistermagpie]

OMG, I'm writing about Deathly Hallows. Because I was having this conversation about something in it that really bugged me. So this is about something I didn't like in DH. If you are bummed out by the negative, don't irritate yourself by clicking this

By the end of the series, we have two different and contradictory explanations for how Wands work with Wizards--and now I think about it, those explanations reflect an ambivalence already present in the series.

The very first book establishes the substitution of magic for school. Harry will go to school just like the reader, but he learns magic instead of other subjects. Which is fine, but sometimes leads to a little canonical confusion between "smart" and "magically adept." When Hermione does Transfiguration on the first day of class we understand she's a good student even though wand movement is more physical than mental. In OotP, iirc, there's a conversation with a Ravenclaw in the DA where he asks why Hermione isn't in that house when she's doing NEWT level magic--again, we've never seen that being a primarily mental process. Although there are some vague references to theory or esoteric knowledge that Dumbledore has but can't explain, and things to memorize, Harry never really encounters anything beyond magic as a physical skill.

This question of brains vs. skills carries over to Wands. Which one eventually dominates? In the end, are they tools of learning or tools of battle? The answer: tools of battle. Are they like a violin or like a sword? They are like a sword.

We got the first explanation of how wands work back in PS/SS. That's where Harry's wand chooses him and we hear its particulars: It is made of holly and has a phoenix feather core. The affinity for Harry comes from the qualities of the wood and core, and the folklore and fictional connections with each one. We hear James' wand was good at Transfiguration, a clue to his being an Animagus. Lily's was good at Charms--her protection of Harry was presumably a Charm. It was another one of those built-in personality tests. Who can say if holly is a nicer wood than maple? Nobody, really, it's personal taste. Everyone is different but everyone has a wand meant for them.

Unfortunately, this goes out the window in DH when Ollivander introducers the startling idea that in fact a wand becomes "yours" if you win it from someone else in a duel, either by yanking it from them or blasting it away from them or just beating them up and taking it. Iow, whatever hints we've gotten about love or learning, it's about power. Wands instinctively "bend their wills" to the person who's the most dominating physically and magically. If someone has beaten you, your wand--that thing that's been like an extention of yourself--is no longer yours!

These two ideas are contradictory and can't both be true, and in DH it's made clear that it's the domination idea that is the true one, otherwise the story wouldn't work. (So much for that Muggleborn's tearful, "But it's my wand! It chose me!" line--it's chosen Umbridge now, lady, if she took it from you.) It's a shame, actually, because with just a little tweaking JKR could have saved the original idea. She could have said that only the *Elder Wand* (the one already uniquely created to dominate others) bent to the will of he who won it. It could have been done with little changes to the story, saved the former ideas about Wands, and avoided questions like why Ollivander thinks he knows who any Wand belongs to after it leaves his store.

But that's not what happened. Instead we have all these careful scenes showing us how Harry can't work with the blackthorn wand (does he even struggle a little with Hermione's freely lent one?), but can work with Draco's because he yanked it out of his hand and thereby won it by physically besting him. Wood and core ultimately mean nothing at all. If they did, then in the scene where Harry shows Ollivander the Wands he's brought from Malfoy Manor Ollivander wouldn't have been going on about how the wand no longer belongs to Draco because Harry won it.

If we stayed with the original idea he should have been talking about wood and core and things like that--Harry's wand was made of holly; Draco's is hawthorn; Harry's has a phoenix feather core; Draco's has a unicorn hair core. How, if as we were originally told, the wood and core are in sympathy with the Wizard, could Harry be expected to use this one easily? Well, he could if Ollivander had just said something like "This wand will never be right for you, but it could be a lot worse. The Wand might feel more cold or detached than your regular one because of the unicorn tail, and you'll probably have to cast spells with more force than your used to in order to compensate for the hawthorn wood. To someone with an affinity for holly, that wood may feel contradictory and less focused. It will feel "lighter" in general, so be careful you don't overdo it."

Or whatever. Had that happened Harry probably still could have used it to win the battle. Draco would still be the Master of the Elder wand because *that* Wand only recognizes that kind of brute force, and Harry would still be the one who defeated him no matter what Wand he was using. He just would have beat Voldemort while struggling to work with a wand that would never truly be his or feel as good as his own for him. (Of course, I can't help but already worry that's getting into dangerous territory, as if Harry is somehow learning to work with Malfoy rather than more satisfyingly dominating him and having his wand like him better.)

It would have been preferable to me personally, though. I far prefer the original idea that Wands are tools of learning that reflect each person's personal experience and the wisdom they gained through it to the one where Wands are phallic weapons turned on by the best fighter, who then just gets to choose which one to use based on whether they prefer kicking ass with a .44 Magnum or a .38 special. Certainly I think this is a hell of a thing to toss in as if it's something only somebody well-versed in Wand-lore would know, when this is the kind of information Wizards would consider hugely important and have noticed immediately.

Comments

[spare-change.livejournal.com]

I FUCKING HATE THE DAMN WANDS!

It's funny because I was just going through my old posts, out of nostalgia, and was reading our reactions to DH. Not to mention my impassioned defense of JKR before DH, in which I argued that one of the brilliant things about magic in her world was that it wasn't about random and arcane rules, but rather intuition and emotion -- an effort of will (i.e., learning Accio or Occlumency) rather than strategy. Oh, how wrong I was!

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

LOL! I know! And yet a strategy can be great too, only this wasn't even a good strategy. Harry didn't plan it, the author just worked it out. So even at the moment where it looks like somebody else might come into it where something might be hard for Harry it's already taken care of--what luck I happened to have taken that very wand in Chapter 22!

[nidoking.livejournal.com]

And I always wondered why the Death Eaters would ever cast any spell other than Avada Kedavra... if you're willing to kill your target at any time, then why pass up the unblockable death curse for one that can be blocked or reflected and will eventually wear off and let them come after you again?

And as for an effort of will... why was Harry able to use the Imperius curse, without any effort at all, on two targets simultaneously the first time he tried it, with such skill that nobody suspected that anything was wrong? Cruciatus I can understand, although his motivation was a bit weak to provoke that result... but Imperius can't be THAT easy to pull off, especially with a stolen wand! Oh, JK... how much you could have done with a bit more planning early on.

[cmwinters.livejournal.com]

The Elder Wand thing, I think, is one of the most crucially disappointing moments of the entire series to me.

I mean, talk about an utterly fascinating storyline, had it been done with any *shred* of competence. It could have been mind-bogglingly, eye-wateringly brilliant.

And instead it just felt tacked on and lame. That in and of itself nearly makes my eyes water, only this time from shame and disappointment, and not because I'm overcome with beauty and brilliance.

The other thing that I am really so appallingly horrified about is her treatment of Snape. And given that Draco could never *be* the "master" of the Elder Wand (because he never held it, so *HARRY* could never have "won" it from Draco, by Jo's own logic), and that Snape was apparently only killed so that the Dark Lord could *become* the (presumed) "master" of the wand, I honestly think the two were interrelated.

Jo has always been horrified when someone shows an interest in Snape. I really am beginning to feel like she did this random, half-assed, unbaked story line to have a way to get rid of him, and caused her own story to suffer in the process.

And what really also sucks is, it makes *everything* she did with Snape — making him the wonderfully multi-dimensional character a lot of us have grown to love (even when some of us hate him we love his depth) — it makes all of it a mistake.

And that's really, *really* sad.

Please, don't get me started on the endless camping trip of pointlessness and stupidity. Do you know two years ago I read a fanfic that had them camping in the woods while they tried to find Horcruxes, and moving about every day so they wouldn't get found? Only they ACTUALLY TRIED to find the damned Horcruxes, and studied magic? JEEEEzus.

[no-mad-skillz.livejournal.com]

Yeah, that bugged me, too. I grumbled about it to my 11-year-old and he said, "It's just a story, Mom." Kids these days.

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

LOL! Just a story? Never!

[nidoking.livejournal.com]

Let's not forget the number of times "Expelliarmus" was cast during the course of the series. Did any of those wizards who lost their wands to a disarming spell ever pick up their wands to discover that they no longer had an affinity for them? I can't recall a single instance of that. And many of those spells shot the wands right into the caster's hand, while Draco Malfoy never touched the Elder Wand... it was buried with Dumbledore, so he could probably be said to have "recovered" it. The idea of the Elder Wand then bowing to the power of a wizard who had caught its master, not even using the wand itself, by surprise... good thing for Harry nobody ever cast "Expelliarmus" on him after that, eh? Or hit him on the head and made him drop his wand, or any number of other things.

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

LOL! I know! That's the other huge problem--wait, you mean basically nobody owns their own wand? Even if you think that picking your wand right up again is the same as taking it back, you have to wonder why people don't just go around stealing peoples' wands all the time so that they'll screw up.

Also doesn't Harry end the book with the odd notion that if he dies a natural death the wand won't have any master? Harry's an auror. Anybody who gets his wand at any time for the rest of his life will be its master, won't they? WTF?

[leia-naberrie.livejournal.com]

It took me a long time but I finally realized that if you want to enjoy Harry Potter, check your brain at the library desk. :p

Where are the previous 22 inconsistencies?

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

Heh. I pulled the number out of the air because I hate thinking about that stuff. But there's got to be at least that many. The Fidelius charm would feature prominently in the list I'm sure!

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

Who can say if holly is a nicer wood than maple?

For what it's worth, in The Faerie Queene Spenser refers to the "Maple seldom inward sound". It's always made me regard pancakes with slight suspicion.

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

Wise words from Spenser, there!

[aasaylva.livejournal.com]

Two things:
First, on a logical level, the whole loyalty changing wands business is utter rubbish and it makes me wonder when she came up with the idea. I mean, it seems rather important for the denouement, so I'd have thought it was part of her overall plan from the beginning. But then why did she write 6 books contradicting it? Oh dear, logic...

I far prefer the original idea that Wands are tools of learning that reflect each person's personal experience and the wisdom they gained through it to the one where Wands are phallic weapons turned on by the best fighter
This is what bugs me considerably more than just one more stupidity, because it's localized on a more philosophical/ moral plane (and more indication that the original JKR was killed and buried along with Ginny I, Hermione I, Ron I etc. and taken over by some very unsavoury character). The series started out as one where "soft" values like fairness, friendship, sharing, learning - in short civilized behaviour was shown to be "good", whereas the guys drawing on sheer force, strength and power were the bad ones. This started to shift in OotP (there, at least, in situations where you might argue, the good guys were in real trouble and couldn't be too picky as to their methods) and went downhill from there. At the end of the series, we end up not only with the good guys using Unforgivables while the evil arch rival is obviously devastated to have to do the same - this might still be argued to show you can't fight a war and stay white as a lily (wonky argument, I know). No the value structure in itself is totally turned on its head. Being cruel and unfeeling is a sign of heroism, not liking to be so is a sign of cowardice. The only value that remains is power - he who wields it, is right. Voldemort said "there is only power and those too weak to seek it" - well, the JKR imposter seems to be his new incarnation.
The disturbing thing about the wands is: I always imagined them to be something like an anima to the wizard - a complimentary being he needed to perform well. A wizard and his wand was like a couple of lovers, so to speak - there are quite a lot of fics that translate that feeling into showing a wizard feeling sort of bereft when his wand is taken away. But in DH, wands are treated like female prisoners are in the Iliad - they just agree to be fucked by the strongest male...

[no-mad-skillz.livejournal.com]

Yes, I'm still stalking the comments on this post.

This is a really fierce and coherent argument. *admires it* I don't have much to say except, Wow, you're totally right.

I mean, it won't do much to douse my ridiculous devotion to Harry Potter--I suspect only time will do that--but it's enlightening to read something that articulates my sense of meh-ness over Deathly Hallows.

[seaislewitch.livejournal.com]

To me, the wood and the core work uniquely with the witch or wizard to focus their magical energy on a particular goal. There has to be a strong connection, and the magical children must be taught to work in concert with this connection while learning spells. They could all say the incantation and mimic the movements, but they have to be in control of the magic. So, I've always thought the wand/witch or wizard bond was an extremely personal. For instance, if the wizard practices Dark magic, the wand is effected. If you have Bellatrix's wand, shouldn't it feel creepy to touch and use?

So, if merely disarming Draco made Harry the master of his wand (no giggling!), then why didn't that happen during class or in DA practice, for instance? Your Elder wand explanation makes sense because that ONE wand was made to be mastered. The rest of the wands seem to be made for a different reason: to focus magical energy for the individual.

Also, it really irked me that during Apparation lessons, using your wand was never mentioned. They learned the three Ds: determination, destination, and deliberation. There's no W for wand in there! *snort* But in DH, Harry couldn't Apparate from Malfoy Manor without a wand! WTF? Besides, Malfoy Manor would have a permanent Disapparation Jinx and other 'magical wards', don't you think? Why else would Snape and Dolohov Apparate in the country lane instead of outside the front door? (Front door = to be polite.) Harry and Co. should have had to duel their way out and run to the country lane, carrying Hermione and Dobby, to Apparate.

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

Oh good, more magical inconsistency!

But yeah, it seemed like she wanted to have it both ways with the wands and they contradicted each other. It's always been more like a personal bond. And Ollivander even talks about having a desire to learn with the wand and wizard working together. So it would seem that Wizards would have a bond with their wand and grow into more and more like one over time. Instead in the end it was like the only couple that mattered was Harry and his holly wand (not even a mention of what's going to happen to Draco's wand--I guess it'll go in the trash where it belongs, or Harry will keep it for his kids to play with), and that was just because it was Harry's and presumably readers care about it because we read about him getting it and all.

I think Hermione does say that Bellatrix's wand feels "evil" but she also isn't truly the master of it. We don't know if that would have been different otherwise. Harry doesn't give any thought to his new wand belonging to Draco or feeling like him at all, only that it's working for him fine.

[brabbel.livejournal.com]

This is a very intriguing discussion which I only discovered through the Daily Snitch. *g*

Most of what I'd have to say has already been said, so I'll just add that I think that JKR just couldn't help herself. She had to bend the rules of her own world and find a quick fix since she couldn't be bothered to have Harry actually *learn* anything useful for the fight against Voldemort during 6 years. So... she came up with the Deathly Hallows in general and the Elder Wand in particular halfway through the last book.

As someone here mentioned already, I'd love to see the series that could have been had JKR paid more attention to detail, and adhered to the rules she herself set out. It was *her* story, and due to unknown circumstances (be it outside pressure, her self-imposed 7-books-rule or whatever), she didn't put enough thought into how she'd end the series properly. (And she still can't shut up about details that just don't make sense like Harry's becoming an Auror in light of his being the master of the Elder Wand...).

Make no mistake, I love the series, but it is inconsistencies such as with the wands, with the intention behind the Unforgivables etc. that bother the hell out of me... that are an itch I just can't scratch...

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

Oh yeah, that's the feeling! It's especially frustrating when you realize how it could have been fixed--like here when I realized that she could have just given the Elder wand these properties. She might have had a problem with that because it would have given away the ending--maybe she'd think we'd guess if we were told that only the Elder wand did this, but I think she could have hidden it fine by just making it part of the Hallows story. And anyway then there wouldn't be these total destruction of the previous six books!

[slinkhard.livejournal.com]

LOL, there are so many things that annoyed me about DH, the wands never even crossed my mind!

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

I know! How many months did it take for me to get around to this? Maybe it's a good thing it's buried under everything else I hated!

[oselle.livejournal.com]

Oh, the whole wand thing is just so goddamned creepy and phallic. Do you think Rowling even realizes that? All that business about taking someone's wand from them -- it's pure castration fantasy. Yech.

[aasaylva.livejournal.com]

Castration fantasy - mmmh, yes. I might be able to stomach it, if she sort of had "castrated" the bad guys, thus taking away their ability to harm others (sort of like you castrate male animals in order to reduce their aggression level)while keeping the good guys just as they were (a cock per se doesn't make a man a rapist, so he can keep it). But she gives these wands to the (so called) good guys AND AT THE SAME TIME shows them to behave more or less like the bad guys did! Harry ends up with what? Three wands? If any man had written this, I'd roll around the floor laughing - compensation much? But JKR? WTF, WTF!!!

[saylee.livejournal.com]

Even the Elder Wand bothers me. It wouldn't necessarily have to work for Harry even, so long as it didn't work for Voldemort. Why would it become Harry's when it's not the wand he took from Draco? I'm sure by the end of the book Draco had more than enough reason not to want Voldemort to win to cause the Elder Wand to backfire on V, if Draco was still its master.

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

Yes, it was at least a chance for Slytherin to make a conscious choice. If Harry had just pointed out that Draco was the master and then Draco somehow "gave" the wand to Harry. Draco wouldn't have to be too heroic or steal Harry's moment, we would actually see a point to his whole storyline in HBP and Dumbledore could teach a lesson, and it wouldn't be at all OOC for Draco by that point. But no, it all has to be the Chosen One and the plot that falls into his lap.

[black-dog.livejournal.com]

I'm so happy to totally agree about something in DH. The wandlore that book is the lamest thing since . . . well, since GoF, where it turned out that, what do you know? -- wands are also a kind of VCR that records and plays back your latest curses. And they fold out into camp stools and they're great at cleaning those hard to reach spots behind the counter! It's maddening the way JKR makes stuff up on the fly, almost purely for the hell of it. Not to mention forgetting what she's said before. JKR: the Bad Liar as Novelist.

I have to imagine that poor Ollivander's brains were just addled by his time in captivity. I reread the Wandmaker chapter just to admire the pure cognitive dissonance as the explanations change, and change back, from paragraph to paragraph. "The wand chooses the wizard" is the basic rule, but "these things are complex." Then there's that wonderful passage about "an initial attraction, and then a mutual quest for experience . . ." But the erotic metaphor turns abruptly into an image of rape: "the conquered wand will usually bend its will to its new master." The juxtaposition of those two statements, literally within three sentences of each other, is really kind of creepy.

On the very next page (495 US edition) it's also odd how JKR acknowledges, and then barely papers over, the shift from one sort of wandlore to the other with respect to Harry's and Voldemort's past contests. In the past, of course, the framework was the whole story of the twin wands, and the odd things that happen when they go up against each other: Harry went on. "Mine still beat the borrowed wand. Do you know why that is?" Ollivander shook his head . . . "I had never heard of such a thing. Your wand performed something unique last night . . . I do not know." At which point Harry responds to this fascinating puzzle by changing the subject: "We were talking about the other wand, the wand that changes hands by murder." The logical connection that justifies the transition is of course that Voldemort couldn't get anywhere with twin-wand-theory either, so he figured he'd give power-wands a try instead. I guess when you've ridden one horse as far as it will go, you just get off and find another one to climb on to. This seems to apply to plot strategies as well as to wands.

You nail it when you point out that none of this was necessary in the first place -- all the "power and conquest" stuff could have been a unique feature of the Elder Wand alone. That would have been enough to take care of the plot problem created by the impasse over twin wands; it might have justified Voldemort's hesitation to attack until after Dumbledore's death; and it would have given an additional bit of swagger and mystery retrospectively to Dumbledore. It's hard to see any reason why she made nonsense out of all the great stuff she had previously imagined about wand-fitting sessions, dueling, expellarimus as an innocuous hex, mismatched wands, etc. etc. etc.

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

Yes! I mean, I'm used to having magic change on a whim in the series and since luckily I'm not the kind of reader who's a stickler on that stuff I'll go with it, especially here where things seemed to be more like a metaphor for other stuff. (An Unbreakable Vow is just a promise you really have to keep or die, even the ever-changing Fidelius is just a really important secret.)

But for this it's such a trashing of the original, far better, metaphor and it really changes the feel of the series. It makes the Elder Wand "win" in a strange way. It should be a bad wand, a wand that's dangerous because of its power and its strange values. And that's the reason it changes hands while other wands obviously stay in the hand of a single Wizard and usually get buried with their owners. Granted JKR had occasionally already hinted that she didn't get what she herself had written about wands--how on earth does Ron have an "old wand" of Charlie's in PS, for instance, when we've never seen anybody get new wands? There at least I can fanwank--maybe they have a family wand that belonged to a dead wizard that they give to the kids until they get their own--that might explain why it's somehow gotten itself into bad shape.

And btw, what's up with Gran giving Neville his dad's wand in that case? The man was obviously beaten by Barty and Bellatrix. Neville could never have been the master of his wand. Does she not know that?

Yeah, clearly JKR never thought she had to stick to one idea, but as you say, that passage with Ollivander shows just how dreadful this particular change is, the way he's juxtaposing a rather lovely erotic metaphor with rape and not only not seeming to be disturbed by it, but have no problem with the face that rape winds up being the more powerful bond.

[nemesister.livejournal.com]

JKR explains it all away with intuition. Harry has it and it can make up for his lack of smarts. So you can either learn the hand movements of a spell or you just know them! Imperius really shouldn't have worked for a good kid who tries it the first time, though. That makes magic seem ridiculous. But yeah, I think JK would argue that he is just that awesome. It's like magic is like learning to play the violin and Harry is a musical genius - you just didn't notice in the first few lessons!

The DH wand thing never made sense to me. The erotic relationship vs rape - two ways to achieve the same end (eek) - thing in the comments makes more sense than with what I could have come up myself, but that doesn't explain why Harry didn't win Draco's wand with Sectumsempra. I guess the wand thought that was over the top and disapproved, so it didn't change loyalties. WTF?

[jodel-from-aol.livejournal.com]

Well, I've said it everywhere else, and I might as well say it here too.

From the vantage point of the end of the series, in retrospect, it's obvious that it was *always* going to be a wand that chose Harry over Tom that was going to be the pivot of the climax and give Harry the victory.

But that doesn't excuse the crappy, half-arsed excuse for an explanation that Rowling gave us, because she had never bothered to work out the details and was fresh out of ideas.

The original premise that wands choose wizards could be worked with very nicely. The premise that someone else's wand would not work as well for you as one that "chose" you could be equated to someone else's spectacles not working as well for you as your own, even if you *can* see pretty well through them. The wood and the core of a properly fitted wand resonate at a frequency that matches *you* and gives better performance. No real problem with any of that, and nothing that we saw in Books 1-6 has any problem with that interpretation.

Suddenly in Book 7 all wands are suddenly the Elder Wand. Wooden bimbos who will go off with anyone who can take them away from their original owner. This is backwards. Only the Elder Wand ought to be the Elder Wand.

And for that matter even the Elder Wand doesn't need to be like that. If Rowling hadn't been bankrupt of imagination she'd have worked it out by some other rationale.

What is needed isn't a wand which goes off and obeys just anyone. What is needed is a wand which flatly *refuses to cooperate with Tom*. One that choses Harry *because* he isn't Tom. One that will kill the soul fragment that IS Tom and not touch Harry.

And that would not be all that difficult to establish if the Elder Wand is kept *unique*

Especially if magic, which throughout the whole series is hinted in all sorts of ways to be connected with the soul, turns out to actually be so. The Elder Wand clearly has no objection to killing, and as such has no apparant objection to damaged souls, but why not invent a way to hint that it may have an objection to *incomplete* ones. Even if only in King's Cross (which would make a certain amount of sense, it isn't information that would be widely known nor would Harry have had any reasonable source for finding it out. Even the wandmakers probably wouldn't have known about that peculiarity).

One little shift, and we'd be rid of the necessity for just about all of the stupidity that Rowling lumbered us with in Book 7. Harry wouldn't be the master of the Elder Wand because he yanked Draco's hawthorn wand out of his hand a couple of months earlier. He would be the Master of the Elder Wand because when offered the choice of killing only one of them earlier that evening, the wand chose to kill Tom. Harry's Expeliarmus gave it the excuse it needed to go back and finish the job.

And with that shift, all the rest of the wand nonsense could just boil down to the awkwardness of trying to read through someone else's glasses. Which the story could make the space for, even though it is np longer absolutely necessary for anything.

About the only thing that would be left twisting in the wind is Harry's holly wand going on autopilot, and we still don't have a decent reason for that, although since it seems to have been what opened up and reversed the mind link between Harry and Tom it does appear to be necessary to have it happen in some manner.

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

Arrgh! Yes, I agree. This is such a central thing in the book it still amazes me that either JKR or the editors didn't seriously question it. I mean, I know that at this point editors aren't going to have that much power, and they're not going to want to mess with the powerhouse. But it drives me crazy how this could have been avoided. Also in your scenario the wand choosing Harry actually means something--Tom Riddle's cutting up his soul leads to him be able to fully master the wand. As opposed to it just coming down to a show of strength in the end. It might as well be an arm-wrestling contest.

[vampromero.livejournal.com]

The wand is a focus. An item which allows a Magus (a Witch or Wizard)to concentrate with, like Dumbo's feather. IT is an alien, foreign thing, with various, inherent resonances, at evidenced by the associations of the mundane woods and the mystical cores.

A wand made without a master, will emit the natural resonances, and a Magus will instinctually attute to and connect with a masterless-wand.

When a Magus defeats, disarms, destroys, or disarms another Magus, the very act of will in the "Domination" by the Magus Victor over the Magus Victim therin attuned the Magus Victor to the wand of the Magus Victim.

The attunement occurs as an accidental side-effect of the Act of Will (Magical or Mundane.)

[woman-ironing.livejournal.com]

As well as all the hocus-pocus we get about wands, there's also the lone voice of Hermione saying it's the wizard not the wand that's important. Harry's problems with the blackthorn wand are about confidence - he's lost in the woods and he's lost his original wand with it's link to Voldemort's that he's come to think of as a safety net.

I think the elder wand is simple: it belongs to the most powerful wizard, and the most powerful wizard is the one who wins it, whether that's by duelling or by nicking it from a dead body. For me, all that stuff Harry says to Voldemort in their stand-off at Hogwarts is bluff, really. Harry is just undermining Voldemort's confidence. Harry wins the wand because Voldemort is afraid of him, while Harry is not afraid of Voldemort - for the very good reason that Voldemort's spells no longer work!

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

Hermione's wrong about the wands. It's not Harry's confidence at all, but the fact that he hasn't won the wand. That's why the hawthorne one works fine. Hermione doesn't know wandlore, and hasn't yet had the experience herself, but Ollivander explains it to them.

The Elder wand belongs to Harry because Harry took Draco's wand. Harry's not bluffing, he's telling exactly what the book's laid out painstakingly with all those blackthorn and hawthorn and vine wands, plus Ollivander's explanation. Whether Voldemort is confident or not doesn't matter. Harry's the master of the wand because he's the master of the hawthorne wand because he yanked it from Draco some chapters back.

[eir-de-scania.livejournal.com]

"It's a shame, actually, because with just a little tweaking JKR could have saved the original idea. She could have said that only the *Elder Wand* (the one already uniquely created to dominate others) bent to the will of he who won it."

That makes sense, unlike the wand business in the book...I didn't even try to understand it.

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

Sometimes that's the best way to go...

[kerosinkanister.livejournal.com]

It's always nice to see a bit of HP meta from you.

Although there are some vague references to theory or esoteric knowledge that Dumbledore has but can't explain, and things to memorize, Harry never really encounters anything beyond magic as a physical skill.

That's cause JKR really doesn't seem to have much of an idea for her magic beyond having magic itself. It's interesting because much fantasy places such strict limits on magic; Le Guin's Earthsea is one of the most strict with wizard's needing to be virgins to do magic. HP was refreshing in that it wasn't this limited, thing, it was everyday and used all over. So of course children found that appealing. But then the magic in her world is basically a roughly drawn sketch on a napkin and she never developed anything further.

There are tons of signs that she wants it to be this fairly rigorous system, much like any scientific study. We get Gamp's Law of Elemental Transfiguration and Golapott's Laws and such. But there's nothing behind that.

The wands, obviously, are a good case in point. They seemingly have a special significance and we get Harry's wand choosing him and Ron's struggles with a wand that was never quite right.

Amounts to nothing, really.

whether they prefer kicking ass with a .44 Magnum or a .38 special

And if that's the case why hasn't wandmaking moved in the direction of small arms, where one drive through history has been to make as powerful and effective a weapon as a man can use with reasonable accuracy and control?

Or why would any wizard pick a 38 special instead of a 44 magnum? Yet that even gets contradicted by intention sometimes sort of being crucial, like with Avada Kedavra.

Anyway, one of the problems I think us adult readers have is over-analyzing HP. The key to JKR's success is that she tells a great story, not that the stories hold up to rigorous analysis and nit-picking.

A few examples, and I've used them before. We've got Hermione spending almost no time at home. Adult readers wonder how her parents can be satisfied spending so little time with with their only child. I've seen people analyze her home situation. Maybe her parents are distant people or more focused on work or whatever. But there's probably nothing deeper than JKR needed Hermione with Harry and Ron for plot reasons.

And another I've seen in R/Hr circles. How could Hermione have ever spent much time with Viktor, much less gotten in much snogging without Ron knowing? He's focused enough on her in POA that he figures out something's wacky with her schedule. They go to a small enough school where if someone's kissing someone everyone knows, even if they never talk to the people. But then that would've ruined both the Yule Ball surprise and taken away a major push of Ron towards Lavender. If Ron had known in GOF it would've interfered with the story JKR wanted to tell. It's actually a bit amusing in HBP when Harry reckons Hermione and Krum snogged. He's given fuck-all concern for Hermione's personal life and never reckoned anything at all. The only time he gave half a second's thought was when an angry Krum confronted him. Harry doesn't know or care.

Anyway, this is getting long!

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

That really does get interesting, the way that there's obviously not really any laws to magic, yet the kids have to study something. In the beginning, as people have mentioned above, it came down to moving your wand the right way and saying the word right, but then even that went away. Potions seems like it should easily work something like chemistry, but you probably need to be comfortable with chemistry to write it like that.

This whole issue with wands really does just effect so much--or should. There should be a Wizard economy where people collect wands or look for more powerful ones, or need extras. The whole set up with Ollivander emphasizes the first method of wand/wizard relationship, because this guy is good at telling who goes best with what wand.

He's given fuck-all concern for Hermione's personal life and never reckoned anything at all. The only time he gave half a second's thought was when an angry Krum confronted him. Harry doesn't know or care.

LOL! So true! And yet I was equally surprised by the "Harry snogged Cho" line since as far as I saw they had one awkward kiss. It honestly didn't seem like it was supposed to be a real make-out session. It makes more sense if it wasn't given their later interactions, because Harry never once wants to be with Cho to actually snog. As if he's not interested in kissing her...

[cressida0201.livejournal.com]

Draco would still be the Master of the Elder wand because *that* Wand only recognizes that kind of brute force, and Harry would still be the one who defeated him no matter what Wand he was using.

I haven't read all of the comments yet, so forgive me if I'm repeating someone else's idea. IMO, the whole tortuous, stupid set of wand mastery rules came about for one purpose and one purpose only: for JKR's plot to work, Harry (and Draco too) somehow had to be the Master of the Elder Wand without knowing it, and without ever having touched the wand. Which strikes me as a fundamentally flawed concept, in terms of constructing a good story--or at least, something that's going to be very, very tough to pull off.

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

That's exactly how it reads to me, that that whole story in HBP and all the wand stuff in DH is just to get Harry holding a wand that's master of the Elder Wand without anyone else knowing it, because it couldn't be Snape. And that's not very exciting. Especially if you avoid making it really mean anything besides 'I won.' Everybody's just chess pieces and you can see exactly how the contrivances work.

[(Anonymous)]

Wands apparently became marxists and they literally understood sentence "Freedom is the recognition of necessity" :-)

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

Ha! You've found the key!