Skip to main content

Was Harry making a big mistake with his plan for Elder Wand?


At the very end of Deathly Hallows, after Harry repaired his own wand with the Elder Wand, he tells Dumbledore's Portrait in the office:




“I’m putting the Elder Wand,” he told Dumbledore, who was watching him with enormous affection and admiration, “back where it came from. It can stay there. If I die a natural death like Ignotus, its power will be broken, won’t it? The previous master will never have been defeated. That’ll be the end of it.



Now, this seems incredibly foolish to me.


"The previous master will never have been defeated" would only have been assuredely true if Harry had died right after depositing the Elder Wand back into Dumbledore's Tomb.


If not, Harry (the Wand owner) would still be alive, and at the risk of being Disarmed (as was shown with Harry and Draco Malfoy, it doesn't matter if the Elder Wand's owner is defeated by death or simple disarming, AND it's not even required that the Disarming would involve the Elder Wand!).


So, if Harry merely put the Elder Wand back into the Tomb, and some years later, someone would disarm him (or, even worse, kill him) - then that someone would become the Elder Wand owner, either by accident or by design:




  • By accident - Harry is likely to get into plenty of magical duels in the future. Even discounting friendly one (teaching people the Expelliramus), he plans on becoming an Auror!





  • By design - plenty of people have been in the Great Hall hearing Harry explaining to Voldemort that he, Harry, was now the owner of the Elder Wand, so the fact of his ownership would most assuredly NOT remain a secret, inviting countless people tempted by owning the Deathstick to hunt Harry down. Oh, and the location is now also known!




So "its power will be broken" is quite unlikely to come true!


Is Harry hopelessly wrong? Or am I missing something in the above logic? Was this addressed in canon/JKR info?



Answer



The fact that he will likely be disarmed by countless people, who will unknowingly become masters of the Elder Wand - and will in turn be disarmed by countless other equally unwitting people - will mean that the true master of the Elder Wand will soon not only be impossible to find, but will also never know that she/he is connected with the Elder Wand in any way.


In addition, anyone who decided they want to be the Elder Wand's master after all would have to track down and disarm or kill a whole lot of - possibly all of - the people who might have been involved. And, considering that we're talking about an Auror and his colleagues and enemies, many of those people will be either other Aurors or hardened criminals, some of whom will believe they are fighting for their life. A really serious set of guards to get through.


As Ellesedil put it in the comments, Harry's actual plan is nuts but accidentally effective. Taking up the Auror profession is, in fact, the safest thing for Harry to do, outside of destroying the wand.



Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Did the gatekeeper and the keymaster get intimate in Ghostbusters?

According to TVTropes ( usual warning, don't follow the link or you'll waste half your life in a twisty maze of content ): In Ghostbusters, it's strongly implied that Dana Barret, while possessed by Zuul the Gatekeeper, had sex with Louis Tully, who was possessed by Vinz Clortho the Keymaster (key, gate, get it?), in order to free Big Bad Gozer. In fact, a deleted scene from the movie has Venkman explicitly asking Dana if she and Louis "did it". I turned the quote into a spoiler since it contains really poor-taste joke, but the gist of it is that it's implied that as part of freeing Gozer , the two characters possessed by the Keymaster and the Gatekeeper had sex. Is there any canon confirmation or denial of this theory (canon meaning something from creators' interviews, DVD commentary, script, delete scenes etc...)? Answer The Richard Mueller novelisation and both versions of the script strongly suggest that they didn't have sex (or at the very l...
1 comment
Read more

Why didn't The Doctor or Clara recognize Missy right away?

So after it was established that Missy is actually both the Master, and the "woman in the shop" who gave Clara the TARDIS number... ...why didn't The Doctor or Clara recognize her right away? I remember the Tenth Doctor in The Sound of Drums stating that Timelords had a way of recognizing other Timelords no matter if they had regenerated. And Clara should have recognized her as well... I'm hoping for a better explanation than "Moffat screwed up", and that I actually missed something after two watchthroughs of the episode. Answer There seems to be a lot of in-canon uncertainty as to the extent to which Time Lords can recognise one another which far pre-dates Moffat's tenure. From the Time Lords page on Wikipedia : Whether or not Time Lords can recognise each other across regenerations is not made entirely clear: In The War Games, the War Chief recognises the Second Doctor despite his regeneration and it is implied that the Doctor knows him when they fir...
Post a Comment
Read more

story identification - Animation: floating island, flying pests

At least 20 years ago I watched a short animated film which stuck in my mind. The whole thing was wordless, possibly European, and I'm pretty sure I didn't imagine it... It featured a flying island which was inhabited by some creatures who (in my memory) reminded me of the Moomins. The island was frequently bothered by large winged animals who swooped around, although I don't think they did any actual damage. At the end one of the moomin creatures suddenly gets a weird feeling, feels forced to climb to the top of the island and then plunges down a shaft right through the centre - only to emerge at the bottom as one of the flyers. Answer Skywhales from 1983. The story begins with a man warning the tribe of approaching skywhales. The drummers then warn everybody of the hunt as everyone get prepared to set "sail". Except one man is found in his home sleeping as the noise wake him up. He then gets ready and is about to take his weapon as he hesitates then decides ...
Post a Comment
Read more

warhammer40k - What evidence supposedly supports Tau as related to the Necrontyr?

I've heard of rumours saying that the Tau from Warhammer 40K are in fact the Necrontyr. Is there anything that supports this statement, in WH40K canon? I just found this, on 1d4 chan 1 : Helping Necrons? Or are they Necrontyr descendants? An often overlooked issue is that Tau have no warp signatures, just like Necrons, hate Warpspawns and Warp in general, just like Necrons, have the exact same skull shape,stature and short lives, and the overwhelming need for Technology and beam weapons, JUST LIKE NECRONS. GW may have planned a race that simply prepares a pacified, multiracial galaxy for Necrons to feast upon, supported by Ethereals that have a C'tan phase blade. Then there is a reference of "dark seed in east" by the Deceiver, so the tricky C'tan might give Tzeentch the finger in the JUST AS PLANNED competition. Or maybe GW just has so little creativity that they simply made a new civ conforming to an Old One's standards without knowing it. Is this the connec...
Post a Comment
Read more