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

Question

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 1

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.

Answer 2

I personally don't think it was Harry's most cerebral moment in the series . . . I'm shocked that Hermione didn't dissuade him from placing the Elder Wand back in Dumbledore's tomb, she being uber logical. It was a risky decision on Harry's part, no matter how remote a chance of someone figuring out that Dumbledore was master of the Elder Wand, and that the wand lay in Dumbledore's tomb. After all, Dumbledore himself came to believe in The Tale of the Three Brothers -- is it inconceivable that another would come to believe the same thing? No. It's not inconceivable.

Further, in the chapter King's Cross in Deathly Hallows, Dumbledore shares with Harry his own story, wherein he eschews his desire for power and the difficulty he had in managing power -- he declined offers to become the Minister for Magic, although he participated in the Wizengamot in a lesser role than Minister. Would Dumbledore even want to be buried with the Elder Wand? Maybe not. He must have had a second wand somewhere -- the wand he likely got from Ollivander when he was eleven. Would it have been more appropriate to have buried Dumbledore with his original wand? I think it might have been. After all, it had been Dumbledore's plan to turn the wand's allegiance to Snape; that it went to Draco was purely accidental.

I suppose we can assume that no one recovered Dumbledore's wand -- the Elder Wand -- but I don't think Harry thought through the risks of returning Dumbledore's wand to his tomb. The Elder Wand would have been safer in Harry's Gringott's vault, left guarded and away from prying eyes (presumably) until Harry's death, at which time the magic of the Elder Wand would cease.

Speaking of wands, what would Harry have done with Draco Malfoy's wand? He certainly couldn't return it to Draco or else Harry would run the risk of the Elder Wand switching allegiance back to Draco. I'll pose this question separately, though.

Answer 3

There are a few points here that make this situation very muddy.

• Even if Harry is defeated, it's very possible that Harry can just defeat them again sometime in the future, getting the Elder Wand back. He would however have to pay attention to any who's-beaten-who chains that pop up.
• Harry ends book 7 with two wands under his control: the Elder Wand, and his own (one can presume - even if it was someone else's at some point, repairing a wand will probably make it think good of you). If Harry's defeated, which wand changes allegiance? The one he's using? The other one, if the first has already changed? Both at once? We don't know this.
• Let's say that Harry succeeds in dying with the Elder Wand still attached to him. What happens to the wand's allegiance? Does it become a freelancer wand, and whoever is the first to claim it become the new owner? (We know that wands are created with no allegiance, and appear to pick people they like, but we don't know if a wand can have a null owner afterwards.) Does it remain attached to the dead owner, and therefore cannot be swayed as its owner cannot be defeated? Does its allegiance pass on to their spouse or eldest child? (This would make a degree of sense but has no real evidence either way.)

I think Harry is banking on the fact that trying to die with the Elder Wand in his "possession" is the best chance he has of breaking its power. He knows that no one knows what will happen afterwards and is probably hoping that no one will remember a thing about it sixty years from then. Like most of his plans there are glaring flaws, but it's not as stupid as it looks, considering the amount of unknowns.

And let's not forget that Harry survived the Killing Curse twice. While unlikely to get the hat trick, that's a reputation that will probably stop people from trying to use it on him.

Answer 4

I think Harry's logic is fine, but not for the reason he explains. You are correct - without destroying the Elder Wand (and in the books I don't think we know that that is necessarily possible), it more than likely will pass to the next person to best Harry, whether that be in a duel, fight or other mechanism. So the part about its power being broken is incorrect.

However, if Auror trainer Joe Bloggs or Dark Wizard Jim Bob happen to best Harry somehow, and thereby become the next owner of the Elder Wand it's incredibly unlikely that they will know that they suddenly obtained this hidden status and that they will also know where Harry has hidden the Elder Wand. If someone locates the Wand, they have to defeat Harry prior to anyone else. If someone defeats Harry, and multiple people probably will, who will know who is the real owner besides Harry himself?

In effect Harry is neutralizing the Wand without destroying it, barring a startling coincidence.

Answer 5

Even if Harry were defeated and the wand shifted alliances, the new owner wouldn't even know that they were the owner to this super powerful wand (like Draco didn't know).

That said the Elder Wand has such a history of violence because a)people who have it tend to brag and b)people who have it also make a power play.

Now Harry is defeated and the wand shifts

a )New person doesn't know that they have a super powerful wand so they can't brag.

b) New owner doesn't have the knowledge that they are at an advantage for a power play.

So if Harry were to fail in dying undefeated, he might have succeeded in breaking/slowing the trail of Death following the Elder Wand and his vanquisher might then die undefeated.

Answer 6

I think the implication of the wand-lore is that you'd have to be in a proper fight, which wouldn't happen because 'happily ever after'. It's unlikely he'd see many more life and death struggles. Besides, your wand would fail every time someone jinxed another person at school. You'd never get any magic done. I'm sure the circumstances of your loss are important. Perhaps the deathstick is only interested in important fights of powerful people.

Or perhaps it's a set up for the next book -harry fights death!

She doesn't really say much about 'magical theory' in the books.

Answer 7

Probably not the most thorough answer, but being who he is, it's probably for the best.

Harry is the symbol of the defeat of evil. The beacon of hope in dark times, knowing a few secrets, owning DA, etc. All those make him a great target for evil and dark wizards. Who'll want to be the one who killed Harry Potter, the Boy Who Lived.

From that perspective, it's better for him to be well prepared for the fights ahead. And well protected as well. And hard to be better protected that at the head of a bunch of Aurors.

Answer 8

Harry's plan certainly doesn't seem to make sense, since he will become an Auror. However, I think that the point of Harry's plan, is to make the ownership of the Elder Wand so mixed-up, that no one knows who the Elder Wand's owner is.

Answer 9

It is a complex matter. One has to consider the full chain that we know of

• Gregorovitch had the wand. We don't know where he got it from, though he quite probably bought it. Was he the master of the wand? We don't know.

• Grindelwald stole the wand from Gregorovitch. Is that enough to be the master? Probably...

• Dumbledore beat Grindelwald in a famous duel, and acquire the wand for himself. It would be unlikely that Dumbledore kept the wand so long if he wasn't the master of the wand.

• Draco disarmed Dumbledore and thus got the mastery of the wand.

• Harry wrestle out Draco's wand from his grip and thus got the ownership as per the story. But there is the question of how did the Elder wand know that this happened? Could it be under the influence of Draco's wand, which changed allegiance. So maybe the Elder wand recognised the possessors of Draco's wand to be its own master..?

Where does that lead us? Well we don't really know and neither does Harry.

The wand is picky. Stealing in the middle of the night, without physically defeating its previous master seemed to be enough for Grindelwald. So anyone getting to the tomb and picking it up might do it. Or Gindelwald was lucky to be spotted while stealing?

Then, if the Elder wand is aware of anything that happens, anyone who beats Harry would get the ownership. Even if the precise location of the wand might be lost in history.

However, one may say that the wand recognise Harry as its master, and the only way for Harry to lose the ownership would be for him to be defeated while with the Elder wand. And the master of the wand that beat the pair would become its new master. In that case, as long as Harry does not have it, it won't change its master.

Regardless, it's still a good way to attempt to drown it in history.

Answer 10

For me, a more gratifying end would have involved Harry taking the wand to Ollivander's shop, and letting him examine it. Ollivander had a great professional and historical interest in it, so he would find this very gratifying.

Once Ollivander is done looking it over, he hands it back to Harry, who immediately snaps it in half. Ollivander would probably be upset at this, but this would be mitigated by having been an eye-witness to the final chapter of the Elder Wand's history.

This would have complicated the resolution, both of the book and the movie, so it's better that it was left out.

Answer 11

Disarming Harry would not be enough to become master of the death stick. The wand who disarmed Dumbledore and Voldemort was Draco's wand. If harry keep the death stick and Draco's wand away, nobody will become the master of both wands. Harry decided to use the phoenix feather wand (the one he repaired) so if disarmed, the witch who disarmed him would become the master of the phoenix feather wand only.

Answer 12

I'm surprised nobody talk about giving away the wand.
The plan was originally for Dumbledore to give away the wand freely and willingly, assuming it will break the curse.

The plan backfire when Draco took the wand against Dumbledore will, but it make sense that Harry tries to replicate it.

By giving away the wand to Dumbledore, two things can happen.

1. The wand does not have an owner anymore.
   May be a wandmaker could find him a new owner, but it will be a case of random chance. If a Dark Wizard wants to gain ownership of the wand, he will need to first to kidnap (I assume he will not be lucky enough to find a valid candidate in his followers) hundreds of wizards to test the wand against, and kill the one wizard that the wand recognized as a owner.
   And this is assuming that a wand could accept multiple natural owners.

2. The wand is owned back by (dead) Dumbledore. And once again we go boldly in the loophole territory. Is it enough to take the wand for the corpse to take ownership?
   Do you have to desecrate/destroy the body?
   Or is it impossible to beat a dead person? and therefore impossible to transfer ownership.

Now an important question would be : Was Dumbledore right in the first place ? Would his original plan have work ? Won't you keep ownership anyway by giving the wand to a dead body ? Could you have given the wand to a rock ?

We don't care, because that's not the point.
We all know that Dumbledore is not perfect, and made his share of mistake.
But Harry idolize Dumbledore, he trusted him with his life. Dumbledore plan was to give way the wand freely to break the curse/succession. Harry will give away the wand freely. No matter the consequences.