1

Since the connections between Harry and Voldemort's wands causes very extraordinary behavior when they are met in a duel; Voldemort tries to find a way to overcome the Priori Incantatum phenomenon. Hence In the Deathly Hallows he borrows (emphasized since that is the center of my question) Lucius Malfoy's wand:

“As I was saying,” continued Voldemort, looking again at the tense faces of his followers, “I understand better now. I shall need, for instance, to borrow a wand from one of you before I go to kill Potter.” ...

“My Lord?” “Your wand, Lucius. I require your wand.” “I...” Malfoy glanced sideways at his wife. She was staring straight ahead, quite as pale as he was, her long blonde hair hanging down her back, but beneath the table her slim fingers closed briefly on his wrist. At her touch, Malfoy put his hand into his robes, withdrew a wand, and passed it along to Voldemort, who held it up in from of his red eyes, examining it closely.
-Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Chapter One (The Dark Lord Ascending).

Although Lucius gives the wand to Voldemort, he does not seem to be doing it willingly. There is a lot of mystery behind wands and their obedience to their masters. The Elder Wand being a major example. I was wondering whether Voldemort could expect Lucius' wand to serve him best when he did not defeat or kill Lucius himself. Obviously this attempt did not work, as we can ascertain from the discussion between Ollivander and Voldemort:

“I swear I did not....I believed a different wand would work....” “Explain, then, what happened. Lucius’s wand is destroyed!” “I cannot understand....The connection...exists only...between your two wands....”
-Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Chapter Five (Fallen Warrior).

Later in the book Ollivander explains some things about wandlore to Harry:

  • Wands can change allegiance when the owner is defeated
  • Wands perform better when the allegiance exists

  • “—then it may be yours. Of course, the manner of taking matters. Much also depends upon the wand itself. In general, however, where a wand has been won, its allegiance will change."

[Details of which can be found in The Deathly Hallows, Chapter Twenty-Four (The Wandmaker)]

As I understand it, Ollivander made a guess, partially scared of what the consequences might be, whether the borrowed wand would work or not. So far I have come up with:

  • Voldemort might have thought it does not matter, because his powers were so great, that the wand would merely be a tool.
  • Although Lucius did not hand the wand willingly, it is without any doubt that he was scared of Voldemort - possible being "defeated" this way, without any physical/magical fight.
  • Lucius' wand itself recognised a greater, more powerful wizard and therefore chose to obey his orders.
  • Voldemort did not think of this, and although it might create a slight difference Harry's wand would probably still be able to defend him.

Question

Did Voldemort defeat or overpower Lucius - even though he did not physically fight him - and therefore mastered Lucius' wand?

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  • 1
    Is there a question in here somewhere?
    – Valorum
    May 31, 2014 at 21:07
  • Well, I don't expect Yes/No answers. Maybe this place is not good for discussions, but I do not know of a better one. I am interested in your opinions and if somebody else thought about that. I did not want to ask "Does the circumstances of obtaining a wand matter?" since it obviously does and I wanted to avoid simple answers like: "yes, he only borrowed it".. I am sorry, that I did not stated my intentions clearly, should I update the question?
    – quapka
    May 31, 2014 at 21:29
  • 2
    If you're looking to simply discuss the book, this isn't the right site for you. You might want to wander over to the chatroom or somewhere like potterforums.com. If you're looking to answer a specific question (like "Did Voldemort 'conquer' Lucius", for example) then yes, you should reword the post.
    – Valorum
    May 31, 2014 at 21:31
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    As I recall, borrowing Lucius Malfoy's wand didn't work because of the piece of Voldemort's soul in Harry and his wand recognising Voldemort. Essentially, he'd solved one issue (the twin cores) but there were more elements in play. A sufficiently skilled/powerful wizard can use any wand, but they get the best results when the wand has chosen them; Voldemort, being one of the most powerful wizards alive at the time, would have been confident of the wand working for him even if it hadn't chosen him. May 31, 2014 at 22:19
  • 2
    @quapka - The wall of text certainly isn't helping.
    – Valorum
    Jun 1, 2014 at 20:41

1 Answer 1

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In essence, I believe it can be assumed that your suspicion that Voldemort defeated Lucius is correct. Lucius shows a certain level of meekness which can be attributed to his submission of Voldemort's power. Lucius clearly did not want to part with his wand.

That said, there is no way for us to know for sure whether the wand passed its allegiance to Voldemort or not!

  • Lucius' wand got destroyed when it met Harry's wand.
  • Ollivander is not able to inspect the wand and tell us who its master is
  • The wand was destroyed out of an (hitherto unknown) effect caused by Lily's love protection covering both Harry and Voldemort as well as the initial Priori Incantatum (Goblet of Fire), whereby a part of Voldemort was imbibed into Harry's wand1 and not because the wand wasn't Voldemort's.
  • What we know of wandlore is very limited especially in regards to allegiance. You must also be careful not to attribute the Elder Wand's properties (changing allegiance to a new master through defeat of the previous one) to regular wands2.

Effectively it does not matter whether the wand chose Voldemort as its new owner or not since it got destroyed and didn't help him3.


1. When Voldemort and Harry met at the graveyard in Little Hangleton, they performed a magical phenomenon called Priori Incantatum. An extra side-effect of this encounter of the two wands was that Harry's wand got imbibed with an essence of Voldemort, and therefore, Harry's wand was now and forevermore protected from Voldemort himself. This and not Harry and Voldemort's wands being twins was the cause of the destruction of Lucius' wand:

“I believe that your wand imbibed some of the power and qualities of Voldemort’s wand that night, which is to say that it contained a little of Voldemort himself. So your wand recognized him when he pursued you, recognized a man who was both kin and mortal enemy, and it regurgitated some of his own magic against him, magic much more powerful than anything Lucius’s wand had ever performed. Your wand now contained the power of your enormous courage and of Voldemort’s own deadly skill: What chance did that poor stick of Lucius Malfoy’s stand?”
-Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Chapter Thirty-Five (King's Cross).


2. See these two questions for wand allegiance:

3. It does matter in the grand scheme of things to know whether allegiance can be attained through psychological domination; but since it is quite deep into wandlore and I don't think that even JKR has thought this far into it, we may never find out.

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  • 1
    Such a small font, SE is definitely broken.
    – No Magic
    Oct 23, 2014 at 11:25
  • 1
    @NoMagic No, I've put the text below the hr in superscript to make it smaller. I prefer this as it is clearly extra to the bulk of the answer. :)
    – Möoz
    Oct 23, 2014 at 20:23
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    Must be my browser then - IE11, thats how it looks, almost unreadable.
    – No Magic
    Oct 24, 2014 at 2:45

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