Wands

• There is a fascinating article on [wand wood] and the personality traits and skills that go along with each.¹
• Mr. Ollivander’s notes in the above article are incomplete:
  • [Umbridge] has a birch wand,² and is also on her original list of Celtic woods when she talks about wands.³
  • [James Potter] had a mahogany wand.⁴
  • ivy is on the list of Celtic woods that Mrs. Rowling posted when she first talked about wand woods.⁵
  • [Fleur] had a rosewood wand.⁶
  • various other woods appear to be introduced by the Fantastic Beasts prequel stuff. [WizardingWorld][ww] seems to mention some of them, and has been mined for information in [this article][20210511-9].
• The one on [size and flexibility] is more abbreviated, but points out that you must not be too literal.⁷
  • Notably, length is not associated with power.⁸
  • Nor is it a vanity thing.⁹ It is easy to make a joke about wizards and their wands. This is debunked.
• Mr. Ollivander has researched wand cores and will use only three of them.¹⁰ There seems to be some ambiguity about which Mr. Ollivander.
  • Most of Mrs. Rowling’s own writing almost acts as if the current Mr. Ollivander is the only Mr. Ollivander despite the fact that the sign outside the shop door states that the family has been making wands since 382 B.C.¹¹ I am willing to accept that wizards live longer than non-magical persons, but not by that much. For there to only be one Mr. Ollivander would require that he be approximately 2373 years old! If such were true, then Nicholas Flamel’s mere 665 years¹² would not really be noteworthy at all, and the philosopher’s stone entirely unnecessary.
  • Indeed, [the article on cores] directly states that the current Mr. Garrick Ollivander inherited the business from his father.¹³
  • Given there have been an entire succession of Ollivanders making and selling wands, which “Garrick Ollivander”¹⁴ actually did the research and published the notes we are relying on?
• Others are possible, but [the article on cores] was, like the other two, written as if by him and so focuses on those three.
  • Earlier Ollivanders were less fastidious about their wand cores.¹⁵ Does the shop still hold wands made by these earlier Ollivanders? If so, is the current Mr. Ollivander willing to sell these wands, or only ones that meet his (higher) bar for quality?
• old-crow in his fan fiction The Core Wars speculates that perhaps as many as ¾ of witches and wizards used what he terms “legacy” wands.¹⁶ How common is it in fact to buy one’s own wand? This story correctly points out that the wand maker’s opinion on the subject may not be unbiased.

Given the above articles, I talk some about [Harry]’s wand on the page dedicated to him. [Riddle]’s wand - I think it is fairly inevitable that he would have a yew wand, but I am somewhat surprised that he would have a phoenix feather core. While it does say it is the most capable, in a sense, it says dragon heartstring is the most powerful. Would [Riddle] value range and or power more? He would certainly dislike that the phoenix feather wand might sometimes act of its own accord.¹⁷ Naturally eleven year old [Riddle] knows nothing of wand lore and so is not deciding this, yet still, the wand must sense something of the wizard it is bonding with…

[Harry]: </Harrypedia/people/Potter/Harry James/>/ [Fleur]: </Harrypedia/people/Delacour/Fleur Isabelle/>/ [James Potter]: /Harrypedia/people/Potter/James/ [Umbridge]: </Harrypedia/people/Umbridge/Dolores Jane/> [Riddle]: </Harrypedia/people/Riddle/Tom Marvolo/>/ [ww]: <https://www.wizardingworld.com “WizardingWorld”> [wand wood]: <https://www.rowlingindex.org/work/wwpm/ “Harry Potter wiki article on Wand Wood”> [size and flexibility]: <https://www.rowlingindex.org/work/wlfpm/ “WizardingWorld article on Wand length”> [the article on cores]: <https://www.rowlingindex.org/work/wcpm/ “WizardingWorld article on Wand Cores”> [20210511-9]: https://harrypotter.fandom.com/wiki/Wand_wood