As the title says this is about whos wand killed Cedric Diggory. As Voldemort gave the order "Kill the spare" you could assume Wormtail did it. And Voldemort made a habbit of NEVER letting anyone else use his wand, not to mention Wormtail didn't have it at the time! After being reborn Voldemort had it in his robes, not handed to him.
If it was Wormtail with his own wand that killed Cedric why did Cedric come out in Priori Incantatem? If he shouldn't have come out he shouldn't have been able to ask Harry to take his body back, if Harry didn't take Cedric's body back then he wouldn't have had any proof to back himself up. (Until Barty spilled the beans etc.)

You are absolutely right and, if I may say so, I think this is just one of those little errors in the books (ie - Marcus Flint, the wand-order thing, those missing 24 hours, etc.) that we who are obsessive over HP book canon - including me - notice, where others wouldn't.

After seeing your post, I just read that section of GoF again and, either we are both missing something, owfio, or it doesn't make sense. Like you said:
1) Harry and Cedric land in the Riddle graveyard,
2) a cold voice (LV's) says, "Kill the spare!"
3) Peter Pettigrew AKs Cedric with a wand
4) Lord Voldemort is "reborn" and takes a wand out of the pocket of his robes
5) when he and Harry duel, the imprint of Cedric Diggory comes out of the wand LV took out of his pocket.

I was hoping that, when I read it again, the book would say that when LV assumed his proper body, Wormtail handed him a wand. That is, LV's own wand, which Peter was using until Voldemort could hold it again. Alas, that is not what the book said. (frown)

The only possible explanation could be if Wormtail killed Diggory with Tom Riddle's wand and then put it in the pocket of the robes for LV to reclaim as his own when the "rebirthing" was done. If that was the case, however, I wish Jo could have written it in.



Laura
"remember cedric diggory"

I always assumed that to be the case. I just assumed Wormtail used LV wand and then put it in the robes. It would be very like his character to not want to kill another person with his own wand because then it cold be linked to him if LV should be conquered. Wormtail never wanted to get in trouble.

Actually, I don't think Voldemort had any choice, his wand is the only one he and Peter have between them so he has to let Peter use it in this case. Peter doesn't have a wand of his own until Ollivander is forced to make one for him. I would imagine Peter put the wand back into Voldemort's robes once he had secured Harry, since he knew Voldemort would expect it to be there once he puts the robes on.

I believe that Wormtail did have a wand at the time that he had taken from someone (Bertha?) and that he needed a new one because useing someone elses wand is never as good as useing your own wand.

Since Peter gets a new wand in DH I suspect that the wand used in GoF was indeed Voldemorts which was hidden per Jo's answering this question of where LV's wand was ("He hid it") Whether that is Peter or someone else I don't know. Peter was able to retrieve the wand and use it though from what I remember it was LV who killed Frank but it was Peter who killed Cedric either way it WAS the same wand that killed James and Lily.

So interesting that this wand was so easily discarded in DH, wander what became of it?

What about Bertha Jorkins' wand? IMO Peter had a whole collection of wands - it may have included James', Lily's, his own (with which he blasted the street back in 1981), Bertha's and possibly Cedric's eventually. But they were taken from him to equip some of the DEs that escaped Azkaban in OOTP and went on to invade the Ministry later that year, so he needed a new one after all.

I don't think its that they didn't have enough wands because they could just take them whenever they killed someone. I think Wormtail just got a new wand because a wizard is always better with a wand made for them than with a wand they just grabbed. And Wormtail being useless was bad for Riddle, a useless servent may aswell be dead.

sorry to be off topic but what do you mean by Marcus Flint?

Since Peter did the AKing ("Kill the spare!") and we know that Voldemort's wand did the AKing (from the shade of Cedric coming out of Voldemort's wand), then it seems obvious that Peter used Voldemort's wand. Sometimes we try too hard to over analyze. The simple solution is that Peter put the wand in the robes after he was finished. Why complicate it?

this i agree with and was what i have always figured out too.........but i do have an kinda off subject question me and my huband (also a fan) have been debating... even if it was LV wand wormtail still performed the spell so why is it in OOTP harry states LV killed cedric? that is one i am still stumped on. because if it is the cause of it being his wand then isn't harry guilty of the dark mark even though Barty jr use it and preformed the spell, because it was harry's wand. so really in reality wormtail killed cedric not LV

So by that logic Lily was killed before James? Mistakes are made in the book, why not highlight them? Most of them are minor and don't make any difference (like classrooms moving up and down.) but some of them (like this) are important. You have to realize that JKR isn't infallible so it is possible that she did this by accident, if it is highlighted then versions printed in the future can be correct.

Lily was killed after James, that was a editing error that was made and later fixed by Jo.

Since Voldemort gave the order Harry credits him with the Murder though Peter is just as responsible.

I think he had to leave his wand behind when he blew up the street to make it credible he was dead. I also doubt he could take Lily or James' wand, because again it would be too suspicious to remove them, and I imagine there are spells on the house at Godric's Hollow to preserve it and stop people removing anything as a memento. Voldemort's wand was different because it was involved in the explosion so might have been destroyed, so Wormtail could find it and take it. It is more of a mystery why Wormtail didn't take Bertha's wand, but maybe Voldemort deliberately kept Wormtail wandless and sharing Voldemort's wand so as to control him better.

No he couldn't afford to do that, in case priori incantato would reveal that it was his spell that blew the street up.

Before he became BabyMort Voldemort wasn't able to prevent Peter from doing anything. And Wormtail needed some wand when he helped Barty Jr overcome Moody. Oh, you might want to add Crouch Sr's wand to Peter's collection - from his appearance when Harry saw him in the forest he had been traveling by land, probably left his wand at home - with Peter.

Hi gbo,
Just to answer your question ...
In PS, Marcus Flint was the captain of the Slytherin Quidditch team. Jo tells us that he is "a sixth year". In PoA - two years later -, Flint was still captain of the Slytherin Quidditch team. Why was he still in school? When some fans picked this up, JKR, obviously a bit embarrassed, improvised with, "He was held back a year." In fact, both she and we knew she had just made a mistake. A lot of fans refer to any unintentional mistakes in the series in terms of Marcus Flint. I did so with good nature and no accusation against Jo. There are thousands of tiny details in the seven books. She's entitled to the odd error.
Hope that helps.

Now back to whose wand killed Cedric Diggory ...


"this i agree with and was what i have always figured out too.........but i do have an kinda off subject question me and my huband (also a fan) have been debating... even if it was LV wand wormtail still performed the spell so why is it in OOTP harry states LV killed cedric? that is one i am still stumped on. because if it is the cause of it being his wand then isn't harry guilty of the dark mark even though Barty jr use it and preformed the spell, because it was harry's wand. so really in reality wormtail killed cedric not LV" - allielayton4

Here's my take on this. You are right. Technically, Wormtail did kill Cedric. However,- and this is very important -, it was Voldemort who said, "Kill the spare." It was he who gave the order for Cedric to be killed. Therefore, by Harry's logic, Lord Voldemort killed Cedric. Were Harry to be more precise and accurate, he would say "LV had Cedric killed" as opposed to "LV killed Cedric." But, to Harry at 14, there would be little if any difference. And, from a certain perspective, he is right.



"Since Peter did the AKing ("Kill the spare!") and we know that Voldemort's wand did the AKing (from the shade of Cedric coming out of Voldemort's wand), then it seems obvious that Peter used Voldemort's wand. Sometimes we try too hard to over analyze. The simple solution is that Peter put the wand in the robes after he was finished. Why complicate it? "

As you can see from the last paragraph of my first post on this thread (#2), I came to this conclusion too, harrydavid. But, wouldn't it have been better, clearer (pick a word) if JKR had just put in one extra line explaning about the wand that killed Diggory? Something like (GoF, p.556, Raincoast): "The thing seemed almost helpless; it raised its thin arms, put them around Wormtail's neck, and Wormtail lifted it. At the same time, Wormtail put the wand in his hand into a pocket in the robes."


Laura
"remember cedric diggory"

That isn't much of a risk though, because if they bother to use priori incantatem to check what happened, they will see from Sirius's wand that he didn't cast the spell. Possibly also Peter could snap his wand so priori incantatem couldn't be used.
That is wrong. Voldemort did have power over Peter, It was mostly by threat, persuasion and promises but we see Voldemort having pretty effective control over him, to the extent of being able to torture him and persuade him to chop his hand off.

He also had the ability to possess Wormtail.

Maybe that snippet of information is missing from the scene because Rowling envisions Harry as having failed to notice it.

Maybe.

- Acrux

It is entirely possible that they did a priori incantato on Sirius' wand - and found the spell he had sent at Peter, a spell that missed because his timing was off as a result of the distraction Peter created with his 'how could you?' act.

I rather doubt it because whatever spell Sirius was casting it wouldn't have blown up a street. I think it is simply that because they had so many witnesses they didn't bother to check things like wands and Sirius didn't protest his innocence.

Spells that miss their human targets and hit inanimate objects instead cause all sorts of damage, as we have seen in various battle scenes. In any case, it would have been uncautious of Peter to rely on the wizarding authorities neglect to test his wand and Peter was a cautious person. So I think he took his wand. After all, an explosion that left nothing bigger than his finger could have reasonably blasted his wand to smithereens just the same.

Since this thread is about the plot of the books, it belongs over in the Great Wizarding Events forum.

Everyone hold on while this thread goes for a ride.

*Moblilthreadus!*

Pleione
LL Moderator