Hey everyone,
Welcome back to Harry Potter Theory.
Today we’ll be discussing Ron Weasley and all of the problems associated with his wand.
A wizard’s wand is his most important tool.
It’s the conduit of his power, and for most, the only way they'll ever be able to conjure
spells.
So, if wands were so important, why did the Weasley family decide to give Ron a hand-me-down
wand that never really served him well?
In fact, Ron’s earliest wand was so bad, that many of his instructors at Hogwarts could
never shake their first impression of the boy: that he was a subpar wizard.
So, why didn’t Ron have his own wand?
Why was he given Charlie’s?
And why did it take him so long to get a new one?
We’ll answer these questions, and more, in today’s video.
RON’S FIRST WAND
When we go back to Ron Weasley’s very first year, we’ll find him in an awkward situation.
Unlike Harry Potter, Hermoine, and most other children on the Hogwarts express, Ron wasn’t
adorned in a lot of new clothes.
And he didn’t possess many new items.
And when the food trolley aboard the train rolled by, known then as the Honeydukes Express,
Ron wasn’t able to buy very much.
In the Weasley household, galleons and sickles weren’t easy to come by.
With one of the largest families in the pureblood community, the Weasley’s had more than enough
mouths to feed.
At one point, poor Molly and Arthur Weasley, Ron’s parents, had to feed, clothe, and
house 7 children: Bill, Charlie, Percy, Fred, George, Ron, and Ginny.
Keeping up with all of your children’s peers was hard enough when you had just one, but
the Weasley’s had seven.
They could hardly afford to buy the greatest owls, fanciest robes, or most powerful wands
for each one.
And when it became Ron’s turn to attend Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry,
the Weasley’s seemed to finally come up short.
Instead of visiting Olivander’s Wand Shop in Diagon Alley, they simply handed Ron one
of the wands from his older brother, Charlie.
With that in his hand, and a trunk full of other hand-me-downs, the Weasleys sent their
youngest boy off to school.
Now, when we ask why the Weasleys would give Ron, Charlie’s old wand, I think the answer
is pretty obvious: they didn’t have enough money.
Or, at least, that’s what we’ve been led to assume.
But in that very same year, the Weasley’s made some other odd choices with their finances,
that might make you question their reasoning.
To congratulate Ron’s older brother, Percy, for becoming a prefect, Arthur and Molly purchased
him an owl and robes.
Now, considering how much trouble Ron had with magic, and how much this would affect
his self esteem in the coming years, investing so much money in Percy’s presents seems
a bit misguided.
If the Weasley parents had spent more time thinking about what Ron would need in order
to succeed in his classes, then they would have realized that perhaps Charlie’s old
wand wouldn’t be good enough.
After all, Garrick Ollivander said it best when he claimed…
“"The wand chooses the wizard.
That much has always been clear to those of us who have studied wandlore...
If you are any wizard at all you will be able to channel your magic through almost any instrument.
The best results, however, must always come where there is the strongest affinity between
wizard and wand.
These connections are complex.
An initial attraction, and then a mutual quest for experience, the wand learning from the
wizard, the wizard from the wand."
It seems unlikely that Arthur and Molly Weasley would have disagreed with Ollivander on this
point, so their choice to blow their education budget on Percy’s gifts seems all the more
strange.
In fact, this has led many outside observers to suggest that the Weasley family wasn’t
poor because of a lack of income… but simply because they failed to manage their money
properly.
Whatever the case might have been, Ron’s first year at Hogwarts was hardly that of
a magical prodigy.
The combination of an ill-fitting wand, combined with the pressure of his older brothers’
great successes, was all a bit too much for Ron to handle.
Sure, he provided his courage while helping his close friend, Harry Potter, protect the
Philosopher's Stone from Voldemort, but Ron failed to make a positive impression on his
teachers.
It didn’t help that the two people he sat next to everyday in class, Harry Potter and
Hermione Granger, were among the most skilled wizards of their generation, either.
BREAKING HIS WAND
But Ron’s time with Charlie’s wand would be short lived.
On the day Ron was supposed to arrive for the fall semester of his second year, the
youngest Weasley boy broke his wand.
That was not nearly the worst thing to happen on the day, but it would have the longest
impact on his year.
Ron was far too afraid of his parents to report his broken wand to them.
So, for the rest of the year, Ron simply suffered through class with a wand that was patched
up, and barely held together.
Throughout the year, whenever rRon would try to produce spells, they would regularly backfire,
or worse, cause so much harm that he was sent to the healers.
Once, his wand even hit a professor squarely on his head.
But Ron’s first wand was useful, for one thing.
When Professor Gilderoy Lockhart ripped the magical device from the children’s hands,
and tried to use it to cast a memory charm, the wand did exactly what it had done all
year: backfired.
Instead of wiping Ron’s mind, and those of his friends, it scrambled Professor Lokchart’s…
leaving him incapacitated for the rest of his life.
NEW WAND
But that run in with Professor Lockhart was about as bad as things would get, for Ron.
At least, when it came to his wands.
Before the start of Ron’s third year at Hogwarts, his parents bought him a brand new
wand from Ollivanders shop.
And his ability to cast spells, and perform magic, dramatically improved that year.
Although he was still a bit behind his friends, Harry and Hermoine, Ron was nothing like he
was during his second year.
With his new wand, Ron’s confidence also grew, and he found himself a bit less burdened
by the legacy of his older brothers.
Confident, and with a new wand in his grasp, Ron went on to become quite a competent student.
And as Voldemort’s shadow rose, and his gathering army of Death Eaters struck out
against Harry Potter’s allies, Ron proved just how capable he, and his new wand, were.
Ron grew to be such a skilled spell caster, that he even disarmed Bellatrix Lestrange…
and he didn’t even use his wand to do it.
He had disarmed Peter Pettigrew shortly earlier, and used that former Marauder’s wand to
get the jump on Bellatrix.
Which was no small feat.
She was considered by many to be Voldemort’s most powerful follower.
After all, she managed to kill Sirius Black, and was more than lethal with her own wand.
CONCLUSION
When we look back at Ron’s first wand, it is… oddly enough…
still a mystery as to why his parents, Arthur and Molly, decided to give it to him.
Again, as we’ve said, the obvious reason would be the Weasley’s unfortunate lack
of finances.
But that first wand certainly put Ron on an uphill path.
Without a properly suited wand from Ollivanders, he’d never quite achieve the same finesse
with his spells that his peers would.
And that would only compound his already substantial self-esteem issues.
The Weasley parents must have been oblivious to just how much harm they were doing to Ron
when they gave him Charlie’s wand.
But if they had to do it all over again, hopefully they would have decided to forgo Percy’s
gifts, and would have bought Ron the perfect wand for his first day at Hogwarts.
And that’s it for this video!
I hope you enjoyed this deep dive into Ron’s first wand, and the effects it had on his
magical abilities during his first few years at Hogwarts.
What do you think?
Do you think Ron’s self-esteem, and by extension, his spell casting abilities were deeply affected
by his second-hand wand?
Do you think the Weasley parents made a poor choice when they decided to give Ron his elder
brother’s wand?
I can’t help but wonder if Ron could’ve surprised us in his first two years, and learned
to love the classes at Hogwarts.
Maybe he would’ve taken after his older brother, Percy, and discovered his knack for
magic.
Or, Ron would have simply felt a bit more confident, and wouldn’t have been so bothered
when Draco and his goons teased him in the corridors between classes.
That alone would have been worth the price of a new wand from Ollivander’s.
Until next time
Remember
It does not do to dwell on dreams and forget to live