Did Harry Potter Unknowingly Create the Next Dark Lord after Defeating Voldemort?
There’s a chance that one of Harry’s post-battle decisions could lead to the next Dark Lord rising, and we can’t help but feel that The Boy Who Lived chose wrong.
After the Battle of Hogwarts, there was too much death and destruction everywhere, but Harry Potter couldn’t allow himself to indulge in either sorrow or celebration: he had some crucial things to take care of, still. It was his last job: ensuring that a few items are taken care of, and doing it before anyone would notice.
The matter of the Deathly Hallows needed to be settled once and for all before another aspiring Dark wizard would follow in Grindelwald’s and Voldemort’s steps in an attempt to take these immensely powerful artifacts for themselves. The Cloak Harry left for himself; the Stone was lost in the Forest; the Wand was remaining.
In the movies, Harry made a tough but definitive decision: he simply broke the Elder Wand and cast it down from the Hogwarts bridge. This took care of the most dangerous wizarding weapon for good and ensured that it won’t fall into the wrong hand once again. In the books, however, things went very differently.
The book Harry felt all too sentimental. He returned the Elder Wand to Albus Dumbledore’s tomb, promising to never touch it again, and believed that with his death, the power of the Wand would be broken since its previous master, Harry, wouldn’t have been defeated by whoever might find the artifact later.
Despite Professor Dumbledore’s portrait’s approval of this plan, it was creating a completely unnecessary problem for the future. Anyone who was interested in the Deathly Hallows or the Elder Wand specifically would easily find out that it was last seen in the Battle of Hogwarts, and everyone who was there knew the truth.
Since Harry and Voldemort were openly discussing the Elder Wand in front of a tremendous bunch of Hogwarts defenders and Death Eaters, there were hundreds of people who knew that it was real and belonged to Dumbledore prior to Harry. Everyone heard him explain exactly how the Wand worked and why.
How long do you think it would take an aspiring Dark Lord to learn this information and realize that since The Boy Who Lived didn’t keep the Wand for himself, it would make sense to start the search with Albus Dumbledore’s tomb where it was buried with him the first time around?
Defeating an unsuspecting wizard doesn’t take much skill, either, even if that wizard is Harry Potter: on the way from work or on a false call (since Harry was an Auror), immobilizing or killing the man wouldn’t take too much work — and the whereabouts of the Elder Wand were as obvious as it could possibly get.
Harry Potter’s sentimental decision might have just provided the easiest-ever path for a new Dark Lord to get their hand on the most powerful wand in the world, and we really don’t think it was the smartest choice The Boy Who Lived had ever made.