Harry Potter and Voldemort's Twin Wands Predicted Their Future in Unexpected Ways
The topic of Harry and Voldemort's twin wand cores has been crucial in the series, but you've never quite realized how deep its meaning was all this time, have you?
J.K. Rowling always enjoys some good old symbolism, and the Harry Potter books are literally riddled with it. Some of the references and hints are fairly obvious; others — not so much.
And then, there's the third category: symbols that appear crystal-clear at first but have other, far deeper meanings behind them than it seems. The entire twin core story is one of these third-category cases as we're about to show you.
Initially, the idea behind Harry Potter and Lord Voldemort having sister wands appears obvious: their fate is virtually shared, and it only becomes more apparent as we learn that "either must die at the hand of the other for neither can live while the other survives."
Still, this is just the tip of JKR's symbolic iceberg with these wands.
Both Harry and Voldemort's wands contained a feather of Fawkes, Dumbledore's phoenix buddy. Phoenix is a symbol of rebirth, and this goes a long way for both Harry and Voldemort as it describes both their past and their future.
First, the twin phoenix feather core is a nod to Harry and Voldemort's shared background.
Both of them grew up in poor conditions with no parents, and both of them were "reborn" as they learned who they really were. While Voldemort got a Yew wand with a phoenix feather, Harry got a Holly wand with its twin feather.
In Celtic myths, Yew symbolizes Death and Holly symbolizes Peace and Goodwill. The wands predict Voldemort's rebirth as an Agent of Death and Harry Potter's rebirth as an Agent of Peace — this is how their stories start, pretty much.
Second, the phoenix feather core foreshadowed both Harry and Voldemort's future rebirths, too. The feathers belonged to Fawkes as we remember, and we saw Fawkes come back to life twice after dying: in the second and the fifth books.
Fawkes' rebirth in The Chamber of Secrets (bursting into flames and coming back from ashes) foreshadowed Voldemort's revival in two books' notice, and his rebirth in The Order of the Phoenix ("eating" an Avada Kedavra and coming back to life) hinted at how Harry will survive Voldemort's spell — two books later, as well.
Third, there might just be a bit of Dumbledore's shenanigans involved. Young Tom Riddle received his wand decades prior to Harry's birth.
As it became obvious that he became Lord Voldemort, Albus Dumbledore might have decided to make a bet on an advantage that was impossible to predict: the core of Voldemort's wand.
After all, the feather in that wand was from Dumbledore's phoenix, and the Headmaster was not the type to pass up on such an opportunity.
Perhaps, he consulted with Ollivander and learned about the phenomenon of the twin cores… And provided the wand master with a twin feather so that one day, some wizard gets insane protection from Voldemort's evil magic.
Was it another deep and sophisticated symbol by JKR? Absolutely. Was it a part of Dumbledore's plot? Maybe. Was it just a "Harry is a Horcrux" reference? No way!