because I'm going to brag for a moment because I'm proud of myself. Long story short, in my Potter class on Tuesday morning, we were discussing want loyalty and all the changing allegiance in the last book, and people were asking why Harry didn't get some one's wand every single time he disarmed someone.
I thought about this and proposed the idea of intent. As Bellatrix said, you have to mean the unforgivable curses, and I think the same rule applies to every spell. If you disarm with the intent of taking away some one's power, dominating them, and making them vulnerable, then the wand will change allegiance. If, however, you disarm them from an academic standpoint (Dumbledor's Army practiced expelliarmus) or from the desire to protect yourself (The trio stunning Snape in PoA), then I think the wand will likely not change allegiance.
So, take that idea and couple it with the notion of wands being a phallic symbol, a symbol of power, domination, and subjugation of someone because of you. So, making someone vulnerable, taking their wand, their phallic symbol, without their consent, do you see where I'm taking this? I think an interesting analysis can done looking at spells, intent, consent, and the sexual/sexual assault parallels that can be drawn form it.
Anyway, I was torn between writing about that or writing about my self-harm analysis for my second paper, so I emailed my teacher. She said, and I quote, "while I suspect you would write the best paper about mental illnesses, I KNOW you would write the best paper about wands and intent. If you're conflicted, I would go with the wands."
So yeah, I came up with a cool theory and my teacher said I would write the best paper about it and I am happy.
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