So we know that before OoTP Neville was using his father's old wand and we know that you will never get good results with another's wand. So do you think if he had his own wand from the get go he would have been better at magic. Or with the Neville it didn't matter?

Discuss away my lovelies

Wow, I hadn't thought of that.

We do notice that Neville gets better/stronger after book 5.... so maybe once he had a wand that chose him, it worked better.

I never really thought about this, either.

I think Neville did pretty well, especially towards his 5th year. Maybe he would have been better from the beginning if he had been able to have his own wand that chose him, though.

I agree to some degree. If Neville had always had his own wand, learning magic would have been easier for him. But since the wand was his father's, maybe it allowed a certain degree of cooperation since the wand could/maybe recognized Neville as being a blood relative of its original master. Remember when Harry had Bella's wand... it really didn't like him and didn't 'act' properly. I think that a wand's affinity for the witch/wizard that is using it, determines the degree of success he/she will achieve with it.

So, Neville did good with his father's wand because it had some affinity with him.... though, if the wand had chosen Neville from the start, Neville would probably have been a bit more successful in Charms, Transfiguration and all other disciplines that require wand use. That being said, since Neville did have to struggle with his magic, did this make him a better wizard in the end?

Very interesting topic!

I guess he had so much to live up to in his first few years at Hogwarts and he never had the self-confidence it took for him to perform better..

Then, he learnt so much in the DA..and his confidence in himself grew immensely. I think that was his turning point. But, he probably never thought of himself as worthy enough of his father's wand, and that may have been why it didn't work well for him.. He did perform better magic later, so it could have been both forces that helped him; a wand that chose him and his confidence in himself. He was also very determined to fight against evil after seeing what the DE were capable of.

I think that the Dept of Mysteries fight changed his perspective completely, because the Neville we see in the seventh book is very different from the Neville in OotP. Although he wanted to fight the DE for what they did to his parents, he showed a more personal grudge against them in DH...from my perspective. He was much more agressive in the battle of Hogwarts and his entire seventh year than he was in the DoM, and that could have been because of his experience with LV and the DE. And the fact that his wand obeyed him better was a very great advantage for him.

I agree with that has been said. He would have had better results in school if his wand had chosen him, but do you guys think He wanted to use his father's wand or was it just thrust upon by his grandmother?

i think that with neville, it wasn't so much the wand, but his [lack of] confidence that made him suffer with his work - as his work got better through out the books, he had more confidence.

I think his Gran probably forced it on him I think she may have thought she as HELPING him--Neville talks about how his whole family thought he was a Squib in the first book, so she probably thought that since his father was such a good wizard, if she gave him his old wand, he'd inherit some of his dad's skills. Obviously, it didn't quite work that way

I'm not sure if he would have been a better wizard with his own wand--I do agree his confidence was seriously lacking and that had to have played a part in it. Also, he DID improve in his fifth year, while still using his dad's wand, which supports the idea that he really just needed a self esteem boost for him to do better.

Of course, he probably could have been a LITTLE better at magic, had he started out with his own wand, and then he could have gotten his confidence higher a little sooner than the fifth book.