wands wands everywhere!
So, Laura was looking at all the characters' heights the other day, which got me wondering about our characters' wands. Whose is longest, whose is shortest, what the most common wood is, most common core, etc.
So I made myself a nice little spreadsheet, then started looking at various trends and such.
And I thought I'd share what I found. :)
Total number of wands: 94 Total number of woods: 26 Total number of cores: 6
Shortest wand: Meredith Watkins, 7 in. Longest wand: Tie between Dedalus Diggle and Kamal Nehru, 14 in. Range: 7 in. Mean length: 10.27 in. (traditional average) Median length: 10 in. (when listed in order, right in the middle) Mode length: 10 in. (most common @ 13 wands) (You guys know I'm a math geek, right?)
After the most common of 10 in., 9 in. and 9.5 in. follow very closely with a second place tie (11 wands each).
Most common wood: Ash (11 wands); three-way tie for second place: birch, oak, and willow (10 wands each) Most common core: Dragon heartstring (37 wands) The other cores: Unicorn hair (32 wands), phoenix feather (22 wands), kelpie mane (1 wand), augurey feather (1 wand), demiguise hair-phoenix feather combo (1 wand)
Most common wood/core combo: Three-way tie: birch & unicorn hair, maple & phoenix feather, willow & unicorn hair (6 wands each); four-way tie for second place: ash & dragon heartstring, beech & dragon heartstring, oak & dragon heartstring, oak & phoenix feather (4 wands each)
Now let's look at the core breakdown for some of our various organizations.
The Death Eaters have a very clear preference for Dragon Heartstring wands. This isn't entirely surprising, considering that hexes are a specialty of this core. Only two DEs are "pure of heart" enough for Unicorn Hair, apparently.
The Order also has a slight preference for Dragon Heartstring, but it is followed very closely by the "very magical" Phoenix Feather. The Order has more "pure of heart" members than the Death Eaters do, but not by as much as I would have expected.
The Ministry, surprisingly enough, has the largest collection of "pure of heart" wand-wielders, followed closely by Dragon Heartstring. (So much for all those jokes about bureaucrats having no hearts.)
The Media is exactly evenly split. Two of the three with Dragon Heartstring? Betty Braithwaite and Guy Dobbs. (Yes, Betty, your wand is longer than Guy's. Go ahead, make the jokes we all know you're itching to make.)