I hadn't even realized just how LoTR the damned wand had become until RaeWhit pointed it out to me when she beta'ed the story. In my head, Harry's paranoia was all his own projections and had nothing whatsoever to do with the wand itself. If you can believe it, I toned it down quite a bit in this draft, but felt like I had to keep some of it in, since the wand had been called the "Deathstick" (which may have fed Harry's paranoia) and Dumbledore had obviously wielded more power than most other magical people. I cheerfully blame it all on JKR's obsession with Star Wars and LoTR plot parallels, of course. *g*