That’s an awfully personal question to ask! Particularly about an underage boy! 
Now that’s just sick! 
Ron used a hand-me-down wand in the first two books, which may account for some of his difficulties getting the hang of things (recall the scene where the students are being taught their first levitation spell). After this wand is destroyed at the end of the second book (When Lockheart’s memory charm backfires), his family buys him a brand-new one, presumably at Olivander’s.
This site will give you everything you ever wanted to know (and then some!) about Harry’s “wand”. 
And one assumes that animaguseses don’t need to wave their wands to shift back to human form because, you know, no opposable thumbs. And no wand.
Just another note on the animagi, McGonagal does not need a wand to transform from her human form to cat and back. It looked like Sirius didn’t either. So I don’t think the animagus need wands to transform.
Don’t know why Peter used one in his transformation. Maybe he’s not a particularly good animagi. Remember, all four of them, Padfoot, Mooney, Ringtail and Prongs were illegal animagi and had no formal training in it.
Moony is not an animagus, he’s a werewolf. He can’t change at will, only during the full moon and then it is involuntary.
Enjoy,
Steven
I don’t recall anything in the books about what might have happened to Voldemort’s wand when Harry did him in as an infant. Presumably it dropped to the floor but was it destroyed or is it sitting in a vault in the Ministry somewhere?
DD
IIRC, Pettigrew had kept the wand. Then, returned it to Voldemort
FB
Yeah, I knew that. Don’t know why I included him. Thanks.
The nature of the Harry Potter magic system in general, and of wands in particular, was discussed in considerable (and remarkably silly) detail in this thread: http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=148022
I contended that very powerful magic could be worked without wands, but that it would tend to lack precise control and versatility.
One thing - in OotP, Harry manages to cast a light spell without his wand - he’s groping for it in the dark, can’t quite see it, then casts the spell and it lights up. But he’s only a few inches from the wand at the time - probably it wouldn’t have worked with the wand a few blocks away.
[QUOTE=Kel Varnsen - Latex Division [/QUOTE]
How much of his power does Harry Potter lose if he does not have his wand? Are there things he cannot do without his wand? Are there things for which the wand makes no difference?
[spoiler] Well its extremely important at the end of book four.
Without it Rowling would probably have had to call HP & the OotP, would have had to have been called … & the OotP [spoiler]
As for using other peoples wands, its probably something simple like there is always a perfect wand for each witch or wizard, but when the need arises, they can use one thats not so perfect.
Seems I didnt think about that post all too well, sorry for the coding not working. Perhaps a mod could fix it if they see it. :smack:
I finally started reading the books (read the first one yesterday). One of the things about using other wizards’ wands stuck in my head as well, especially after seeing the movie yesterday. (I think this is also what NE Texan was talking about.) Mr. Olivander (the wand guy) was in the process of finding a wand for Harry, when he mentioned that
I took this to mean that while a wizard could use a different wand, the spells cast would be less potent, and less well-controlled.
which is why Harry could use Hermione’s wand in the third movie
Of course, that’s just this uninformed muggle’s opinion.
Quoth AzRaek:
You know where you’ll find a person who uses less than 10% of his brain? Either drooling in a mental hospital, or rotting in a cemetary. I, personally, use 100% of my brain, and while I’m rather fond of my brain, that hasn’t let me do magic. And matter is a form of energy: It can’t be converted to energy, it already is.
Correct me if I’m wrong, Chronos, but the widely-quoted notion that we “only use 5/2/10/15% of our brain” stems at least in part from the fact that at any one point in time we’re not actively perusing, say, instructions for fixing a chocolate car, and the pages don’t smell of perfume we remember from three years ago (IOW, we’re not accessing every part to do menial tasks). At any rate, that’s how my (very much not a scientist!) understanding works.
Potter’s wand and Voldemort’s wand do come at least in part from the same bird. In Book 1, there’s mention in Olivander’s of what happened to Hagrid’s wand. I don’t recall if it was in the movie, but it shouldn’t be terribly difficult to locate in the book (I’d do it myself but I don’t know where our copy of 1 is).
Cecil addressed the 10% of the brain thing and basically said it was crap - we use it all - but I’m too lazy to look it up right now.
Hagrid’s wand was broken when he got kicked out of school, but he was allowed to keep the pieces. Of course, he wouldn’t do anything like put the pieces in something innocuous… like an umbrella or something… then use that umbrella to occasionally perform a bit of magic… like giving an annoying Muggle a curly pig’s tail… Because that would be wrong! Very wrong!
I decided to use that 11th percent of my brain, and I looked it up. The column of Cecil’s is Do we really use only 10 percent of our brains?
-N
Yeah, others have pointed out that “we only use 10% of our brain” is a ridiculous myth (think about this: the brain uses 20% of our body’s energy. Energy costs are important; if we could evolve so that it only used 2%, wouldn’t we do so?) And I’d also like to point out that, while energy and matter are interchangeable on some fundamental physical level, not only is there no evidence that one can do so with the power of thought, but it’s worth observing that a tiny bit of matter takes a whole hell of a lot of energy to make. I mean, an atomic bomb may require 10 or 20 kilos of fissile material, but only a few grams are converted into energy. Where you gonna harness that kind of energy source in order to make things with your mind?
Sheesh.
Not sure where you’re going with this, but I think the idea in the books is that magic is involved in there somewhere…