After Voldemort was defeated and Harry became the true owner of the Elder Wand, the Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows movie took a different turn than the Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows book in terms of the fate of the Elder Wand and the fate of it.
“It’s mine.”
“What should we do with it?’
“We?”
“I’m just saying – that’s the Elder Wand, the most powerful wand in the world. With that, we’d be invincible!”
In the movie, the fate of the wand drastic as Harry dramatically snaps the wand in half, destroying its powers, and tossing the two pieces away. Harry wanted to make sure that the wand won’t be used for evil again. Therefore, Harry made sure to make the wand unusable, not for good and certainly not for evil. He broke the wand making it completely useless.
“I’m putting the Elder Wand,” he told Dumbledore, who was watching him with enormous affection and admiration, “back where it came from. It can stay there. If I die a natural death like Ignotus, its power will be broken, won’t it? The previous master will never have been defeated. That will be the end of it.”
In the book, Harry repairs his own wand and lays the Elder wand to rest with Albus Dumbledore. When Harry left the wand in Dumbledore’s tomb, he bore in mind that the wand would naturally lose its power. This was because, in order for the Elder Wand to truly change its master, the current possessor must be disarmed, defeated, or killed by another witch or wizard. Harry understood that if he died without ever losing possession of the wand, then it could never change allegiance again, rendering itself useless. This would make the wand unable to be used for evil.
But, this whole idea was solely based on the assumption that, as long as he was alive, he would not be disarmed or killed. The chances of this, however, would always exist, especially because Harry pursued a career in the Auror department, and someone else may be able to disarm or defeat Harry. Even if Harry wouldn’t be actively wielding the wand, it would change its allegiance towards the person who manages to defeat Harry. Harry’s decision, however, based on very flawed logic, also ensured the safety of the wand.
The fact that Harry would likely be disarmed by countless other witches or wizards, who would unknowingly take possession of the Elder Wand, and then those people themselves would be disarmed or defeated by countless other unknown people. This would make the path of the wand’s ownership too complicated. Most of these people won’t even know that the Elder Wand exists, much less know that they are in the possession of the most powerful wand ever.
In both the scenarios, Harry was concerned regarding the wand and the intensity of the power it held. The Elder Wand was undeniably the most powerful wand in the history of wizardkind. It was one of the Deathly Hallows that Death creates itself. Possession of the wand also meant that the possessor could produce magic which was not possible otherwise. If the wand was in the wrong hands, it could put the existence of the entire wizardkind and non-wizardkind in jeopardy.