Why did Dumbledore want Harry to know about the Deathly Hallows?

Question

Dumbledore's instruction before his death were pretty clear: he wanted Harry to find and destroy the Hocruxes. But why would he take the trouble of giving Harry clues and hints about the Deathly Hallows?

Had Dumbledore already foreseen that Harry would break his holly-and-phoenix wand, thus needing a new and stronger wand? How exactly could Dumbledore predict such things?

Or did Dumbledore predict that Voldemort would want to conquer another, stronger wand to defeat Harry's holly-and-phoenix, because Voldemort's wand was useless against Harry's wand (due to the Priori Incantatem effect)? But wouldn't even the Elder wand still be beaten by Harry's wand? Harry's holly-and-phoenix had already absorbed some power and qualities of Voldemort's wand (as explained in the Deathly Hallows ch. KingCross) therefore it would still overpower whatever wand used by Voldemort.

Answer 1

The main reason why Dumbledore left clues to the Quest (as Xeno Lovegood puts it) of the Deathly Hallows for Harry to decipher is because of the importance of the Resurrection Stone in the grand scheme of his plans. The Stone was crucial in helping Harry carry out the task of walking to his death. However, the Elder Wand was really just part of the package. The legend of the Hallows is that the person who unites all three "would then be, truly, Master of Death". Dumbledore wasn't counting on Harry ever possessing the Elder Wand. Remember, Dumbledore's plan for the Wand was that it's power would end with his death.

At one point, Harry speculated that Dumbledore intended him to become the Master of Death (assuming that Master of Death meant invincible, rather than someone who accepts death as an inevitability) and fight Voldemort using his newfound powers; Hallows vs Horcruxes! But that wasn't the case. Dumbledore just wanted Harry to continue with the original mission - find and destroy the Horcruxes. The actual act of killing Voldemort was left up to Harry and his love-magic protection: If Voldemort couldn't properly kill Harry, how could he win, really?

Also, putting Harry on the path of learning about the Deathly Hallows allowed him to understand the origins of the Invisibility Cloak and its creator, Ignotus Peverell. The realization that Harry is a direct descendant of Ignotus offers him insight into his past - insight that Dumbledore never shared with Harry while he was alive - and, even, a sense of identity.

Hope this helps ;)

Answer 2

The reason Dumbledore wanted Harry to know about the hallows was because harry was likely to find out about them anyway (since one of the Horcruxes was a hallow - which Dumbledore needed Harry to have to complete his quest - and Harry owned another Hallow).

As such, he preferred that Harry found out about the Hallows in a controlled way, on Dumbledore's timeline:

“I am afraid I counted on Miss Granger to slow you up, Harry. I was afraid that your hot head might dominate your good heart. I was scared that, if presented outright with the facts about those tempting objects, you might seize the Hallows as I did, at the wrong time, for the wrong reasons. If you laid hands on them, I wanted you to possess them safely. You are the true master of death, because the true master does not seek to run away from Death. He accepts that he must die, and understands that there

Another angle on this is one that Dumbledore gave Harry at the end of HBP: he wanted and needed Harry to go and do his sacrifice as a choice.

But he understood at last what Dumbledore had been trying to tell him. It was, he thought, the difference between being dragged into the arena to face a battle to the death and walking into the arena with your head held high. Some people, perhaps, would say that there was little to choose between the two ways, but Dumbledore knew — and so do I, thought Harry, with a rush of fierce pride, and so did my parents — that there was all the difference in the world.