Notes

Sebastian Murphy (@sebmrphy)
4thMins Hufflepuff

The exception to this rule - the unnamed maiden of ' The Warlock's Hairy Heart ' - acts more like a Muggle 's idea of a storybook princess, but there is no happily ever after at the end of her tale.

Most of these tales (with the exception of The Warlock's Hairy Heart ) have been rewritten by Beatrix Bloxam an compiled into her book The Toadstool Tales ; which has since been banned since it had a tendency to induce nausea and
vomiting in the children who read, or had to listen to, them.

One story by Beedle is "The Tale of the Three Brothers". This story was about brothers who meet Death on the road and avoid his clutches; each in turn receives a gift from him, although Death attempts to.twist each boon into a bane.

In 1998 , Harry Potter , Hermione Granger, and Ron Weasley came to hear the legend. The three brothers were Antioch, Cadmus , and Ignotus Peverell. They came to a river which was too deep to wade across, and built a bridge using magic. Death appeared to congratulate them for their ingenuity, and offered them rewards (or so he said; his real intent was to give them traps which would be their undoing, because he felt
cheated by their survival.) Antioch asked for a weapon that would always win any battle, a weapon worthy of one who had cheated Death. Death snapped a twig off an elder tree and gave it to him — the Elder Wand. Cadmus asked for something to give him power over Death, for he had
lost his loved one before this encounter. It was also an attempt to humiliate Death. Death gave him a river stone, which, by the terms of the deal, became the Resurrection Stone . Ignotus however, did not trust Death, and asked for something that would allow him to avoid Death. Death was trapped by his words, and handed over his own Cloak of
Invisibility . The brothers continued on and went their separate ways.

Time passed. Antioch provoked a duel
with a wizard he disliked, left him for dead, and afterwards boasted of his
unbeatable wand. He was killed that very night by someone who had heard his boasting, and wanted the wand. Cadmus found misery when he brought his former lover back to life with the Resurrection Stone and learned she had been happier dead, ultimately committing suicide in order to truly join her. Ignotus hid from
Death his entire life using the cloak until he finally reached a ripe old age, and he gave the cloak to his son. He and Death finally "met as old friends," and departed as equals.

The symbol of the Deathly Hallows
drawn in the page of The Tales of Beedle the Bard .
The items mentioned in the "tale "
became legendary artefacts known
together as the Deathly Hallows . If
joined together, they would make the
wielder extremely powerful, the
"Master of Death." (Dumbledore later states that the true Master of Death is one who accepts that it is inevitable, in much the same way Ignotus did. Dumbledore is also the one to reveal finally that the three brothers were the Peverells, though he believes that the tale of how they received the items is a fabrication which would naturally appear around such powerful items, whereas the
Peverells simply created the items.)

Lord Voldemort sought the Elder Wand because he believed it would allow him to defeat Harry Potter . However, it was Harry himself who temporarily became the Master of Death, when he ultimately united all three artefacts.