The Tales of Beedle the Bard
There are five different stories to be found within the pages of this old classic, which remains a favourite for the children of wizarding families to this very day. Young witches and wizards enjoy these stories and their accompanying illustrations just as their parents and their grandparents did before them, and the magic of Beedle is showing little sign of wearing out any time soon.
The five stories are as follows:
The Wizard and the Hopping Pot
This tale follows a benevolent old wizard who owns a very special and magical hopping pot, which is mounted on a metal foot. He uses his pot to make potions for people in need, and never once turns down a request for help. When he dies, he passes the pot on to his son, who unfortunately is the exact opposite of his father. Jealous and bitter, the son refuses to use the pot to help anyone at all – but he doesn’t get out of it that easily. The pot, unhappy that it is no longer being used to help people, responds by taking on the characteristics of everyone who the son has refused to help. Finally, unable to cope and in despair, the son relents and begins to help those who ask instead. Thus reconciled, the two are friends and walk (or hop) off together into the sunset.
The Fountain of Fair Fortune
This story is about a magical fountain that is reputed to, once a year, solve the problems of those that come to it. Three witches with problems, Asha, Altheda and Amata, have all decided to seek it out, and meet at the start of their quest. They are joined by a knight who is on the same mission.
Asha’s problem is that she suffers from disease. Altheda has no money following a robbery. Amata cannot get over her lover leaving her. The knight’s problem isn’t stated specifically, but it is almost certainly the fact that he can find nobody to love. The four have to overcome a number of onerous trials on their journey to the fountain, which leave them exhausted. In response to one of them, Amata even has to leave her memories of the lover who spurned her in a river before it will let them cross.
Upon reaching the fountain, Asha collapses from exhaustion, and Altheda has to brew a potion to save her. The potency of the potion also cures her disease, meaning she no longer needs help from the fountain. On seeing the results, Altheda realises she can make a living from potion-making and needn’t be poor any more; she doesn’t need the fountain either. Amata finds that, having shed the memories of her lover, she is now free of sorrow for her loss and can love again. She does not need the fountain. Only the knight jumps in, after which, having fallen for Amata, he asks her to marry him.
All four of them have had their problems solved: none realise that the fountain isn’t actually magic at all.
The Warlock’s Hairy Heart
This is a story about a young, rich and handsome wizard who decides that he never wants to fall in love. To ensure this is the case, he uses Dark Arts to remove his own still-beating heart and seals it in a casket. As he wished, he is now incapable of love, but one day he overhears two servants discussing why he doesn’t have a wife.
Seeing that a beautiful wife might be a good status symbol, he determines to find the most beautiful and talented witch he can and marry her to make everyone see how wonderful he is. The very next day he runs into such a girl, and despite the fact that she is repelled just as much as she is fascinated by him, she allows herself to be convinced to come to dinner at his castle.
There are many guests at the feast. The witch tells the wizard that if she is to love him, he must show that he has a heart. He takes her down to the dungeon and shows him the heart in a casket, whereupon she begs him to put it back inside himself, where it belongs. He does so, and she embraces him warmly. Unfortunately, the heart has grown unaccustomed to emotion in its isolation and is overcome by her beauty and fails. Later, the other guests at the feast find both the witch and the wizard dead.
Babbity Rabbity and her Cackling Stump
In this story, Babbity is a washerwoman in the employment of a rather vain and jealous king. The king in question is envious of the ability of others to use magic, and so comes up with a scheme to become the only magician in the kingdom: he needs to kill every witch, and at the same time, hire someone to teach him magic.
Unfortunately for the king, the man he employs to teach him magic is an impostor, who has fooled him with a few “magic” tricks into thinking him genuine. Babbity, a secret witch herself, sees the impostor and his supposed magic and laughs at him. Outraged, the king orders a public demonstration of magic from his teacher, who will be executed if anyone laughs. Unfortunately for Babbity, the teacher finds out she is a witch and threatens to betray her to the king is she doesn’t help with the magic show he has to perform. Babbity agrees.
During the show, the teacher is asked to raise a dog from the dead, something not even Babbity can do. The crowd call him an impostor, and in response he announces that Babbity is a witch and accuses her of deliberately casting counter-spells to his own magic. Babbity runs away and disappears, apparently into a tree. The teacher has the tree cut down, still watched by the crowd.
Then the tree stump begins to cackle. Terrified, the teacher confesses to being an impostor. The stump tells the king to never hurt witches again and to build a statue of Babbity to remind him, which the king does. Finally, when everyone has gone, a rabbit with a wand in its mouth hops out of the stump and runs away.
The Tale of the Three Brothers
This is the classic tale that was told by Xenophilius Lovegood to Harry, Ron and Hermione while they were on their Horcrux quest. The brothers in question are the real-life Peverell brothers, Ignotus, Cadmus and Antioch, although it is almost certain that the story is a fictionalised account of how they came upon their treasures, and contains no grain of truth at all.
The story goes that the three brothers were travelling when they came to an impassable river. Being exceptionally powerful wizards, they were able to build a magical bridge over it, and began to cross. Halfway across, however, they are stopped by Death, who wants their souls and is angry at their attempt to escape a watery grave. Death has a cunning plan, and pretends to congratulate them on their ingenuity. He offers them each a wish, hoping that their choices will be poorly made and lead to their own downfall.
The eldest brother asks for an unbeatable wand. The middle brother asks for the power to resurrect the dead. The youngest brother is the only one to realise Death’s plan, and simply asks for Death to stop following him; Death gives him an invisibility cloak to allow him to hide.
As Death planned, the two older brothers both meet their end through their gifts. After loudly boasting about his new unbeatable wand, the oldest brother is murdered in his sleep. The middle brother uses the Resurrection Stone he has been given to bring back his dead lover. She is desolate and unhappy in the world of the living, and he ends up committing suicide to be with her.
The youngest brother stays under his cloak and Death never finds him. When eventually he knows he is about to die of old age, he hands the cloak to his son and reveals himself to Death, and the two leave together as equals.
Written by Andy
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