History WMG / TheTalesOfBeedleTheBard

When Amata and the others trying to reach the titular Fountain find their path blocked by a stream, they find a rock in the water bearing the words: "Pay me the treasure of your past." Realising what this means, Amata uses her wand to draw her memories of the man she once loved out of her mind and throws them into the water to be swept away, at which point stepping stones appear and the party is able to continue on towards the Fountain. This is reminiscent of extracting memories from one's mind and placing them in the Pensieve, so it's possible that the unknown witch or wizard who invented the Pensieve got the idea from the story. Alternatively, the Pensieve was invented first and Beedle used it as inspiration for Amata extracting her memories and throwing them into the stream. Interestingly, Dumbledore makes no mention of the Pensieve in his notes on "The Fountain of Fair Fortune", implying that its existence is meant to be a secret known to only a select few.

According to the information on the Potter family shown on Pottermore, the family ancestor is Linfred of Stitchcombe, nicknamed "the Potterer" due to the fact he liked to potter around his garden, which later was shortened to "Potter". Linfred was a potioneer, creating several potions that became the basis for other potions like Pepper-Up and Skele-Gro, and was known to give out his cures to his Muggle neighbors. Beedle the Bard could have discovered what Linfred was doing and used him as the inspiration for the kind wizard helping out Muggle neighbors in "The Wizard and the Hopping Pot". Whether or not one or more of Linfred's seven children objected to helping out Muggle neighbors (like the way the wizard's son in the story did) is unknown.

2. The Ring: This is literally the only item we've come across which can do this. The Priori Incantatem spells are after images of old spells, Voldemort's appearances are all linked to his soul, because he wasn't really dead, so where exactly does this ring come from? Who has the power to bring people back from the dead, even as some sort of after-image, that stays permanently? Death. The Ring makes people stay until the user wants them to go, Priori Incantatem only lasts for as long as someone's wand is pointed at yours.

** Indeed, it's only said to be "invincible" in the tale, which Dumbledore indicated shouldn't be taken as a 100% accurate and literal version of events. He also suggested the artifacts were created by the brothers themselves rather than being gifts from Death.

[[WMG: Sirius isn't dead, but would be better off if he was. (He may also be [[TheGrimReaper Death...]] or [[Webcomic/IrregularWebcomic ''a'' Death.)]]]]

* And remember, Sirius is constantly mistaken for the Grim in the early books- an omen which heralds death.

People assume that the Death in the tale of the three brothers was a skeleton, based on the most commonly used form in modern times as well as the skull in the drawing at the head of the chapter. This may be in error; Death is quite likely a relatively human-looking being. Wands typically have a core of something magical, typically a bit of a fantastic creature (hair, feather, heartstring). The book states that Death fashioned a wand from the branch of an elder tree; it doesn't say how, and no mention is made of the core. This not only allows any fatal spell to be blocked and fatal spells cast by the wand to have that extra "kick," but also means that the wielder carries death with him in a more literal way than the average mortal. Hence, why people with the Elder Wand tend to die gruesome
deaths even when they aren't being boastful about their super-fancy deathwand.
* WordOfGod says that the Elder Wand's core is a [[CoolHorse Thestral]] tail-hair - so close, but not quite. And people interpret the whole "Death himself forged the Wand" thing LITERALLY?
** Why not? This is a universe with wizards and witches, centaurs, phoenixes, basilisks, vampires, werewolves, accurate prophecies, soul-sucking demons, and an afterlife - is it so much of a stretch to believe that there might be a personification of death?

** My theory is that the wand defends its owner from attack, but not itself from capture -- Dumbledore defeated Grindelwald with a simple ''Expelliarmus.'' (Rowling clearly loves that spell -- it's what Harry used to win ''both'' his duels with Voldemort.

*** Worked for Harry, didn't it? Under some circumstances, the most unusual, least expected move can be the thing that makes all the difference in a fight. Both Malfoy and Harry were able to use the spell in a duel with the wand owner involved, and it worked. Apparently the disarming spell is a loophole since it is not ''dueling'' per se any more than shooting the gun out of your opponent's hand is really and truly engaging him in a duel of pistols. You're participating in any sensible definition of the term but you're still not playing by the rules of what's supposed to constitute the actual fight.

Like how Priori Incantato and the Priori Incantatem effect create a shadowed image based on the effect of the most recent spell, or an imitation of the most recent people affected by a killing spell from that wand. The only difference is that the Priori Incantatem effect takes the image from the residue or backlash or whatever of the person's actual soul, but the Resurrection Stone uses as a reference the caster's memories. this is why the beings made by the resurrection Stone turn out to be extremely two-dimensional, but the shadows from Priori Incantatem are properly fleshed out and possess knowledge and habits that the people involved in the spell did not necessarily know about.

** To be fair Harry had seen pictures of both Lupin and Sirius as post-Hogwarts members of the Order of the Phoenix. He had also seen both as students in the Pensieve.

They were wrong about which way the split in the Elder Wand's control went, and it went Snape->[[spoiler: Nagini]]->Neville. Nobody said it had to be a ''wizard'' to control the wand, and for bonus points, the presumably first non-human to control it was also female.
* Um... The book very clearly explained how the Elder Wand changes masters. At least, it was pretty clear to me. In case it wasn't, here it is: In order for the Elder Wand to recognize a new master, its current master must be defeated, but "defeated" does ''not'' mean "killed". It could mean something as simple as Disarming, as [[spoiler: Harry]] did to the real master of the Elder Wand as of the end of ''[[Literature/HarryPotterAndTheHalfBloodPrince Half-Blood Prince]]'', [[spoiler: Draco Malfoy]] (also: the master doesn't have to be using the Elder Wand for it to be defeated). So there's the first link in the progression broken: Snape was never the master of the Elder Wand, because [[spoiler: he killed Dumbledore as per a prior agreement; Dumbledore more or less forfeited his mastery of the wand to Draco]]. The second link in the chain has a very low probability of being able to mutter an incantation (she'd have to hold the wand in her mouth, and proper word choice and pronunciation is kind of a big deal in the Potterverse), and she never defeated any of the wand's true masters. Neville, while [[TookALevelInBadass taking a level in badass]], ''also'' never defeated any of the wand's masters, but hey, come on. He ended up being master of a big fucking sword that can only be mastered by a true Gryffindor; he's no less badass for not being a master of the Elder Wand (which, as [[spoiler: Harry]] pointed out later, is a lot more hassle than most people want to deal with).

** Also none of this reasoning is consistent with [[spoiler: Harry telling Dumbledore's portrait that "As long as I die a natural death, the wand's power dies with me"]]; after all the number of scenarios where the wand could possibly switch masters is endless. One of Harry's [[spoiler:kids]] could playfully disarm him, or a muggle could steal his wand, etc, without the Elder Wand ever [[spoiler: leaving Dumbledore's grave]].
*** It doesn't have to be consistent - Harry's not that bright and has never paid attention to magical theory (at least that's my Watsonian explanation for it never being explained).
*** It doesn't work like that. Whether or not a wand changes allegiance has a lot more to do with the intent of the "defeat" than the actual act of disarming your opponent. If you're just fooling around or practicing or something, the wand stays with its rightful owner. If the wizards or witches are duelling with a serious, perhaps life-or-death intent to win, then the wand would change hands. Remember, wands basically have feelings here--imagine them as a shallow girlfriend who will go off with whoever seems to have the most power. It's not as simple as another boy simply yanking them away.

* To clarify everything here, Harry is clearly the master of the Elder Wand [[spoiler: as his defeat of Voldemort proves]] because if he was not then expelliarmus would not have worked against the killing curse. Also Harry did not master the Elder Wand with his own wand he did so when he took [[spoiler: Draco's]] wand from him physically, thus even if he is disarmed in a real duel it would be his holly and phoenix wand and not the Elder Wand which is in Dumbledore's tomb. The only way for him to lose the mastery of the Elder Wand is if he is killed because of the way he obtained the mastery over it, because I sincerely doubt he uses the wand that he used to defeat the Elder Wand.

* Obsidian- which is associated with the underworld.

*** To the silver cane idea, JK Rowling mentioned that silver does not work on Harry Potter werewolves.

1. The Elder Wand: We've been told time and again that wands are only as good as the wizard who uses them, and the real power comes from the wizard who wields the wand. So why suddenly is there a wand which miraculously makes peoples' magic stronger? Unless there's something about crafting wands which was forgotten in the hundreds of years since the Elder Wand was made, then it has to have come from somewhere else, and since it couldn't have been another wizard, Death is as good an explanation as any.

The gist is that there must be limits that human wizards and witches can't surpass when it comes to magic, no matter how skilled they are. If Dumbledore, Grindelwald, the founders of Hogwarts and more haven't been able to replicate the efforts of three wizards despite thousands of years of magical improvements, then where did these three items come from? The story of the three brothers meeting Death must be true, there isn't another explanation.

** Pretty much ''confirmed'' in-universe when Ron mentions that the Invisibility Cloak acts exactly as the tale describes, then Harry puts it together that he's descended from the third brother. (This becomes HilariousInHindsight when you realize that Harry and Voldemort are pretty much cousins seventy-times removed since Voldemort is descended of the SECOND brother) And then Dumbledore and Voldemort flat out prove the Elder Wand is real so the first brother also existed. Harry even proves the Stone is real when he uses the thing to summon his parents, Sirius, and Lupin. Since we know Voldemort's grandfather claimed direct lineage to the Peverell brothers as stated in book six and that there were three of them...well, do the math. The Peverell siblings are the three brothers in the tale and their encounter with Death happened.

** How exactly does that confirm that the encounter with Death happened. I thought it was pretty clearly meant to be the case that it hadn't happened and that while the Peverell Brothers existed they had simply made the Hallows with their own skills.

* I love this theory because it's somewhat less far-fetched than some other dei ex machina involved in the final battle, and because it's totally consistent with Dumbledore's character: with all three Hallows, he found himself Master of Death and became afraid of his own power, because he knows what the darkness inside him -the one that believed in "the greater good", the one he keeps fighting against- is capable of; and thus gave one of the Hallows to Harry as soon as he can. Of course, James' will helped him to regain his reason, but I like to imagine him tempted.
** In this theory, either he found the Stone shortly before Christmas 1991, or had been Master of Death for quite some time at this point and only "accepted Death as an old friend" during this very year, after considering Voldemort's mistakes and/or talking with Flamel -becoming the Dumbledore we all love only at the beginning of the saga.

I'm pretty sure Dumbledore didn't found the Resurrection stone (and also one of Voldemort's horcuxes) until around the summer of 1996. Since 1940s till 1996 it been hidden in the Gaunts' cottage. So Dumbledore had possession of the Elder wand from 1945-1997 (51 years). He had the cloak from 1980/81-Christmas of 1991 (10/11 years). He had the Resurrection stone for less then a year July/August 1996-June 1997.

So why did the Elder Wand not kill him? Because it was facing another wand ''also owned by its master''. It was Draco's wand vs. Draco's wand, and the Elder Wand realized that first (It seems more sentient than other wands) and gave up.

Warning: spoilers for ''Deathly Hallows, Part 2''. [[spoiler: Firstly, this falls under the simple assumption that the Elder Wand doesn't work any differently than any other wand in regard to allegiance, because nothing of the sort is stated in the films to the best of my memory. Now, we've seen a number of disarmings in the movie continuity, with no mention or indication of wand allegiance. However, Ollivander does mention towards the beginning of ''Deathly Hallows, Part Two'' that Malfoy's wand is now allied to Harry's, after he defeated the former and took it. It can be extrapolated, then, that the allegiance of a wand does not come from simply taking it, but from defeating the wizard in question. In the infamous Astronomy Tower scene in ''The Half-Blood Prince'', Malfoy merely disarmed Dumbledore; Snape killed him. In the films, as in the books, Voldemort believes that Snape is the master of the Elder Wand and has him killed. But - and this is crucial - he does not do it himself, no doubt out of fear that the Elder Wand will rebel against him to protect its true master. But rather than simply using another wand, he has Nagini kill Snape. Nagini, a living entity with as much of a human soul within it as Voldemort itself.]]

[[spoiler: Throughout both parts of ''Deathly Hallows'', we see a phenomenon simply not present in the books; that Voldemort slowly falls apart as his Horcruxes are destroyed, implying that, rather than just anchoring his soul to the mortal plane, they are literally holding his body together. Cut to the end of ''Deathly Hallows, Part Two'', and Harry and Voldemort's epic final confrontation, climaxing in a final wand stalemate broken only by Neville swiftly slaying Nagini. Voldemort barely has time to fire one last Avada Kedavra before dying, apparently by his own curse rebounding. Yet we see no apparent signs of an actual rebounded curse; nor does Avada Kedavra cause an individual to explode into confetti. It seems far more likely that Voldemort's death was due to the death of Nagini. Nor is any mastery of the Elder Wand made apparent by Harry. Oddly enough, the scene where Harry uses the wand to repair his old one is completely omitted, leaving us with a movie where Harry did not once use the Elder Wand. Why, then, should we assume he mastered it?]]

[[spoiler: Putting all the pieces together, it seems far more likely that Snape, who ultimately bested Dumbledore (as Malfoy certainly wasn't going to kill him or seize his wand), did become the master of the Elder Wand, until mastery was taken from him by Nagini, who had every bit as much right to hold ownership of the wand as Voldemort, thanks to the piece of a human soul within him. Finally, Neville took the life of Nagini, making him the master of the wand. Voldemort did not die because Harry was the master of the wand; he, never the wand's master, could not overcome the wand stalemate between he and Harry, which lasted until his death, at which point Harry's Expelliarmus took effect and he seized the Elder Wand.]]

[[spoiler: Which means that he just snapped Neville's wand in two and tossed it off a bridge. Class act, Harry.]]
* Um... no. Just, no. You are grasping at straws to try to make your theory hold together, but all you do is spend time uselessly trying to convince others of something that is clearly shown to be incorrect. As explained above, Snape never intended to defeat Dumbledore - he was just planning to give him a MercyKill. It is Malfoy who defeats Dumbledore by disarming him. It is Harry that then defeats Malfoy by disarming him. It is Harry's ownership of the Elder Wand that allows him to defeat Voldemort, since the Wand will not attack its master. And it is Voldemort that defeats Snape in the movies, by using ''Sectumsempra''. And, of course, you choose not to explain how your pet theory fits with the part where Harry does not die to Voldemort's Avada Kedavra, instead only destroying the Horcrux in Harry's head. And the reason why Nagini's death helps Harry? Simple, Voldemort feels the death of the snake and knows he has lost his last anchor - and that weakens him.

I, of course, express skepticism that the Peverell brothers actually met Death after crossing a deadly river. It is my opinion that Antioch crafted the Elder Wand, but was having issues with controlling it, as Thestral hair is very difficult to incorporate into a wand. Seeking power and control over the wand, Antioch murdered the rival wizard with the immature wand, and used the murder of his rival to seal a piece of his own soul into the Elder Wand. Euphoric from the new found power of the wand, Antioch went to the bar bragging of how he bested death (by placing his own soul into his own wand!), but did not count on being killed by non-magical means. Without any loyal followers to restore his body, his soul fragment lives on in the wand, accounting for its power, the ability to do magic considered impossible, and the unusual characteristic of transferring loyalty to the wizard who overpowers the previous owner.
* But then, why was Harry able to [[spoiler: destroy it]] so easily, unlike Voldemort's many Horcruxes?

Death seems to be a {{trickster}} when he gives the deathly hallows to the Peverell brothers. He claims the lives of the older two brothers after they use their gifts foolishly. Der Tod is the only Death I know of to reach this level of {{Jerkass}}.

* It's simple. The Elder Wand ''isn't'' invincible. Indeed the one consistent feature in the Elder Wand's history is that every single one of its owners is defeated and loses it. It has changed hands many more times than directly mentioned in the novels, and undoubtedly some, if not most of them, occurred in direct duels. The Elder Wand is just an unusually powerful wand, the user's own skill still matters. A sufficiently powerful opponent can overcome whatever advantage the Elder Wand gives. Dumbledore beat Grindelwald because he was just that good.

** Supporting evidence for this WMG lies in the way the shades of the stone speak to Harry. Close your eyes and have someone read their dialogue to you, and it will all sound like the same person. Neither Stone-Lupin nor Stone-Sirius have the sam speech patterns as their living selves did, in present day or past, and when the whole thing is read, it is very much as if one being is speaking through four different faces.

*** They did, in the Ministry of Magic. It's implied , however that [[TheChessmaster Dumbledore]] was intentionally battling to a draw for a number of possible reasons.

Sure, Xenophilius offered the alternate theory that the three brothers were just very powerful magicians who made their own cloaks and wands and rings, but it doesn't quite gel with what we know about the magic in the series already.

** How exactly does that confirm that the encounter with death happened. I thought it was pretty clearly meant to be the case that it hadn't happened and that while the Peverell Brothers existed they had simply made the Hallows with their own skills.

[[WMG: The kind wizard in "The Wizard and His Hopping Pot" is based off of Linfred of Stitchcombe, the Potter family's patriarch.]]
According to the information on the Potter family shown on Pottermore, the family ancestor is Linfred of Stitchcombe, nicknamed "the Potterer" due to the fact he liked to potter around his garden, which later was shortened to "Potter". Linfred was a potioneer, creating several potions that became the basis for other potions like Pepper-Up and Skele-Gro, and was known to give out his cures to his Muggle neighbors. Beedle the Bard could have discovered what Linfred was doing and used him as the inspiration for the kind wizard helping out Muggle neighbors in "The Wizard and His Hopping Pot". Whether or not one or more of Linfred's seven children objected to helping out Muggle neighbors (like the way the wizard's son in the story did) is unknown.

* The actors for the romantic couple actually were going out until an hour before the curtain rose, when the guy playing Sir Luckless broke up with the girl playing Amata because he was attracted to the actor who played the sick witch. Immediately after the Ashwinder exploded, the two girls attacked one another with spells and the whole thing just went downhill from there.

** Let's just say that the core is [[TsubasaReservoirChronicle Sakura's feather.]] ...Hey, somebody had to say it.

* Um... no. Just, no. You are grasping at straws to try to make your theory hold together, but all you do is spend time uselessly trying to convince others of something that is clearly shown to be incorrect. As explained above, Snape never intended to defeat Dumbledore - he was just planning to give him a MercyKill. It is Malfoy who defeats Dumbledore by disarming him. It is Harry that then defeats Malfoy by disarming him. It is Harry's ownership of the Elder Wand that allows him to defeat Voldemort, since the Wand will not attack its master. And, of course, you choose not to explain how your pet theory fits with the part where Harry does not die to Voldemort's Avada Kedavra, instead only destroying the Horcrux in Harry's head. And the reason why Nagini's death helps Harry? Simple, Voldemort feels the death of the snake and knows he has lost his last anchor - and that weakens him.

* Um... The book very clearly explained how the Elder Wand changes masters. At least, it was pretty clear to me. In case it wasn't, here it is: In order for the Elder Wand to recognize a new master, its current master must be defeated, but "defeated" does ''not'' mean "killed". It could mean something as simple as Disarming, as [[spoiler: Harry]] did to the real master of the Elder Wand as of the end of ''[[Literature/HarryPotterAndTheHalfBloodPrince Half-Blood Prince]]'', [[spoiler: Draco Malfoy]] (also: the master doesn't have to be using the Elder Wand for it to be defeated). So there's the first link in the progression broken: Snape was never the master of the Elder Wand, because [[spoiler: he killed Dumbledore as per a prior agreement; Dumbledore more or less forfeited his mastery of the wand to Draco]]. The second link in the chain has a very low probability of being able to mutter an incantation (she'd have to hold the wand in her mouth, and proper word choice and pronunciation is kind of a big deal in the Potterverse), and she never defeated any of the wand's true masters. Neville, while [[TookALevelInBadass taking a level in badass]], ''also'' never defeated any of the wand's masters, but hey, come on. He ended up being master of a big fucking sword that can only be mastered by a true Gryffindor; he's no less {{badass}} for not being a master of the Elder Wand (which, as [[spoiler: Harry]] pointed out later, is a lot more hassle than most people want to deal with).

[[WMG:Death, from the Tale of the Three Brothers, is Der Tod from {{Elisabeth}}.]]

[[WMG: Sirius isn't dead, but would be better off if he was. (He may also be [[TheGrimReaper Death...]] or [[IrregularWebcomic ''a'' Death.)]]]]

[[WMG: Albus, Aberforth and Ariana represent the Three Brothers, and Grindelwald is Death]]

Where else would Death get the [[IncrediblyLamePun styx]] to carve into the most lethal wand in all of existence? But puns aside, a wand from a tree beyond the veil would probably be ''much'' more potent, and definitely more resistant to "dying" from violence or old age ([[DoubleJeopardy again]]), than would a wand carved from a normal (albeit very, very old) tree.