YMMV / The Tales of Beedle the Bard

• Alternate Character Interpretation: Given the vague way fairy tales are often told this can crop up.
  • One can apply this with the Deathly Hallows in regards to the third brother's fate. The first interpretation is taking the story of at face value, which indicated he was able to live with his family without worrying about Death coming for him the way it did for his brothers until he decided to pass his Hallow onto his son. The other view is that the third brother was just as screwed as the others and that each Hallow comes with their own type of "curse" fitting the nature of their request. This curse theory stems from how while demanding invincibility and the power to raise the dead are both pretty hubristic, his own demand to hide from Death can be seen as very arrogant of him as well while the story merely presents this as being clever. So the youngest could have spent his entire life hiding away from the world, unable to meaningfully interact with other people including his own children for fear of Death finding him should he remove the cloak for too long. And as for what happened to him in the end? He "welcomed Death as a friend", which could be seen as him either being satisfied with the life he lived and deciding his time on earth should come to an end or growing sick of the hollow life he was living depending on the preferred view. This particular case could be helped by how while parts of it are proven "true" it could still have been changed over time to help give it a clearer moral for younger audiences, much like how we know Ron's mother changed the time of day the meeting with Death took place at to make it "spookier" when she'd tell it to him.
  • It's possible to read another interpretation into "The Warlock's Hairy Heart"; that the heart, during its long period of severance had become sentient and it motivating him to tear the maiden's out to replace it (whilst not allowing him to use magic) was an act of revenge.
• Anvilicious: Out-of-universe, Dumbledore's notes continue his proud tradition of laying out every single nuance of the story previous in exacting detail.
• Heartwarming Moments: The ending of The Fountain of Fair Fortune. Asha's cured of her horrible disease, and Altheda, having discovered the cure, will be able to make plenty of money off of it. Amata, finally able to see what a scumbag her ex was, is just glad to be rid of him. So, the three witches all tell Sir Luckless to use the fountain, which he does... and promptly asks Amata to marry him, and she accepts. The four walk away, arm-in-arm, to live Happily Ever After, never once suspecting that the fountain isn't really enchanted. Cheesy, sure, but in the best way.
• Magnificent Bastard: "The Tale of the Three Brothers": Death is the ghostly figure in charge of taking deceased souls to the afterlife. Angered by three bothers who managed to cheat certain demise by crossing a river that would've killed them, Death pretends to congratulate the brothers and offers them gifts, with the full intent to have them result in the brothers' deaths. Succeeding in killing two of the brothers with the Elder Wand and Resurrection Stone, he only falls short in claiming the third due to his gift being the Invisibility Cloak, which would shield him from Death. When the time came, the third brother gave away his cloak and embraced Death as an old friend, allowing Death to claim the final brother, whom Death respects for using his gift responsibly. These three objects would become the Deathly Hallows, which would make the user "Master of Death", which many wizards falsely believed would make them immortal, when in reality it would have them accept that death is inevitable.
• Nightmare Fuel: The Warlock's Hairy Heart, full stop. It's even this to many children in-universe.
• Older Than They Think: There is real folklore of dead people turning out to have hairy hearts as a sign of the power they had back when they were alive, like the Greek king Aristomenes and the Spanish soldier Julián Romero.
• Values Dissonance: In the context of Potterverse; Babbitty Rabbitty feels no compunction about threatening to use a curse later declared Unforgiveable and outlawed. Then again, she is threatening to use it on a muggle king who persecutes magic-users (and had just two minutes ago tried to kill her with an axe), so there's at least a justification for it.

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