I'll start off with my favourite of the three The Tales of the Beedle and the Bard. The book comprises of five popular wizarding fairy tales, full of delight and peril in equal measure, were popular bedtime stories for young witches and wizards. This edition was translated from the original runes by no other than Hermione Granger and includes Albus Dumbledore's personal notes, written not long before his death and has a scattering of beautiful images throughout the tales.
My personal favourite tale is The Tale of the Three Brothers (which many will be familiar with from the Deathly Hallows, especially its beautiful animation sequence in the film) as I find it very much reminiscient of the Pardoner's Tale by Chaucer- whom I love- but with a flair of magic and excitement - rather than being about three greedy drunks and still includes many morals, even for us muggles.
Three brothers traveling together reach an impassable river, they are an exception as they magic a bridge over the river. Halfway across they meet death who is angry at loosing victims, decides to pretend to be impressed and grants each a wish. The eldest brother receives an unbeatable wand, the Middle wishes to bring back the death, the youngest just wants death to stop following him so receive a cloak of invisibility.
The eldest brother is killed in his sleep and the wand stolen after his relentless bragging. The middle brother brought back his beloved, but she is not truly alive so he chooses death himself so he can properly join her. The youngest brother is not found by death, not until he is old and passes the cloak on to his son. He welcomes death and leaves with him as an equal after many years.
The other tales include:
The Wizard and the Hopping Pot
There was once an old man who generously uses his pot to brew cures to help everyone and anyone who needs it. Upon his death he leaves his legacy to is son who is very much the opposite of him and extremely bitter that his father has only left him a pot therefore refusing to help anyone. Each time he refuses to help the pot mimics the symptoms until the son must learn from his ways and help the townspeople.
The Fountain of Fair Fortune
Once a year someone may bathe in the fountain and have their problems solved, the search for this is how three witches meet. The first suffers a disease, the second is poor and powerless due to robbery and the third is suffering heartache. They resolve to reach the fountain together and on their journey encounter a knight. On the path the group faces many challenges and are relieved of their burdens, unaware of the fountains lack of magic.
The Warlock's Hairy Heart
A handsome young warlock is determined he will never fall in love, so performs dark magic to prevent this. Overhearing gossiping in his household he sets out to find a talented, rich and beautiful bride whom everyone will envy. Upon finding such a woman, he invites her to dinner during which she tells him she needs to know he has a heart. The warlock reveals his hairy heart in a casket in the dungeon and the witch begs him to put it back inside him. His hearts nature however has changed and is animalistic and he finds a need for a truly human heart, taking the witches. The hairy heart however cannot be removed and in attempt to do so he does along with his maiden.
Babbity Rabbity and her Cackling Stump
This tale is about a long who wants to keep all magic to himself. To do so heist capture and imprison all sorcerers and learn magic. Babbity his washer woman finds it hilarious when the king attempts to perform magic with only an ordinary twig. The king demands the charlatan teaching him to perform to the public with him or else be beheaded. Luckily he has seen Babbity to perform magic and enlists her help or else he will expose her. During the performance Babbity hides in the bushes, however the king wants to resurrect the dead, which is beyond her power. Babbity flees into the forest, hiding in the trunk of an old tree. The stump cackles and the charlatan is forced to confess.
Qudditch Through the Ages
This is probably my least favourite of the three books. Whilst I love Qudditch and many of my favourite moments from the books and films are the Qudditch matches (and in particular the commentaries) in real life I'm not a huge sports fanatic so reading sports theory and history isn't really my kind of thing. Don't get me wrong it's not to say it isn't a good book, it was great to find out about the history of how the game evolved and to find out in more details some of the rules of Qudditch and taking further exploration into the wizarding world, but we must remember this is a Hogwarts library book so it's not as exiciting as the tales of the bard.
I'll go on to what I've been doing for the rest of my Harry Potter posts and talk about some of my favourite parts:
The introduction and the fearsome Hogwarts librarian Madame Pince's reluctance to give the book up for muggles.
"In 1419 the council issued a famously worded decree that Qudditch should not be played 'anywhere near a place to where there is a slightest chance a muggle might be watching or we'll see how well you can play whilst chained to a dungeon wall" a somewhat hilarious threat.
The loose snitch on the Bodmin Moor after a game went on for 6 months!
The Ballycastle Bats mascots butterbeer advert - he's just batty about butterbeer
The Chudley Canons change of motto to 'Lets all just keep our fingers crossed and hope for the best' - there's nothing like a bit of optimism
This method of keeper defence:
Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them
I was very excited about reading this book again as just before I started it was announced that Eddie Redmayne would play Newt Scamander in the upcoming movie adaptation of this beloved Hogwarts textbook. This reproduction of the book is very special indeed as it is Harry Potter's (and Ron Weasley's as we discover inside) personal copy.
Whilst this is once again a Hogwarts text book this one for me was more exciting as it speaks of many of the different magical creatures we encounter throughout the Harry Potter series and many others to.
Harry and Rons notes really make the book as they either defunct some of the facts in the book (those about giant spiders and basilisk in particular squashing rumours of the beasts) as well as their many references to Hagrid every time something dangerous comes up and the renaming of the Norwegian Ridgeback to Baby Norbert.
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