The tale of The Three Brothers

There were once three brothers who were travelling along a lonely, winding road at twilight. In time, the brothers reached a river too deep to wade through and too dangerous to swim across. However, there brothers were learned in the magical arts, and so they simply waved their wands and made a bridge appear across the treacherous water. They were halfway across it when they found their path blocked by a hooded figure.

And death spoke to them. He was angry that he had been cheated out of three new victims, for travelers usually drowned in the river. But Death was cunning. He pretended to congratulate the three brothers upon their magic, and said that each had earned a prize for having been clever enough to evade him.

The Unforgivable Curses

In the Harry Potter books, an unforgivable curse is a curse which results in severe damage or death to the witch or wizard that it is performed on. If convicted of casting an unforgivable curse, the sentence is life imprisonment in Azkaban, the wizarding prison. Only three curses are considered unforgivable: the Cruciatus curse, the Imperius curse, and Avada Kedavra. Readers are introduced to the unforgivable curses in Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire during a Defense Against the Dark Arts class, when the curses are demonstrated on spiders.

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows is the seventh and final of the Harry Potter novels written by British author J. K. Rowling. The book was released on 21 July 2007, ending the series that began in 1997 with the publication of Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone. This book chronicles the events directly following Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince(2005), and leads to the long-awaited final confrontation between Harry Potter and Lord Voldemort.

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows was published in the United Kingdom by Bloomsbury Publishing, in the United States by Scholastic, in Canada by Raincoast Books, and in Australia and New Zealand by Allen & Unwin. Released globally in ninety-three countries, Deathly Hallows broke sales records as the fastest-selling book ever. It sold 15 million copies in the first twenty-four hours following its release, including more than 11 million in the U.S. and U.K. alone. The previous record, nine million in its first day, had been held by Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. The novel has also been translated into numerous languages, including Ukrainian, Swedish, Polish and Hindi.

Several awards were given to the novel, including the 2008 Colorado Blue Spruce Book Award, and it was listed as a "Best Book for Young Adults" by the American Library Association. Reception to the book was generally positive, although some reviewers found the characters to be repetitive or unchanging. A two-part film based on the novel is in the works, with part one's release date in November 2010.