J.K. Rowling’s book The Tales of Beedle the Bard includes five tales.
The collection is presented as a wizarding storybook associated with Albus Dumbledore. Its five stories are “The Wizard and the Hopping Pot,” “The Fountain of Fair Fortune,” “The Warlock’s Hairy Heart,” “Babbitty Rabbitty and Her Cackling Stump,” and “The Tale of the Three Brothers.”
“The Tale of the Three Brothers” is especially important because it explains the legend of the Deathly Hallows. Hermione reads the collection after receiving it in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, making the book part of the series’ central mythology.
The real-world edition was published in 2008. Rowling wrote and illustrated the original limited-edition manuscript, while the commercial edition included notes attributed to Dumbledore. The number five refers to the stories in the collection, not the Deathly Hallows themselves, of which there are three.