When working with Term Store take into consideration that SharePoint for some reason replaces ampersand character & (code 38) with ampersand character ＆ (code 65286) in the label. The bad thing is that if you create a Term with the name with & you won't be able to change it back from symbol 65286 to symbol 38 as default label of the term can't be modified.
Simple way to play with it:

  1. Create new term "Wood & Fire"
  2. Copy the default label text
  3. Paste the value as string into browser console and run call charCodeAt(5): "Wood ＆ Fire".charCodeAt(5)
  4. The result will be 65286 instead of 38
I tested the behavior on O365, SP 2016 and SP2013 - all the same.

Have fun!