Skip to main content

money - Why Did Gringotts Pay Out for Harry's Firebolt?


In Prisoner of Azkaban, Sirius Black anonymously sends Harry a Firebolt broom after the demise of Harry's Nimbus 2000 in the Whomping Willow. At the end of PoA, Sirius writes Harry a letter and explains that, yes, it was he who sent the Firebolt:




There is something I never got round to telling you during our brief meeting. It was I who sent you the Firebolt – Crookshanks took the order to the Owl Office for me. I used your name but told them to take the gold from Gringotts vault number seven hundred and eleven – my own. Please consider it as thirteen birthdays’ worth of presents from your godfather.

Prisoner of Azkaban - page 315 - Bloomsbury - chapter 22, Owl Post Again



Throughout the entire series it's made very obvious that breaching Gringotts' security was punishable by death. Gringotts had tons of security measures in place (and for the sake of this question, I'm not talking about the successful break-in the trio pulled off in Deathly Hallows).



Vault seven hundred and thirteen had no keyhole.

‘Stand back,’ said Griphook importantly. He stroked the door gently with one of his long fingers and it simply melted away. ‘If anyone but a Gringotts goblin tried that, they’d be sucked through the door and trapped in there,’ said Griphook.

‘How often do you check to see if anyone’s inside?’ Harry asked.

‘About once every ten years,’ said Griphook, with a rather nasty grin.

Philosopher's Stone - page 59 - Bloomsbury - chapter 5, Diagon Alley



Why did the Gringotts goblins act on Sirius's written direction that the money for the Firebolt should be taken out of his vault instead of Harry's? Sirius was the most wanted wizard in Britain at the time and it would seem that the goblins wouldn't have followed such suspicious directions so blithely when they received the request for funds from, presumably, Quality Quidditch Supplies for the broom. Why wasn't the Ministry notified that a request for funds from Sirius Black's vault had been made? How is it possible that Sirius was able to purchase Harry's broom via third party? Why did Gringotts pay out?


★ I'm looking for a canon-based answer (the Harry Potter novels and three supplemental books, any J.K. Rowling interviews with relevant information, or Pottermore). I do not prefer an answer from the HP Wikia/Wikipedia.



Answer



In Harry Potter and Deathly Hallows, Chapter 15, The Goblin's Revenge, when Ted Tonks asks Griphook why was he on the run, Griphook answers:




"What about you, Griphook?"
"Similar reasons," said the higher-voiced goblin. "Gringotts is no longer under sole control of my race. I recognize no master."



According to this paragraph I assume that the Goblins of Gringotts are not subjected or held liable by Wizarding law. So they are by no means compelled to share the knowledge about Sirius to any third party including the Ministry of Magic.
Furthermore the same could be said about the Lestrange vault. The Lestrange family are notorious Death Eaters imprisoned in Azkaban for life but the content of their vault remains untouched while they served in Azkaban whereas the Ministry could have confiscated it if they had any power over Gringotts.


Comments

Popular posts from this blog

harry potter - Do the Kwikspell courses work?

In Harry Potter we are introduced to Kwikspell course in The Chamber of Secrets (and never hear about it again). We see Filch taking courses, presumably by mail. The descriptions of Kwikspell make me think it is for people who are weak in magic (kind of like how Neville was supposed to be when he was younger), but had magic in them nonetheless. However, Ron's comments later in the chapter make it sound like it is mainly for Squibs to learn magic. However, it is strongly implied through out all the books that Squibs are essentially Muggles, and will never be able to do magic. How then is a Kwikspell course supposed to work? Do we have any information to know if it works at all? Is it a scam? An answer from any level of canon is welcome. Answer Kwikspell courses are (probably) useful to some wizards, but not to squibs. The Kwikspell course literature comes with two testimonials. Madam Z. Nettles of Topsham writes: ‘I had no memory for incantations and my potions were a family joke...

futurama - How much time is lost in 'Time Keeps on Slippin''

In time Keeps on Slippin' , Farnsworth creates a basketball team which he matures by abusing Chronitons. This leads to time skipping forward by random, but ever increasing amounts. How much time was skipped in this way? Answer Unfortunately, I don't think a good estimate can be made for this, for two reasons: Many of the time skips move forward by an indeterminate amount of time. At one point, the Professor mentions localized regions of space skipping forward much more than others. We then see two young boys on the street below complaining about having to pay social security, only to suddenly become senior citizens and start complaining about wanting their money. Thus, each individual could have experienced a different amount of time skippage.

languages - Do we ever see written English in the Star Wars films?

In Empire Strikes Back , we see a transcription of what R2's beeps and bloops mean, but it's not English (sorry for the low quality, it's from the 2004 DVDs): I'd assume it's what Basic looks like when written, but is there some point in the the Star Wars films we see written English instead? (This sort of spun off from a discussion in How do people understand astromech droids? .) Answer At one point there was English but it has been phased out in subsequent versions of the films. Chris Gould at DVD Active did a comparison of all versions of each of the Star Wars films, and in his comparison of Episode 4 , there are a couple of screenshots showing how the power gauge for the Death Star tractor beam was changed. I imagine there are probably more to be found in his other comparisons but I haven't got around to reading those yet.

Was the "pure soul" of Harry's what had really hurt Voldemort?

In the Order of the Phoenix, Voldemort possesses Harry, and it hurts. Greatly. I think that Dumbledore explained that it was because Voldemort's rotten soul was incapable of assimilating Harry's pure soul, that Voldemort didn't understand the love and friendship etc that Harry has in his heart. But, I think it was a lie. Remember that in Deathly Hallows, while looking for information regarding Horcruxes, it is discovered that it is in fact possible to merge a soul fragment back, but that the process was extremely painful. Now then, if Voldemort tried to possess Harry, and Harry had a fragment of Voldemort's soul, I think that it could have been the true cause of Voldemort's pain: the fact of having his soul so close of another fragment. I think that Dumbledore knew that fact, but had to lie to Harry because it was inappropriate to let him know that he had one of Voldemort's soul fragments at the moment. Is that right? Or was it truly the pure soul of Harry's...