Luke's HP Site

wealth

facts

speculation

One of the things that has bothered me since I read the seventh book is Harry’s inheritance. When I started reading fan fiction, and from author’s notes started learning more about the interviews and comments that Mrs. Rowling has given over the years, it has bothered me even more. Bellatrix has a vault deep deep in the caverns under Gringotts, and while it has lots of gold in it, it also seems to function as a storage room for heirlooms.4 Harry on the other hand has a low security vault in the upper levels of the caverns, containing only gold.5 The contents of Harry’s vault are not really important until the seventh book when we have Bellatrix’s to compare against. Even then, it might not be important, except that we find out, also in the seventh book, that 1) the house in Godric’s Hollow is still mostly standing (part of one side is missing the roof, but that’s about it) and 2) it has become a monument of sorts.

Now we know that Harry’s parents had taken the family in hiding, and I believe we read somewhere that they had not just defied Riddle the requisite three times, but had had several close calls after the prophesy is given as he hunted for them. If this is true, it is safe to say that the Godric’s Hollow house probably was not their original residence when they first got married. But even if some prior residence was destroyed as a total loss, two adults do not, even with an infant, live full time in hiding in a house with nothing around them. In fact, we know they did not. They had ornaments of some sort to pack away after Harry’s birthday, as well as a vase that [Petunia][] sent for the prior Christmas.6 The vase she did not like was probably not the highest priority as they fled from residence to residence, so what else did they have? Books, furniture, probably some photographs, maybe some pictures, the point is Potters would have possessed things. What became of their personal property? Why is it that per the “extra” non-book content we have that it seems that Harry inherited Grimmauld Place from Sirius, but nothing but gold from his parents?

James came from an old family. A family like the Potters should have had land, even if the house on it was destroyed. Fleeing and hiding from Riddle was not the time to dispose of it, in fact I suspect that James would have intended to rebuild. Even if he did not, the middle of a war you are losing is not the time to sell your land. Even if he did sell the land, why is there no high security vault with heirlooms? Perhaps the Potters were not as rich as the Blacks or the Lestranges, but Mrs. Rowling describes them as well off,7 old, and influential. There should have been heirlooms, and I doubt they were all kept in the house - particularly if the family was being hunted.

Fan fiction authors seem to largely agree with me.8 Some solve this by giving Harry such a vault that he gets access to when he is either emancipated or turns seventeen. Others say that Dumbledore essentially stole everything. Still others make James a fool who liquidated everything to fund the Order of the Phoenix, only for Harry to discover Dumbledore is in fact evil. Whichever you chose, Harry should have inherited more than he seems to have. One interesting twist is that the second vault may require something (a ring or a key) to unlock that was itself locked in the vault in question, because everything the Potters owned was placed in the vault without forethought.9

  1. Mrs. J. K. Rowling. “The Potter Family” The J.K. Rowling Index 2015-09-22.↩︎

  2. Mrs. J. K. Rowling. “The Potter Family” The J.K. Rowling Index 2015-09-22.↩︎

  3. Mrs. J. K. Rowling. “The Potter Family” The J.K. Rowling Index 2015-09-22.↩︎

  4. Mrs. J. K. Rowling. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows better citation needed.↩︎

  5. Mrs. J. K. Rowling. Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone better citation needed.↩︎

  6. Mrs. J. K. Rowling. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows p. 74. Pottermore Publishing. American Kindle Edition.↩︎

  7. Mrs. J. K. Rowling. “The Potter Family” The J.K. Rowling Index 2015-09-22.↩︎

  8. There are too many of these to even begin to guess where I first got the idea, and too many variations on it for anyone to come up with something truly original. Speculations on how Gringotts works is really outside the scope of a page on the Potters.↩︎

  9. TheBeardedOne. Little Whinging Pet Shop Chapter 22: Harry Roth - Expanded ArchiveOfOurOwn Published 2020-11-22. Updated 2021-03-05. Last Viewed 2021-03-22.↩︎