How Did Sirius Black Buy Harry Potter The Firebolt? Is It A Plot Hole?

By Amanda Bruce and Adrienne Tyler

Sirius Black bought the Firebolt broomstick for Harry Potter, but as he was a fugitive at the time, how did he manage to not get caught?

Summary

• The Harry Potter movies failed to address how Sirius was able to buy Harry a new broom.
• In the books, Sirius bought the Firebolt for Harry through a wizarding mail-order system.
• Harry Potter movies omitted detailed explanations from the books, leading to plot holes in the films.

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The Harry Potter series introduced the audience to the Wizarding World, its society, rules, and more, but some details about it throughout the books and movies raised many questions about how things work in this magical world, among those how Sirius Black was able to buy the Firebolt for Harry. The success and popularity of the Harry Potter novels allowed them to make the jump to the big screen even before all seven books were out. Harry Potter's saga allowed the audience to fully immerse themselves in the Wizarding World and gave them a good look at the most important places in it, while also meeting its most notable characters. Among those was Sirius Black (Gary Oldman), the fake antagonist in Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban and Harry’s godfather.

Sirius Black was the closest Harry had to a caring family member, but given that Sirius escaped from Azkaban Prison, they couldn’t share much time together. Still, Sirius made sure that Harry was safe and had what he needed even though he couldn’t visit him as he had to hide, and he sent a very special gift to his godson at the end of Prisoner of Azkaban: the Firebolt, a world-class broomstick. This raised many questions about how he bought it without being caught by the Wizarding authorities.

Why Sirius Black Wasn’t Caught After Buying The Firebolt

How Could A Notorious Fugitive Go To Diagon Alley?!

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Harry Potter (Daniel Radcliffe) got his first broomstick in Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone. It was a gift from Professor McGonagall (Maggie Smith) after Harry joined the Gryffindor Quidditch team as the new Seeker. The new broom became one of his most prized possessions. Unfortunately, in Prisoner of Azkaban, Harry fell off the Nimbus 2000 when the dementors who usually guard Azkaban appeared during a Quidditch game.

While Harry survived the fall, the broomstick fell on the Whomping Willow, which completely destroyed it. At the end of Prisoner of Azkaban, after Sirius left Hogwarts on Buckbeak, he sent the Firebolt to Harry as a present, and while this was a heartwarming moment between Sirius and Harry, it has been pointed out as a potential Harry Potter plot hole given the circumstances around Sirius’ status as a fugitive.

Sirius Buying The Firebolt Is Explained In The Book

It's Not A Plot — JK Rowling Answered It

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The Harry Potter movies never explained how Sirius, who had the Wizarding authorities after him after escaping from Azkaban, was able to purchase the Firebolt without being caught. The books, however, actually give a good answer to how this was possible. Sirius bought the Firebolt for Harry through the equivalent of a wizarding mail-order system.

Sirius himself explained to Harry in a letter that Hermione’s (Emma Watson) cat, Crookshanks, took the order to the Owl Office for him. Though he used Harry’s name on the order, he also told them to take the gold from his vault in Gringotts. As it was the Owl Office that dealt with the purchase and not Sirius himself, it’s understood that they only cared that it was being paid and not so much who was paying for it, and as Sirius gave the number of the vault and not his actual name, he could have easily gotten away with it without catching the Ministry’s attention.

It has also been pointed out by readers that goblins don’t exactly respect Wizarding law, and they act by their own laws, so even if they were instructed to take money from the vault of a fugitive, and again, as Sirius never mentioned his name, he wouldn’t have had a problem in taking the money from it to pay for something that would be sent to Harry Potter. How Sirius Black bought the Firebolt isn’t really a plot hole in the Harry Potter saga, but it does raise a couple of questions about Wizarding law and the goblins at Gringotts.

The Sirius Firebolt Plot Hole Started A Harry Potter Movie Trend

Drawn from the Pages: The Legacy of Sirius Black

Sirius Black purchasing a Firebolt on the run with no explanation isn’t the only small Harry Potter plot hole in the movies as a result of omissions from the novels. There are a lot of things left out of the movies simply to streamline the story and to cut back on how much time the movie would take. Some plot points that get long explanations in the books don’t get the same explanations in the Harry Potter movies.

Harry Potter And The Prisoner Of Azkaban began a trend for the Harry Potter franchise. Each of the subsequent movies was more willing to leave out explanations from the books, hoping the audience wouldn’t have questions. Because of the popularity of the Harry Potter novels, there was likely the thought that a few Harry Potter plot holes could go unnoticed in the movies because audience members who read the books would already be able to fill in the blanks themselves. Several unexplained Harry Potter plot holes can be found surrounding the Triwizard Tournament in Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire.

Some of the book plot points that didn’t appear in the Harry Potter movies were things like Harry being the one to gift Fred and George Weasley (James and Oliver Phelps) with the seed money to start their joke shop. He gifts them the winnings from the Triwizard Tournament in the novel. Fred and George, as members of an extremely poor wizarding family, wouldn’t have had the money to rent or buy space in Diagon Alley, no matter how many tricks and treats they sold at Hogwarts, but that is glossed over in the movies.

While some of these Harry Potter plot holes are more of just plot points that don’t have full explanations in the movies, they do have full explanations in the novels.

One of the biggest Harry Potter plot holes, however, also happened in Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. While the movie keeps Barty Crouch Jr. (David Tennant) as the villain, it doesn’t entirely explain his backstory. The novel goes into detail so that the reader understands his loyalty to Voldemort (Ralph Fiennes) and his dying mother’s desperation to save his life. The movie does not. His mother, his father, and the family house elf are the ones who break him out of prison with his mother staying behind in his place. That’s never explained in the movie.

While some of these Harry Potter plot holes are more of just plot points that don’t have full explanations in the movies, they do have full explanations in the novels. The novels create a more complete picture of the world in which the story takes place as a result.