Malfoy gold

[Catlady (Rita Prince Winston)]

No: HPFGUIDX 106837

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "Brenda M."
<Agent_Maxine_is at h...> wrote:

> I mean where on Earth did Malfoys get their hands on all that gold. 
> Is it only me, or does it seem like he owns about half of all the 
> Wizarding gold there is?!?!

My theory of how the Malfoys built up their fortune over the millennia
goes along with why nice wizarding folk feel guily about past abuse of
Muggles:

I feel certain that Lucius Malfoy inherited his wealth, and he doesn't
have to do any work except to manage his money. I fantasize that the
ancestors of the Malfoys were already sitting pretty when the Romans
came to Britain, but continued to increase their fortune since then.
Early sources would include charging Muggle villages a large annual
tax not to destroy them, conquering other wizards and confiscating
their property, selling spells to rich Muggles, finding desposits of
metal ore and other valuables and mining and processing them with
slave or House Elf labor or by spells. 

Medieval sources would include owning large amounts of land and either
farming it by slave or sharecropper labor and selling the produce, or
renting it to non-slave farmers, and selling exotic foreign luxury
goods (e.g. spices, silk, Oriental carpets) that could be imported
much more easily by magic than by Muggle means. Modern sources would
include being a venture capitalist or loan shark. 

I can easily imagine that Lucius Malfoy owned a broomstick company
(owned it, not managed it) and offered to his competitors to buy them
out at a ridiculously low price, and when they refused, somehow their
factory, family home, and family members were all laid to waste with
the Dark Mark glowing over the ruins... 

The broomstick factory, incidentally, could employ a number of parents
of Hogwarts students, such the careful, hardworking Hufflepuff who
individually hand-ties and charms each twig, and the obsessed
Ravenclaw who invents the improved versions of the charms, and the
inventory manager who notes how fast the wood, twigs, feathers,
string, polish, sandpaper, and all are being used, and orders more in
time that the store room won't run out.

Some of those early sources of wizarding wealth would account for the
hostility of Muggles toward wizarding folk, such as Binns mentioned
during the Founding of Hogwarts: "it was an age when magic was feared
by common people, and witches and wizards suffered much persecution."