How Malfoys earned money?

[Carol]

No: HPFGUIDX 186841

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, No Limberger <no.limberger at ...> wrote:
>
> randmath23 wrote:
> >I was wondering how the Malfoy family earned their money.
> >I cannot find in any of the Harry Potter books that gives any
> >indication of what type of job the Malfoys engaged in.
> 
> >Miles wrote <SNIP>:
> >JKR didn't plan or describe the economical system of the
> >Potterverse. She invented a currency (the currency system
> >being a parody on the old UK Pound system), she made
> >some families rich and others poor, but the rest is
> >imagination for us readers.
> 
> No.Limberger responds:
> Given that wizards and witches can perform magic, the
> notion of needing to earn money seems to run counter to
> being magical in the first place; unless it has to do with
> laws governing the use of magic (limits) and/or how
> skillful each wizard & witch's magic is.  First, as far
> as restrictions on the use of magic, the WW does it's
> utmost to remain hidden from the muggle world.  Thus,
> if a wizard or witch wanted a huge chateau on a large
> piece of muggle-owned property, magically taking it from
> the muggles would, no doubt, raise a lot of suspicions
> and potentially threaten the WW.  Since the Black
> family has a hidden row-house in London, it stands to
> reason that other wizards and witches also live in
> major muggle cities, but secretly.  So, there are clearly
> limits imposed on the WW for its own protection. This
> would mean that there is a finite amount of property
> owned (and magically protected) that could be bought
> and sold between WW families.
> 
> To buy and sell limited property requires some kind
> of currency to be used.  The amount of money then in
> possession of any WW family defines their financial
> status within the WW, but magical skill also plays a
> role in this.  Take Lockhart for example.  He is good at
> memory charms, which he used to make wizards &
> witches who did daring deeds to forget them so that
> he could write them, claim credit and become rich and
> famous himself as wizards & witches purchased his
> books.  Clearly, Lockhart wasn't good at much else
> magically, so he used magic to steal in order to obtain
> everything else that he wanted, but couldn't do himself.
> Then there are various magical items that each have a
> specific purpose.  Take Harry's invisibility cloak, which
> is a very rare item.  This would suggest that very few have
> the ability to magically produce one.  Otherwise, anyone
> could make one and it wouldn't be so valuable.
> 
> Thus, between variances in magical abilities and limited
> property availability, a WW economy is established.
> How, specifically, the Malfoys earned money I don't
> know, but given their predilection for dark magic, it
> may have been earned in various unscrupulous ways
> over the centuries in what would essentially be a WW
> black market. Of course, they'd also need to appear
> legitimate in some way to avoid raising suspicions
> within the WW as to how they earned their money,
> which suggests the possibility of WW money laundering.
> 
> It's a very interesting topic regardless.

Carol responds:
One small point in response to your post. Quite possibly manor houses like the Malfoys' were acquired before the statute of secrecy went into effect. Once the family had acquired it, perhaps through marriage to a Muggle aristocrat (a genealogical detail that would be obscured after a few generations), the family could continue to enrich itself and increase its status by judicious marriages to rich Pure-Bloods, and the manor house could be maintained magically, preferably (in their view) by House-Elves, who would require no wages. Aside from clothes and status symbols (such as white peacocks) and school expenses and wands and food and the occasional poison or Dark artifact, the Malfoys would have very few expenses. No mortgage payments, no utility bills. Like nineteenth-century Muggle aristocrats, they could live off the interest from investments (or whatever interest the Goblins paid them for the use of their gold if they operate like Muggle bankers in that regard, the protection of Goblin-made treasures being a different matter altogether).

What was Lucius intending to do with the Dark objects and potions that he sold to Borgin? Was that a little sideline like the one that Aberforth mentions in DH? Or was that merely a little matter of killing off enemies?

At any rate, Lucius has a great many advantages. His family is wealthy to begin with. He's sufficiently intelligent to have been made a Prefect, and, like a small-scale Tom Riddle, he seems to have the power to charm people and to intimidate them when charm fails. He certainly seems to have Fudge in his pocket up till the end of OoP, at which point things fall apart for poor Lucius. He even does a good job of leading the DEs in the DoM; it's not *his* fault that Snape called in the Order of the Phoenix! 

Seriously, Lucius Malfoy starts off with the advantage of a rich family of which he is presumably the oldest son and heir, adds to that advantage by marrying a rich Pure-Blood wife (not the eldest sister but possibly a co-heiress whose inheritance would be increased when the middle sister, Andromeda, was disinherited. He also seems to have influential connections, some of them perhaps fellow members of the Slug Club (I can't imagine his not having been a member since he was a Slytherin Prefect). He's also connected through his wife's sister to another old and wealthy Pure-Blood family, the Lestranges. Lucius would know how to make the most of his connections and how to manage his money--and how to use it to get his way in more important matters by bribing Fudge. And little matters like new brooms for the whole Slytherin Quidditch team? A drop in the bucket.

Only when he twice fails Voldemort and ends up in Azkaban does his "career" as influential aristocrat and manipulator begin its downturn. Once he loses his wand, he loses all influence even among his fellow Death Eaters. And it goes downhill from there (though I imagine that once LV is dead, Lucius will get a new wand and use his talents for lying and manipulation to restore himself to something like respectability again. After all, he didn't actually fight in the Battle of Hogwarts, and he still has his manor house and his and his wife's money. For all we know, Narcissa will inherit Bellatrix's money as well (assuming that Rodolphus and Rabastan are also dead).

BTW, I hope that no one takes my light tone in this post to indicate that I approve of Lucius Malfoy. I think we're meant to contrast him with Draco, who at least has a conscience and a reluctance to kill, torture, and betray HRH to Voldemort that his father doesn't share. Lucius is the epitome of amorality, IMO.

Carol, wondering once again how Lucius, Bellatrix, and their fellow Azkaban escapees got their wands back, in Bellatrix's case twice