To protect his Horcrux, Voldemort had used a great number of Inferi and concealment charms, yet it was still found. However, the person who had truly found Slytherin's Locket was someone else.
Georgiana looked at herself in the mirror. She was wearing a gray formal gown adorned with dazzling silver flowers, somewhat resembling the dress Fleur Delacour had worn to the Christmas ball. Yet perhaps because her complexion was pale and bloodless, she did not look entirely human.
If the Gaunt family had not been so extravagant in its early years and had left something behind for its descendants, there might never have been a Voldemort afterward.
Financial management was indeed a dull subject, but the world had its own laws by which it kept running.
According to what Adam Smith wrote in The Wealth of Nations, the price of English wool fell during Edward III's reign. Aside from Edward III's series of trade embargoes forbidding English wool from being exported to Flanders, this was because the Duke of Flanders had not taken Edward III's side in the Hundred Years' War. People at the time believed the wool trade was tied to national security. Edward III thought that, deprived of raw materials, the towns producing cloth would break away from the Duke of Flanders's rule.
Edward III had been so confident that he declared himself King of France in Ghent. Yet this fragile alliance collapsed around 1345. Before Flanders went bankrupt, England had defaulted first on its debts to the Peruzzi family.
Soon afterward came the Black Death. It first devastated financial centers in Italy, such as Florence and Genoa. In The Decameron, people fled Florence for the countryside to take refuge. In short, everyone stayed home instead of going out, and there was far less demand for clothing.
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