In the Drop-off Platform Square of Diagon Alley, everyone attending the emergency consultation meeting remained silent, staring at the tabletop before them as though they could make flowers bloom from it.
The Ministry of Magic would invest money to purchase shares in the workshops?
Narcissa's lips moved slightly, as if she wanted to say something, but in the end, she remained silent.
As a matter of fact, it was perfectly normal for workshops and companies to seek financing.
The businesses now familiar to everyone in the British wizarding world had mostly begun as sole proprietorships of certain pure-blood families.
But after decades or even centuries of mergers and expansion, none of them remained wholly owned by a single party.
Basically, everyone had a stake in everyone else.
Take the Malfoy family, for instance. Some of their businesses within Britain were not wholly owned by them either, but operated in cooperation with multiple parties, even foreign investors. They merely remained the largest shareholders in the workshops' ownership structures.
Those investors themselves included investments from certain high-ranking Ministry of Magic officials.
Take Cornelius Fudge and Dolores Umbridge, whom Amosta Breen had sent away not long ago. They and their families had been interested parties all along, openly and covertly shielding these well-known workshops.
Even some collateral blood relatives of the Bones family, to which Amelia Bones, now seated in the Minister for Magic's chair, belonged, shared in those profits.
But!
Narcissa's delicate brows furrowed tightly, and her lips pressed into a line.
The British Ministry of Magic had established the International Trade Division to directly serve as an investor and participate deeply in the management and operation of workshops?
It seemed that no government of any magical civilization had ever done such a thing—though Muggles did.
But regardless, this was absolutely not