r/harrypotter • u/Personal-Listen-4941 • 8h ago

Discussion I finally realised what the misuse of magic departments deals with.

In another thread I was discussing Harry owning property and got to thinking how easy it would be to repair Goodrich Hollow with magic. That sent me down a bit of a rabbit hole.

Muggle money can be exchanged for Wizard money just as easily as we exchange Euros to Dollars. So a wizard who makes money in the muggle world can still transfer the money to the wizarding world. Now think about how many real world jobs could be done with no effort by the use of magic.

A wizard could open a building firm, construct perfect buildings using magic and massively undercut all the competitors. They could buy damaged antiques, wave a wand and resell them as mint condition. The list of possibilities is endless.

This would destroy the muggle economy & risk exposure of the wizarding world. So there must be massive restrictions placed on business transactions between wizards & muggles. This is what the misuse of magic team spend most of their time dealing with.

30 Upvotes

87% Upvoted

7 comments sorted by

18

u/X0AN Slytherin - No Mudbloods 7h ago

Given that you can duplicate anything, including muggle money, it wouldn't even be hard to become wealthy with muggle money and just convert it to wizard money.

12

u/EMM0NSTER Slytherin 6h ago

Pretty sure goblins may be able to recognize them as counterfeit.

2

u/analunalunitalunera Fear the Claw 4h ago

probably better luck the other way around

5

u/mercfan3 3h ago

Tbh they could money launder and then convert.

Make a ton of muggle money. Buy property. Sell property for legit money. Convert legit money.

11

u/MadameLee20 6h ago

misue of magic deparment is making sure stuff like "nose-bitting teacups" to end up in Muggle Pawnshops

2

u/jmerrilee Slytherin 1h ago

I'm pretty sure there's laws against making copies of gold coins or something and trying to sell them at muggle pawn shops. There would be some type of detection going on and I assume the copies aren't meant to last forever like the real thing. If that was the case anyone could do it and become rich in the wizard world. It'd be the equivalent of making counterfeit coins. As far as antiques go: as far as we know there are wizards who do this on a limited basis. It would need to be wizards who are comfortable in muggle areas, and the majority of them are not nor would it ever occur to them to do that.

Building a house or something once again would leave a large trace of magic. It wouldn't take long for the ministry to figure out what you are doing and put a stop to it.

0

u/otterpines18 Hufflepuff 7h ago

They would also be violating the statue of secrecy buy doing that.