Well, sure, that’s exponential growth for you. I’d actually rule out the scenario I present in the grandparent on narrative grounds: it’s not interesting from a plot or a rationalist perspective to be interrupted every chapter or two with a description of Harry’s latest trade, or even with his latest plan to wring another 5% out of his capital. (Maybe not that latter—Spice and Wolf pulled it off. But that’s a different kind of story.) Point is, this doesn’t need to be attention-getting in or out of story, just repeatable. There are boring options that would work (day trading with a Time-Turner being only the first to come to mind). Since that’s an unstable state for a story and the debt could easily have been omitted, at this point I’m waiting for the other shoe to drop.
I’m not expecting that shoe to come in the form of unexpected changes to the financial structure that the early chapters set up, though. That does paint the Wizengamot in a rather unflattering light, but these are people that have only the vaguest idea of what cars are—an enormous blind spot concerning the Muggle world is quite consistent with the established culture.
Well, sure, that’s exponential growth for you. I’d actually rule out the scenario I present in the grandparent on narrative grounds: it’s not interesting from a plot or a rationalist perspective to be interrupted every chapter or two with a description of Harry’s latest trade, or even with his latest plan to wring another 5% out of his capital. (Maybe not that latter—Spice and Wolf pulled it off. But that’s a different kind of story.) Point is, this doesn’t need to be attention-getting in or out of story, just repeatable. There are boring options that would work (day trading with a Time-Turner being only the first to come to mind). Since that’s an unstable state for a story and the debt could easily have been omitted, at this point I’m waiting for the other shoe to drop.
I’m not expecting that shoe to come in the form of unexpected changes to the financial structure that the early chapters set up, though. That does paint the Wizengamot in a rather unflattering light, but these are people that have only the vaguest idea of what cars are—an enormous blind spot concerning the Muggle world is quite consistent with the established culture.