Chapter 700

"Half-breed...... Do you think the latter word is 'prince'?"

Solim snapped his fingers, and Zim appeared with two glasses of canyon water, which disappeared with a snap before being handed into Solim's and Hermione's hands, respectively.

"Is there a problem?" Hermione looked at where Zim had disappeared with her glass.

"It's a last name, not what you think it is—sure, maybe he was actually playing a pun when he wrote it—who hasn't been a secondary two yet?"

Solim took a sip, then let go of his hand, letting the cup hover in the air.

"Last name?" Hermione said as she looked at the floating cup, "Half-blood...... Prince? I think I've seen that name—"

Hermione frowned and began to meditate, she was sure that she must have seen this name in some book.

"A pure-blood family known for their potions. Solim reminded: "There are several special formulations of dragon's blood mixtures, deformation reducing agents, and corrosive agents...... And so on, these are the contributions of their families. "

After Solim's reminder, Hermione remembered that she had borrowed the book "The Outstanding Contributions of Pureblood Families" from Solim as a bedtime reading.

"But...... If I'm not mistaken, this family didn't ...... a long time ago."

"Decay, extinction – yes, so to speak, there are no male heirs left in this family. "But the women of this family continued to live on after they married, although they no longer bear the surname Prince." "

Pure-blood families, especially those small and medium-sized families, are not having a good time.

The wizarding world is also a pyramid, with the families at the top monopolizing and controlling almost everything, and these small and medium-sized families can only survive in the cracks, eating some leftovers left over from above, or living on things that the top families don't care about much.

The most typical is the dragon farm, where there are only a few items on the dragon's body in circulation, and most of them are still taken by families like Selwyn, or institutions like the Presbyterian Church - ordinary wizards or institutions simply can't digest the annual output.

Malfoy is a good mix, and there are many more miserable pure-blood families. They can't get their own piece of the pie of interests, and they can't make their family's status go further - the problem of class solidification in the wizarding world is actually quite serious, and there are almost no channels for rising.

The Ministry of Magic is just something on the table, and if anyone thinks that if they work in the Ministry of Magic, or become the head of a department in the Ministry of Magic, they will be able to revive the family, it is simply a bad brain.

The quest for power and wealth is the same for wizards and Muggles. The difference is that the wizarding world has a behemoth called the Council of Elders.

The Ministry of Magic is the line they draw - telling ordinary wizards that whether you are pure-blood, half-blood, or Muggle-blood, the Ministry of Magic is the end of your life, and that your struggle ends here. Want to go further? Don't even think about it.

Prince is such a very ordinary pure-blood family, as a pure-blood family must have some kind of capital to settle down, and potions are their capital. They had a great reputation in the wizarding world for quite some time, and their contributions to potions were more than enough to write a book.

However, they were unable to translate their achievements in potions into practical benefits.

What is a practical benefit?

Making money on potion recipes is secondary. Expand your influence and gain more power at the same time, for example, as the president of the Apothecary's Guild, you have a wide influence among the Potions masters, and to a certain extent, you can control the Potions world, and continue to expand your family's influence based on this.

But they couldn't.

Garons had made a lot of money, and the patents for various recipes had allowed the Prince family to be prosperous for a while—just for a while. When they were ready to try to expand their reach, they found that it was not that simple.

The president of the Apothecary's Guild is not elected, and looking at Gilves, the helmsman of the Orvis family, who controls almost all of Europe's herbal supply, is only one of several vice presidents. It was impossible for Prince to get that status.

The meaning of the Presbyterian Church is obvious, a small family like the Prince family is indeed useful, Galleon can make you earn, and reputation can be given to you, but you want actual power? Don't even think about it!

For a family, without the upward channel and the fundamental interests to be maintained, the struggle and power struggle within the family will become even more intensified - the royalty of the potion formula indirectly splits the Prince family.

What is the most important thing about potions?

Recipe, equipment, or potions?

It's the material, and without the material, no matter how talented the potions master is, he can't concoct the simplest pot of scabies potion.

In whose hands is the supply of potions materials?

If there is a family that tries to challenge the status of the Orvis family, then their life will not be easy.

Most of the herbal medicine supply throughout Europe depends on the faces of the Orvis family. The dangers of this near-monopolistic approach have long been recognized, but the Orvis family is still the largest supplier of herbs in all of Europe.

Plantations, cultivation techniques, sales networks, and so on are all cash cows that can make those small and medium-sized families blush. It's not that no one has tried, but the Orvis family has fundamentally broken off the minds of these people.

To open a new plantation of herbs without consent? is illegal, and since it is illegal, then it is punishable, and the Prince family has fallen here.

After they developed their plantation to a certain scale without a business license, the Orvis family came out to pick fruits, and the connections and status of the Orvis family were not comparable to a small family like Prince, not to mention the annexation of Prince's plantation, and they were fined a large sum of money, which directly made this family with a lot of reputation in the Potions world collapse.

"Isn't this half-blood wizard a genius who was able to refine so many recipes and spells during his student years without the backing of his family?"

With that, Solim drank all the canyon water in his hand.

Hermione, on the other hand, had a complicated complexion, and after listening to Solim's long list of the history of the decline of the Prince family just now, she had a clearer understanding of these problems in the wizarding world.

Looking at the house-elf who was refilling Solim's glass, Hermione sighed.

"I was so naïve at the time. "

Solim noticed Hermione's gaze at the elf.

"If you mean you wanted to 'liberate' the house-elves, you would be naïve. "

Zim disappeared with another "snap".

"House-elves are already the last face of those pure-blood wizards - that's the last resort to prove their family status, and if you want to rip this off too, you'll be torn apart by them - physically. "