In reality, Damian and Draco were cousins. Draco's mother, Narcissa, was a daughter of the Noble and Most Ancient House of Black.
Despite their blood ties, Draco had always been absolutely terrified of Damian.
When they were still young, Draco's maternal grandfather, Cygnus Black, had hosted a lavish family gathering. Almost everyone related to the House of Black had received an invitation, and it was the first time Draco had ever met Damian.
Upon learning Damian's surname, Draco had immediately wanted to befriend him. Carrying his usual pure-blood arrogance, young Draco had marched up behind Damian, fully prepared to employ his practiced, aristocratic charm.
"Damian Black," Draco had announced grandly.
Damian had turned his head in confusion, casually tossing a realistic-looking eyeball into his mouth. "What is it?"
The eyeball was, of course, a magical confectionary. The potioneer who crafted the sweet clearly had a wicked, morbid sense of humor. The moment Damian bit down, the candy ruptured, spraying a massive burst of thick, blood-red syrup right across Draco's face.
"I think you would be very happy... to gain... the friendship... of a... Malfoy," Draco had stammered, his speech faltering as he wiped a hand across his face.
Seeing his own palm covered in what looked like fresh blood, Draco had burst into loud, hysterical wailing right in the middle of the ballroom.
The incident had left a permanent shadow on Draco's young mind. From that day onward, he felt an inexplicable, instinctual fear whenever Damian was nearby.
Now, standing in the Great Hall, Draco's childhood terror flared up, causing him to involuntarily blurt out the humiliating truth.
"You borrowed it?" Damian frowned, his voice dropping to a serious warning. "If I were you, Draco, I would stop investing right now."
Although the Malfoy family was obscenely wealthy, Draco's personal Hogwarts allowance was still limited. He couldn't freely dispose of massive amounts of liquid Galleons. To seize this "guaranteed" opportunity to make a fortune, he had leveraged his family's name to borrow thousands of Galleons from older Slytherin students.
But thinking of the massive daily returns he was about to rake in, Draco's greed temporarily overpowered his fear. His ego inflated, and his tone hardened.
"Damian, you're far too conservative," Draco sneered, sounding exactly like a seasoned swindler. "Seeking stability makes it impossible to build true wealth."
"Profit always accompanies risk; it's impossible to gain without taking chances," Draco lectured grandly. "Only those who dare to dream, dare to act. And only by daring to act is there a high probability of making a fortune."
"In just ten days, I'll earn back my initial capital," he boasted, gesturing to the sea of squishy frogs. "And after that? I'll be generating a passive return of several hundred Galleons every single day."
Behind Draco, Crabbe, Goyle, and a few other lackeys looked at him with faces full of absolute admiration.
"Alright then. Good luck to you," Damian said, scratching his head.
He didn't waste his breath trying to persuade the boy any further. A gambler who has already gone all-in at the table cannot be talked down with mere words.
Draco immediately went back to shoving Galleons into the Frog Wallets. He fully intended to feed in all five thousand Galleons he had scraped together.
Damian and Jerry returned to their seats to finish their meal.
Jerry picked up a cookie, looking back at the Slytherin table. "Are you really so sure that this is going to crash?"
Damian took a sip of black tea and picked up a croissant. "Unless every single frog contains a microscopic Gringotts goblin constantly minting Galleons, things are going to go wrong very, very soon."
Jerry nodded thoughtfully. "True. If all the Hogwarts students combined fed tens of thousands of Galleons into the frogs, the network would have to spit out thousands of Galleons every single day to keep up. Heavens, that's a terrifying amount of money."
Damian chuckled softly. "Well, you don't need to worry. You only bought one, and Draco is currently subsidizing the entire school."
"I hope he doesn't lose too badly," Jerry muttered, shrugging.
...
After finishing dinner, Damian and Jerry headed back toward the Slytherin common room.
As they walked down a quiet corridor, they bumped into the Weasley twins. Fred was hiding behind a suit of armor, frantically gesturing for Damian to come over.
Catching the signal, Damian told Jerry to head back to the common room without him. He slipped behind the tapestry to join the twins.
Fred immediately clutched his head with both hands. "Damian, something massive has happened!"
George chimed in from the side, looking completely panicked. "There's a massive, critical bug in our new product!"
"What new product did you guys—" Damian froze, a look of absolute shock washing over his face. "Don't tell me you two made the Frog Wallets?"
"You guessed right, clever Black!" Fred groaned. "Quick, you have to help us think of something to fix this!"
"Think of something fast!" George pleaded.
Damian stared at them, completely bewildered. "How did you even make a Ponzi scheme? What were you thinking?!"
He honestly felt that these two Gryffindor jokers had the terrifying potential to end up in Azkaban for financial crimes before they even graduated.
Fred tugged at his red hair regretfully. "We originally just wanted to invent a magical piggy bank! Lots of young wizards have terrible spending habits, so we thought a locked wallet would help them save their allowance."
"The original design was simple," Fred explained. "Once you deposited money into the frog, you couldn't take it out at will. The frog was only supposed to spit the money back out when a pre-set withdrawal date was reached. But the runic function George was responsible for had a... slight deviation."
George threw his hands up defensively. "You kept telling me to hurry up the enchantment process! How was I supposed to be fast and perfectly accurate?"
"The time-lock function completely failed, and it somehow inverted into spitting out a coin once a day," Fred continued miserably. "But most importantly—the automatic money-spitting function has no upper limit!"
Damian massaged his temples. "You guys test your products, right? Why did you release it to the school if the core function was completely broken?"
"We didn't intend to sell it!" Fred protested. "We left the prototype on our dorm room desk, and Lee Jordan took it to play with. Somehow, the replication charm triggered, and it just spread through the castle like wildfire!"
"You massively underestimated human greed," Damian sighed, looking at the two with a strange expression.
For a brief second in the Great Hall, Damian had suspected a dark wizard was trying to scam the school to fund a war. It turned out to just be two teenagers making a coding error on a magical piggy bank.
"Okay, so where exactly are the Galleons they feed into the clones going?" Damian asked, trying to untangle the magical logistics.
"They're all teleported into the belly of the original 'Mother Frog'," George answered. "We cast a massive Undetectable Extension Charm on the original prototype's stomach. It acts as a shared vault for all the clones. It also holds the alchemical rubber required to self-replicate new frogs."
Damian nodded. A networked, spatially expanded vault made perfect magical sense. "Does the Mother Frog track who deposited what? And how many clone frogs can the rubber in its belly produce?"
Fred shook his head. "Tracking deposits felt like an invasion of privacy, so we didn't include a ledger function. The Galleons just mix together and are dispensed randomly to the active clones. Also, we lost the Mother Frog. It's somewhere in the castle."
"We stored enough rubber inside it to split into exactly one thousand frogs in total," George added.
Damian scratched his head. The situation was a mess, but it was a self-contained one.
"Honestly? Just let it run its course," Damian advised. "Treat it as if the students simply spent ten Galleons to buy a novelty toy. The rubber inside the Mother Frog is limited, so it can't replicate past a thousand units. The Galleons inside the shared vault will also be completely exhausted soon. The entire network will inevitably collapse."
Fred and George looked at each other, realizing they were legally in the clear.
"Let's just do that, then," George said, exhaling a massive breath. "We don't need to panic. We never actually collected any money ourselves; the students are just passing it back and forth through the Mother Frog."
Fred nodded rapidly. "Right. Paying ten Galleons for an incredibly interesting, self-replicating frog toy is actually a pretty fair deal!"
Damian suddenly thought of Draco. He wondered just how terrible the Malfoy heir's luck was going to be. The total number of frogs was hard-capped at 1,000. Depending on where Draco fell in the replication cycle, he was guaranteed to lose thousands of borrowed coins when the vault finally emptied.
"Listen to me," Damian warned sternly. "Do not leave unstable alchemical items lying around your dormitory in the future. They must undergo strict, isolated testing before anyone else touches them. Otherwise, you're going to cause a disaster you can't walk away from."
The twins nodded repeatedly in solemn agreement. After all, they knew better than to ignore the strict advice of their primary financial investor.
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