The Malfoy family were indeed excellent business partners.
Not just the adults—the younger generation even more so.
Jane Yu had come to understand this profoundly.
A surge of emotion led her to stuff that half-bag of "image usage fees" right back into her future business partner Draco's arms.
"Consider it an investment in your future ventures," she consoled him kindly. "Study hard, improve daily, and don't get so fixated on theory."
After five years together, she'd already discovered his hidden stubborn nature—perhaps inherited from his mother's Black family lineage.
For anything that piqued his curiosity or that he wanted to attempt, he simply had to try it, never turning back until he hit a brick wall.
Only after a truly brutal collision would his stubborn convictions finally shift.
—In other words, he never listened to advice.
Before failing, he would steadfastly believe that his business plan, executed according to standard theory, was absolutely the finest plan in the entire world.
Even when the equally proud Blaise was practically begging for confidence tutorials, even when Theodore and Daphne—who barely cared about business matters—questioned his reckless free merchandise campaigns, he never once doubted his own strategy.
Even when Jane Yu generously shared practical case studies that bordered on trade secrets, he forcibly twisted her examples to fit his theories, then crammed theory down practice's throat, insisting that merchandise was some indispensable synergy marketing strategy, whilst pay cuts and drastically reducing potion quality were the true path.
In short, everything could be theorised—even nonsense could be twisted into warped logic.
—The good news was that theoretically, he had indeed surpassed 99% of wizarding shopkeepers.
—The bad news was that practically, he had unfortunately surpassed 0% of wizarding shopkeepers.
"Let go of your saviour complex and respect others' destinies—this saying particularly applies to our dealings with Draco," Blaise observed astutely. "Perhaps you don't know, but when we were small, we secretly rode modified toy broomsticks—Aunt Narcissa forbade him from flying more than two feet off the ground, and we all knew how easily one could get hurt... Though we all tried to dissuade him, Pansy even threatened to tell his father if he dared go up, he absolutely had to try it. Nearly got himself completely rebuilt. Apparently after we left, Draco was hung on Malfoy Manor's gates by his father for a lecture—"
"Shut it!" Draco yelled, face flushed crimson. "The broomstick business... how can that compare to my grand commercial enterprise?"
"After he fell, he blamed us," Blaise continued exposing Draco's childhood misdeeds to his face. "Said it was our fault for not stopping him. In your words, Yu, 'good advice can't save a stubborn ghost'... Theodore and I refused to speak to him for a month over it... He got better that time, but next time he'd make the same mistake..."
Draco leapt up furiously, covering his gossiping friend's mouth, loudly explaining:
"What do you mean I don't listen to advice? Back then my head was full of nothing but broomsticks—though it was only a toy broomstick, it had been modified, used proper mahogany branches, painted with beautiful lacquer... You lot didn't understand its sublime magnificence, so I never considered what you were saying!"
Blaise turned away and winked meaningfully at Jane Yu.
She could understand that wink's meaning—
It seemed Draco's advice-resistant nature had been evident since childhood.
At three you see the man, at seven you see his fate—the ancients' words held true indeed.
Draco clutched the money pouch, stubbornly lifting his chin, his grey eyes seeming ready to shed tears yet proudly refusing to let them fall:
"I'm going to burn all those bloody theories—useless rubbish, completely worthless, all lies and deception—"
"That's right, after getting told off he also said he'd burn the broomstick," Theodore observed calmly. "But less than a week later, we found that supposedly burnt broomstick under his bed..."
"This is different!" The mortified Draco protested stubbornly. "Bloody hell, academic theory and business practice—how can that be the same as a broomstick?"
He immediately used Incendio to send off a copy of The Development of Management Theory to demonstrate his resolve.
But a week later, Jane Yu was hardly surprised to discover in Transfiguration class—
A copy of How I Succeeded: The Autobiography of Devlin Whitehorn had appeared in Draco's desk drawer in front of her.
This founder of the Nimbus Racing Broom Company had summarised all manner of successful entrepreneurial experiences in his book.
Failure truly was the mother of success—it appeared Draco had finally recognised
the difference between theory and practice.
Quite cause for celebration indeed.
...
"I've always known Muggles are utterly untrustworthy," Draco began his blame-shifting in the common room, pretending he'd buried all business books. "It's all the Muggles' fault—their theories must be too superficial and incomplete, which led to my failure."
His flanking bodyguards Goyle and Crabbe looked as though they wanted to speak but held back, finally managing only nods of agreement.
Jane Yu found this rather difficult to assess.
She looked up to find Goyle and Crabbe exchanging glances, various expressions of bewilderment and conflict sliding across their faces...
She could read their expressions' meaning: Draco's gone mad!
"Absolutely right," Jane Yu replied perfunctorily, having already anticipated Draco's sequence of reactions. "So what's your summary of the failure's causes?"
This time Draco finally listened to his housemates' suggestions, rather than selectively hearing only the encouraging words he wanted to hear.
"I was careless," he admitted his problems reluctantly. "When you told me about your company... my head was full of werewolves and house-elves... All that bloody book's cost-cutting strategies misled me..."
"I've deeply considered the reasons for my failure," he confessed after extensive research and investigation. "Those suggestions you made earlier about cutting merchandise—I think perhaps I put too much cost into marketing, which led to failure. But marketing's proper extent is hard to control. I'd intended to use merchandise to capture the entire Hogwarts market and squeeze out those black market dealings..."
Jane Yu felt as though she was attending yet another wizarding MBA group discussion class.
Upon hearing this content, Goyle and Crabbe beside Draco had already developed spiral eyes.
"No, you absolutely don't need merchandise marketing," she replied. "Take Floo-Poom as an example—they never market because they're the only company licensed by the Ministry of Magic to sell Floo Powder... And your Baruffio's Brain Elixir is also the only in-school potion business approved by the Heads of House. Official authorisation is the best publicity—your marketing was excessive."
Draco fell into contemplation, then had a sudden realisation.
"Indeed, absolutely..." he murmured. "How foolish of me, truly. The Heads of House had already agreed, the prefects helped notify students—why did I bother with all that merchandise? Indeed, official support is most important. If I could get the professors to mention Baruffio's Brain Elixir in class, that effect would be stronger than sending ten sets of merchandise..."
He appeared to have awakened some power, profoundly understanding his family's ancestral wisdom in wealth accumulation:
"That's exactly what my father does. He's devoted to maintaining good relations with the Minister for Magic, thus gaining many Ministry licences and publicity. And those Ministers and candidates also need Galleons to support their positions... Everyone benefits mutually..."
Jane Yu watched in amazement as Draco leapt up, leaving his bodyguards behind, and charged towards the library:
"Politicians and businessmen... mutual influence... government-business relations... politics and economics..."
He seemed to have once again selectively ignored her question of "Aren't you going to revise?"—
Apparently intending to establish his own school of thought and create an original branch of wizarding scholarship.
~~~~❃❃~~~~~~~~❃❃~~~~
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