As usual, I don't own Harry Potter, I only own this story.
Please let me know what you think.
The Treasure Hunter.
The boat was nearly where he wanted it to be. In the meantime, Harry checked the SCUBA tank on his back as the boat sped on its way to the spot he wished to dive, nodding in satisfaction when saw the tank was full. There was enough breathable gas in the tank to last for three hours. Harry wasn't bothered about the time, really. He had been hiring out boats for some time, and since he wanted to be seen as just another tourist instead of someone seen in the peripheral vision in someone's eye, he would need to use muggle breathing equipment to explore the wrecks and the sea bed.
However, once he had explored the wrecks, he would go back in a stolen boat and check out the wrecks later and plunder whatever he found so he could keep or sell.
The tourist thing was just so he could get the lay of the land as it were much faster, so he could explore later on his own with a good idea of what to expect.
Once the check on the air-tank was finished, Harry turned his attention to the rest of his equipment. He had flippers, the face mask, the mouthpiece, and a large diver's knife, and a net bag so he could collect things on the sea bed and bring back up to the surface.
As he worked, he had time to think.
After the Dursleys had almost killed him by sticking him on that fire, Harry had been placed into foster care in London. Those female coppers had gotten their wish, and truthfully Harry was pleased; his memories of the Dursleys were as clear as the memory of Voldemort himself levelling that wand in his face, and while his stay with the muggle family was thankfully brief, Harry's memories of Dudley poking and punching him were not pleasant. The thought of him being at the same school as Dudley sickened him. There was little doubt in his mind Dudley would be a bullying bastard by now, hated and feared by his victims while he was protected by his parents who ignored everything he did.
Since his memories of the Dursleys and Voldemort were as clear as crystal, so to were his memories of how the policewomen had seen him. He remembered the Detective Constable watching his closely with a look of surprise on her face, but he didn't know what she had been thinking, although he knew she had been surprised by him.
In foster care, because he hadn't had a name, Harry had been given the name Matt Turner, the person who had given it to him had been a fan of Turner the watercolour artist, but while he had accepted it he had already known his true name. Harry Potter.
Lily Potter had been frightened for him. She had been frightened for a long time, frustrated at the same time because the Order of the Phoenix was fighting an enemy who had no scruples, and they were losing because Dumbledore's pacifistic stance was doing more harm than good during the war against Voldemort, a war he remembered from his mother's point of view, a war which Lily Potter, in her wisdom, had wanted him to prepare for. But when she heard Voldemort was after her child, him, Harry, Lily's fears saw reality. She was frustrated by James' belief Dumbledore would look after their child if they died. To make matters worse, Dumbledore was encouraging his mother to rebuild bridges with the Dursleys. Not that Lily bothered since the Dursleys had proven time and again they wanted nothing to do with their 'freaky' relatives and pretended they simply did not exist.
Harry sneered at the thought, guessing correctly his father, like Minerva McGonagall and Remus Lupin who both followed Dumbledore's orders like they were a pair of mindless automatons, would have blustered had he seen what the Dursleys had tried to do to him.
Lily hadn't had any doubt things would have been bad for him growing up if they were lost. She had no idea what Dumbledore had planned for him, but she had no desire for her child to become another of Dumbledore's lackeys. So, she had done her research, and she had discovered a way she could imprint her knowledge, her magical experience on her son, implanting it into Harry's mind.
At the same time, Lily also imprinted a desire for him to survive and to never grow up. And it worked. Not only did Harry remember everything he had gone through in his own life, but he had his mother's memories. He saw, through her memories, just how pathetic and self-interested Petunia had become, never growing, never changing, even though she had dreams of being better than she was right now.
But Harry didn't just have a massive encyclopaedia of knowledge locked away in his mind. Lily had come to believe education as it generally appeared was more limiting than people expected. Schools never encouraged their students to grow on their own, giving them the interests to seek out fields of knowledge to study. Yes, while Lily believed school was essential, she also believed that people should look for knowledge on their own, and she had implanted that belief in her son.
For instance, while she had knowledge of wandless based magic and how to make it work, Lily had only allowed the basic principles to be learnt and practiced by her son to ensure accidental magic did not break out. She didn't just hand him the knowledge on a plate, she provided him with enough knowledge to allow him to understand how it worked, and mentally encouraged him to discover the answers by himself. It was a hands-off form of knowledge gathering, but it worked. At the same time, because he was being encouraged to learn for himself, by himself, Harry gained a thirst for knowledge.
At the same time, she had inspired him to study other things in primary school, and again at Hogwarts. Indeed, by the time he had reached the first-year level at Hogwarts, he had already mastered the basics of using magic to do what he wanted and after sensing his mother's essence was pleased with his performance, she gave him tidbits of her spell repertoire to help him grow. It was kind of annoying and demeaning slightly that his mother would hand him knowledge like a dog received scraps, but at the same time he had figured out how to transfigure and charm objects very well. He knew she wanted him to experiment, to learn by doing instead of learning how to do things by relying on her.
Lily had wanted him to become stronger in order to fight opponents like Dumbledore.
It worked. At the same, he had developed his experience as a thief, moving on from being a shoplifter, a pickpocket, and then as a burglar. He made mistakes, more than a few, and yet he bounced back.
Lily's essence would give him knowledge of charms, and he would push the boundaries of his magic to help him make it work while at the same time using the principles to develop his own repertoire.
While he had been studying magic privately before he had received the Hogwarts letter, Harry had been developing other interests while he tried his best to keep himself as invisible as he could be while he made the effort to make friends while he tried to make himself as normal as he could while he kept some degree of control over his magic, he had discovered he had a fascination with the Indiana Jones and Lara Croft: Tomb Raider franchises.
He just loved the thought of going out into the world, tracking down ancient legends of incredible artefacts, but at the same time he had watched a few heist movies, and he realised that going the legit way of finding the artefacts and just giving them to a museum where they would be gawked at by clueless and incurious idiots for eternity when in fact he could just hand them over to private collectors would make him rich. Harry had known thanks to his mother's memories, his family was rich, but he didn't like the idea of just inheriting cash without doing anything for himself.
With that in mind, Harry turned to burglary.
Okay, at first, he had used his powers to help him commit basic thefts, some pickpocketing here and there, and shoplifting here and there. He had been bitten by the bug and he had discovered the thrill involved in stealing from others, and once he had discovered that, he had asked himself why not use superior burglary skills to steal artefacts from museums or tombs.
Indeed, before he had gone to Hogwarts, Harry had already stolen a few paintings from private collectors and he had sold them for exorbitant prices in illegal auctions for hard cash. They were a good starting block, and the burglaries had won him some degree of respect while he learnt from experts in the fields while he privately studied archaeology.
And then he had received his Hogwarts letter. Harry had been mystified when he had met Hagrid rather than a professor like his mother had met when she'd been indoctrinated into the magical world although she knew about the magical world already thanks to Snape, he had quickly worked out Dumbledore was likely playing one of his games.
His surprise had been transformed into certainty.
Hagrid had clearly instilled into him Slytherin was evil, and the way he spoke about the house was full of disgust, which made him seem too biased to be believed. Lily's memories didn't cover Hagrid's feelings to the four Houses, simply because she had never asked to find out for herself, but Harry had a feeling even she would have been taken by surprise by the amount of disgust coming from the otherwise gentle giant of a man.
Lily had never seen Slytherin as evil. Yes, more than a few of the Death Eaters had come from that House, but she believed a large number of those same Slytherin students had only joined Voldemort because of the bullying they'd received from the other students, and considering just how bad the bullying had been for some time during his mother's time at the school, it was a wonder none of the Slytherins had wanted to join even though Lily got the impression some of them truly did not care about the sick ideology Voldemort spouted.
The way Hagrid had taken the Philosopher's Stone out of that vault in Gringotts had been suspicious in itself given how the Hogwarts gamekeeper had just taken it while on a shopping trip, although Harry hadn't known what it was at the time.
He had been sorted into Gryffindor. Very quickly; the Hat had barely touched his head as it had been lowered onto his scalp, and then it shouted "Gryffindor" without once getting an insight into his personality. It didn't take long for Harry to work out the Sorting had been rigged by Dumbledore, who was the only one in the whole school who could influence the Sorting Hat.
The sorting had put his life in context, really; Harry had wondered that whole night, especially when he was forced to befriend Ron Weasley simply to lull the Weasley family and Dumbledore into a false sense of security while he prepared himself from potential potion doping and obliviations which he had known would be on the cards once he had used his skills in legilimency to scan Weasley's incredibly basic brain, just how much of his life Dumbledore had played with.
The death of his parents (if Dumbledore hadn't had something to do with that, he would be very surprised), which led inevitably to being dumped at Number 4, Privet Drive although Harry knew Dumbledore hadn't anticipated or even planned for him to be burnt alive, he had planned on him being indoctrinated with the crap about Slytherin being evil.
He had even ensured Molly Weasley spouted off about where Platform Nine and Three Quarters were, the 'friendship' with the Weasley family even if Harry was repulsed by them. Dumbledore had even tried meddling in what he did in his spare time, and where he went for the summer, but ever since he had gotten away from the foster home, and he had started to live full-time in his mother's old bungalow in Sussex and he had proceeded to leave the country for his holidays so then the old wizard wouldn't try to put him back with the Dursleys again even if Harry had gotten trained in martial arts from a young age to toughen himself up a bit. Harry didn't know if they still lived at Number 4 or not, but he truly didn't care.
And then there were his years at Hogwarts.
Harry was certain Dumbledore had manipulated events specifically with him in mind, and Voldemort was at the centre of it all.
"We're at the site you wanted to look at."
Harry looked up and smiled at the boatman he'd hired for the last week. "Great, I'm ready," he said, looking forward to seeing what was down there, although there was a chance the whole site had been ransacked already; he might be a treasure hunter, but burglary was always in the background.
Perching himself onto the side of the boat, Harry slipped on the mask and checked his tanks one last time before he waved to the sailor and went over the side.
Harry was momentarily shocked when he went into the water, finding himself suddenly weightless before he adjusted to the new environment he was in, and he began swimming down slowly to the seabed. He looked around, admiring the glow of the water from the sun's rays shining through the liquid environment around him, but he very quickly swam on looking for any shipwrecks.
He wasn't interested in looking for gold and silver. While he knew some of the wrecks around here hadn't been touched, he knew some of them had, especially since the sailor who'd brought him out here knew about some of the wrecks this far out, once carried such treasures. It was likely those same ships had been plundered long ago by now given how much of a tourist hotshot the wrecks were which meant many divers were attracted here to the wrecks, never mind how much of a magnet they were to other parties.
That didn't worry him very much considering how much of a treasure hunter he was. If this plans to become an archaeologist went through despite the yearly interference of Dumbledore, who was still trying to see him 'protected' from the remaining Death Eaters, although if Dumbledore wanted the Death Eaters to steer clear of him in the first place then he should have seen them properly punished instead of being allowed to literally get away with murder. Harry frowned a little as he swam as his mind went to the last attempt of Dumbledore's to get him to go to someone else, someone whom he trusted to look after him although the old fool refused to say who it was he'd had in mind. The argument hadn't gone well for the old wizard, and despite his firmness, Harry had refused to play by Dumbledore's rules. Yes, while Harry was doing his level best to keep his head down and not show his intelligence off because Dumbledore was ensuring he never learnt enough about magic despite his mother's memories and her own personal knowledge of magic which was far greater than Hermione Granger's, although the difference between his mother and the bushy-haired idiot was where Hermione read books and used her photographic memory to help her get through the different courses, his mother had had the wisdom to experiment with what she learnt, and she had excelled rather than simply repeat the knowledge verbatim, he refused to allow Dumbledore to play games on what happened to him outside of school.
The old fool had not even known he had almost been burnt to a crisp by the Dursleys, for goodness sake. Why would he let someone who was not only negligent but also so out of it place him with someone else? It was sheer madness.
Harry mentally sighed. He was mentally exhausted just thinking about Dumbledore and having to keep his head down although he knew if he didn't keep his intelligence hidden then Dumbledore would find out and wipe his memory. That was the last thing he wanted. He didn't even want to think about what Dumbledore could remove from his memory, and what he could tamper with because he knew Dumbledore was a powerful wizard and he was old enough to know of the mind arts. Harry had managed to keep the old fool off his scent for a while, but if he did anything suspicious or showed off his true knowledge of magic, then the old wizard would intervene and then he could kiss goodbye to his mother's knowledge and he would be reduced to one of those mindless slaves of Dumbledore who followed the man's lead like a puppy being thrown scraps.
Only two more years, he thought to himself while he kept an eye out over the seabed as he swam ahead, just two years and then I can wave goodbye and let Dumbledore clean up any mess he had caused himself. After being in that poxy school for a while, it's not impossible to see just how many he's made. Or better yet, let the magical world do it; after so many years of burying their heads in the sand and ignoring their problems, they need to make themselves useful for a change….Hold on, is that….a U-BOAT?
Harry had been diving for a short while in different places to find objects to add to his private collection and to sell off, but while he had never before seen the wreck of a submarine on the seabed, he knew enough to know how to tell the difference between them and a small ship. And since he was interested in history although it was mostly for his own benefit, he knew enough of the second World War to know what a U-Boat looked like.
But he hadn't expected one here. Harry swam closer to the submarine and inspected its hull, he swam around the length and the breadth of the sunken wreck and examined it carefully. Aside from severe damage to the aft section, the hull looked good albeit it was covered with barnacles and coral, but Harry knew it was still badly corroded.
Slipping his wand out of his concealed holster which had cost him an arm and a leg from one of his forays into Diagon Alley but had proven to be a worthwhile investment for his longterm plans, Harry scanned the submarine without any care at all to the so-called Trace, which he knew was nothing more than a fake. In any case, since he wasn't technically on land and was in fact beneath the sea, there was no danger to the Statute of Secrecy.
As he scanned the wreck and received the results, he was surprised by what he found. The submarine was surprisingly only flooded in the forward torpedo room, the rest of the ship was apparently still dry although he had no idea how that had happened, especially after five decades worth of being immersed in seawater which had corroded the U-Boat's hull.
Harry shrugged his shoulders, deciding it made little difference to him really. He had a U-Boat here that was likely in good condition on the idea, maybe barring a few leaks. It was a tremendous find of marine archaeology, but best of all….it was all his. He only needed to figure out a way of getting inside the submarine once, and then he could come back and forth whenever he wished, and once he had done that he could return whenever he wanted and plunder the submarine of whatever was inside it.
Yeah, it was likely full of the skeletons of its crew, but Harry didn't care about that. In his eyes a skull of a human being and a gun were they were just things, but what it boiled down to was just wondering how much money they were both worth. He didn't care if he was seen as a grave robber, he was. And he didn't care if he plundered countries of their treasures, and he didn't care how many people got in his way, like with that time he had travelled to Syria and Iran last year. Stupid muggles, they had been completely unprepared for what he had done to them. A few flesh rotting spells before he had wiped them out with his own custom killing curse.
The only thing that worried and surprised Harry was the fact the U-Boat seemed to have simply not been noticed. He had no idea if it was because divers had only been interested in the other wrecks, or they had simply not bothered in coming around here. But then again he did know some wrecks went untouched and unseen for years, so he hoped it fitted there.
Harry examined the submarine again to find out if there were other places he could enter and leave, but he found there wasn't a way in unless he wished to compromise the artefacts inside with a flood of seawater he'd never be able to stop. Harry performed a few more scans before he realised he didn't have the equipment to get inside and seal the U-Boat off.
After etching a tracking rune to the hull of the sunken wreck, Harry checked his air supply and saw he only had 45 minutes of air left in the tanks which made him decide to just return to the surface, already making plans for the U-Boat. However, at the same time, he needed to remind himself he would need to come back down here over the next few days, just to see what else was down here.
For now, however, he would go and party with the gorgeous Caribbean girls.
XXX
In an office on the island, three people were in consultation. "Are you sure?" an older man said.
"Yes, I heard a report from my friend in the coast guards," a slightly younger man replied, his expression grave. "A boat was on the water, close to the wreck of the U-Boat. According to the radio, it was one of the tourist sailors who sells diving trips to tourists. They were out there for some time. When I heard about it, and the tourist was coming back, I went out to check them out for myself."
"What did you find out?"
"It was a teenager. A boy, maybe fourteen - thirteen years old, tallish, skinny, messy black hair. But he was on his own, apart from the sailor. He had a small bag full of bits and pieces he's taken from the wreck."
"Sounds like a souvenir diver," the third person, a woman commented. "Are you sure the U-Boat was untouched?"
"No."
"This isn't good. The wreck needs to be kept undisturbed before we make a move," the first man said.
The second looked seriously at him. "Do we have the equipment needed to bring the sub up to the surface?"
"Yes. We will by the end of the week. Unfortunately getting it all down there will be problematic, and we need to do it carefully and slowly without being noticed, and that will be tough since it won't take a rocket specialist a lot of clues to realise what we're doing. Can you ensure your friend in the coast guards can keep the riffraff away?"
"I can only do my best, but most fishermen go out late at night, and they will be hard to keep away."
The first man wasn't happy. So much of the plan hinged on secrecy until it was too late, but then again this whole operation was complex enough as it was. But ever since he and his group had found the wreck, he had seen a way of moving up in the world. "Tell him to do his best," he advised, knowing not to demand miracles since he knew they rarely came. In any case, he knew he could demand one precaution after another and it wouldn't do the slightest bit of good.
"Okay, tell him to do his best."
"Will do, but he will need to be careful; the coast guards will get suspicious if he pushes too much."
"Does your contact know what we've got down there?" the woman asked.
"No, I haven't told him. He took the bribe easily enough, you were right to find someone in the coast guards who're down on their luck," the second man grinned.
"What about this kid?" the woman asked.
"We'll keep an eye on him," the first man said, making his female colleague frown. He saw the frown. "What is it?" he asked, sensing the disapproval.
The woman sighed, inwardly hiding her major inner concerns. "I just think our plan is too risky. I mean, here we are, playing around with a sunken U-Boat. Surely we can go for something more modern, more advanced? It's going to take a large number of our funds to do what we're doing."
"I know, but we have to risk it. I hear what you're saying about the U-Boat and acquiring something more modern but think of the advantages. In any case, we can't get a modern submarine on short notice."
