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The Treasure Hunter.
Why was it every single time there was a treasure that was discovered, there was a rush to get there first and plunder it? Harry knew he was being a hypocrite, given his own attitudes to treasure, but whenever an archaeological expedition discovered a trove of gold and silver either on land or in the sea, Harry usually left it alone if there was far too much heat which would stop him from stealing it otherwise unless he saw a kind of thrill in plundering it.
But the longer he was here, in China, the more Harry wondered how this whole thing had started in the first place; a pirate ship had been found somewhere in the South China sea by a group of fishermen, but a nearby tourist had taken a snapshot of the fishermen bringing up a piece of a very old Chinese junk which had sunk two-three centuries ago, and the next thing anyone knew, there was a well-equipped team of archaeologists who'd muscled their way in. The only surprising thing was how it had happened so quickly; it usually took months for an expedition to be arranged, especially a marine archaeological expedition.
Arrangements had to be made and clearances needed to be sorted out with the Chinese government while they needed to find a boat which was equipped with ROVs, and maybe even a mini submersible to explore the surrounding area of the sea bed, but it took a lot of money to fund such resources, so many marine archaeologists just made do with basic diving equipment and smaller technologies.
But then Harry had discovered for himself the wreck of the Chinese pirate junk had been sought after by the archaeologists for some time. They'd been in the area long before the fishermen had even found it with their fishing nets which had snagged on part of the wreck, and brought it up to the surface. In the meantime, the only thing Harry had to do was watch; he wasn't going to stop the scientists from studying the wreck of the ship, nor was he going to stop the other major problem the scientists had, in the form of the fishermen.
They had staked a salvage claim on the wreck. In their eyes, it was a simple game of finders keepers, unfortunately for them, the archaeologists had muscled in before they could even stake a claim, so now there was a massive battle taking place between the two groups and it was turning nasty.
Whatever, Harry had no intention of getting involved with any of it; he was the only reason he was here in the first place was that there something valuable on the bottom of the South China sea mingled in with the numerous tiny islands which made the entire place like a labyrinth. Harry had spent much of his time and energy just speaking to the locals, getting the local intel on the whole matter, and he had been practicing his Chinese thanks to the spells he had gathered before he had left Hogwarts 3 years before.
As he sat in a bar nursing a bottle of the local beer, thankful for the anti-intoxicant spell he'd cast over himself - the laws of Magical China were centuries harsher than those of the MACUSA because they had gone underground long before their American brethren as part of their long term plan, and their acquisition of Chinese muggle-born children when the children showed off their first bout of magic ensured their break from the muggles even more, but it had been a nightmare for him to get permission to even use his magic freely without being detected - Harry was jotting down in his notebook everything about the case. He had been paying a lot of attention to the rumours being spread around by the locals, and he was preparing to go down to the wreck to see what was down there once he had stolen a boat. Many were saying it was the ship of an angry spirit, which made him scoff since he hadn't felt any kind of magical spirit and he had checked magically, there was nothing wrong here.
Others were saying the pirates had treasure down there, but Harry knew that just because there was a pirate ship on the seabed it wasn't any guarantee there was a treasure; pirates usually raided any kind of ship and took their cargoes to sell it off, it was extremely rare for them to pick up anything like gold or silver, but it wasn't impossible especially when Asia was importing porcelain. In any case, his nighttime raids to the archaeologists' boat had made it clear that they had just found a simple ship on the sea bed. In any case, he wasn't really bothered about not finding anything more than an old golden ring or an old Chinese sword, he was more flexible than that.
Suddenly his ears pricked up. He had the whole place 'bugged' with runic clusters to help him eavesdrop and gather information, but much of it had been fairly mundane so he had let them talk while he jotted down his notes. But now something interesting had caught his attention and he used his occlumency to appear unaffected while he listened in.
"Are you sure, Charlie? Are you positive you saw them bring up a chest full of gold?" Someone asked in an excited whisper.
"I saw something, it wasn't necessarily treasure," another more pessimistic voice pointed out.
"I can't believe it; whatever is in the wreck is ours. I mean, we found the wreck before those fishermen," a third voice commiserated. "The only reason we couldn't get it out was that we didn't have the necessary gear to get it all out."
"Maybe we don't need to." The second voice suddenly went from pessimistic to sly, crafty; Harry stiffened when he heard the personality shift in the voice. It sounded like a true Slytherin was in that part of the bar, the voice of someone who was looking at things through different perspectives and coming up with a plan. This voice belonged to someone who was going to be trouble, Harry could see that.
"Why, what are you getting at?" The first voice asked, slightly less excited than before, just curious.
"I'm saying, why don't we find a way of stealing it, if it is a treasure?"
"What? Are you mad?"
"Why? A moment ago you looked like someone had run over your dog, now I'm saying we could steal whatever's been brought up and you won't even think it's a great idea."
"No, it's not that-."
"Then what is it? We can do this, all we need to do is find a way of boarding their boat and finding out if there's any treasure on board that boat," Harry heard the owner of the second voice say. He knew it wouldn't work since he had gone onto the boat, read the minds of some of the crew and the archaeologists. If there was any treasure, then these tourists were wasting their time.
Sipping his beer, Harry considered his options. These guys were going to go to the archaeologists' ship and ransack it. But if the archaeologists were near anything valuable in the wreck, then they would be very close to it given they had the resources. But the tourists would likely let them get whatever was there and then move in themselves. That was also the choice of the fishermen, he had heard how annoyed they were.
And then there was himself.
He had to get to the wreck, tonight. After taking another large gulp of his beer, Harry stood up and left the bar. The tourists didn't even see him leave.
X
Finding a boat to take him out to the wreck was perhaps one of the easiest things he could have done so far; the harbour was tiny but it was chock a block full of boats, equipped with engines or not, but that was no problem for Harry; a simple tap on the sides of the boat, and he was speeding towards his destination. As he headed for the archaeologist's boat in the dead of night, wearing a pair of glasses charmed to help him see clearly in the pitch dark, Harry prepared his gillyweed and his SCUBA suit. The wetsuit would be an added way of keeping warm when he swam to the bottom of the sea.
Finally, when the boat arrived at the archaeologists' boat, Harry tapped the side of the boat again with his wand to will it to slow down. By the time he came to a dead stop, the boat was simply gliding through the water.
Using a rope, Harry fixed the boat to the archaeologists smaller boat, and he stuffed the slimy gillyweed into his mouth. Jumping into the sea before the transformation took place, Harry waited for the pain as he swam slowly down. By the time he reached the bottom of the sea, Harry had gone through the painful transformation with gills in his neck and flippers on his hands and feet. Thanks to the gillyweed, Harry's eyes and senses had become acute, allowing him to see in the pitch dark sea, but he still lit his wand for added visibility. It didn't take him long to find the shipwreck.
Harry might have gone there to plunder the wreck, but he was more than curious about the ship itself. The wooden hull was badly damaged due to being sunk below the waves for so long, leaving behind a veritable coral reef. Once he was finished, Harry went through the wreck, using his wand to move anything in his way, be it sand or debris.
He found several swords and porcelain jars and urns. Some of them went into his wet bag and he moved on. Harry remained working on the wreck for two hours, barely expending his energy before he began the slow rise to the surface, already feeling the pain in his hands and feet and his gills. By the time he got out of the water, he was back to his normal self.
Again using his wand to speed away from the archaeologists' boat, he looked over everything he had taken; he had just collected weapons and a few treasures from parts of the ship his keen eyes noted hadn't been touched or tampered with by anyone from the archaeologist team above. He wasn't worried about them realising someone else got here before them; not only would he be far away from the archaeologists by the time they got that far, it would make more sense for them to point the finger somewhere else.
Either way, it was no problem.
X
"Hello, there, would you like a coffee or a tea?" The air stewardess smiled at Harry as he tried to get comfortable on the cramped plane seat before he could read the newspaper article he had picked up from the airport.
Harry smiled back at the cute air stewardess. "Yes, a coffee, please. Milk and three sugars," he ordered in perfect Japanese.
The young woman was very pretty, almost on the same level as Cho Chang or Su Li, or even Parvati or Padma Patil in an exotic - for him - way, and she blinked in surprise. "Your Japanese is very good, sir," she commented while she prepared the drink.
"I love languages," Harry bluffed, pleased by his wise decision to take advantage of the magical means of learning languages rather than the rather primitive way muggles used. "In any case, I was trapped in my home country growing up, and I wanted to travel the world and see it for myself."
"Well it's very good," she said as she handed him the cup.
Thank you," he added when she handed the cup to him.
As he sat drinking his coffee, ignoring the loud-mouthed American sitting next to him demanding that he tell him what he said to the stewardess so he could pick up such a hot girl himself, Harry focused his attention on the article. When he was in China, he had heard about a major archaeological find in the South Pacific Ocean. Someone had discovered a strange sunken city on the bottom of the ocean, and now there was a team of archaeologists forming a joint expedition of Thai, Australian, Chinese, New Zealander and Japanese scientists to investigate the city.
It wasn't unusual to find such things on the sea bed.
Baiae, a sunken Roman town for hedonists, was such an example, and then there was Olous, which was just off Crete. But this city was different, it was more advanced in design and architecture compared to everything else discovered by scientists over time.
