I don't own Harry Potter.
To tell you the truth, I was becoming tired of the Hogwarts angle and I couldn't really add anything new to it, so I added in the time skip.
The Treasure Hunter.
As he looked through the archaeological labs at the university, Harry looked through the reports of the basic findings of the underwater city that had been discovered in the pacific ocean. Harry had learnt how efficient many professional academic archaeologists were over the years, and all he had needed to do was to break into the university with a flick of his wand, shut off the alarm, and he just had to summon everything relating to the underwater city.
In front of him were photos of artefacts taken from the city and of the entire site, notes of everything the archaeologists that were surveying the city, their observations of the area the city was found in, their initial speculations on what some of the unusual artefacts were and what their initial findings were. The notes were in Japanese, but it wasn't a problem for him. After reading through the notes three times in a row to make sure he got everything and hadn't missed anything important, Harry found the location of the sunken city and more details than what had been released.
Dozens of points jumped out at him. Concrete building construction that had been made as physically light as possible. A simple and basic tramway pulled by enormous cables that allowed it to move around the entire floating city provided those sections had switches and cable pulleys. A Scottish archaeologist was reminded of the subway in Glasgow, which had once used a similar system, so it was possible.
All in all the system was cheap, efficient and simple. The city moved through the sea using collapsable masts which were unfurled and enormous sails were used to catch the wind.
The scientists researching the city had found a number of boathouses containing canoes and boats similar to the boats used by the Polynesians to colonise islands in the Pacific Ocean for countless centuries - in fact, they were so similar that several of the archaeologist team had commented on it, and Harry read the speculations contained in the notes the Polynesians were taught the design by the people of the city.
All of the boathouses seemed to be designed to hold and store and build and maintain boats for the city, and there were stacks of fishing nets and spears for hunting and there was also equipment for land exploration.
It wasn't so weird.
There were dozens of cultures that learnt from the practices of ancient ones. But what interested the archaeologists, and Harry when the wizard picked up on the detail, was how the city was capable of splitting itself into large chunks; all of the sections of the city were designed to attach to one another using some kind of clamping system that was still being examined and scrutinised. All of the sections of the city had their own mast, they had their own boathouse, so they could be self-sufficient.
There were even signs of gardens on the city segments; the archaeologists had found the remnants of long-dead plants, and there were even sections of the city that seemed to be giant gardens designed for growing vegetables but also for relaxation; they even found things like slides and climbing frames among other things for playing children, and something one scientist compared to a football or rugby pitch, among other things but nobody could be sure. The only thing nobody really understood was how the city was able to produce water. Nobody knew if the inhabitants of the city used some kind of filtration system or solar stills or gathered a large supply of water; according to the notes, one scientist suggested the city simply travelled from land to land, picking up different supplies like meat and extra vegetables when needed, and it included water.
But it was quickly refuted; while the idea had some merit, others stated the sheer size of the city alone made it very unlikely. there were other factors; they would need large amounts of water for cleaning, for watering their plants and tending to their food supplies. That spoke of a desalination method that was both intricate and simple for large amounts of water. There were a number of pumps, similar but larger and more complex than the pumps found on ancient sailing ships. Some of the scientists were convinced they were just for pumping water out, but nobody was sure.
Personally, Harry had thought the method the city used to gather the water was designed to gather water from all around. They took their freshwater from the sea after filtering it. It was not hard to do. He agreed with the scientists who believed the city's needs were too complex unlike with ships a long time ago, which sailed the seas and only gathered replacement supplies of water from islands in barrels. The yields the city would get were too small. Harry wasn't a scientist, he was a practical individual.
The university labs were sifting through hundreds of photographs of the city, and they had already uncovered hundreds of artefacts. But one thing that caught the interest of the archaeologists the most was how there were no skeletal remains from anyone. That meant in Harry's mind the city had been built as a large ship for a very large community and they had travelled for years possibly in search of new land, they'd found it, and they'd set their 'city-ship' adrift where it later sank, or they had sunk it themselves while finding a way off.
It seemed the scientists had come to the same conclusion, there was a second group being set up who would be pouring through the records of numerous lands near where the city had been found, but Harry made the decision to pay more attention to this whole archaeological expedition later on. He often did that with archaeological finds that he found the most interesting and fascinating, and this was one of the more fascinating since undersea finds were always intriguing.
In the meantime, he made a number of copies with his wand. He'd read a lot of the archaeologist's findings later when he got back to his hotel room and he left the lab.
