Don't Panic: A Wizard's Guide to Westeros (HP × ASOIAF)

Chapter Synopsis: A bit of medieval tech uplift, and a solid dose of petty revenge. All the makings of a productive Winterfell stopover.

____________________________________ 

 Last Time:   ... As Lord Edwyle looked over the gathered hoard in front of him in astonishment, he couldn't help but feel that luck was on their side, and quietly gave thanks to the Old Gods for their grace.

... It was no Lannister gold hoard, in-fact he was sure it was fairly modest compared to many of the great houses. It was likely just a portion of the kingdom's treasury at the time they bent the knee. It would have been suspicious to the conquering Targaryen's if Torrhen Stark had hidden the entire treasury.

The piles were, however, a mite larger than the gold piles he would usually have gathered together in preparation for the start of winter. This was quite the boon.

With winter having just passed, the Stark treasury was largely depleted. He thought, with a smile, that this gold could drive a far stronger start to the usual frenzy of summer building activities. He'd be able to afford more seed for planting, with plenty of gold left-over to set aside for much needed infrastructure projects.

He suspected many of the suggestions from Harry and Maester Garrick could be funded with this gold. It was like a weight lifted off his shoulders, he felt lighter than he had all winter.

____________________________________

Chapter 14: Back to the Grind Stone

Despite wanting to spend more time on the First Men scrolls they had recovered from the crypts, Harry had made a commitment to Lord Stark to offer valuable knowledge that could help his kingdom.

Each night, after a day with the Maester, Harry would delve further into his own tent library, focusing on the history section to gather ideas on low-tech improvements he could introduce to this medieval world. It was all quite mentally exhausting, but it would be well worth it for the quality-of-life improvement he knew could be achieved for the smallfolk of these lands. 

Ultimately, he'd only be sharing a small number of the ideas he'd collated, with the most impactful being the mills and crop-rotation. Most of the other concepts were focused around taking advantage of those innovations. Though Sirius occasionally chipped in with his own thoughts, like cheap animal fat soaps he'd noticed were worryingly absent in this world. 

He felt, this evening, that he was thankfully reaching the finish line in terms of how many new ideas the smallfolk could reasonably be expected to stomach in such a short time, even under orders from their Lord to implement them. Change could be a dangerous thing after-all, and Harry had no intention of creating unrest.

Having shared Sirius's soap-making idea with Maester Garrick, he turned his attention to one final concept, that of introducing Roman road-building methods to Westeros. He knew that true productivity and prosperity would come from open trade facilitated by faster, easier trade routes. 

After all, the romans controlled a vast empire with their improvements to trade and travel through their roads. After the Romans fell, the Venetians, Dutch, Portuguese, and then the English built their own global empires each taking over from the other as they developed better seagoing vessels, roads, and eventually rails to dominate the trade routes.

Forget wars, trade ultimately built these empires. Harry had no interest in an industrial revolution, so rail was off the cards, but roads, rivers, canals and sea routes all offered room for improvement. He'd yet to see any canals in the North, but noted that the river system was vast. He scratched down a note to look into that later.