There had been little in the way of useful progress after that, Helga spent the rest of her time in the mortal world giving admittedly humorous, but still somewhat insulting, advice about men and how to handle us. It probably would have been less insulting if it wasn't quite so spot on in most cases. Nel was actually blushing a bit at the end of it, which was a feat in of itself, but then again, Helga didn't seem to have any sort of problem giving what was essentially a very blunt version of "The Talk" to my innocent companion.
I would have laughed if I wasn't afraid the attention of the great Founder would fall on me should I do so. I'm fairly certain the experience would be both enlightening and humiliating in equal measures. I like to think that I'm smart enough to avoid such things. Thankfully it wasn't too long before Helga asked do be returned to the hereafter, but she did invite us to summon her again.
I resolved to myself that if I ever did I would do so in private, if I was going to embarrass myself I prefer it to be without an audience.
I also made a note to bring Nel along more when I went exploring as it occurred to me that her gift could be very effective in identifying how the various magical doodads resting in this place actually worked. In fact, I'd have to show her some of the stuff I'd found that I had no way of knowing what it was, mostly old potions that I had no way of identifying if they were still viable or not.
"Hey Nel, you mind looking some things over for me?" I asked as we moved back towards the entrance to the room.
Nel nodded placidly. "Of course."
"Great, come on!" I told her enthusiastically as I picked up the pace.
It didn't take us long to arrive at the area that I'd rather unimaginatively named "The Stash" because it was where I stashed most of the stuff I found in the Room that I didn't have an immediate use for or that would cause uncomfortable questions should they be discovered in my room. It was also where I stored most of my valuables; both money as well as items made of precious materials because fuck those Goblins.
There wasn't really any order to the area, just things strewn around in a somewhat circular manner. There were several trunks where I stored the valuables, mostly galleons, and sickles but there was a trunk filled with gold coins, real ones, of unknown origin, alongside what I believed were the actual crown jewels of some country, might even have been England for all I knew. Really ugly in my opinion, tasteless and silly looking. The rest of the trunks were mostly filled with goblets, candlesticks, cutlery, some Occamy eggshells, and a chandelier or two and of course a couple of gold and silver cauldrons.
A bit extravagant for the average wizards, but certain potions could be brewed to a greater potency in them, so I made a point to set them aside to not be destroyed for raw materials like I planned to do with the rest of the stuff I found.
There were several bookcases filled with books of… questionable nature, that I didn't want to have laying around in the open. There were also several cabinets, filled to the brim with bottles filled with potions that I hadn't been able to identify by observation alone, some of them had likely gone bad, but as I knew that plenty of potions didn't really have an expiration date, there as a good chance that some of the contents in these cabinets were still usable. Some potions grew in potency as they were allowed to age.
"Here we are," I said and gestured to the cabinets. "I was hoping you would be willing to take a look at these potions and see what they are and if they are still viable or if they have gone bad."
Nel gave me an indecipherable look before nodding mutely and started to touch bottles in quick succession while I watched on curiously. I'd never seen her use her ability before and it quickly became apparent that the process was far quicker then I'd assumed it would be when she'd explained it. By appearance, she only needed to touch any individual bottle for a few moments to get what she needed before moving to the next.
"I need somewhere to place the ones that might be usable." She told me after she finished the first shelf in the cabinet. She was holding a small vial filled with a light blue liquid inside, it almost seemed to glow in the dark.
I nodded wordlessly before concentrating and summoning a chair to myself and then transfigured it into a small but high table before placing it within easy reach. She placed the small vial on the table before getting back to work. As she separated out the potions in the cabinets two small groupings of potions started to form on the table. I looked them over but couldn't determine why she separated them from one another but refrained from asking at the moment. She would undoubtedly tell me once she was done.
The whole thing ended up turning about half an hour and most of the potions in the cabinets turned out to be bad, much as I'd expected it to. And on the table were two unevenly sized groups of vials and jars. I gave my companion a questioning look.
Nel gestured to the first and smallest grouping, containing only five items. "These I was able to identify, and their color and consistency suggest that they are still usable. The blue one is a cure for boils, the red one is Babbling Beverage, the light blue one is an Exstimulo Potion while the two green ones are Regerminating Potion." She said.
"And these?" I asked gesturing to the larger pile containing twelve bottles in all, some of which were glowing.
"They are too old for me to understand the maker, but from their looks, I assume they haven't gone bad yet." She told me. "I can give you my best guess, but I wouldn't recommend it. Some of the brewers of these were fond of making poisons."
I made a face. "Yeah… that wouldn't be any fun at all." I said then sighed. "Thanks for the help, it was nice of you."
"Of course," Nel answered placidly.
I gave her a quick smile before turning my attention back to the potions. The only rare one in the batch was the Exstimulo Potion. I only knew of it because it used Re'em's blood as its main ingredient. It produced an energetic effect in the body of a wizard that would cause their next spell to be more powerful then would normally be possible.
It wasn't widely used by wand wizards because the sudden spillover of power had been noted to sometimes cause damage to the wand, particularly when casting more intense spells.
I wonder if it could be used for enchanting. There were about four mouthfuls in the bottle so I'd get four uses out of it at best. Something to think about. I turned my attention back to my fair company. "You find anything you'd want?"
Nel nodded but didn't say anything.
"And that would be…?" I prompted her.
Nel just looked at me neutrally for a few moments and I almost decided that she wasn't gonna show me when she stuck her right hand up her left sleeve and pulled out a necklace with an attached pendant. It didn't look all that valuable, by the coloring I would guess the necklace and medallion that was attached was made out of simple brass. The medallion itself was a bit more interested; it looked like someone had removed the outside casing on one of those old pocket watches. The only thing remotely valuable looking on it was a blue precious looking stone affixed to one of the larger cogs. I couldn't identify the stone by sight, it didn't look like a sapphire, it could just be colored glass for all that I knew.
Somewhat pretty I supposed.
"Magical?" I asked curiously.
Nel shook her head. "No."
I frowned. "Does it do something?
"Not by itself."
"There are more like it?" I asked curiously.
Nel shook her head again. "No."
I stared at her for a moment before snorting. "Alright, keep your secret."
"Thank you. I will see you later." She responded before walking off leaving me alone.
Well, that had been curious. Or curious-er considering who I was dealing with. Well, I'd find out what she was up to later, probably. If anyone could keep me in the dark it was that little lady. I smiled a bit. I had to admit, it was a bit exciting, not knowing what was going on.
I liked it.
It felt like an adventure.
Then I frowned. When had that happened? Back home I'd never had any interest in things like that, reading about them sure, that was fun, but I'd never to actually go on one myself. Seemed damn uncomfortable for one. And dangerous, very very dangerous. The kind of dangerous you tended to end up six feet under by if you sneezed at the wrong time.
I felt another delicious thrill run up my back at the thought.
Oh, fuck me.
---
Ly carefully stepped out from the Leaky Cauldron and into the Muggle World and took a slow look around. She looked on as a large red car drove past her and turn a corner and disappeared. It was still such a strange place. A wonderful strange place, but still a very strange place. Lys had decided that she liked it though, because of that strangeness, not despite it. It presented her with an unexpected opportunity that she wouldn't have considered had she not insisted that she join Drew for his little excursion. It had opened her eyes to new things just walking around this place. And then there had been the books.
Working metal in the way of her ancestors were... satisfying, and appropriate. It made some need part of her feel... fulfilled, for lack of a better word. But then there were the books she had gotten Drew to buy, the ones that had been filled with muggle tales of contraptions. Machines! Such wonderful strange machines! Cars! Airplanes! Escalators! Elevators! Refrigerators! So many wonderful things. The books she had gotten explained about some of them, there were even descriptions and basic diagrams on how they were put together. Such as a basic steam engine. Such a simple thing, but with so many applications. Or so Affrig had told her.
The Dwarves of the past had just started experimenting with such things when the Goblins had sacked their ancestral cities. Industrialization, Drew had called it. it had allowed them to create things like the Arboretum that they had found in the Room of Requirement, the one with the strange copper-like plant in it. Affrig had told her that Nidlaviir had been filled with machines of different sorts and purposes, from opening the giant doors that lead outside to simple elevators that brought up ore from the depths. Drew had noted that they had seemed quite advanced for the time, though not as advanced as the muggles of the present. The dwarves had never created something like the combustion engine, for example.
That was why she was out here. The thought of taking what the Dwarves of old had started, adding a bit of muggle ingenuity, and then taking it further with her magic had lit a fire in her mind. It made her heart beat in excitement like nothing ever had! The things she had learned in the books had just made it worse! it had filled her head with ideas that wouldn't leave her alone, they filled her dreams! She saw complex puzzles of cogwheels, spigots, and sprockets, nuts and bolts that all fit together into a wonderful dance of parts. She was fascinated by the complex interactions of parts inside of a simple pocket watch and had spent hours working out what part did what and why. That had been a fun afternoon.
But that was not all! Drew had sown her something that he called a cellphone. It looked like a piece of black glass in the shape of a rectangle, just large enough to comfortably fit into one's hand. That is until you pressed a small button on the side wish caused it to light up. The things you could do with it were astounding and she wished she could get her own, but Drew said it wasn't available to the public yet, and he only had one by sheer luck. He'd said it was a computer, a type of device that could think, after a fashion. it didn't have any moving parts like other machines, running entirely on electricity. She didn't know what a microchip or a processor was yet, but she would find out that too. And then she would make her own.
She stepped into one of the bookstores she'd seen on her first tour of the muggle world and immediately started to look for any interesting book dealing with machines or anything tangentially related. Her father had sent her enough muggle money to buy a good chunk of books, but even that money wouldn't be near enough to buy all the things she wanted, so she would have to be careful to stretch it as much as she could.
She blinked as something caught her eye and turned to look. She was passing through the children's section, which was lined by all manner of picture books. They weren't immediately interesting to her, but something somewhat familiar had caught her eye. It was a brightly colored picture of what looked like a large knight, but the people standing around it made it seem like the knight was the size of a small building. She picked it up and turned it over to look at the backside and gasped in surprise. It was the same knight, but now with the armor removed on half the body, like a cross-section. And what was below was obviously supposed to be mechanical. Fascinated Lys cracked open the book to see that it was filled with both pictures as well as text, which was contained in little balloon-like parts. She quickly deduced that it was a bit like seeing a play, only on paper.
"Hmm." She hummed to herself as she flipped through the book, reading the occasional word balloon until she found one that seemed to describe the strange metal knight. "Ro-bot..."