"What is that thing?" Lys asks me as she walks closer, studying the floating silver gem. It was already starting to play another song but with a gesture, I cause it to go quiet.
"I don't have a good name for it yet, I'm just calling it a Musical Gem." I told her with a small chuckle at the little pun. "As you can tell, it produces music."
"I've never heard music like that before," Nel murmured while looking vacantly into the air. I'd bet good money that she was taking a look into the past at what I'd been up to. I wished her good luck.
I smirked to myself, "I'd be surprised if you had, the only other place it exists is in my head."
Nel's eyes refocused and a faintly astonished look passed over her features before her customary neutral mask fell back into place with practiced ease and she turned her full attention on me. I have to say, having those ice blue eyes on me caused my skin to prickle with goosebumps. The intensity was a bit intimidating... and titillating. I smirked up at her from where I was sitting. What else could I do? Nel seemed to consider me for a few moments before apparently deciding on what to do.
"You placed your memories in the crystal." She stated.
"Memories?" Lys wondered.
Nel nodded but didn't break eye contact with me, "Like with a pensive, but a pensive can't do what this crystal can. I thought the memories required to be stored in a liquid medium?"
"Supposedly," I confirmed. "But then again, your brain isn't liquid so there is nothing that says that it's impossible, it's just that no one has figured out how to place memories in a solid medium, until now."
"What made you think of ectotite?" Nel questioned.
"Ectotite!?" Lys exclaimed and pointed to the silver crystal. "That's ghost crud!? Really?"
I shrugged at them with a smug smile, "Well, it occurred to me that ghosts are essentially the memories left behind when a wizard dies. They even have the same silver glow as an extracted memory. So it stands to reason that anything they leave behind would have a connection to such things, and could thus be of some use." I told them with false modesty. "And guess who was right? Me that's who! This will make me even richer than I already am." I told them smugly. I didn't normally care too much about money, but that didn't mean I wouldn't take an opportunity when it fell into my lap. That would just be stupid. And wasteful.
"Clever." Nel mused as she inspected the crystal again. "But the scarcity of ectotite makes it a curiosity at best." She decided after a few moments and turned to face me. "Even with the great deposits here at Hogwarts, you would run out quickly if you were to try to sell them."
"True enough, but after I tested this little thing and confirmed that it worked I also came up with some possible ways for someone to synthesize crystals that should be able to do the same thing. I haven't had a chance to test it yet, but I'm sure that one of my theories will work." I countered easily. There was no telling if I was right, but I'd found that mixing a bit of science with magic tended to work out quite well for the most part. I was confident I would be able to produce a good substitute.
"That so?" Lys wondered. "Well, what do ya have in mind?"
I smirked again, "You'll just have to wait and see."
Lys rolled her eyes and swatted at me, but I was expecting it and dodged out of the chair and bounced away out of her reach. "Too slow, shortstack!"
"Will you ever grow up?" Lys asked, exasperated.
"Hum, growing up..." I mock-mused while tapping at my chin with a finger. "That doesn't sound very fun. I'll put a pin in that for now."
Lys sighed again and looked over at Nel as if hoping to get some support from the taciturn girl, but Nel was paying her no attention and had instead moved over to where I'd placed several more pieces of ectotite, some of them with memories in them, and some not. Lys sighed again and moved over to look them over herself. While Lys perused the crystals Nel was looking over some of the preliminary research notes I had strewn about the workspace and gave me a curious look.
"You are looking for a way for the memories to be displayed as visual images?" She wondered.
I nodded eagerly, "Yeah, it's something the muggles came up with, they call it cinema. It's moving pictures, kinda like a Wizard picture, but set to sound and music. They use it as a form of entertainment. I've already got the sound working, but that was the easy part. I will have to nudge an illusion charm a bit for it to be able to do what I want. It will take some time, but I'll get it."
"Cinema?" Lys asked thoughtfully before a light came on behind her eyes, "Oh right, the one with the cars?"
"That's a Drive-In theater, but close enough," I said. I was a bit surprised that they had it in Brittain, to be honest. I'd thought it was an American thing, but apparently not. It was still fairly popular in England, though not as much as it had been a decade earlier, or so I'd been told.
"You plan to sell such things as well?" Nel wondered.
"Hell yeah, I'll make bank," I told them proudly. And as an added benefit I would be able to watch all those movies that wouldn't be coming out for several decades. I mean, the 70's had some good movies, I think... Star Wars came out in the 70's right? I couldn't remember. Not that it mattered since I would soon be able to see it anyway. And books! It should be possible to hook a crystal up to Self Dictating quill and have it transcribe whole books! I grabbed a sheet of paper and made a note of it so I wouldn't forget.
"More ideas?" Nel asked curiously.
"Always more ideas," I confirmed with a smile.
---
The student population was understandably curious about the new addition to the castle, but so far they had left it mostly alone. I'd put up defenses to prevent just anyone from gaining access pf course, but I was somewhat hampered by the fact that I couldn't make them really nasty. Some brave souls had tested the defenses and had thus far been deterred from pushing further, but it was only a matter of time before someone got into it. Fortunately, or unfortunately, depending on your point of view, the more overt defenses weren't the ones I was relying on to keep people out. In fact, I very much expected them to get in, just not to the parts that mattered.
I'd constructed my tower for two reasons, two reasons that intertwined, which is the best kind of reasons. The first reason was that my room was getting too damn full of all my various experiments, finished and unfinished. I was planning on using the tower to store some of my cooler-looking stuff. Of course, I didn't want the student pop to get into that, but I did want them to be able to see it. So what is one to do?
Enter my second most favorite spell; the space expansion spell. If Moody can have a multi-compartment trunk who is to say I can't have a multi-compartment tower! No one, that's who! And that's why I made a damn multi-compartment tower. At first, I had only planned to have two rooms, but after some thought, I'd decided to have three compartments in case I'd come up with something else to add to it. A genius decision as it turns out. The first room was to be empty, just a large tube of stone to taunt anyone that tries to break into the tower.
That might seem somewhat contrary seeing as I want the students to be able to see my cool stuff. I came up with a deliciously evil little way to frustrate people. The top of the tower, which bears more than a passing resemblance to the top of a lighthouse, only without the giant spotlight. That is to say, it looks like a glass-walled gazebo with a walkway outside of it for people to stand on should they want to. I'd enchanted the windows to show the interior of the room containing my stash, but should a student breach the windows, either by getting the glass door open or by smashing the windows, they would find themself inside the empty room.
I could just feel the future frustration of my would-be burglars.
Just to make sure that they didn't get into their heads that it was just an illusion I had plans to add some constructs, like my three animal companions, that would be ordered to interact with people that came close enough. I might even have them able to exit the room and go about the school just to push it home. Yeah, I'd definitely do that. I might even leave the trio behind at school and have them serve in that position. It would save me some work, but it would leave them behind and I was somewhat fond of them.
Gaspode wouldn't complain, he'd pretty much been adopted by Gryffindor at this point and I rarely saw him at this point besides his weekly reports on the going ons in that house, and Quarth was hanging around Ravenclaw after they had defended him from Scamander. Maurice was the one that hung around the most but even he was more prone to find things to do outside of my room. I knew I could just order them to pay more attention to me, but I felt kinda proud of how far they had developed.
I smiled softly to myself as I moved one of those giant representations of the solar system and floated it up towards the top of the tower. I'd made it third year just because there was always one of these things floating around in any mystical setting I'd ever seen. I'd make it all old-school style. The sun in the center even had a huge silly face on it. I'd been damn proud of it at the time. It had been the most complex piece of transfiguration I'd managed at the time, and I'd done it almost completely wandlessly, another thing that had put a smile on my face.
I inspected my work and then shifted the whole mass of brass a bit before I set it to spinning. At some point, I'd have to fix it so that it was accurate to reality as far as the positioning of the planets. I might also set the sun to glow a bit at night. That could be cool, right? I mused at that as I made my way out of the tower. At the moment the only way into the treasure room was by using the space bending properties of the Room of Requirements but I had plans of creating a portal that led there. I just had to figure out a good challenge as a lock. I mused on that as I exited into my bedroom.
"Sir," Paddy said, drawing my attention. he was standing on one of the bedposts. I had to admire the balance on the little guy, he wasn't even wobbling. I couldn't do that.
"Yes, my trusty manservant," I answered grandly.
Paddy rolled his eyes at me. Politely of course. "You asked me to remind you of your upcoming meeting with your muggle friend. I believe you were going to procure a present of some sort."
"Mmm." I hummed agreeably, not really paying too much attention. "Remind me to get to that later, after I'm done with all this," I told him as I tried to decided what to move next. Maybe I should move my giant microscope in there. It would match with the solar system model.
"Sir," Paddy interrupted my thoughts again. "The young Miss will have her gathering the day after tomorrow, I fear you are quite out of time." He told me with a touch of condemnation coloring his tone.
I blinked in surprise and did a quick memory check. Paddy was right! Wow, where did the time go? "Oh..."
"Indeed, sir." Pady noted pointedly.
"Right... RIGHT! Present! I need a present..." I said, mostly to myself. Then I frowned. What could I get her? I had no idea what she liked, like at all. So... something general? What did girls like? Clothes? Fuck no, I had no taste that didn't involve a high chance for some wardrobe malfunction.
That left jewelry... More doable. What kind though. Not a ring, definitely. That had way too many... uncomfortable connotations connected to it. Maybe a pair of earrings? A necklace? Both? I frowned. It felt kinda... trite. She would have expectations when it came to my gift, something magical. But I quite honestly didn't feel like pushing my luck by giving her enchanted jewelry. But giving her ordinary jewelry didn't feel enough either.
I really should have put some thought into this before now. I walked slowly back and forth through my room trying to find a solution. I was on my third circuit when my eyes landed on a familiar green piece of crystal and an idea popped into my head. I walked over and picked up an uneven bit of ectotite the size of my thumb and studied it for a moment. It would have to be cut to shape. I could probably do it with transfiguration, but I knew that Lys knew how to cut gems and I liked the thought of telling the birthday girl that an actual dwarf had worked on her birthday gift. I'd need something to hold it, of course. And wouldn't you know, Lys could help with that as well.
I liked how things tended to work out. Now I just had to find a certain grumpy dwarf and annoy her until she agreed to help me out.