With Menes' promise, Tom could naturally make a request. He pulled out a scroll of parchment from his pocket and handed it to Menes.
"This is the method I found to make a Time-Turner. Can you create such an object here?"
Menes didn't answer right away. Instead, he took the scroll of parchment and held the golden ball in his hand, shaking it while reading the words it contained. It seemed that the ball could translate not only sounds but also words.
"A Time-Turner?" Hermione's eyes widened in surprise upon hearing Tom's request. She had seen that parchment before: it was a reward that Tom had received in Slytherin's Chamber of Secrets. She hadn't thought that Tom would want Menes to help him make something like that.
However, Hermione thought that if it could be done, it would be an astonishing alchemical artifact.
"Very well." Menes read the parchment Tom had given him and nodded as if it were a trivial matter for him.
"Have you taken two vials of the Time Sands from my pyramid?" He calmly poured himself a glass of beer, which seemed more like fermented barley gruel to Tom. "Bring it."
After taking the Time Sands from Hermione and Tom, Menes directed another glance at the two of them, gestured towards the pond in the Great Hall, and a bubble of water spewed out from the golden fish floated up. When the bubble was floating in front of him, he asked the catwoman to grab two gold chains and place them on his table.
He grabbed the bubble with his hand, the liquid water was like gel in his hand, soft but not dissipating, and he passed the gold chains through the water ball to make a necklace. He set the necklace aside and then casually combined the sands from the two glass vials and "squeezed" the bottles to form an hourglass with a small valve in the center to control the flow. A chain was also threaded through this hourglass to make another necklace.
As the chain was being threaded, there was a flash of light in the hourglass.
All of this was done without a wand, and Tom and Hermione were left speechless: Menes' wandless spell was astonishing to them. To them, this wandless spell was a masterpiece. For Tom, it wasn't difficult to perform a wandless levitation spell, but he couldn't perform a wandless transfiguration spell and solidify a water ball. And if Tom was correct, he hadn't seen any extra movements, but Menes had already made the Time-Turner.
"Take it." He let the two necklaces float towards Tom and Hermione. "Turn the hourglass upside down, and the golden fish will traverse time and start moving backward in time. When the sand in the top part finishes, the golden fish will stop. At this point, you have to turn the hourglass again, and when the sand in the bottom part finishes, the golden fish will bring you back to the original point in time..."
Tom and Hermione: !!!
This Time-Turner looked impressive!
Hermione thought it was an interesting design, and the fact that it could travel through time was a bit mysterious, while Tom was delighted that the Time-Turner Menes had made for him was not the same as the ones in the Ministry's collection. The Ministry's Time-Turners were designed to turn back time one hour per revolution, up to a maximum of five hours; beyond that, the risk of time travel increased significantly. And the Ministry's Time-Turner couldn't recover itself after traveling. If it has been used three times, it would have to wait for three hours. If one wants to return earlier, they just have to adjust the valve to let the sand filter through the hourglass a little faster.
Both types of Time-Turners have advantages and disadvantages.
The Ministry's Time-Turner was easier to use and had a more precise range. Tom's Time-Turner had more freedom and a broader range for traveling back and forth, and most importantly, it was Tom and Hermione's personal Time-Turner. The one from the Department of Magic was public, and each use had to be reported.
Furthermore, Menes was a very skilled alchemist. Tom took the Time-Turner and realized: it was a Time-Turner! An object that touched the realm of time! Its creation required a very deep and complex magic.
And Menes had made it by hand?
In the face of Tom's gaze, Menes seemed pleased. "It is a skill inherited from my lineage. Alchemy is like an instinct for my clan, but it seems that my descendants have tried to summarize the mysteries of alchemy..."
So it's a gift, then it's fine, goodbye! There was truly nothing Tom could do against a prodigy.
After obtaining both necklaces, Tom thought for a moment and gave Hermione the one with the golden fish water globe, while he put on the hourglass necklace himself.
"Let's try it," said Menes as he finished his tasks and began recommending the food on the table. Menes then treated the two men to a warm welcome and a wide variety of specialties. They stayed for a few days before departing.
Before leaving, Tom looked at Menes.
"I will not reveal this place to the outside world." He promised Menes seriously that he would keep his mouth shut.
"Don't do it!" Menes stopped, "Life here is very boring day after day. It's good to have new people here to keep me busy."
"Why don't you go out and take a look?"
Menes merely smiled at this question and did not answer. Tom immediately understood that Menes' form of immortality came at a great cost, a cost that prevented him from leaving his own temporal loop.
"Well, before I change my mind, please come back!" Menes gestured invitingly, and it was clear that he was somewhat reluctant to let them go, after being exposed to so many new and exciting things in the past few days that he didn't even want to let them go.
Tom and Hermione ventured into the pond, as they had done before, and returned to the pyramid with the help of the golden fish. They then resurfaced through the mechanism at the end of the pyramid.
By that time, Dr. Hunter had already left the city.
The floor mechanism returned to its original state. Tom took the cat statue from the mechanism and found two camels in the ruins, leading them out of the Sahara.
They returned the way they had come, back to Aswan. The cat statue had only been rented as collateral, and now they returned it to its rightful owner, as it wouldn't be honorable to do otherwise with a family heirloom. But when they arrived at the night market, they found the shop empty, even the owner had changed. According to the new owner, it seemed that the father and son had made a fortune and had sold the shop overnight...
Since the original owners had disappeared, the cat statue naturally passed into Hermione's hands as the creditor.
Tom placed the statue in Hermione's arms, looked at the sunset in the sky, and said, "Now that this is over, it's time for us to return to London."