Literally everyone in the castle was aware that he could create fairly solid enchantments for all manner of things. The best example of this was the playmaker rings that more than a few people were dying to get their hands on. To be fair though Malfoy still goes around making an ass of himself by bragging about his own ring that was all shiny and pretty to look at. Nick had to screen the people coming for commissions as more than a few were clearly trying to rip him off.-
Like a first year Slytherin student actually thought that Nick was stupid enough not to realize why he wanted a solid gold ring with an enchantment to get away with sleeping in class for cheap. The student tried to argue that Nick shouldn't be charging for materials at which point Nick kicked him out. Unless someone provided the material themselves he was definitely going to charge for them or else it comes out of his pocket. Despite the few trouble makers he did get quite the eclectic and varied set of orders. From waterbreathing , to flight the list was extensive and made Nick's friends wonder why someone would even want some of them like the person who wanted a ring that purred like a cat when stroked.-
That wasn't a joke as a first year Hufflepuff girl wanted exactly that for some reason. Nick split the commissions into three categories based on a few factors such as difficulty , material cost , research time , and how willing he was to do it. The categories basically just decided the order he did them in with the easy and near effortless ones coming first followed by the moderate difficulty and research involved ones and finally the pains in the ass time sinks.-
After he had crafted his realm ring nick was surprised to find out that his soul had fully resonated with his body and mind perfecting his channeling of spiritual energy. This meant that he no longer glowed when he enchanted something though the glow from the rings and floating words during the process was still there. This was a huge boon to Nick as it meant he could now crank out even more rings a day since he wasn't wasting as much energy during each session. Meanwhile his friends were each improving by leaps and bounds in each of their chosen fields with his help.-
Ron finally crafted his first wand that was functional using a piece of unicorn hair that Nick let him have as his first core material. Ron bragged to literally everyone who would listen to him for a week after that. Nick on the other hand was still studying the staff in his realm as he was constantly improving his veritology knowledge thanks to what he was getting. See the staff was made in a far more advanced version of the subject that used hard to deduce methods. The core of the staff was from an extinct creature as well that was worth studying by itself.-
Hermione and Daphne were both quickly becoming fluent in elder futhark as they rarely made any mistakes anymore when they wrote out sentences. Harry and Luna showed the greatest improvement however as when they dueled now the only advantage Harry had over Luna was his much larger mana pool. Nick still won whenever he dueled against them but he worked up a sweat so long as he didn't use any vicious moves to end the matches early. Tracy on the other hand was stuck in what may as well be crafting limbo as Nick told her to create something from scratch without copying something else.-
All decent craftsmen need to learn how to think of designs and patterns for what they make which was a lot harder than one would think. Tracy wasn't the most imaginative person so struggled to come up with something from the top of her head. Still other than that she had already memorized the list of metals Nick had given her as well as their properties. While he worked on his list of commissions Nick also published his study on the merfolk community living in the black lake.-
It didn't make too much of an impact on the wizarding community at large but it was mentioned in a few small research newspapers and a tiny spot in the daily prophet. As promised Dumbledore got a copy of it for himself while the Hogwarts library also got a copy. Nick may seem carefree during this time but he was watching for any sign of Voldemort making a move. He knew the man wouldn't be able to sit still for very long and was bound to do something to advance his agenda.