It wasn't all that hard to get Steve healthy again as the stubborn critter was easy to trick into exercising. All Nick had to do was transfigure an uncatchable ball from the twins into gold and then release it in front of the niffler. It was shocking just how motivated a niffler can be when the prospect of loot existed. The twins had already perfected the ball so the only way to get it after it was released was the deactivation spell. Steve looked half dead by the time Nick retrieved the ball from chasing it all over the workshop.-
Nick spent all of February working on improving his ability to enchant organic materials and he had made a very small amount of progress. Like before he was still dealing with a heavy amount of rejection from the materials that he needed to iron out. On a different note his progress with the sixth year books was going well as he had already memorized the books and was now on the step of practicing the material to integrate it smoothly. While that was going on he made sure to exert his mana to exhaustion everyday so it grew faster.-
He only had until he was seventeen before his mana stopped growing at the rate it was currently and he wanted to get the most of this benefit while he could. At the moment he was at roughly the level of someone who rarely practiced magic after graduation for a couple years. By his estimation he should reach tier two in mana levels after he undergoes the ritual in a two more months. In addition to that his birthday was coming up and unlike last year his friends weren't going to allow him to ignore it this year.-
Thankfully Rons birthday was merely a day apart from Nicks so they couldn't go all out like they wanted to since that would be unfair for one of them. Other than that though it was all business as usual for Nick though he was planning on collecting the star metal his items had accumulated until now since it should be way more than he needed for the atronach forge. Nick was sure that there was no thing as having too much metal to work with but he needed to increase the size of the realm to store it all.-
Dumbledore had been helping with this by supplying spatial magic items that were eaten by the realm to grow in size. The "planet" hadn't really grown but the empty space around that had been expanded considerable to the point Nick was sure he could fit a small mountain in the ring. His plan for expanding the "planet" though was very simple as he started to make regular trips into the forbidden forest. The random hills and dead trees in the forest were eaten by his realm and broken down into base materials like carbon ,silica and calcium that built up his planet chunk by chunk.-
Besides confusing the hell out of the centaurs and magical creatures who saw the aftermath of this land grabbing the forest itself wasn't harmed at all. Nazgul had apparently figured out that she could control her size to a degree as well during the past month which let her return to the size of a large dog. Her true size was still increasing however as the souls of the acromantulas she was eating regularly were a dense fuel for her and powered her growth. Her purgatory flames were also getting more powerful as the quality of the fuel had increased from her new diet.-
Nick had already swapped the previous seed in the furnace for this better quality version. Still it didn't change the fact that Nazguls true size was now the length of two large horses minus her tail and slightly taller as well. A unique benefit of this large size was that she could be ridden now which was surprisingly comfortable. Her feathers were soft and thanks to the horns on her head it was nearly impossible to feel the wind pressure. On a unrelated note Lucas had finally finished memorizing the books Nick had given him and was ready to start learning the more hands on stuff.-
Nick had to take a week to explain the different kinds of metals as well as their properties both magical and mundane. He set up a small sample of each of the metals he had on hand so that Lucas had something tangible to help remember all this information. Beyond that though Nick spent the entire month uneventfully until his birthday came around on march second just after Rons birthday. Ron got gifts from everyone in the form of candy or gag gifts that he took in stride with a happy smile.