Since he could not safely seek to increase his power Nick chose to take another route and focus on his skill and knowledge for the rest of the school year. He still avoided the dwemer lexicon though as he wanted to fully master the knowledge he gained from Slytherins library first. He understood it of course but that didn't mean he had mastered it so he focused on that for the last remaining month of the school year he had before he needed to start the binding process for the realm if he wanted to finish before the start of the next year.-
The downside to having such a vast repertoire of knowledge to master reared it's ugly head during this time as Nick had nearly a thousand spells , potion recipes and other assorted magics each to work on. The spells were the easiest as he merely needed to cast it a single time to "see" the magics true form and function thanks to his magical senses. this meant while it was a tedious effort to cast all the spells he mastered them afterwards immediately after only a single success with them.-
The spells in parseltongue were especially difficult but also the most rewarding to learn for Nick the language had a magical resonance with nature that empowered that variety of spells greatly. Even more interesting for Nick was that the snake summoning spell serpensortia that normally only summoned nonmagical snake species could also summon magical ones if used with parseltongue. Of course like all beast summoning magics there was not any part of the spell that gives control over the summoned creature after it arrived. With parseltongue however this was an entirely different matter as all snakes magical or otherwise felt reverence to the language and were usually more than happy to obey so long as the speaker didn't order something innately self destructive.-
This was how Nick had managed to bring a Runespoor into Harrys employ in a funny way. Runespoors were usually about seven feet long snakes with orange and black striped scales that possessed a unique three headed body that was controlled by three joined minds for each head. The left head was the planner , the middle head was the visionary that imagined the magical snakes future actions and the right head was the critic that vetoed any plans or actions that it found incorrect.-
The funny part was that the right head was constantly in danger of getting destroyed by the other two heads if it got too naggy so the species rarely lived their naturally bountiful lifespans. In a way the snake reminded Nick of what Harry , Hermione and Ron would have been like had he not been around. Harry himself shared a similar thought process and had thus been able to teach the serpent how to work with each of it's personalities. The snake was scarily effective once this happened as it efficiently imagined , planned and executed it's actions perfectly.-
After mastering the spells Nick split his focus between the potions and medimagic with the help of Snape and Madam Pomphrey. Both of which were more than eager to assist him with his mastery as it benefited them as well in their chosen fields. Much of Slytherins knowledge in these fields could be considered new and exciting so both experts were happy with the situation even if it resulted in them arguing with Nick a lot as they clashed with his knowledge of the professions. Snape for example often debated Nick over the choice of ingredients , the boil time of the potions and even how wasteful the recipes were. -
The man was a harsh critic but clearly held great appreciation for the knowledge Nick had as well. As a result Nick mastered the potioneering knowledge of the library at a staggering pace alongside the medimagic knowledge as well with Madam Pomphrey using her modern understanding of the field to rebuff his own ancient one or perfect certain parts of it further. Nick was sure that both experts knew very well that they were being used by him to master his knowledge but he also was pretty sure they were fine with that.-
Soon the final week of the school year came around and Nick was mostly satisfied with the progress he made mastering the knowledge from the library. 'I'd say I've gotten it about seventy percent mastered if i ignore the dark magic part of it.' He thought as he played a game of wizarding chess against Ron. "Blast it all!" The red head cursed after noticing the trap he had fallen into which forced him to sacrifice his queen to save his king. "And that is checkmate." Nick said after moving his other knight to seal off the kings escape routes with the second trap that had gone unnoticed due to the first.