Chapter 215: Chapter 215: Heading for Egypt (Edited)
"This store, it's a little expensive..." Tom squeezed out that sentence between his teeth.
Sure, it's expensive, almost as much as the winner of the Triwizard Tournament, but considering its function in the desert, it's a reasonable price.
The shopkeeper noticed Tom's hesitation and suggested some cheaper stores, especially in terms of interior decor and size.
Tom tried to haggle over the price, but the shopkeeper was so determined that he wouldn't let him get away with it, so he might have to give him something.
Tom came up with a bold idea: he could put the box with the undetectable extension spell in the tent, then fold the tent and carry it on his back to make nested dolls.
But there was a catch: it cost money. Items with the Undetectable Extension spell were expensive, both because the spell was difficult to cast and because every item with the spell had to be reported to the Ministry of Magic.
The clerk saw what Tom was thinking and, out of professional ethics, coughed, "Each item with the Undetectable Expansion spell has a limited volume and weight that can be carried inside, so if the weight is exceeded, it can cause damage to the store..."
Tom: "..."
There is no way to nest.
The Undetectable Expansion spell is an advanced spell that increases the internal space of a container, allowing "a hundred mages to fit in a toilet cubicle", and even better, the weight of the container itself does not change drastically with this spell. A small bag under the undetectable expansion spell, even if crammed with books and clothes, does not weigh as much as a student's backpack when leaving home for school.
But this spell has a limit. There are two kinds of limits: volume and weight. Volume is easy to understand, if you expand the interior to five cubic meters, six cubic meters will not fit, and weight is understood as load. If Tom wants to buy a tent that holds a thousand kilos of stuff and he stuffs a magic suitcase with 500 kilos of stuff inside, the tent will only have a remaining load of 500 kilos, because it is still essentially a suitcase with 500 kilos of stuff inside.
After some haggling, Tom ended up buying the tent for the original price, but got the shopkeeper to give him two cloth bags with an undetectable expansion spell: they wouldn't fit more than a few pounds. Good thing he had the salary and money from Lockhart's time, otherwise Tom would have had to pay a lot of money for the camping tent.
After paying for the camping tent, Tom threw it on his back: it was light, like carrying a quilt. Because the tent package was so complete, Tom felt he had bought everything he needed, and as he was about to leave the magic tent, his eyes caught a glimpse of something: a crystal ball with a cloud of smoke inside.
"How much is this?" he asked pointing to the crystal ball.
"It's not worth much, you can keep it." The clerk who had just completed a large order waved his hand and handed the crystal ball to Tom, and also stuffed it with an old book, "Dispelling the Mists of the Future."
"This book is a useful guide to palm reading, crystal ball gazing and other methods of divination." The clerk blinked, obviously skeptical about this.
After completing his purchase, Tom returned to the Granger home, where Hermione was still in the sea of knowledge, but looking terrible: her face was pale and bloodless, and her forehead covered in beads of sweat, but Hermione was oblivious and smiling. She was ready to drown in the sea of knowledge, even at this moment.
Tom grabbed her by the shoulders and shook her vigorously, as he removed the tiara from her head, and Hermione came to her senses.
"Tom... I just learned so much..." Hermione flashed a weak smile and then leaned weakly on Tom's shoulder.
"Rest first!" In this situation, Tom dared no further action, he took the safest strategy: he laid Hermione down on his bed and let her sleep for a while.
Hermione fell fast asleep almost as soon as her head touched the pillow. Tom watched Hermione, saw that her breathing was even and prolonged, and was relieved to see that the Ravenclaw reputation was still intact; if she had been a Slytherin relic, Tom would have gone to Dumbledore.
Hermione didn't wake up until late afternoon. She thought about the day's events and felt a twinge of danger.
"Next time you wear the tiara, be sure to tell me, you can't wear it without my supervision." Tom made a very serious pact with Hermione.
"Okay, pinky promise!" Hermione held up her pinky finger.
...
London's Heathrow Airport was crowded.
Three days had passed quickly, and it was time for the promised departure.
Hermione and Tom had arrived a little earlier than the others, they had arranged to meet at eleven and Tom had arrived a good half hour early. Hermione was wearing a white short sleeved shirt and blue denim shorts with a leopard belt around the waist. She was carrying very little, just a small leather handbag.
Tom, next to him, was dressed similarly, except that he wore a straw hat and camouflage vest instead of a shirt, and carried an extra duffel bag with a rolled-up tent tied to it.
"You're early!" Out came Hal Hunter, dressed the same way as his students: a sturdy, durable tracksuit, a jacket and hat for sun protection, with sunglasses on his chest and bandanas wrapped around his neck. They look like four adventurers.
Despite the heat in Egypt, this outfit is great protection against sunburn, but of course, it's hot ...
Seeing Tom and Hermione dressed up, Will frowned, seemingly disgusted by their unprofessional attire, but Hal spoke before him.
"Little Granger, you look very smart today, but you can't go out into the desert in those clothes, the sun will burn your skin there."
"Uncle, it's okay, we have local burkas, they're perfect for the area," Hermione replied with a smile, "But what flight are we taking?".
Hermione had just looked, there were no flights at the airport at the appointed time.
"We'll charter a flight, Mr. Yuri has arranged it for us," snapped Hal fingers, he lowered his voice slightly, "After all, we're going to be taking a lot of ammunition with us!".
Tom also had his revolver with him, but he wasn't worried about safety at all, hidden in his magical suitcase, it wouldn't be detected by Muggles.
As soon as Alyosha's men arrived, the group set off for Egypt. The plan was to take a chartered plane to Cairo, spend two days in the capital to get used to the climate, find a suitable guide and then head into the desert.
Chapter 216: Chapter 216: Museum and Knowledge (Edited)
Five hours later, the plane slowly landed at Cairo International Airport, Egypt. The group stepped off the plane with their bags, and Tom looked at Alyosha's bags and suddenly felt that this adventure might not be like the one he remembered...
Once they had their bags, they took the minibus Peter had hired in advance to the hotel Hal Hunter had booked. The bus looked rickety, but started up incredibly smoothly and comfortably. By the time the group arrived at the hotel, it was almost dusk, and there was a minor hiccup at check-in.
"Did a water pipe burst?" Dr. Hunter's heart burst at the news, and he had visions of his own shower when the pipes burst, and wanted to change hotels as he imagined the yellow water gushing out.
But finding a new hotel for twelve people in an unfamiliar Cairo at sunset was not easy, so Hal had to suck it up.
Dr. Hunter had originally booked a luxurious six double rooms, but when the hotel's water pipes burst and flooded one floor, there were not enough suites.
The end result was that the five Alyosha siblings shared one super-sized suite, Dr. Hunter and Peter, the bespectacled interpreter, shared one, leaving two queen rooms....
"In that case, there's only one answer." Tom thought, in this case, was there a choice?
"Yes, yes." Hermione thought the same thing, and they both watched dumbfounded as Sarah, Will and Alan entered the same room.
Tom: ???
Is it really necessary for students to know each other so well? Sara really is a girl with a smile on her face! Is it really okay for Will and Alan to be so manipulative?
"I must be thinking too much." Tom took a moment to calm himself.
But he had a real problem before him: there was only one king-sized room left, and there were two other people in the group.
"What an enviable bond between partners," Hermione pushed open the door to the hotel room with a forced air of calm, "So let's go in too."
The suite was small, the master bedroom was about four meters square, with an Egyptian style rug on the floor and a six foot wide carved bed in the center, which looked very fluffy. Directly in front of the bed was a table, in front of which two hanging lamps were the only source of light after dark. Although there were few lights, the room was well lit and there was a large window through which the dome of the monastery could be seen in the distance.
Tom sulkily carried his luggage inside and, once the door was closed, there was silence between the two of them.
"So... I bought some magic items, why don't you take a look." Tom broke the silence by pulling out the items he had bought in Diagon Alley a few days earlier and presenting them to Hermione one by one.
Indeed, Hermione took notice of him. She looked intently at Tom's purchases and listened to his presentation.
"So you bought a crystal ball as well?"
"A gift." Tom corrected.
"Then let's do fortune telling tonight!" Hermione became very interested in this topic.
Before they could speak, there was a knock on the door and it was Hunter, who had come to call everyone in for dinner. The owner of the hotel recommended a small restaurant nearby, which was not very crowded, and Tom and the others went in and sat at two large tables, which took up almost half of the restaurant.
The owner of the restaurant was a middle-aged man, slightly balding, with dark-rimmed glasses and a slight mustache, and he seemed very friendly. He greeted everyone personally in his thickly accented English and served each table a dozen juices, each jar the size of an adult's arm. Two baskets of Egyptian staples followed, a round flatbread made without yeast and sesame seeds, and two earthenware pots filled with beer.
Tom wasn't interested in the beer in the jars, he poured himself a glass of juice - an Egyptian juice is not the same as a juice with water or flavored,
Most Egyptian juices are pure and natural, with only fresh fruit. Tom chose a mango juice, which had a lot of pulp and a pure flavor. Hermione poured herself a glass of grape juice and sipped it slowly, her lips tinged with a purple hue.
Soon, with a rich, exotic aroma, the owner entered again, carrying a huge tray with several bags of fine, oily linen.
"It's a specialty of Bukhara (Uzbekistan), which is cooked in a cloth bag and requires a lot of work, four to six or even eight hours. But the locals don't opt to cook the bags slowly in hot water and then go out to visit friends: by the time it gets late, they've finished the party and come home to a steaming hot meal."
"Wow...", was the unmistakable exclamation from those present. Will took a big gulp of his beer, "It's a taste that's been passed down for thousands of years, you can't beat it."
At that moment, the owner set the tray down on the table, picked up a spatula he had placed on top and began to gently tap the bag to break up the rice. He then opened the bag and the aroma was overpowering.
He overheard the conversation between Will and the group and said, "The rice expands with the heat and squeezes the juices out of the other ingredients, which end up being absorbed by the rice grains, and as the rice soaks up the juices, it tastes fuller and more flavorful."
As he described the dish, he picked up a corner of the bag, turned the opening down and shook it gently, all the while tapping the bag with a spatula, shaking the rice out of the bag onto a large silver plate and pouring a large plate of rice from a small bag. Again and again, the plate, the length of an adult's arm, was filled with rice.
"May you find good nourishment in a happy and joyful life." He picked up the plate and approached Alyosha's table.
In addition to the bakhsh, the owner served a pot of green soup, a stew of mallow, a common plant on the banks of the Nile, mixed with rice and garlic, called molokia, an Egyptian specialty. In addition, there was a large plate of kebab, a big bowl of fruit salad and a bowl of thick yogurt with honey and sultanas.
"This time, I found a clue about the ancient city when I happened to be flipping through a photocopy of a papyrus that, according to the papyrus, belonged to the god of time and the early pharaohs, and in the record there was this strange figure." As the group feasted, Dr. Hunter related the origin of the trip.
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