Chapter 48: The Eight Tracking Spells

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"I... I don't know what you're talking about! How would I know where Tony is? If I did, I'd have sent someone to rescue him already. You know the company's stock has plummeted since he disappeared," Obadiah explained with a look of terror on his face. Judging by his expression and tone, there wasn't a hint of deceit in him.

If George hadn't been using both Legilimency and telepathy to read Obadiah's thoughts, he might have been completely fooled.

Even with his life threatened, Obadiah's ability to act so convincingly showed that he wasn't to be underestimated. After all, a man like him wouldn't have manipulated Tony so easily or wiped out the entire Ten Rings gang if he weren't sharp.

"In the desert near Baghlan Province, Afghanistan... it seems you don't know the exact location either," George muttered, stopping his Legilimency and telepathic scan. He frowned slightly.

He had assumed Obadiah would know where the Ten Rings' base was, but it turned out that Obadiah had been searching just as well and only had a rough idea.

"How do you know?" Obadiah was dumbfounded by George's words.

But George couldn't be bothered to explain. He simply raised his hand and began casting a spell at Obadiah:

"Obliviate!"

This was the only spell he had managed to learn from Lockhart over the past three months. While he wasn't as skilled as Lockhart yet, he could still manage to erase a small portion of an ordinary person's memory.

After casting the Memory Charm on Obadiah, George used it again on the unconscious bodyguard.

With everything taken care of, George mounted the motorcycle that had been parked by the roadside and left.

Not long after George's departure, Obadiah and his bodyguard slowly regained consciousness. However, they only remembered their car crashing and losing consciousness, with no recollection of George whatsoever.

"Damn it! You're fired, you useless idiot! Call for help immediately, and make sure this doesn't get out. No one can know about my car accident!" Obadiah bellowed.

The next day, news of Obadiah's accident and injury was all over the media, thanks to some well-placed information left on the desks of eager New York journalists.

With Tony Stark missing and Obadiah injured in a car crash, Stark Industries' stock plummeted to an all-time low. However, as the world's largest company, this wasn't fatal. It only meant the difference between earning a little more or a little less.

"That desert's massive. Finding someone there won't be easy," George muttered as he stood in front of Hogwarts Castle, watching snowflakes drift from the sky. After a brief moment of contemplation, he turned and walked toward the Defense Against the Dark Arts office.

"Looks like I'll need to check the Restricted Section."

Finding Tony Stark in the desert, even if it wasn't the largest one, was no simple task. George needed a spell that could help him locate people. Unfortunately, he hadn't come across anything useful in the regular sections of the library, which left him with no other choice but to search the Restricted Section.

Many wizard spells are inspired by the abilities of magical creatures. For example, the Legilimency spell was developed based on the natural abilities of the mind-reading Kneazle.

George couldn't believe that no wizard had ever researched tracking spells similar to the owl's uncanny tracking abilities. He remembered that Newt Scamander was particularly skilled at tracking magic and could even recreate scenes from the past.

Tonks had once mentioned during dinner that she was practicing a tracking spell specifically designed to capture dark wizards.

Of course, if tracking spells exist, there must be counter-tracking spells. He remembered that Sirius Black was a master of them, making it impossible for Aurors to track him. Even owls were unable to locate him.

However, people in the Marvel world wouldn't know how to counter tracking spells. If George could master even one, he could quickly find Tony Stark in the desert.

To access the Restricted Section, George would need permission from a professor. But even Snape, who had been particularly invested in his progress, wouldn't allow him entry.

The Restricted Section held far too much dangerous black magic and hazardous magical knowledge. One wrong move could lead him down a dark path, or worse, cause harm to himself.

So, George had no choice but to turn to Lockhart, a professor who could be easily swayed with a few flattering words to grant him the required permission slip.

As expected, thanks to the rapport George had carefully built over the past few months, it didn't take much effort for him to secure the pass to the Restricted Section.

"Go ahead, but don't disturb the precious magical books in there. Otherwise, I won't let you off easily," Madam Pince warned after glancing at the slip signed by Lockhart, frowning slightly before allowing George to enter the Restricted Section.

Compared to the thousands of books in the main library, the Restricted Section held far fewer volumes, but they were much more meticulously organized, suggesting few people ventured inside.

Ignoring the alluring tomes that contained records of dark magic, George focused on searching for books on tracking spells. It wasn't that he didn't want to look at the dark magic books—it was just that the moment he entered the Restricted Section, his telepathy alerted him to the fact that someone was watching him.

If his instincts were correct, the person monitoring him was likely Dumbledore, possibly using some magic or magical object George was unaware of. Ever since Voldemort had found information about Horcruxes in the Restricted Section, Dumbledore had placed extra precautions to prevent anything similar from happening again.

As long as George avoided the dangerous dark magic books, there shouldn't be any issues. If questioned about learning tracking spells later, he could easily provide a reasonable excuse, like searching for his birth parents.

When Dumbledore wasn't around, he could always return to study the darker materials.

"Got it!"

After some searching, George finally found a book titled Eight Methods to Find the Lost. Flipping through it, he discovered it contained eight different tracking spells.

There were spells that would reveal the direction in the form of an arrow, spells that showed footprints, and advanced tracking spells like the one Newt used that could even reveal an image of the person being tracked.

The most powerful method described was a spell involving time magic, which allowed the caster to rewind time and witness past events, tracking the target's every move. However, since the spell's creation, there were no recorded cases of any wizard successfully mastering it.

Given George's current skill level, there was no hope of learning the advanced tracking spells. For now, he only needed to master the simplest one—the arrow-guided tracking spell.

In the open desert, where there were no obstacles to block his view, the arrow-guided spell would be more than sufficient to help him locate Tony Stark.

After checking out the book from Madam Pince, George returned to the Slytherin common room and began studying the most basic of the tracking spells.

Meanwhile, in the Marvel universe, his true body had already begun the operation to eliminate the upper ranks of the Coulson family.

(End of Chapter)