Eight Tracking Charms

"I-I don't know what you're talking about. How would I know where Tony is? If I knew, I would've sent people to rescue him.

"You have to understand, with him missing, the company's stock has plunged."

Obadiah explained with a face full of terror. Judging by his expression and tone, there wasn't the slightest flaw to be seen.

If George hadn't been using Legilimency and Telepathy at the same time, allowing him to read Obadiah's thoughts, he really might have been fooled.

To act this convincingly with his life under threat—this guy was no pushover.

Then again, if he were, he wouldn't have played Tony for a fool, nor would he have wiped out that entire group from the Ten Rings.

"In the desert near Bagram Province in Afghanistan. Looks like you don't know the exact location either."

Stopping Legilimency and Telepathy, George couldn't help frowning.

He had originally thought Obadiah would know the location of the Ten Rings' lair, only to discover that the man had been searching for it all along as well, and had only narrowed it down to a rough area.

"How... how do you know?"

Hearing George's words, Obadiah was completely dumbfounded.

George couldn't be bothered to explain further. He raised his hand toward Obadiah and began casting a spell.

"Obliviate!"

This was the only spell he had learned from Lockhart over the past three months. Though he still couldn't use it as powerfully as Lockhart did, he could at least erase a short segment of an ordinary person's memory.

After casting the Memory Charm on Obadiah once, he cast it on the unconscious bodyguard as well.

Once everything was handled, he mounted the motorcycle he had parked by the roadside long ago and left.

Not long after George left, the bodyguard and Obadiah slowly woke up. However, all they remembered was that the car had flipped over while they were driving, and then they had passed out. They had no memory whatsoever of George.

"Damn it! I'm going to fire you, you useless trash! Hurry up and call someone to come rescue us. And seal off the news immediately. We can't let the outside world know I was in a car accident!"

The next day, news of Obadiah being injured in a car accident was reported by those all-powerful New York reporters.

Of course, those reporters also had to thank a certain kind soul who had placed this explosive piece of news on their desks.

With CEO Tony Stark missing and main person in charge Obadiah injured in a car accident, Stark Industries' stock price immediately hit rock bottom.

However, as the largest conglomerate in the world, these things had an impact, but they weren't fatal. It was only a matter of earning a little more or a little less.

"With such a huge desert, finding one person won't be easy!"

At the entrance of Hogwarts Castle, George looked at the snowflakes drifting outside. After pondering for a moment, he turned and walked toward the Defense Against the Dark Arts office.

"Looks like I need to search the Restricted Section."

Finding traces of Tony Stark in the desert, even if that desert wasn't particularly large, was still far from easy.

So he needed a kind of magic that could find people. He hadn't seen this kind of magic in the normal shelves of the library, so he could only check whether the Restricted Section had it.

Normally, many wizards' spells were researched from inspiration taken from the abilities of magical creatures. The Legilimency spell, for example, had been developed based on the Wampus Cat, which was naturally capable of Legilimency.

He refused to believe that no wizard had researched the owl's miraculous Tracking Spell. Besides, he remembered that Newt was quite skilled in tracking magic, even able to manifest the scene from the time.

Tonks had once mentioned during a meal that she was practicing a kind of Tracking Charm, specifically for hunting down criminal dark wizards.

However, since Tracking Charms existed, there would also be anti-tracking charms. He remembered that Sirius was proficient in anti-tracking charms. Aurors couldn't lock onto Sirius' location at all, and he could even block owls.

But people in the Marvel Universe didn't know anti-tracking charms. As long as he could master a Tracking Charm, he could quickly find Tony Stark in the desert.

To enter the Restricted Section, he needed a teacher's signed note. Other teachers, even Snape, who currently valued him the most, would never give him a note to go there.

After all, there were far too many dangerous dark arts and dangerous magical knowledge inside. If one got careless and too greedy, they might stray onto the wrong path, or even harm themselves.

So he could only go to Lockhart, this teacher from whom he could easily obtain a signed note with just a few words of flattery.

Sure enough, because he had deliberately drawn closer to him over the past few months, he obtained a signed note for the Restricted Section with almost no effort.

"Go on, but don't mess up the precious magic books inside, or I won't let you off."

Madam Pince looked at Lockhart's signed note in George's hand, frowned, gave him a warning, then let him enter the Restricted Section.

Compared to the thousands upon thousands of magic books outside, the Restricted Section had far fewer books, but they were arranged even more neatly. Clearly, very few people came in to read them.

George skipped over the books that recorded tempting dark magic and began searching for books that recorded tracking magic.

It wasn't that he didn't want to read them. It was just that the instant he entered the Restricted Section, his Telepathy told him that someone was secretly watching him.

If his guess was correct, the person watching him was most likely Dumbledore, perhaps using some kind of magic he didn't know about, or a magical item.

Ever since Voldemort had found information about Horcruxes in the Restricted Section, Dumbledore had paid special attention to it. It was understandable for him to set up some surveillance measures to prevent something similar from happening again.

As long as he didn't touch dangerous dark magic books, it wouldn't be a big problem. If anyone asked about him learning a Tracking Charm later, he could easily brush it off with some excuse like wanting to find his biological parents.

When Dumbledore was no longer at school someday, it still wouldn't be too late for him to enter the Restricted Section and learn those dark arts.

"Found it!"

After searching for a while, he really did find a magic book called Eight Ways to Teach You How to Find a Lost Person. He flipped through it roughly and discovered that it actually recorded a full eight different Tracking Charms.

There was a tracking spell that produced an arrow pointing in the target's direction after being cast, one that revealed footprints after being cast, and a more advanced form like Newt's that could directly reveal even a person's silhouette.

The most impressive was one kind of tracking involving Time Magic, which could directly reverse time and show what had happened in the past, allowing one to know everything the tracked person had done.

However, since this Tracking Spell had been created, there had been no record of any wizard ever learning it.

With George's current level, high-level Tracking Spells were definitely out of reach. He only needed to learn the simplest kind, the Tracking Spell guided by an arrow.

There weren't many buildings in the desert to obstruct his view. An arrow-guided Tracking Spell would be enough for him to find Tony Stark.

Taking the book on Tracking Charms with him, he left the Restricted Section, registered it with Madam Pince, and returned to the Slytherin Common Room to begin studying the simplest Tracking Charm.

Meanwhile, his main body in the main Marvel Universe also began its operation to purge the upper ranks of the Carlson family.