The Magic of Pursuit

I poured the potion into a bottle, and held it up to the light. The Tracking Potion was sort of like Sting from the Hobbit. It glowed in the presence of the person it was tracking. I would be using it as a poor man's Tracking Spell to divine her location.

Next, I spread out a map of London, and placed a single drop of the Tracking Potion onto each of the knuckle bone dice. It would take too long to wander about a city like London holding a bottle in one hand and waiting for it to glow brighter as it got closer to Delilah's position, so I was going to have to do a bit of old fashioned Divination work.

"Find Delilah Hunt," I intoned solemnly, tossing the dice across the map. I noted the spots they landed, and wrote down the symbols on the face of the corresponding dice.

"Hmm, no luck," I muttered in annoyance.

It took a few more tosses and half the Tracking Potion before I finally got an exact answer out of the finicky Divination tools. One of my special bone dice had the words 'Yes,' 'No,' and 'Maybe' carved onto its faces, and I grinned madly as I saw that I'd finally narrowed down Delilah's position.

"Here," I uttered, looking at the building my die had landed 'Yes' side up on.

I quickly got out a silver bowl and filled it with water and the last of the Tracking Potion, save a single silver droplet that I carefully stored in a crystal vial. Using the unicorn horn stirring stick, I stirred the contents together to create a crude Scrying effect. In the ripples of the bowl, I could catch glimpses of Delilah. She was trapped. It was hard to tell, but I could make out ropes. And a chair?

There were men. Angry men. I saw a gun being brandished. The contents of the bowl suddenly turned milky white before I could see any more, and I frowned.

"Damn, ran out of power," I grunted in annoyance. "Still, at least I know where she is, now, and that she's alright."

Using the British equivalent of the Yellow Pages to track down the address of the building revealed to me the address my fortune telling dice had landed on was an office building in downtown London.

"There we go," I muttered, a finger running over the address. "The Marlin Building. Has offices that it rents out to a bunch of different companies. Hmm. No time to do a deep investigation. I'll just have to rely on the dregs of the Tracking Potion."

I then turned to Inky. "How close can you get me to this building?" I asked, pointing out the location on the map. In response, the elderly House Elf pointed to a spot that was about four blocks away.

"Alright, then, do it," I commanded, and Inky snapped his fingers, teleporting the both of us away from the apartment.

We appeared in downtown London, hidden in a filthy alleyway that smelled horrific, and that was with the Bubblehead charm on my glasses active!

Grimacing, I glanced down at Inky, who was giving the alleyway an offended look.

"Alright, Inky, I have a few more commands for you," I told him. "When I go in, I want you to protect Delilah, the silver-haired woman that was captured. You are free to do whatever you wish to ensure her safety."

Inky nodded in understanding, and I grinned a bit in relief that he didn't say anything against the order. There were Rules that House Elves had to follow. And that was 'Rules' with a capital 'R.' One major Rule was that House Elves couldn't strike or otherwise try to harm a human, magical or otherwise, with magic, so long as they were bound to a family.

There were ways around this rule, obviously, or Dobby couldn't have – or technically wouldn't be able to, since it was yet to happen in this timeline – enchant the Bludger in Harry's Second Year. In that case, the fact was that Dobby was trying to hurt Harry Potter to save him. A bit of a stretch, but since it worked, that meant Dobby's own magic viewed the threat the Horcrux diary possessed to be great enough that a broken body was acceptable if it meant saving Harry's life.

This meant I could not use Inky to punish the kidnappers, but I could use him to keep the girl safe. There was also another Rule, albeit a lesser one, more of a taboo than a magical enforced order, that stated House Elves couldn't be seen by anyone other than the family they served. Only if their master called for them could a House Elf be seen by guests. Again, easily worked around.

But the main reason I couldn't use Inky to pop in and rescue Delilah and save myself the trouble and danger was the ancient Rule of Guest Rights, a magical law older than the House Elves themselves. Just as vampires cannot enter a building without an invitation, so too can a House Elf not act in another person's home without permission from an owner of said building. And an office building was just enough of a grey area for this Rule that all I could do was have Inky protect Delilah, and that was only possible thanks to Delilah herself being an unwilling 'guest' of the office building in the first place.

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