Dumbledore stepped in. "I believe Alastor would be the best person to explain that to you, given that the spell is his brainchild."
Coon made a dissenting noise. "Headmaster, with all due respect, that is classified information. The boy is hardly authorized-"
"He will be by the end of this meeting," Dumbledore stated, giving Coon a level look. In any case, I authorize it."
The mild tone was replaced with soft steel. "Arthur? Any objections?"
The Minister shook his head.
Moody looked impatient now. "Flitwick tells me you' ve a good hand at Charms, so I'm not going to dumb this down for you, boy."
"Appreciated," Draco replied dryly.
"As you know it' s next to impossible to make a standard Tracking Charm stick to a person. Good, solid, inanimate objects, things like clothing and possessions, now that' s do-able, but it' s different with a body." Moody rubbed at his chin. "Doesn' t work as well in the wet, you see."
Draco didn't see."The 'wet'?"
"Water, boy. Water. The human body is mostly made up of water. You can't track a turnip with any great accuracy and you can' t track a person with the spells we' ve got at the moment."
"You've worked out some way to track wands, haven't you?" Draco asked, immediately intrigued.
His seventh year advanced charms project had been to write about the potential of magical sensor spells. The topic the class had been asked to focus on was the sensor spells that were used at the Magical Birth Registry, but Moody's concept was similar.
Moody grunted. "It's more a case of us being able to track certain spells on a tagged wand. The eggheads over at Research tell me that some spells have a stronger register than others. They stand out. The more magically complex a spell is, the stronger the signature is. The tag won't work on things like Lumos or Alohomora, but on Unforgivables for example, memory fixing spells, things like-"
"Mosmorde," Draco supplied.
"Yep," Moody nodded. "I volunteered your dad' s wand as our prototype, since we figured it'd have an, ah, particularly strong history of potent spell casting. We needed a Marker to test the spell and the Malfoy Family standard seemed the easy choice given it was Lucius' wand we were using. Unfortunately for the person who stole it, the Marker spell was still in place when the wand was taken."
"And you can set whatever Marker you want?" Draco asked.
Moody nodded. "Anything we want." He rubbed his chin. "I was thinking of a great big, red X for Voldemort. With instructions to whomever is in the vicinity to fire at will." He chuckled. Only Tonks managed to grin.
"So someone' s going to have to get close enough to Voldemort to tag his wand?" Draco surmised. A rather heavy ball was about to drop, he suspected.
Moody snorted. He shuffled forward to sit on the edge of Dumbledore's desk. "Boy, if any Auror worth their salt managed to get that close to him, we'd try for a hell of a lot more than tagging the bastard's wand. We don't actually need to know who a wand belongs to before we tag it. We just need to get close enough..."
Draco frowned. "I don't understand? You want to tag Voldemort's wand?"
"Given that Voldemort has proven to be continually elusive, we're thinking we might be able to find him through secondary sources," added Coon.
Snape seemed to catch on. The Slytherin Head of House stood so quickly, he made a breeze. "No. Absolutely not! "
"No to what?" Draco asked, starting to stand up too, Snape all but shoved him back into his seat.
"Come now, Professor. I can' t be that much different from being the leader of what was his little group called again? 'The Inquisitorial Squad'?" Coon looked pointedly at Draco. "You took Dolores Umbridge's orders easily enough."
Draco took his que from his obviously furious Head of House. "They were easy orders to take. Terrorising students isn't exactly new to me nor is it particularly difficult. Besides, it was quite clear her reign at Hogwarts was temporary."
"And you don' t have any feelings of remorse for your behaviour that final term? I'm told you even accosted fellow students under Umbridge's orders."
Draco smiled sweetly. "Mr Coon, if I did, you' re the last person I' d be telling."
Tonks snorted.
"We' re not asking you to spy for us, Draco," Arthur Weasley felt he needed to clarified.
"What exactly are you asking me to do then?" Draco retorted.