Harry Sawyer (Patreon)

Happy New Years, everyone. As I mentioned, since the 22nd, family-time has dominated my life. My brother having a baby will do that. Regardless, I barely had a few hours late at night to work on chapters, which made finishing King of Champions hard, let alone anything else. Hence why, instead of putting out a subpar chapter for an ongoing story, I had told everyone that I would probably be able to get out a teaser chapter as a final present to my patrons.

Thus, we have Harry Sawyer or Harry’s World Adventure Tour.  It’s a Harry Potter universe-only fic whose pairings are, for the most part, up in the air. This first teaser will show how Harry changed, the immediate impact of those changes, and the start of his world travels. There’s not going to be a lot of action in this, and there’s not going to be any romance, obviously. But I hope that you all enjoy it regardless.

Again, though, this is a TEASER chapter. Until I finish FILFy, Making Waves, and maybe even one more fic, that is all it will be. But I did have fun with it. Teaser chapters are more freewheeling than writing in established settings.

Oh, and for obvious reasons, Hogwarts will start at 16.

Now, without further ado, here’s the fic!

Reading Is an Adventure

Harry Potter, age ten, was used to running. In fact, it seemed to him that nearly every day since he started to go to school (not that his relatives had wanted him to go, but apparently, it would have raised odd questions if he didn’t) ended with him running. Either hiding away from the glares and odd looks from other students, or running away from Dudley and his gang.

Don’t ask Harry how someone as generally unlikable as his cousin had a gang. It was honestly a mystery, one that had resulted in not one but several larger-than-average ten-year-olds hanging around and waiting for an opportunity to beat on Harry. Who, in turn, knew he was the smallest boy in the class. Heck, many of the girls were taller than him. Not that anyone seemed to care overmuch about why he was so scrawny and thin while Dudley was, well, ‘built like a hog’ in the words of one of the girls.

Today, once more, Harry was running. Harry Hunting was Dudley and his gang’s favorite game, and it never took much to start a round of it. Today, Harry had made the mistake of being on the same side of the street as the gang when they came around the corner he’d just passed over.

Corners were prominent in Harry’s mind at present as he raced on, seeing an intersection coming up ahead of him, where he would have to choose to go around the corner of one set of fences or the other. To his left lay the unknown. Harry could remember going that way a few times, but he had never gotten very far before running out of steam and getting caught. Right now, though, Harry felt he could push himself further.

To the right, lay a run straight back to the Dursley house. It wasn’t exactly safe, as the Dursleys, Petunia and Vernon would never stop Dudley from doing anything he wanted to Harry. Their little Dudders could do no wrong as far as either of them was concerned. But there was always the chance Petunia would demand that Harry start his chores, at which point Dudley wouldn’t be able to do anything to him. Or the other boys would get bored and convince the rest to head to one of their houses for games.

In a million universes, Harry would choose right. He would rush back and, for a certain measure, be safe from another of his daily beatings. Harry would go on to survive his life with the Dursleys until strange envelopes addressed to him began to arrive in the mail, then down the chimney before one was hand-delivered by a jolly half-giant.

In this universe, however, Harry chose to go left. I’m feeling okay today. I don’t think I need to stop running for a while. If I can just keep this speed, I can keep ahead of them until they give up, and I really, really don’t want to work in the kitchen again, not after I burned myself yesterday.

Petunia had shouted at him for that, flung some alcohol on the wound, and shoved him, still whimpering in pain, into his cupboard. Harry had worried it would leave a scar, but by morning, it had been gone. For some reason, that had infuriated Petunia, and she had called Harry a freak at least five times more than usual before hustling him and Dudley out the door to the bus. Harry wasn’t certain why, but that had easily been the angriest he’d ever seen Petunia since his hair had somehow grown back after she’d tried to cut it for a school picture last year.

Thus, Harry turned left, and the future changed. Not dramatically, of course. There was no peel of thunder nor a sudden magical door opening.

Turning left, Harry found himself running through streets he had barely ever been on. In the distance was a large building, as large as the main building at school. In front of which was a sign on which the words Surrey Public Library were written.

And as any reader could have told Harry, a library is a magnificent place to start an adventure.

Hearing the shouts from behind him, Harry put on a burst of speed, racing up the few steps to the large doors leading into the library. Pulling it open he gasped in delight at the hit of the AC, it being a hot, muggy day out. He paused there for a moment, then hurried in, hoping to find a place to hide. Library, where have I heard that word before? In class, maybe? It was a vocabulary word at some point.

When Harry opened the inner door of the library, he stopped and stared, a small part of his mind finally making the connection. Oh, that’s what a library is. A place for books.

Harry looked around in awe, never having seen so many books in one place before. The school library was tiny, a single room in which the younger students never ventured. Their teachers only had small rows of books in the classrooms, if that. Here, though, there were what looked like acres of books filling dozens of rows of bookshelves. Books were also out on tables, some of them propped up to show their covers. Helpful labels hung from the ceiling, showing where different sections of the library were.

After a second just staring around, Harry moved deeper inside as an elderly man watched him with narrowed eyes. Seeing the wide-eyed look of wonder on the young, thin youth’s face, the elderly man’s expression softened just a touch, and he spoke up, his voice a gravelly growl. “If you’re looking for something to read, you’ll find the books over by that table to your left most interesting, kid. Beyond that is the children’s section. Read whatever you want while here, but if you try to take without a library card, I’ll take me cane to your back. If you take out books and ruin them, I’ll take my cane to your back”

“Oh, I wouldn’t dare,” Harry flinched at the threat before answering hastily, bowing and touching his forelock respectfully, copying what he had seen people do when bobbies passed by. I have no idea what a library card is, although I’d wager whatever it is wouldn’t stop Dudley from ruining the books. He’s already blamed me for ruining three sets of school books.

“Good. And wipe your hands before you touch the books,” The older man growled out.

Harry nodded, absently noting that the plaque at the desk the man was sitting at read ‘Mister Mattis’, no first name, just Mister written out instead of ‘Mr.’ as Harry had seen on mail for Vernon occasionally. He filed that away, and then hurried in the direction the man had pointed him to, washing his hands in the bathroom, half-expecting Dudley and his gang to barge in behind him any second.

Yet they didn’t. Wait, the books. They must know they’re here, and if there’s one thing Dudley hates more than me, it’s reading!

That thought threatened to make Harry break out in laughter. Maybe this place could be an escape from Dudley and the rest? But I’ll have to balance it carefully. Petunia will want me home to ‘help’ with cooking Vernon and Dudley’s dinner at around six or so.

While Petunia never beat him up like Dudley and his friends, she wasn’t above slapping him upside the head if Harry didn’t perform his chores well enough. Most of the time, she and Vernon simply didn’t care, just not doing anything for Harry or against him, but when it came to chores, Petunia had made it clear to Harry since he could walk that his place in the house was dependent on how well he could perform them. As for Vernon, he through Harry around sometimes, but mainly Vernon only became a threat when he was drunk or really angry about something. Which, alas, was often enough, and when it happened, Harry could expect a beating to make Dudley and his gang’s worst seem like playing patty cake. I’d best keep an eye on the clock. And give myself an hour at least to get home.

Right now, though, Harry set such fears aside, staring around him with wonder. He was soon standing in front of the small table that Mister Mattis had pointed him toward, looking carefully at the cover of each book in turn.

The first that grabbed his attention was called Tom Sawyer. On the cover was a child, maybe thirteen or so, but fit, wearing old, ratty-looking clothing. He stood on a raft, a wide grin on his face as he polled through the water. At least, that was what Harry supposed he was doing with the long stick in his hand.

The youth looked so free, so happy, that Harry just stood there for a moment, staring. I, I want that! Freedom, to live wild and and away from everyone. That sounds amazing!

Hesitantly, he reached forward, gently picking up the book and the stand, pulling out a book from underneath. Opening it, he found that the book looked a bit tough to read through, but that didn’t deter Harry. I will get good enough at reading to read this. Maybe not right now, but soon.

With that goal, he set the book aside and looked at some of the other covers. One showed a young ballerina dancing away under a spotlight while around her, small globes were filled with other images of her, each one doing a different type of exercise. Another book had a small bear with a raincoat and a hat walking on his back legs. Another one showed an incredibly frizzy-haired woman standing by what was labeled a magic school bus. “Magic…” Harry paused, frowning a little at the word.

He’d heard of it a few times as something unusual, unnatural. It seemed to be the only thing that Vernon and Petunia would not let Dudley have, as in, if a game or show mentioned magic, he couldn’t watch it, and Harry was in for a rant about how it was freakish.

Yet on the book cover, well, it just made the school bus look funny. Better than the ones we have to get on every morning, anyway.

Shrugging, Harry decided to start with those two. The one with the ballerina and exercises didn’t look as interesting, although maybe if there was one around for boy sprinters, Harry would read that. With his three books in hand, Harry moved through the library, wondering at the silence, the smell of the books, and the peace.

An hour later, when other children started to show up with their parents, the silence fled, but Harry was still left alone to read his books in peace. He never noticed how Mister Mattis occasionally glanced his way or hobbled past, looking inquisitively at the youngster who seemed so happy to immerse himself in the world of books without anyone around to make him.

Over the next few days, Harry came to the library every day. He was respectful, quiet, and always returned the books to where he got them, things that easily endeared him to Mister Mattis, other library workers and even some of the families that came there with their own children, although the kids themselves sneered or scoffed at Harry just like they did at school. His strange, ragged-but-too-big clothing was remarked upon, as was the state of his glasses, but no one wondered about it enough to ask or to even question their own kids about it.

Indeed, any concern for Harry or even any thoughts about him did not stick in the heads of most of them for long. Even Mister Mattis, who saw him the most, barely remembered the youth between visits despite his growing concern for the boy.

A week after he began to go to the library, though, it became an even more important place to Harry because it was that day that Dudley and Piers, his best friend, got over their fear of books to the point where they entered. “Potter’s hiding somewhere in here, I tell you!” Dudley growled out, his voice echoing around the nearly empty library. “We just need to get him out and moving and…”

“Here now!” Mattis growled from his desk. “What part about the sign on the door’s vague, eh?”

Dudley barely sent a sneer the older man’s way as he spotted Harry. Harry had spotted him, too, and had ducked behind a row of bookshelves. “There he is!” Dudley yelled. “Get him!”

The two boys began to charge toward Harry, but suddenly Mister Mattis was standing, his cane cracking on the ground so loud that both boys flinched, and several pairs of eyes that would normally have looked away thinking it was none of their business when it dealt with Harry were looking in that direction.

Into the silence, Mattis snarled, “What part of ‘quiet in the library’ do you two buffoons not understand, eh?”

Within a few strides, Mister Mattis was standing in front of the pair of youths who, although both large, Dudley in overall size and Piers just in height for their age, barely came up to Mattis’ thighs, the old man proving to be taller than six feet by a good bit. “Now, I don’t care what business you think you have with the youngster over there. But this is a library. As long as he’s respectful of the book and obeys the rules, he’s welcome here. You two aren’t. If you’re here to read, pick a book, find a place ta sit, and do it. If not, turn around and get out.”

“You, we, that… but he’s just Harry! He’s a freak. My dad always says so,” Dudley stammered, stunned that anyone would stop him Harry Hunting. “He needs some thumping!”

That was true. Vernon never called Harry by his name, first or last, both of which Harry had only learned when he started to go to school. Instead, Vernon called Harry freak or boy.

 “I don’t bloody care what yer Da tells you. Are ya thick in the head as well as the waist? This is my bloody library. You obey the rules, simple rules that even simpletons can follow, or you don’t set foot in here. Try’n cause trouble, me and me cane will see you right out.”  

Faced with this adult disapproval and the threat of violence done on his own person, Dudley had no recourse but to retreat.

And just like that, Harry’s new safe zone became even better. Anyone stopping Dudley and Piers was a literal hero in his book.

Not that he tried to abuse the privilege or get close to Mister Mattis. Just his making certain that the other children couldn’t make trouble in the library was enough, as that left Harry free to continue to do what had rapidly become his favorite pastime: reading to escape the painful monotony of his life.

Within a few weeks of his first time in the library, Harry had gone through all of Ms. Frizzle’s adventures and left behind Paddington. Doing so had taught him several valuable words and definitions, the encyclopedia, which a growling Mister Mattis (“I’ll not have ya shorten it, boy, I’ll know if you do”) had pointed him toward, having become his best friend. He had begun to do little exercises while in the library, pushups, situps, and such. He had also taken to trading some of the fired things that the Dursleys favored with other children at lunchtime. They all thought they were getting the better of the deal, but Harry didn’t mind. Apples, grapes, even oranges and healthy sandwiches were way better than what he could scrounge at the Dursleys.

They didn’t even bother Harry much about that. Not since he’d told him back when school first started that the teachers were worried about his not having anything to eat, that it was unusual. The Dursleys hated anything that could be called unusual or what could be labeled freakish.

By the end of the first term, Harry was feeling better and fitter than he ever had before. Indeed, he was able to race to the library now, sprinting the whole way the moment school ended, leaving Dudley and his gang in the dust. He was able to then race home later, having more time to ‘help’ cook and even start work in the gardens when there was still some sunlight to see by. Harry had also moved on past the children’s books into the ones marked Young Adult.

Here, Harry found himself immersed in different adventures of all sorts, deeper and richer, the information given part of the background rather than the point as had been the case in the Magic school bus books. Buoyed by his enjoyment of those, he sought out books that had magic in them. Yet Harry didn’t stay in such stories. Instead, he found other books, books about what the dictionary called escapism. His favorite was My Side of the Mountain, about a boy who left the city behind to live on his own in the mountains. Eventually, his family came out to join him, which Harry didn’t like, but the rest of it seemed brilliant to him. These and other books about young boys or even girls running away to sea, to join the navy or just escape from their pasts appealed to him greatly.

So it would have gone, with Harry using the books he found to escape from the sadness and pain of his life, if not for Mister Mattis stepping in one cold autumn night. It was the kind of chilly night that most would be home for, knowing it presaged the onslaught of winter. Finding Harry in the library once more, dressed as he always was, Mattis sighed.

He was a very observant man. One did not survive, as he had, through World War 2, from the campaigns in France all the way to the end without being observant. He knew Harry, for all that he was now looking wiry and fit, was short for his age, nearly spindly. He knew the youth flinched at loud noises and never let someone nearby without having both eyes on them. Mattis further knew he wore the fat fool’s hand-me-downs.

Dudley had attempted to sneak into the library several times to rouse Harry out. His attempts had included trying to open the emergency doors from outside. Mattis and the other workers had not been amused.        

Mattis also had learned by this point that no one was helping Harry. For some reason, this youth had fallen through the cracks of society. Mattis suspected there was a story there, but if no one at the school, and he had mentioned Harry a time or two, even bothered to get to know the real Harry, the studious, quiet boy that Mattis saw every day, then he doubted the words of an old, retired veteran would hold much sway.

But that didn’t mean Mattis couldn’t help in his own way. “Young’un,” he growled, his voice the same gravelly town he always used. It scared most, but not Harry. He simply looked up, startled, from his latest book. A book about Horatio Hornblower, Mattis saw. Hah, I was much older when I started to read that. Good lad. “You know there’s such a thing as a library card, right? You don’t have to read all the works in the library sitting here.”

Harry blinked, staring up at the man. “Are you kicking me out Mister Mattis?” He asked with trepidation.

“What part of what I just said sounded like that?” Mattis asked, rolling his eyes. No. I’m not kicking you out, lad. However, don’t think that I haven’t noticed that your clothing hasn’t changed with winter coming on. And wherever you’re from, I’d wager that getting there is easier than getting here, yeah? So maybe it’s better to start thinking ahead, bring some books back home.”

“I, I don’t know… I’d like to. But owning books…”

“A library card doesn’t mean you own the book, lad. You have to return it after a set amount of time. And if it’s damaged, then you have to pay for it.” Mattis smiled conspiratorially. “What I’d do, if I was a lad who wasn’t welcome in his home, so to say, I would bring along a few books that I think the owners of the house’d accept and one hidden one that they might not. I’d also make certain,” and here Mattis’s voice turned even more gravelly than normal as he laid a finger on the page of the book that Harry was reading. “That they know these are all library books, and need to be returned in the same condition they were loaned out.”

Harry bit his lip worriedly. While Petunia wouldn’t care overmuch if he brought books home, he wasn’t certain what Vernon would think, and Dudley would probably go out of his way to destroy them even if that meant that his parents would get a bill. They’d only blame it on me anyway. But maybe, if I bring over books about cooking and gardening, then… Then maybe I’ve got a chance. And it will be getting cold soon, and I know that Vernon has more people over during the winter, which means I need to be home early to cook anyway. Didn’t Petunia say something about that this morning, about wanting me home early tomorrow?

She hadn’t put it that way, of course. She’d shouted at him about how he’d better not spend any more of his freakish time away from their nice home come Friday, or there’d be hell to pay. But Harry knew what that meant.

“So, how does one go about getting a library card?”

“Well, normally, for young’un like yourself, you’d simply be added to your relative’s library card if they thought you were responsible enough to get out books on your own. But I think we can waive that for you, eh?” Mattis said, winking.

Harry grinned up at him. For the first time, it seemed like someone was on his side in this world.

Harry’s quick thinking worked. When Petunia demanded to know what he was carrying in his bag that night, Harry showed her the books about gardening and cooking. She saw those two books and lost interest, smirking superiorly down at Harry as if his getting books to help him do his chores was some kind of victory for her. This made Harry brave enough to point out that these were library books and would have to be returned as good as they were now, which caused Petunia to snip angrily, “We’re not in the habit of destroying books in his house, Potter!”

As always, Henry’s last name was a curse on her lips, and Harry nodded meekly. “I just wanted everyone to know that, Aunt Petunia.” Harry never called Petunia his aunt in his head, but aloud, he had to.

Petunia sneered at him again, then ordered him to start looking for new recipes to try the next day.

This meant that Harry actually had an ally in Petunia. When Dudley came in and looked at the books that Harry was reading at the table, he made to grab them, and for the first time, Petunia stopped him from destroying something of Harry’s.  “Oh, those don’t belong to Harry Dudley. They’ll need to be returned.”

She then promptly turned around, and didn’t do anything as Dudley smacked Harry upside the head hard enough for Harry to see stars. But that was fine by Harry, he still considered this a victory.

The next day, however, was worse. As Harry had anticipated, Petunia demanded he come right back home after school to start cooking. Vernon was going to have guests over, and they would demand the best. The meal he cooked went off without a hitch, even if Harry could only smell it from his cupboard, but it was after the guests left, with Vernon drunk but not having secured a new client, when things went badly for Harry, as they always did.

Vernon blamed the food and stomped toward the door to Harry’s little bedroom underneath the stairs. Reaching in, he grabbed Harry, shouting as he pulled him out, his breath heavy with drink. “You think you can sabotage me, sabotage me with your freakishness! You’ll, they said, none! They have their own supplier, they said, courtesy alone, they said, c, cause of you! Well, I’ll teach you!”

None of that made any sense as the meal had been deemed fantastic by the guests, who had bestowed several large compliments on Petunia. But that didn’t matter to Vernon, and Harry knew that any protests would only make what was going to happen worse. Luckily, if it could be called that, Vernon didn’t pull out his belt that night, only wailing at Harry with his fists.

That was bad enough, though, and Harry was bruised and battered black and blue from the waist up before he was shoved back into his cupboard with the bellowed warning, “And I better not see you walk or hear you whine or whimper! You got what you deserved!” from the still drunk man.

Vernon was so drunk that night that he didn’t bother to turn out the lights as you normally would, something Harry felt as he stared underneath the door out into the light beyond that he would probably be blamed for tomorrow. He groaned as he tried to shift, wincing a little. That had been one of the worst beatings Harry ever had from Vernon, and he ached all over.

I hope that all this pain is gone tomorrow like it normally is, but it’s a lot right now, he thought, whimpering and biting his lips to keep any noise from escaping him as he slowly turned to stare up at the slanted ceiling of his cupboard.

There, balanced on a small piece of wood that stuck out from the side of one of the steps, was the book that he had snuck past Petunia the day before. It was hidden in the darkness from anyone just looking in. You had to actually enter the cupboard and look up to see it.

It was a story about young boys and girls being brought to a camp where, among other camp activities, they began to learn that they were magic users. The magic users in it used crystals in order to focus their spells. Harry had identified with the main character among the kids quickly. The boy called himself twice-adopted because after his mother died, his father had remarried. Then he’d died, leaving him with his new mother, who had then remarried herself.

The boy was a bit of a loner and an outcast at the start, never fitting in anywhere. But he made friends at the camp, where he found out he was special.

Looking up at that book, the cover barely visible in the darkness of his cupboard despite the light coming through underneath the door, Harry grinned through cracked, bleeding lips. Wouldn’t that be nice, he thought, raising a hand despite the amount of pain it gave him, holding it up towards the book. Wouldn’t that be nice if I, if I was special, rather than a freak, rather than living here?

Harry held out his hand like that, gritting his teeth against the pain, wishing for the book to come to him, half-delirious from the pain, just wanting something to concentrate on, something to take his mind off the agony. Just, if, if I can’t escape this life in body, please, let me do so in mind!

A moment later, Harry’s eyes widened in shock as the book, with no apparent reason, suddenly dropped off its perch. Harry winced, clenching his eyes and expecting to be brained by the book, which, although paperback, would still hurt after he’d been battered so much already. Instead of hitting the phase, the book slowly, gently, like a feather on the wind, wafted down to his stomach, landing there with barely a sound.

Harry was young, but he knew about gravity. Gravity did not act like that. He stared at the book for a few seconds, then up to where it was before, then down again, before slowly reaching for the book as if it was a dream. When he touched it, the book that spoke about young teenagers discovering their magic was still there. Harry stared at it for a moment before turning around, holding it so that the light coming in from under the cupboard’s door caught the pages and began to read.

OOOOOOO

Harry did not get any sleep that night nor the next few nights. Partly, that was because of the pain he was in. Vernon had done a major number on him, and only some of the bruises had begun to heal overnight. Luckily, it being near the start of winter, Harry didn’t need to do much work outside in the gardens, and it being the weekend, Petunia was more willing than normal to actually cook all three meals for herself, Dudley and Vernon.

She also took one look at Harry when he opened the cupboard at her shout and scoffed, ordering him back inside until he was decent enough to be seen. She wasn’t going to add to his injuries, but she also wasn’t going to help him much beyond telling Dudley that Harry wouldn’t be good for any playing for a while.

That was fine by Harry. He had things to do. Despite his injuries and the groaning from his stomach, because obviously if he wasn’t working, he wasn’t going to be allowed to take any food away from the kitchen, Harry kept himself busy, reading the book in little bits and bobs, making certain to hide it away the instant he thought anyone was coming close to the door to his cupboard. Although he didn’t have a crystal like the magic users in the book did, he experimented, pushing his willpower to make things happen.

Specifically, he tried to make a light in his cupboard. For some reason, this took a while. All that night and most of the next day, Harry tried his hardest, staring at nothing in between reading the book trying to will the light to appear. Trying to summon up the same amount of want and desire that he’d been feeling towards the book, the desperate need to have something to concentrate on, to escape into its pages, to leave behind his mundane existence with the Dursleys.

Eventually, he was able to concentrate on that again, the need to be different, to have something he could call his own that the Dursleys could not take away. That need drove him, and three nights of practice later, a small glimmer of light appeared, hovering in the middle of the cupboard under the stairs. It gave scant lights and no heat, but it was a start, and it was something Harry had done.

Staring at it, Harry, for the first time in forever when in his relative's house, smiled to himself in the gloom of his little cupboard.

He didn’t get back to the library for nearly a week as he had to allow his injuries to heal, but when he did, Harry was a man on a mission. He read through that entire series within another week and went to find more. Harry also found some interesting science books, hoping to figure out more of his strange abilities. Every day when he left, it was with one gardening book and one cookbook, with the third being an escapist-type book for himself.

Those books weren’t always about magic, but they always had the theme of getting away from a life or a home that the main character was stuck in. Because that was what Harry wanted to do most of all.

If I am magical in some way, I don’t belong with the Dursleys. I don’t know why I’m with them. I don’t even know if we’re really related. Petunia speaks about my mother as if she was a freak, too, on the rare times she’s ever spoken about her at all. Maybe, maybe my parents were magic users two. But whatever I am doing here, I don’t want to be. I want to get away, just like Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn did. Just like Jason did when he decided to leave his foster parents behind, no matter how nice they were to him in comparison to the Dursleys.

Yet one other aspect he’d read in those books had caught his attention. The fact that magic was hidden from the world. In those books, there were two factions, one good based on cooperation and working with others, and one evil, full of egotistical people who were only out for themselves and who thought they alone should use magic.

That made Harry wonder about his own circumstances. Maybe the good guys won’t come for me until I’m older, like in the books. Or, or maybe I was sent to the Dursleys to hide… or break… me. I… thinking about it, wasn’t there that first teacher I had? I can barely remember, but didn’t she say she was going to help me? The next day, she was gone. Then there was the school nurse and that bobby, who stopped Dudley from beating me up in the park. He came to the house and… nothing.

To Harry’s way of thinking, that meant he couldn’t trust either the adults around him or maybe his fellow magicals. I need to keep my magic to myself, I need to get away, and I need to grow stronger.  

Harry had laughed then, quietly. Of course, he was in the library at the time. “Oh, but what I wouldn’t give to have a friend like the big berserker! Heh, if he’d scare a whole group of footy players, I’d wager he’d be great to have around. Pity Dudley’s the only one in my life to fit that description.”

That winter was a bad one, with lots of snow, ice, and more. It got so bad, and the looks that Harry got when he was walking around were so pointed that the Dursleys were forced to give Harry more of Dudley’s hand-me-downs. Or rather, hand-me-acrosses, as they were the same age but nowhere near the same build.

None of them fit well, of course, but they kept him warm. That, and the fact that Harry had begun to experiment with heating his own body. Not creating a fire or light, just filling his body with the sensation of being warm, of being comfortable. This was actually easier than creating a light, and Harry wondered why that was but wasn’t about to question it.

This and his other experiments, specifically on making his glasses unbreakable, easily made that winter the best of his life. It also made him wonder. If he could make himself comfortable, if he could make himself feel warm, then maybe he could do other things with himself above and beyond that.

One night, Harry slowly, carefully pushed the door to his cupboard open. He’d done this several times over the years and knew it would creak at a specific angle, but he could squeeze out before it hit that angle. Normally, Harry would then grab whatever he thought looked edible and retreat back to his cupboard. But now, he was a boy on a mission.

Harry stood up, slowly moving away from the cupboard, leaving it ajar behind him, stuck there with a small sliver of wood so there was no chance it would cause any noise. Sometimes, it felt as if Vernon or Petunia stayed up at night just to hear if Harry dared to come out of the cupboard. Mind you, that was a few years ago, I haven’t tried to sneak into the kitchen even in a while. Maybe they don’t do it any longer?

Shaking his head at such thoughts, Harry looked down at his body, specifically his feet. Currently, they were in stockings, and Harry concentrated on them, staring down at the shadowy forms of his feet in the dark. Silent, he thought, silent, be silent, no noise, no noise!

Several minutes later, Harry felt a tingle on his feet, as if something had happened. He didn’t know what, but he breathed in and then slowly moved away, specifically to a few floorboards at the base of the stairs that he used as a monitor for when Vernon, Petunia and Dudley were up and about. Slowly, he raised his foot, then pressed it down into the floorboard. The floorboard creaked.

Instantly, Harry stiffened, then bolted back toward the cupboard. As he did, his feet made no noise as they slapped down on the wood of the floor. Right, so I was able to do it, he thought, reaching his cupboard and ducking inside quickly, pulling the door swiftly yet silently closed behind him. Breathing hard, staring up at the slanted ceiling, waiting for something to happen. But I also need to silence other things if I’m going to move on them quietly. It was the whole plank that was making the noise, not just where my feet touched down on it.

Harry waited anxiously in the darkness for several minutes, but nothing seemed to happen. He slowly pushed himself back to his feet, then glared at the cupboard door. “Right,” he hissed in a whisper. “If I’m able to silence my own feet, I should be able to silence you!”

That became his project for the next few nights, silencing the doorway. Then, slowly, he began to try to make himself invisible. This was an extremely difficult process and took him weeks, then more than a month to get right. But, eventually, Harry was able to stand in the bathroom on the second floor of the Dursley house, having made no noise on the stairs or on the second floor as he entered the bathroom, staring at where his reflection should be, but wasn’t.

Unseen by any, Harry began to grin.

Harry was a smart boy, though. Keeping himself invisible or silent was simply one aspect of getting away from the Dursleys, especially if there might be other magiclas out there determined to keep him there. Harry had to have a place to go, and he had to have a plan. Thus, as winter continued, Harry began to plan ahead. He began to read more books about normal people escaping, going back to the Boy on the Mountain, pushing his way past the first chapter of Tom Sawyer, and then more such books based in England and beyond.

Eventually, he had a start of a plan, but Harry knew that it would take a wild to put into effect. There was so much he needed to know, needed to prepare. That was fine by Harry. I have a goal and a plan. I can make this work.

Winter passed into spring, and Harry continued to go to the library after school whenever he could, learning more about boats, rivers and navigation. Books about ships, boats, what made one a ship, what made another a boat. Wind and sails and other things dominated the rest of that winter, as did books about exercise. Harry knew that if he was to get away, he would have to be fit, and that meant he liberated more food from Dudley’s kitchen and read books on nutrition while also sneaking into the school’s swimming pool to teach himself how to swim.

Over the summer though, Harry couldn’t get away from the Dudley house to the library nearly as often. Petunia was eager to see what the books on gardening were good for, and Harry had put a lot of effort into keeping up that pretense.

Now, Harry turned gardening into more exercise for himself, interspersing working on getting rid of this or that weed, planting this or that flower with push-ups, situps and other things. Harry knew by this point that he would never be very large simply because of how malnourished he had been, a word Harry had learned before getting his library card. He simply hoped he could at least be fit. And at night, Harry practiced his magic.

With the weather having turned nice, at first, Harry had thought about finding someplace outside. But when he did so, Harry got the scare of his life and proof that someone was indeed responsible for him being at the Dursleys.

Near the school, there was a small park. With Dudley over at one of his friends and it raining, with thunder and lightning, so badly even Petunia didn’t think it a good idea for Harry to be out in the gardens, Harry had snuck out of the house and headed there to do some experimenting.

At first, his small light and fetch spells worked well enough. The rain didn’t seem to interfere with either at all. But when Harry started to practice his silencing spell on a ball someone had left, he heard something beyond the steady rainfall, a loud popping noise. Instinctively, Harry ducked, hiding under a jungle gym, going down on his stomach to hide better in the shadows.

Looking toward where he had heard the noise, Harry saw a man by the entrance to the park. The man seemed to look around for a moment, then grumble to himself before disappearing. From this distance, Harry wasn’t certain if the man had simply walked out of sight in the rain or had somehow teleported himself like some of the magic users in his books could. Well… that tears it. I need some way to hide myself from magic users, too, maybe? But, but why did it take whoever that was so long to appear? I’ve been practicing for a good… oh, maybe it’s simply the amount of spells I use? But, no… that can’t be it, I’ve gone way longer than this in my cupboard.

Shaking his head at that mystery but adding hiding himself from other magic users as a priority, Harry made his way back to the Dursleys. Well, regardless, I know now I need to practice at home for a bit until I figure that out. Ugh, and maybe stay away from Ms. Figg’s cats. They always seem to be staring at me. Ugh.

Where other boys might have been put off by the idea of adults being after him, though, at this point, Harry had sort of assumed that might be the case. That, and it really gave his entire life more of an adventure-type feel. I really might be like one of the kids in my stories!

At first, Harry’s attempts at spells were simple, things like his light, but then they evolved into his invisibility and no sound spell. But he quickly ran into issues even with these spells when he tried to make those spells last longer than an hour or so and when he wanted to do more complex things. Like making a ball bounce or trying to figure out where things were, a spell he read about in a book. Many of the specific spells in the books seemed beyond him, like making fire or lightning, although during one such experiment, Harry had a somewhat startling surprise.

Harry grunted, feeling the heat beat down on him. It was ninety degrees out with a blistering amount of sun, which was bad enough, but Petunia had forbidden him from entering the house to cool off until the gardening was done for the day. She’d done that before, but today was worse due to the blistering sunlight.

I, I need to, to cool off. Can… Can I create water? I know I couldn’t create fire or lightning, but… Pushing into the tiny shed where the gardening tools were kept, Harry paused and then held up his hands, cupping them in front of his face. With all the tools outside, there was just enough room for him to stand in here, but Harry knew that if he took too long, Petunia would be out to force him back to work.

Water, water, cool, chilling… Please, work… Harry thought, his mind starting to get hazy with the heat. Slowly, very, very slowly, the water began to form, and Harry gasped in delight. Once his hands were full, he splashed his face with the cold water, the water almost cold enough to have been turning into ice, feeling magnificent against his face.

Harry was able to conjure another handful of water and drink it slowly before hastily exiting the shed, holding a tool in his hand as if he had been trying to find it. Several times throughout the day he was able to conjure water for himself, staying hydrated despite the sun beating down on him. Although, he still got sunburned pretty badly.

So, while he wasn’t able to create fire or lightning, water seemed doable. This still left him with the problem of making certain his spells lasted for a long time. Up to this point, that hadn’t been a major issue, but he decided once more to go back to the series of books that he had been reading when he first discovered his magic to discover more, hoping to not waste time redoing his spells, and maybe to help him further hide his magic away from other magic users.

While it was very clear that he didn’t need crystals to do many of his spells, Harry wondered if perhaps using a focus would help. Or, or maybe to, to somehow hang spells on them and thus make them last longer, and keep more spells, um, active, I guess, at the same time!

Finding a crystal proved difficult. They were not something that occurred naturally in Surrey. Harry’s explorations of the parks and roads proved that for a certainty, and his one foray into the woods simply added to it.

Eventually, feeling quite bad about it, Harry stole a crystal from the school science lab. The science teacher thought of himself as a bit of a geologist and kept numerous stones of different types and crystals in the classroom. One of them was a large, almost clear crystal of quartz, and that was the one that Harry took.

Thanks to his magic, Harry was able to get in and out of the classroom with no one the wiser, although he and a few of the other boys were detained after school when the professor demanded to go through their stuff to see if any of them had taken it. Harry had known that would happen, and had hidden it out in the playground. He had to sneak out entirely from the Dursley place that night to retrieve it, which was somewhat nerve-racking, but he was back, and in his cupboard with no one the wiser save for a few cats. And they wouldn’t be able to tell anyone what he’s been up to. They’re really creepy, but Ms. Figg’s cats can’t talk, at least.

Whether or not it was the crystal or the simple fact that he had something to concentrate his spells through, Harry didn’t know. But his experiments with ‘hanging’ spells on the crystal worked like a charm. He was able to leave the crystal outside one day, hiding it under the lounge chair that Petunia occasionally used in the wrong position, and she never noticed either the crystal or the lounge chair thangs to the INvisbility spell Harry had set on the crystal, creating an area where no one else could see anything.

All Petunia would say was that she was certain she had brought the lawn chair out and was wondering where it had been stored, blaming Harry for putting it away for some reason.

With the crystal, Harry’s plans took a step forward. With Summer beginning to end, Harry snuck out every night, memorizing the way he wanted to go when he finally made his great escape.

First, Harry found a place in the woods nearby. Thanks to living in Surrey, one of the most wooded areas in England, this was actually pretty easy. It took him a while to get to the woods from Privet Drive, but once he was there, finding an out-of-the-way place where no one else would go was easy enough. There, Harry left the crystal after hanging a spell on it that was powerful enough to make it invisible to people’s senses. He hoped that by doing this, the area would hide everything else he wanted to do.

After that, Harry reluctantly turned to thievery again. Harry didn’t enjoy it, but it was the only way he could get what he needed. He didn’t have any money or any way to earn some. The Dursleys would certainly never give him an allowance, and everyone but Mister Mattis seemed to think of him as some sort of criminal already, so Harry was more than willing to go with it.

He snuck down to the gas station and took several maps, getting in and out without being seen so easily that it was almost startling. With those maps in hand, Harry planned out his route to the nearest river, which he would then be able to follow all the way down to the ocean. This turned out to be the River Wey, which was a tributary of the Thames that flowed down through Surrey and on through London then out to sea after passing around thirty more miles.

Over the autumn, Harry mapped out that route and then actually journeyed down to the River Wey. The river nearest Privet Drive was kind of deep but very slow-moving. Far better for Harry was the fact there were several small inlets along its way hidden entirely under a line of weeping willows. With the help of my Invisibility Crystal, I think I can make an area like this entirely secret from anyone! Harry thought as he crawled through the branches of one large weeping willow.

The area directly below the tree was quite large, enough to house one of the rowboats that Harry had seen pulled up alongside the river earlier that day. That was good. In fact, that was excellent. But it posed a problem for Harry. Do I move my secret base entirely down here or make a second one? Would I need a second crystal or something to concentrate my magic on? It’s kind of far from the Dursleys…

After the past several months of using his magic, Harry no longer had any doubt that was what he was doing, nor did he flinch from using the term despite what he knew the Dursleys would do if they thought he was even more of a freak than they thought already. But the fact remained that he still needed something to concentrate his magic through to make anything last for very long.

Sighing, Harry shook his head, looking down at the base of the weeping willow. “Yeah, it’s too far from the Dursleys for me to use it every night. No, I’m going to have to get another crystal and set up a base here with that. Which means it’s back to stealing for me, drat it.”

Despite his upbringing among the Dursleys, Harry was not a natural lawbreaker as both the Dursleys and practically everyone else thought he was. Thus, stealing from someone else did not sit right with him. But if it was to help his plan to get away from the Dursleys Harry would do it gladly. “And I think I actually passed a store that sold crystals and other stuff on my way here.”

For some reason, people thought that crystals had healing powers, which Harry hadn’t noticed just yet, but maybe once he was better at magic, that could be true, too. Regardless, he snuck into the store two days later and grabbed four small crystals. One was another quartz crystal that matched the size of the one he’d stolen from the science teacher. The other three were geodes.

With those in hand, Harry snuck back out as another customer entered, with the owner of the store none the wiser.

For several months following, Harry didn’t go anywhere but the library, reading even as he held the crystals in his grip, trying to somehow infuse his magic into them before imparting the ‘keep stuff invisible/indetectable’ spell as he thought of it. One he kept in his bag so that whenever anyone tried to look through it, they wouldn’t see anything. This wouldn’t stop someone simply upending his bag and anything inside coming out, but it was at least a help in that area that worked several times on Dudley and Petunia.

The largest crystal one of the geodes Harry placed among the roots of the weeping willow along the River Wey, hidden from sight for now. The other two and the Invisibility Crystal he kept at his Forest Base, as he thought of it with a certain amount of delight, was enough for now.

With two secret bases and the route secured between them, for a given value anyway, Harry began to expand his magical repertoire. He had to, in order to build the object that would allow him to use the river in the first place: a boat. There was no way he could steal a boat, unlike the crystals and maps, without the theft being noticed. Worse, people would automatically start searching the river for a stolen boat. Harry was certain that his Invisibility Crystals could work against a few people at a time, but dozens? Maybe with dogs?

“I have no idea how good a dog’s sense of smell is, and I am so not going to chance that,” Harry shivered. He’d been somewhat afraid of dogs after an encounter with Marge’s dog, Ripper.

No, Harry would have to build his own. And after a bit, Harry realized it would have to be a ship, not a boat or raft. A raft would not be able to some of the rapids that he might run into, nor out on the open ocean when he got out past London and out into the open ocean beyond.

Because that was Harry’s ultimate goal: to escape out onto the ocean. Most of the young adult books he’d been reading lately had their main characters run away to the ocean to build a new life among the sailors, and Harry hoped to do much the same. But to do that, he needed a ship of his own. In this day and age, a boy his age would never be allowed onto another ship. Harry knew that for a fact.

It never occurred to Harry to simply hide in the woods or to try to sail up the river deeper into England to get away from his relatives. He had fixated on the idea of the ocean and of ships in general in a way that only an eleven-year-old who has finally seen a path to freedom could. Nothing would dissuade him, and no one was available to convince him that running away to the ocean on his own was a horrible idea.

Even his sole ally, Mister Mattis, didn’t know what Harry was up to and might not have said anything about it, regardless. Harry’s life was his own, whatever he did with it.

During that winter, Harry’s plans going forward were stymied by the simple fact he didn’t know enough about magic or boatmaking. He had books to figure out the one, but using magic to replace some of the tools and other things was incredibly hard. But over the winter, the creation of his ship’s keel was finished. Which obviously made Harry wonder aloud, “Well… I made it. Now, how to get it and all the rest down to the river…” He sighed. “Back to the drawing board, I guess.”

With that, Harry started to experiment with his magic to float things or take away their weight. This was incredibly difficult, but eventually, Harry was able to lift the keel off the ground. “Do or do not, there is no try. Use the Force, the Force, lift the x-wing,” he murmured, quoting a movie that he had recently listened to from his cupboard, staring at the keel as the geode he was using for this glowed in his hand like a small star, the keel slowly floating up off the ground.

OOOOOOO

Unknowingly to Harry, his levitation Spell moved the keel out of the area covered by his Invisibility Crystal. Nor was this the first time something had happened of that nature. Before this, Harry’s Invisibility Crstyals had protected him almost as much as being at home with the Dursleys did, but occasionally, he had made mistakes like that when he was on the move.

              This wasn’t enough for any other magical to find him, though, much to the annoyance of the woman whose job it was to track the misuse of magic in the muggle world.

Deep in the bowels of the Ministry of Magic, a middle-aged woman scowled, breaking off from gossiping with another middle-aged woman as a bright red dot flared up on a large, rather old-looking and not-at-all updated map of the United Kingdom. “There it is again! Surrey once more, and the woods to boot. Not nearby muggles, this time, but still, it’s in the muggle area of England. What in the world is that witch or wizard thinking,” she grumbled, reaching for a far talker. “I’m going to need to send in an Auror again, drat it all.”

“Now, wait a moment. It’s not a witch or wizard, or at least, not a trained one. Look, there’s no magical signal, just the notification, right? Some young buck or powerful witch to be must be in that area, Mafalda,” the other woman rejoined. “That’s nothing to bother the Aurors about.”

“You’d think so, but red means it’s a directed spell, not accidental magic.” The woman named Mafalda, or rather, Mafalda Hopkirk, judging by the brass plaque on her desk, shook her head in annoyance. “No, someone is using magic where they shouldn’t and using an unregistered wand. That’s a hefty fine right there.”

“Wait a tic, love. You know, at this time of year the Aurors are overworked, it being near Winter solstice.” Humming, the other woman tapped the red dot on the map with a small, willowy wand that she held in her hand.

Tugging the wand away, what was supposed to happen was that further information about the spell sensed by the Runic Sensors spread around all of the United Kingdom would appear in midair in fiery letters.

The ancient, powerful Sensors had first allowed the ancient wizards and witches to identify and find young magicals born to muggle families. Since the creation of the Statute of Secrecy, that enchantment, and others like it across the globe, had been expanded to allow anyone watching the ability to discover spells being used where they shouldn’t and even the nature of the spells.

Yet despite that, when the woman pulled her wand away, no more information appeared. “See, it might be directed, but there’s no actual spell, the magic,” the as-yet-unnamed woman pointed out. “All we know is that someone’s using magic in that area. Hmmm… Is there anything special about Surrey we should know about?”

Mafalda scowled, thinking about it, but knew her friend was right about the Aurors being busy. If she was lucky, an Auror would be able to get out there in an hour, at which point, as she had learned over the past few months, whoever was there would have moved on. “Drat it, and I never thought to check on if something was going on in that area. Good point.” With that, she waved her wand, tapping it on a nearby file cabinet, intoning firmly, “Surrey.”

Instantly, the file cabinet opened the files within flowing back and forth for a moment before the ‘S’ organizer sheet appeared, followed by a file popping out of the rest. Mafalda pulled it out, kicking the drawer closed, causing the other woman to roll her eyes.

“You shouldn’t treat your enchanted items like that, Mafalda. They might not have feelings, but if you’ve ever played with an old wizard’s chess set, then you know enchanted items can act very strangely, especially if they aren’t treated with respect.”

“Bah, don’t be ridiculous, Rach, a file cabinet is a cabinet. You sound like those pairs of loons, Selene and Xeno Lovegood,” Mafalda waved the other woman’s injunction off airily as she opened the file. “It’s only things that are supposed to act a bit more human that can evolve to be near-sentient. Now, what is…huh.” She blinked, shaking her head. “Weird. This says the whole district has been remanded to the eyes only of the Chief Warlock. Drat that means I shouldn’t even have been sending Aurors down there at all.”

“Dumbledore!?” Rach, if that was her name rather than a nickname, gasped, her look of annoyance fading. “Really?”

“Really. Says here we’re to ignore anything that happens below a Size Six disturbance, and even then, we are to inform Dumbledore before sending anyone. Crud, I could have gotten into trouble if any of the Aurors I sent actually found anything,” Mafalda murmured, finishing reading the small injunction. It had all the proper signatures and documentation, but Mafalda had never seen anything like it before.

“Hmmm…I wonder what the old coot is up to,” Rach murmured. Then she smirked. “You don’t suppose that he’s somehow hidden the Boy Who Lived there, do you? Hiding him away in the woods in the muggle side of the UK?”

“Hah! I doubt it. That boy’s probably living a life of luxury somewhere on the continent,” Mafalda scoffed. “Still, if that whole area is to be Dumbldore’s eyes only until… huh, for five more years? Strange. Then I can safely ignore anything unusual from that area for now.”

Rach nodded her head at that before grinning suddenly. “You know, in five years, wouldn’t Harry Potter be sixteen? Just in time to start—”

“Oh, away with you with your conspiracy theories!” Mafalda snickered before turning the conversation back to what they had been talking about a moment before. The latest scandal involving Mad-Eye Moody was far more interesting than whatever Dumbledore was hiding in Surrey.

OOOOOOO

When Harry was a baby, Albus Dumbledore, one of the world’s most powerful and learned wizards, had decided to use an esoteric and extremely powerful ward based on familial blood to hide him with his aunt. The blood ward itself was highly illegal but would hide Harry from being found by any magical means and even nonmagical people looking to harm him so long as he lived within the Dursley household. It also blocked anyone from detecting any magic within, yet that wasn’t as helpful any longer as Harry was performing magic elsewhere in his two separate ‘secret bases’. There, Harry’s Invisibility Crystals helped, but occasionally, Harry’s magic still slipped out.

Albus also had a way to keep track of Harry. Specifically, he had an item enchanted to his blood to make certain that Harry did not try to run away. Which Harry had yet to do. And he had an agent on Privet Drive to watch him. This was the local cat eccentric, Ms. Figg. She used a few of her cats to track Harry and always watched him whenever he was out and about from her second-story window. Thus, Arabella knew about how badly Petunia treated her nephew and had seen Dudley bully Harry several times, although she had no idea about the extent of that or that Vernon occasionally joined in when they were all inside the Dursley house. And ever since Harry had discovered how to silence his feet and make himself pass unnoticed, even her half-kneazles could not track him.

Yet that was alright by Ms. Figg. Indeed, she had noticed a marked improvement in Harry’s overall appearance and emotions over the past year or so. Whenever he was away from the Dursleys, and even sometimes in their backyard, he was always smiling, his eyes gleaming like a boy who was suddenly enjoying life, whereas before, he had simply been getting by. Or so Arabells supposed. She wasn’t certain why but felt that was the case, and reported it to Dumbledore.

Yet because she had seen no sign of Harry using magic, she didn’t mention it. And thus, Harry’s actions continued to slip through the cracks.

OOOOOOO

During winter, Harry lost a lot of his free time during the day. Vernon hosted people to dinner at least twice a month, and Petunia demanded Harry take up more and more of the cooking at night and in the morning. And while concentrating on several spells, keeping himself warm, invisible and moving objects was good exercise for his magical muscles, it was also hard as heck and wiped him out mentally for several days after. So Harry had to husband his magic and the time spent at either of his secret bases.

Because of this, he only went down to his Willow Base every week, first hiding the keel and then other wooden planks he had created with his magic and downed trees within the forest without doing anything else with them. He abandoned his Forest Base for the winter and stayed home in his cupboard instead, practicing the various spells he would need to build his ship: joining, drying, shaving, gluing and others. These were difficult spells, more so than his simple heat spell, but were very necessary to build a ship, no matter how small, that could last longer than it took the water to find ways in.

He also spent more time exercising and planning more for what he needed when he finally was able to get away entirely.

During this time, though, the Dursleys finally realized something was up with Harry. ‘I tell you, Petunia, he’s too… too upbeat these past few months. It makes me want to wail on him on general principle,” Vernon scowled as he and his wife sat at the dining table late after dinner had been cleared away. “What’s going on?”

“I, I don’t know, Vernon. I had him out there all day, every day over the spring and summer, and he did an alright job following my instructions in the gardens. I didn’t see anything freakish then. Have, have you?”

“Ugh, other than his healing too damned fast, no,” Vernon grumbled. “I took the belt to Potter a few weeks back, fucking freak is doing something to the food, I swear! It tastes good, but not a single damn person I’ve had over in more than a year agreed to make a deal with Grunnings for their drills. My higher-ups still think highly of me, but if I can’t bring in commissions, then that’ll change.” Vernon’s curses went on for a while before returning to actual normal words. “The brat’s back should’ve been a mass of welts, bruises and cuts for weeks. But it was healed in four days. Didn’t even leave any scars this time.”

“Don’t remind me, I still remember his freakish hair and how quickly it grew back. But Vernon, he can’t have found anything about it,” Petunia answered, sounding almost petulant to the listening Harry. “He’s got no wand, and we haven’t seen anything freakish. Not even when Ripper got after him this past weekend. I’m all for continuing to beat it out of him, but at the moment, we don’t know if he really is up to anything.”

“Other than running to that cursed library, you mean. I’m all for the boy using books to get better at his chores but nothing else. Ugh, they’ve even got books there that feature that freakishness! No. You’ll tell him tomorrow, Petunia. No more library or library books. In fact, I’ll start searching his bag and his cupboard for any sign of freakishness.”

“That sounds like a good idea. I’ll be sure to watch Potter more when he’s outside this summer and spring. But so long as, as one of their kind hasn’t come around, I still don’t see how he could have learned about it. That bitch Lily had to learn about it from, from that snake, and then the teacher who, well, you know,” Petunia trailed off, sounding disgusted by the words coming out of her mouth.

“Maybe. But better safe than sorry,” Vernon said grimly.

Slowly, Harry pulled the long hemp rope he had enchanted to carry noise back towards the cupboard, scowling. Well, I suppose I’m going to need to hide the rope and everything else I keep here somewhere else, he thought for a moment, then sighed. I’ll leave it all down at Willow Base. It’s a few days early, but I need to renew the spell on the Invisibility Crystal there anyway.

He then smiled widely. Although I now know my mom was magical too and that there are enough of us out there to have teachers. But I’m still here, here with the Dursleys who have tried their best to beat it out of me. Now, that might mean that they just left me with Petunia, thinking she was family, and that was it, but without anyone even checking up on me, it seems weird. No, I think whoever put me here did it because they knew how I would be treated. There’s too many things that have worked against me before this, and then there was that guy in the rain months back.

Shaking his head, Harry set those thoughts aside. Right now, he needed to plan how to get out of the house unseen with everything he had been hiding in his bag and under one of the loose floorboards in his cupboard. Harry couldn’t take any chances that Vernon would find anything.

Vernon didn’t find anything. But that only made him more certain Harry was up to something. He watched Harry like a hawk but didn’t see anything unusual. And while Petunia had laid down the law on going to the library, it wasn’t like they could actually keep track of Harry before he was home.

Having finished reading most of the books about woodworking, ships, and shipbuilding, Harry spent most of his time, Harry spent time now on even more nautical matters. How to handle a ship, how to work sails, how to read the ocean. More and more, Harry began to love reading about the ocean, the descriptions, and the stories of people who ran away to sea.

During this time, once more, Harry took to thieving. Specifically, he took to stealing things for his ship when it was built.

A compass from a hiking store. One of many, it wouldn’t be missed. New shoes from a student who was around his own age. As he’d joined in on Harry Hunting in the playground, Harry had no qualms about stealing them.

A sail was easily the hardest thing to find as most ships today relied on gasoline. But Harry had no idea about engines. He’d tried to read a book about engines and had walked away cross-eyed. Sails, though, Harry could understand.

Eventually, Harry found a place that sold sails to hobbyists. Getting to it was also hard as it was at the other end of Surrey from Privet Drive. Hitching a ride on the back of a bus was bouncy, painful and annoying, but it eventually got there. Getting the sail was another adventure entirely, but thankfully, Harry’s magic was up to the task once more, opening doors and letting him steal a full set of sails without raising any alarms.

That, and the place didn’t have anything but a lock to protect its warehouse. It actually took Harry longer to find the sails than it took to get into the store. Feeling extremely guilty about all the thefts, Harry headed back to Privet Drive after dropping off the sails and once more empowering the Invisibility Crystal at his Willow Base.

Any guilt about his actions fled that night as, once more, Vernon got drunk and beat Harry so badly he could barely move the next day. Vernon once more blamed him for missing out on a deal, but more than anything, Vernon seemed to sense Harry’s rising hope and wanted to stamp it out.

Petunia, whining all the while, was forced to call the school to tell him that Harry had an accident and wasn’t fit to go. It took him several days, nearly a week, before Harry was well enough to move again, and even then, he couldn’t get away from Dudley that first afternoon back at school, resulting in another beating.

I, I need to get out of here. The Dursleys, they’re getting worse. I, I need to leave, Fast!

When spring came, Harry was ready to finally put his ship together. He’d mastered the spells he needed to dry out the wood, to maintain it, to set the planks one on another. This last, he’d found in a book on Japanese wooden ships. Most of it was useless, but the way they built their ships, fitting the wood together, was incredible. Harry had taken weeks on each plank to make it so they could be set together. It was hard and extremely magic-intensive, but Harry was able to do it.

It took Harry another month of nights and a few afternoons to build his ship, but finally, it was ready.

Harry’s ship was built like a sloop, but smaller, barely twenty feet stem to stern. It had a single mast with a headsail in front of the mast and a mainsail aft of it. Aft of the sail was where the wheel was as well, built into the top of the entryway into the ship, while the ropes controlling the sails were tied up in front of the wheel. The ship was sleek, matching the image of a sailing boat Harry had seen in many of his books, the name Bonaventure on its side in neat black lettering. Inside, there was enough room for Harry to lay out on a small bunk, which wasn’t exactly comfortable for most, but Harry had gotten used to years of sleeping on the floor of his cupboard. This was no different.

A small fridge that Harry had repaired from a trash can near the school sat there, a geode with the spell ‘COLD’ embedded in it inside.

Harry spent one last day and night at the Dursleys, daring to get a full night’s sleep. But when Dudley and his gang tried to chase Harry the next day, Harry ran in an entirely different direction. Within a few blocks, Dudley and the boys were in an entirely different area of Surrey that none of them had even been in before. “Wh, where’s the freak going?” Piers gasped.

“D, don’t know. I, is it just me, or is he faster than he was a few days ago?” Another one of Dudley’s gang gasped back.

“I, I, oh screw this!” Surprising no one, Dudley was the first to let out a gasp and slow to a halt. “Freak’s too damn quick these days. We’ll have to find a place near home or that blasted library to ambush him.”

But Harry would not return to Privet Drive, not then, not ever. Nor would he return to the library. He’d said his farewells to Mister Mattis days ago.

The rest of that day, Harry rested in his boat at Willow Base, eating, sleeping, and going over the maps of the River Wey and the Thames. Once evening fell, Harry empowered the two crystals that he’d been using for more than a year now to carry the Invisibility Spell. Then, in the dead of night, Harry slowly polled his ship out from under the Weeping Willow.

Staring up at the slack sails, Harry floundered for a moment. “Wind. I, I forgot to check the weather!”

Thinking quickly, Harry pulled out one of his spare geodes, the one he’d used routinely to concentrate on his active spells. Holding it up, he whispered, ‘Wind, Wind, blow, wind, come on!” Harry pictured it in his mind, how the breeze would feel on his face, on his arms, his hair, how it would look if the wind filled his sails. And he pushed that thought out into the already glowing crystal. “MAKE IT HAPPEN!”

For a moment, the world did not respond to his will as it had in so many small ways up to this point. But then, a wind picked up from behind Harry, filling the sails, and, invisible to any but Harry, the ship began to move, slowly but surely, as the river’s slow current also began to do its part.

For a few moments, Harry just grinned, staring at the sails, at the prow of his ship and smiled. He looked back at the weeping willow, and waved at it, then turned almost entirely around to stare past the line of weeping willows at the edge of the river to the rest of, in his mind, Surrey. In his mind’s eye, he pictured 34 Privet Drive. He pictured the Dursleys, with Vernon growling angrily and Petunia having had to make dinner and clean up afterward all on her own, both of them promising retribution when ‘the freak’ returned home. “I’m free of you all, of this place. And if I ever set foot in Surrey ever again, it will be too soon!”

With a whoop, Harry turned away and pushed more power into his spell, sending more wind into the sails. Soon, Harry’s ship was moving quickly down the river, and he was working hard on the wheel, keeping the ship level as he sailed through the night. Right up until it nearly ran aground, only Harry’s quick work with the wheel kept him from crashing full-bore into the hidden sandbank.

“I, I think I didn’t think this through,” He muttered, cutting power into the wind spell. “Right, right, slow and steady, but… can I get out to the open ocean in one night at this speed?”

 Pulling out the map one-handed was tough, but he was able to do it, and eventually, he saw that after a few twists and turns, the river became straight until it merged with the Thames. At that point, there was a long, slow curve before it straightened again. No, no way will I be able to get to the open ocean in one day. And I’ve got the invisibility spells. If I can find a place out of the way, then maybe…

That was what he did later that night. As a horrified Albus Dumbledore appeared on Privet Drive, he was already hours away and had just hit the straight portion of the river.

OOOOOOO

Albus Dumbledore blinked, looking up from his work at his desk as a small silver rotating device stopped turning, sputtered, and then collapsed in on itself as if the metal it had been made of had suddenly become so much paper. Instantly, he pushed himself to his feet, moving around his desk far more sprightly than a man his age would normally be able to, his wand appearing in his hand as he knelt down, tapping it gently against the rubble of the device. But there was no mistaking it. The tracking device, the device that linked itself to the blood awards on Privet Drive and Harry Potter, was broken.

Straightening up, Albus stared at it for a moment, then whirled around, heading for a fireplace set to one side of the headmaster’s office in Hogwarts. Grabbing up a blue-green powder, he tossed it into the fire, shouting out clearly, “Arabella Figg!”

The next instant, he was stepping through into a woman’s living quarters, scowling as he stared down at a cat that he had nearly stepped on. To one side, he saw Arabella sit up abruptly from a rocking chair, staring at him, her eyes wide. “Albus, what is it?”

“Where is Harry?” Albus said, his tone brusque, unwilling to waste further time.

“I, I don’t know. I didn’t see Harry coming home from school, but I sometimes miss him doing so when he stays late at the library,” Arabella admitted. “I’ve got some of my cats out there watching, but I can’t exactly keep staring out of my window at night towards the Dursleys' place without it seeming unusual.”

His face set into a ferocious scowl. Albus nodded and made for the door. “I fear that something has happened to Harry, or…” Or perhaps worse, he no longer feels as if the Dursleys are family. I must discover why.

Between one step outside and the next, Albus disappeared from where he had stepped into Arabella’s backyard and reappeared in the Dursley’s backyard. He frowned then, looking around him, Albus pulling out a small device from his hand that looked pretty much like the one that he had connected to the blood awards, only smaller and with more detail. He moved over towards a portion of the garden, directly in front of the small shed there, holding it out, watching as the top of the device began to move quickly. Someone has been doing magic here, but long enough ago that it has not left a discernible spell trace, only the whiff of magic in the air.

Putting the device away, Albus moved towards the back door, knocking on it abruptly.

“There’s the freak! I’d wager anything that he tried to stay away for the whole night, then got scared. It’s too late to do anything to him tonight, but I expect you to work him hard tomorrow, Petunia,” a male voice growled out.

“Of course I will!” A woman’s voice answered, the owner of the voice opening the door even as she shouted over her shoulder. She turned, a sneer on her lips as she looked down, only to find herself staring down at Albus Dumbledore’s belt buckle. Raising her eyes to his face quickly, outrage and horror warred on Petunia’s face for a moment. “You! What are you doing here?! We don’t want your kind here, not you and not that freak!”

“Well, part of the mystery that brought me here is very clear at the moment.” His tone deceptively mild, Albus flicked his wand, freezing Petunia in place, then slid into the house around her, locking the door.

Hearing a man’s voice, Vernon had pushed himself out of his chair, and turned, glaring at Albus, but the sight of the older man’s wand made him pause. “You! I remember you. You were at that blasted Potter’s wedding!”

“I was. I was also the man who dropped Harry here and made it so that you and he were safe from those who would seek retribution upon Harry for his role in their master’s demise.” Albus heard a noise to one side and looked up the stairs, seeing a fat young man there, eleven or twelve years old perhaps, immensely overweight and not much muscle. He seemed to stare at Albus with fear in his eyes for a moment before rushing back upstairs.

Turning, Albus saw that Vernon had made to move forward, but a quick spell froze his feet to the ground, leaving him flailing, almost losing his balance and falling forward. Albus doubted, looking at the man, that he would be able to write himself, but surprisingly, windmilling his arms was enough to cause the man to remain upright.

“Now, I am going to ask some questions. If I do not like the answers, I am going to rip them from your brains.” Albus paused then, smiling in a grandfatherly way and turning towards the door, flicking his wand again. He silently pulled Petunia’s frozen body away from the door, placing it beside her husband and unfreezing her. She stumbled, staring at him with fear in her eyes. “I’m going to ask the most pressing question first. Do you have any idea where Harry Potter is?”

The answers that he got to that simple question were less than helpful. Sighing, Albus turned, looking around the house, absentmindedly silencing the two idiots, before pulling out the same devices he’d used outside a moment ago.

Seconds later, he held it towards the door of the cupboard, staring at it thoughtfully, then opening it looked inside. He saw little inside, barring a matted, threadbare blanket and an even more threadbare pillow.

But magic was alive in this place, heavy in the air from continued use over many, many days in a way that no place I the muggle world should have been. Beyond that, it was magic of a sort that, after a few moments of waving his wand, Albus could barely discern. Yet he had run into such things a few times before when dealing with Muggleborn.

With Harry having Taken his Invisibility Crystals with him, the magical residue from the spells they had hidden was now visible.

So, Harry discovered he was magical and began to experiment. Where did he learn of it, how, and why in such a controlled manner?

Pushing himself to his height again, ignoring his slightly aching knees, Albus moved over towards the two frozen adults. “I did not like the responses I was being given by the two of you. I am now going to take the information I want from your mind. It will not be painful, but it might feel a little strange,” he said clinically, staring into one pair of eyes and then the other.

What Albus found within was nothing that he had not expected to see. Having met these two in person before, he understood that they were petty tyrants, more than willing to lash out at anyone weaker than them, more than willing to take advantage of anyone and anything they could and beat down anyone that stood out from what they saw as normal. Albus had thought that placing Harry here would shape Harry in a manner that Albus could later use. But it seemed as if, with his ability to use magic, Harry had begun to grow in ways that Albus could not predict. That would not do.

So, these buffoons have no idea what Harry has been up to. But they might have some idea of where he has been going and who he has been meeting.

He pulled back, then unfroze Petunia’s head, allowing her to speak. She opened her mouth, but a glare from Albus caused her to shut it quickly. “I’m not going to do anything permanent to either of you nor that son of yours I saw upstairs. However, I must know where Harry Potter is. Nothing I was able to find in your mind gave me a clue as to where to look. Now think, woman. Is there anyone around here who might have helped him run away from you all? Is there any place where he could possibly think of going?”

Petunia shook her head quickly, opening and closing her mouth for a few seconds, looking like a particularly foolish horse as she began to think for the first time, perhaps in ages by Albus’s estimation. “I, I don’t, he liked to go to the library. Potter spent a lot of time there, but only ever brought home were books about gardening and cooking.”

“Books he knew he could get away with…” Albus actually allowed himself a faint smile at that. “I believe he did indeed trick you quite thoroughly, Petunia. But the library, a place of wonder, mystery, and knowledge. What sort of knowledge, I wonder?”

He stared out in over their heads out the window behind them for a moment, staring at the darkened streets beyond. “And if my sense of time does not elude to me, it is well past the time such a place would be closed. Yet he is a young boy. There is a limit to how far he could go.”

Albus unfrozen Petunia first, then Vernon, and moved to the front door, tapping himself on the forehead even as he went. “Close the door behind me, would you?” He tossed over his shoulder before he was out the door, invisible to anyone, leaving behind a thoroughly shaken, thoroughly frightened and furious pair of Dursleys.

As Albus walked through the streets, he hair he tried several times to divine Harry’s location. He tried to find him with a Point Me spell. The first attempt to point toward Harry Potter failed. He then tried to find the nearest source of magic, but that simply pointed back to the Dursley place, and finally, Albus tried an esoteric spell that would allow him to see where his quarry had last stepped. However, that spell only worked after a certain amount of time, and within seconds, he could tell that it had been far too long. So he did not break the blood wards right away, but only after he was… safe? Well away? Given how weak the connection was, I would wager it did not take long.

Sighing, he gave that up for a moment until he was at the library. There, he floated himself up onto the roof until he was well away from the sides of it, where no one from below would be able to see him or his companion. “Fawkes.”

Within a moment, a phoenix appeared, teleporting above Albus, then alighting on his arm, causing him to smile briefly. The phoenix method of transportation was one that he had never truly been able to duplicate, worried that any true experimentation on Fawkes would force the Phoenix to leave him. Such a thing would be punished in the extreme.

“Fawkes, can you find Harry Potter?” He asked. Before, more than once, and have been astonished at how well the the phoenix could do so. Yet now, the bird flicked its wings out, about to take off, then pausing, cocking his head, and then trailing a confused sound.

That caused Albus’s eyes to widen, and he frowned pensively. “Something is blocking you from finding him?” Impossible! And yet, it appears to be patently the case.

The Phoenix bobbed its head, looking both surprised and interested. It would take powerful wards, far more powerful than a child would ever be able to put up, to stop a Phoenix from teleporting to wherever you were. But perhaps not so powerful if they are simply blocking the Phoenix from discovering you, Albus thought, frowning. Yes, I must know more about young Harry’s… call it his methodology.

With a sigh, he asked Fawkes to wait for him on the roof, lowering himself back down to the ground and using a lock-picking spell on the door to the library, inwardly praying that it wouldn’t have any kind of newfangled security thing on it. He’d spoken to Aurors occasionally, who had been called to houses with such things on them, and they were quite annoying to deal with.

Luckily, they weren’t all that common, at least not in this area, and the door opened, allowing him entry. Creating a light from his wand for a moment, he frowned pensively. There was little magic here, which surprised him. So, Harry is not hiding here for certain and is not using magic here very often. The trail is cold, then. Unless I can find someone who was helping him, no matter how incidentally.

With that in mind, Albus moved through the library until he found a small nook, where he quickly transfigured a chair into a large comfortable sofa, laying out there for a moment. He spent the next hour attempting various divination spells, spells they would try to find whoever he was looking for or craft an image of the person as he moved through the area Albus was in currently, with scant luck. Whatever Harry was doing was, quite frankly, fascinating to Albus, hiding him entirely from being discovered. If I did not know better, I would think he had re-created the same kind of spell that is on the Potter invisibility cloak. But even then, some spells would be able to see through it. See through it but not discern his location from this far away.

With that, Dumbledore decided to get some sleep. He would question the proprietors of this place in the morning, which was barely a few hours away by that point.

Albus was woken up hours later by the jingling of the keys in the lock of the door to the library and quickly set up, making himself disappear as well as transfiguring the chair back to its original shape. Or rather, what he thought of as its original shape. That was not entirely accurate but at the moment, Albus did not care. He had a mystery to solve.

He waited there, hidden, watching as an elderly man came in, turned on all the lights, turned on the air conditioning, and, still munching on a bagel, turned back, flipping the closed to open sign on the door.

The old man then moved behind a desk near the doorway, finished his bagel, and sat down, sighing with the relief that Albus knew all too well. Elderly, injured in the past at some point. Now, he could simply be a librarian. They are always a contrary breed. But perhaps not. Perhaps he was more to Harry.

Making certain that his clothing would pass muster as a muggle with a quick transfiguration, Albus moved forward, certain that no one else had entered the library yet, before dispelling his dissolution charm just as he stood in front of the desk.

Mattis jumped, one hand flicking down to his belt for a moment as he glared. “Damn me, old fool, don’t sneak up on this old fool.”

“I apologize for that,” Albus chuckled, keeping his tone mild and respectful. Politeness, after all, took no time at all. “And for the early hour with which I am pestering you. However, I hope that you can help me with my inquiries,”.

“I’m a librarian. That’s what I’m here for. What are you looking for?” Mister Mattis answered.

“Who, rather than what. A young boy named Harry Potter. He did not return home last night.”

The change was immediate. The old man’s expression, which had not been friendly but polite, now closed down, and he gripped his cane in one hand hard enough to make the wood creek. “Good on him then.”

“Surely, though, a boy who is barely past twelve should be home with his family,” Albus asked leadingly.

“I’ve got eyes. If that lad came from a loving family, he surely did not act like it. And what’s it to you anyway? Who are you?”

“A concerned citizen, one who is worried that a boy his age has no business trying to live out in this world on his own. Surely you can see that. Whatever he is going through at the Dursleys…”

“That ain’t your place to say, nor mine. And until I see a badge, I’m not answering any questions,” Mattis said firmly.

Dumbledore nodded and then locking eyes with the other old man, used his passive Legelimency. Quickly, he discovered a memory, a memory of Harry thanking Mister Mattis for his help and telling him goodbye. Mister Mattis simply nodded gruffly before reminding Harry that it was a tough world out there. Simple, all-encompassing statements, with no hint that Mattis had ever actually given Harry any help. He also saw all the times that Harry had checked out different cooking and gardening books, along with other books. Books about magic, about people living on their own and more.

Here, Harry’s nighttime reading preferences saved him. He had always done his research on boatbuilding, construction, and ship handling here in the library. He’d never checked any of them out, and Mattis actually hadn’t seen him read any of them beyond Tom Sawyer and a few other escapism-type books. The only one whose he’d ever checked out was the Boy on the Mountain.

Sighing, Albus shook his head. This was a dead end, too. I will have two bring in especially enchanted equipment to be able to follow Harry’s footsteps. Dammit all. This old man gave Harry a safe place and access to the library, nothing more.

“Well, thank you for at least being polite about it, Mister Mattis. I will bid you a good day.”

With that, Albus turned, striding out of the library. Between one moment and the next, he had apparated back up to the roof, where he found his trusty companion waiting, enjoying the sun on his feathers. “Back to Hogwarts, old friend. This hunt is going to take a good amount of preparation. I only hope that Harry can survive on his own long enough for us to find him wherever he has hidden himself away.”

OOOOOOO

Working on the river was a fraught experience for Harry. A large chunk of the river wasn’t lit by any kind of light bar distant houses, and that just wasn’t enough to see by. Harry had run aground several times and had been forced to pole himself off each time. Even with his magic able to lighten the ship’s weight, that had not been easy, and when he had discovered another weeping willow to hide under just as the sun began to rise, he had grabbed at the chance to hide himself and rest with a great deal of relief.

Waking up late in the afternoon, Harry had let himself lay out on his cot, smiling despite his sore muscles. “I’m away. I’ll never have to go back there ever again. This calls for some food!”

Pushing himself to his feet, Harry reached into his cold box, pulling out some meats, cheese and crackers. Things that would keep for a while and were filling. “I’ll have to think about ways to keep my food fresh in the future and a source of Vitamin C. Hmm…” Shaking his head, Harry set that thought aside. “First, I need to figure out a way to see at night.”

While his crystals had been up to hiding his passage at night, Harry was extremely leery about relying on them during the day while on the move. “Not unless I have to, but I have no idea about what they do to the wake of my ship,” he murmured around bites of salami and cheese. “But I’ve been able to cast spells on myself before this. I need to… wait!”

Harry grimaced as he realized he’d just sprayed bits of food out onto his bunk. “Ugh.” Hastily cleaning it up, it took a moment before Harry could return to his earlier thought. “Cats can see at night, can’t they?” He tried to remember all the books he’d read that had cats in them and many of them did have something like that. “Okay, so… how do I…”

Frowning, Harry pondered that for a few moments. Some of the books that had magic in them implied that transforming yourself was really advanced stuff. “So transforming one part of you had to be even harder, right? Yeah, I don’t think I want to try that. But how?”

Deciding he wanted to get a bit of fresh air, Harry headed up on deck. There, he made certain the two crystals were still glowing with magical energy and then flopped out on the deck, staring up at the welcoming green of the Weeping Willow’s branches. As he did, a bit of sun came through the leaves, hitting his glasses and causing him to twitch. Then, Harry slowly reached up to his glasses, pulling them off his face to look at them. “Huh. I’m an idiot sometimes.”

Experimenting with something that was meant to let him see at night was kind of hard without the actual night, but Harry felt that he had figured out a few ideas by the time evening started to fall and it got dark under the weeping willow. Poling his way out of the weeping willow was difficult again, but once out on the river, Harry’s new cat-eyes glasses allowed him to see way better in the dark than he had before. A brief burst of his wind spell followed, and Harry was away once more.

OOOOOOO.

While Harry had been sleeping the day away, a certain elderly gentleman had been investigating. His first stop was the Department of Magical Misuse, where he spent several moments speaking to Mafalda and gaining a copy of the past few years' records of ‘uncontrolled’ magic in Surrey. Knowing, in fact, that it was quite controlled, Albus became more impressed. Harry had very obviously learned to hide his magic some time past, only mistaking how far such cover reached occasionally. So, what is Harry planning? What is he doing with his magic?

The rest of that day and deep into the night was spent creating the rune and enchantment-based items that he would need to figure out more about the magic Harry had been using and to track him. Beyond Privet Drive, where Dumbledore had already been, there were two places on the map where the Magic Sensing Array had reported semi-frequent use of magic. Albus decided to start at the river because that was where the latest bursts of magic had begun. Here, however, he hit a problem.

 The boy had done a magnificent job with something that was like an obfuscation charm mixed with an invisibility and silencing spell, which Albus had known beforehand. Now on sight, feeling of magic in the air was far, far stronger than it had been, yet somehow, the impressions of the various spells used were still diffused.

“Amazing, my boy. You have imagination and will to go far once properly directed, should the worst outcome be avoided,” Albus murmured as he stood underneath a weeping willow. “But what precisely have you done here? And whyever can I not pull an actual magical signature from this area? Harry certainly cast enough spells. Yet his actual imprint into the mana residue is extremely limited.”

The rest of the spells whose traces his various enchantments could discern were unknown to him. None precisely matched to anything in the European, Asian, African, or Native American schools of magic he was most familiar with, although there were hints of… “Woodworking? Glue? Joining? Fascinating, young Harry!”

Enthusiastically, Albus spent most of the day there, pulling apart the various remnants to the best of his ability, actually enjoying the mental exercise. Once he was done, he smiled, having discerned much of what Harry had been up to, although not the why of it, nor Harry’s actual magical signature. “He must be using some kind of medium, but what kind? Certainly not an inherently magical one, or else his signature would be easily discernable..”

Albus mused, smiling in glee at having solved such a difficult challenge, standing upright and nearly bonking his head on a branch. Stepping sideways, Albu’s foot nearly slid off the bank, and looking down, he saw what looked like a small rut, as if something with some weight to it had been left there. That brought Albus back to the here and now, and he stared at the water for a moment. “Oh… Oh no, Harry, you wouldn’t?!”

With that, Albus was off. He quickly called Fawkes from where he had been perched nearby watching Albus work, then returned to Hogwarts, coming back with a broomstick. Hopping aboard the broomstick, Albus grumbled. “If this is going to go any longer, I’ll have to reach out to younger and fitter folk to do the footwork for me. This is most undignified. And painful.”

A moment later, with Fawkes beside him Albus zoomed along the river, searching for any source of magic, concealing himself and his companion from sight as he went.

OOOOOOO

Harry had pushed himself hard that night, wanting to get out to the open ocean as fast as possible. Thankfully, the current helped him, and Harry was able to finagle his wind spell well enough to push him along at a good clip, almost equal to a powerboat.

Staring ahead of him, Harry took in the Sight of the London Bridge, or at least what he thought was the London Bridge, from the Thames, which he’d been on since the River Wey had merged with it, widened considerably. He could barely see the edges of the river to either side, and there were dozens of moving ships ahead of him. Most had lots of lights on them, the ships ranging from cargo haulers, to personal yachts, with many different ships somewhere in between those two extremes in size.

Feeling the waves coming, Harry braced, getting used to the up and down quickly. He then touched the two crystals one after another, empowering them further, just in case. Then he breathed in and did the same to his Wind Geode. With that Harry stared ahead of him further down the river. The river that would take him out to the ocean. “Let’s go!”

With that, his wind geode pushed the ship along at a brisk pace, going as fast as the wind and sail could push it. Harry whooped, enjoying the movement and the breeze, moving with his little ship up and down, delight filling him.

On a yacht nearby, a party was going on. One of the partygoers was outside, blatantly flirting with a woman who wasn’t his wife. He scowled a little as, instead of listening to him, she looked out, staring out over the river. “What was that?”

“What was wh—” He grumbled before pausing, hearing what the woman had heard a second before. “Huh…” The pair of them stared out into the night but couldn’t see anything. While Harry’s crystals had not worked so well with keeping the noise of his ship and his shout in, they were doing a very good job at hiding his ship from sight. After a moment, the man gave up, but the woman moved around, following the noise until it was out of sight, ignoring the man’s attempts to try and restart their conversation.

Unaware of this, Harry and his ship sailed on. Within an hour, thanks to Harry’s magic, the ship was by the London Docks. Another twenty minutes took them out past the commercial dockyard area. Soon, the last lights of London and the shore began to disappear behind him, and the Thames continued on towards the distant North Sea. 

It was around midday by the time the Wind Geode had pushed the Bonaventure well out into the waves. Not very fast in terms of how far a modern speedboat could have gone in that time frame, but further than any other similarly built ship could have gone in that amount of time thanks to Harry’s magic.

Seeing the open ocean ahead of him, Harry began to grin, imagining the open ocean, waves as far as he could see, the feel of going up and down.  The knowledge that he would never need to return to the Dursleys, that he had the whole world to explore ahead of him.

However, moments later, that smile disappeared as the waves began to pound at his little boat and the reality of the ocean waves were not nearly as rosy as in his imagination. Quickly, he raised his hand from the Wind Geode, letting it push him forward still, but without the added power he’d been funneling into it to go faster. Both hands on the wheel, he desperately tried to remember everything he’d read about how to deal with waves, moving from one to another, each crash making it feel as if his boat was being pounded apart.  In this way, Harry came face to face with reality on the ocean as the North Sea did its darndest to try and capsize his little vessel.

Perhaps Harry should have thought about the fact that in most books, the young runaway looking to make a new life at sea joined a ship’s crew and did not simply make his own ship. Perhaps he should have thought about the fact that those ships were much larger than a tiny yacht a single person could control, especially when that person was, admittedly, a somewhat wiry, but still small for his age twelve-year-old. There was a vast difference between reading about wind and waves and dealing with them.

Now, the wind picked up too, and Harry quickly canceled the spell on his Wind Geode, stowing it in his pocket instead of in the small slot he’d cut for it between the two crystals. “There’s more than enough wind now!” Harry nearly hissed, his hands starting to hurt. The air was warm, so he didn’t need to deal with any change in temperature. But trying to keep to a single course was impossible. The waves were slowly overpowering Harry’s best efforts to ride through them, and Harry knew that if he turned side-on towards them, his ship would capsize.

But Harry knew he couldn’t keep this up. Barely an hour after having seen the last vestige of land behind him disappear over the horizon, Harry could feel his strength fading. I, I need to get to land. I can’t keep this up… His mind flared, trying to think of ways to use his magic to help him, and he began to imagine his body, then his ship, creating an aura of calmness, imagining the waves around them diminishing.

Desperation lent power to his magic, as it flowed out again. The wind still tried to pull the ship to the side or just rip the sails apart, but the waves were no longer trying to kill him. “Okay, that worked, but…” Harry grunted, holding the wheel still as he worked the ropes with his other hand, wincing as the ropes, which were meant to pull the sail around, nearly pulled his arm out of its socket instead. “But it might not be enough!”

This happened several times as Harry tried to work with the wind, letting it carry the ship wherever it wanted to go. The waves continued to come at the ship far smaller than they had been, but now it was the wind that Harry fought. This was another fight he was quickly beginning to lose.

Worse, Harry could feel a, a kind of strain inside him, like Harry had exercised too much and his body was starting to not respond but centered in his mind and chest rather than throughout his body. That worried him a lot, and Harry knew he was coming close to a limit he could not push past.

Desperately, Harry scanned the distance, thankful beyond words that he could still see at night. Ahead and to his port side, he saw the shore like a hump over the horizon. “Have to make for it,” Harry gritted his teeth and, with an effort Harry swung the sails around to push his little craft in that direction. He felt that thing inside him, the strain, growing worse, but pushed on, knowing that it was a matter of life and death. “I’ve just escaped to the ocean. I’m not going to let my own dream kill me!”

How long it took him, Harry had no idea, but by the time the Bonaventure beached itself in a small inlet, he was utterly exhausted. The last few moments before he entered the inlet had been ferocious, with Harry barely able to fight the current, which threatened to smash his ship’s side into the rocks that lined one edge of the tiny inlet.

Gasping, Harry leaned heavily into the wheel, shaking his head. “Bugger. I, I did not expect that. What was that phrase going around school to describe utter cockups? Mistakes have been made? Yeah, I’ve made a few here.”

Ignoring the throbbing in his head and the fact his arms felt like lead, Harry stumbled to the side. He had intended to head down to his bunk, but in a single step, Harry’s body decided for him that the wave-swept deck looked just too inviting. Within a second, Harry keeled over, laying out right next to the wheel. He was asleep within moments, mentally and physically taxed beyond his endurance.

OOOOOOO

 Albus scowled down at the place where the magical signature had been hovering over the waves as he looked around. Whatever Harry was doing to obfuscate his presence and magic was powerful, but Albus had finally been making headway, closing in on more current signs of Harry’s passage, only for the boy’s presence to nearly disappear as those signs led him out into the ocean.

The aged Headmaster had never made a study of how the ocean impacted magic. He knew from hearsay that using magic while in the ocean, along the surface, was incredibly tough, draining almost. Deep into the water, it was different, and above the waves, too, one could use most magic, anything that did not attempt to control wind or wave, anyway. That kind of magic was supposedly impossible, and had been since the last of the Weather Masters had died in ancient Rome. Any active magic soon lost power, battered apart by the background magic of the ocean itself, a holdover from the cataclysm that destroyed the first magical society, Atlantis. At least, that was what most people credited with the phenomenon. Albus wasn’t so certain, yet was cursing the fact he had never made a study of it now.

A hasty attempt to use a Point Me spell failed again, although this time the spell didn’t even activate, as if the person he was attempting to find was simply nonexistent. That was worrisome, but quickly pulling out a small object, Albus breathed a sigh of relief. The youth wasn’t dead, he thought, staring at the large, capped thimble that radiated light from within. No, he is somewhere alive. I simply cannot find him.

Hovering in midair, Albus brought up one hand to stroke through his beard. “Let us then go over what we know.”

One, Harry has learned magic. There is, however, no sign of any external source of that knowledge. He worked it out entirely on his own. Second, I saw no hints of anything dangerous or Dark in his castings. Third, his ability to hide himself is extreme. Out on the ocean, with the ocean’s own effects aiding him, he will be impossible to find. Fourth, Harry was going for the ocean from the start. I would wager he had no idea what he was in for, but he did so and built himself a, a sailing craft of some kind. Five… I haven’t even been able to pick out his actual magical signature, drat it all. Six… I have no recourse now. Not unless I can find something that Harry has owned recently or was well loved by him. Then, some African Voodoo magic could perhaps lead me to him. But for now… for now, the boy is on his own. I hope he doesn’t come to any mischief out there. The world will need him in the future, and its already clear that some of my plans to mold him will need to be changed in the future.

“For now, Fawkes,” Albus spoke aloud once more to the phoenix perched on the end of his broomstick, “I believe we have reached the end of this journey. Unless you can finally find young Harry despite us being out over the water like this?”

Fawkes trilled, shaking his head, although the sound seemed upbeat. As if Fawkes felt there was nothing to worry about. “Well, I hope you are right, my feathered friend.” There could be much indeed that rides on my successfully guiding young Harry in the future. I can only hope that I am able to find him when next he surfaces. “For now, back to Privet Drive, I think. Tomorrow night, of course. I will need to discover something of Harry’s that he owned, or else any hope of finding him even in the future will be a dead end.”

OOOOOOO

“Oy, kid! Are you alive?” a man’s voice shouted, causing Harry to stiffen and go from deep asleep to awake in an instant.

“Bloody hell, Byron, did you just say that? No wonder you’ve never been good with kids or women. Kiddo, do you need an enervate?” Another voice started off harsh before ending in a kindly but officious tone, like a teacher who wanted to make certain his students were awake before yelling at them.

Slowly pushing his matted hair out of his eyes, Harry found himself staring sideways into the faces of two men who were standing on the sand by the ship’s prow. Both of them were dressed in dark brown robes, with a large badge holding the robes closed. The badge was golden or bronze, Harry wasn’t certain, but it was made to look like a large M at the top with what looked like an eye in front of a pyramid, with the words Ministry of Magic written around it.

Seeing that, Harry stiffened, fear going through him. Could these two be connected to the people who wanted me with the Dursleys, that man in the rain and everything else? Right now, though, there was nothing Harry could do except play dumb and make certain that he looked as young and unassuming as possible. But not too dumb, although I shouldn’t play with my hair or anything.  My scar’s too distinctive, can’t let them see it or they’ll remember me just because of that. “Er, no, sir. I’m tired, but I’m alright.”

 “Good to know. Now, Are your parents or family around here?” The man who had spoken second asked brusquely. “We’ve got a report of illegal magic around here, and No offense, kid, but I doubt a child’s play wand would be enough.”

“There’s also the crystals on that ship of yours. That’s some illegal enchanting right there,” the second man said, scowling as he looked at the ship. With a start, Harry realized these two could see at least his Invisibility Stones where they rest on the bulwark in front of the wheel. The man’s next words made him tense even worse. “I say we search the boat. There might be a chamber concealed against our Homenum Revelio spells. And that’ll be some jail time. Well, unless the buggers are nobles.”

Filing the name of that spell and everything else away, Harry thought quickly. He was grateful that it was clearly late in the day and his clothing had time to dry out, so he didn’t look as bedraggled or suspicious. I have to keep them off the ship.

He then jumped to an idea that he’d taken from some comics and some actual jokes he’d heard from older boys: that boys will do anything they can to impress a girl.

 “Er, I wasn’t the one using the magic, sir. That’d be my older brother, Sam.” Sam or Joe are common names, right? “He um, he had this plan to take Patricia to France and took me along to help with the rigging, but um, it didn’t work out so well. Last I saw of them, they were both making their way up the walk path over there.”

That walk path looked tiny and was barely visible from Harry’s current position, but it was there, regardless. “I decided to take a nap and wait for them to get some help.”

“Are you, GRAAA, of bloody course, some bloody idiot trying to impress his girl. Ugh.” The first one to speak grumbled, which seemed to be his only method of communication. “Fucking hell, and he just walked off and left this ship, full of illegal enchantments, here?”

“You wouldn’t know Griselda’s last name, would you, lad? And what’s your name first and last, please?” the second said, scowling, his kindly tone now gone.

“Er, Joe Thomas, sir. From Ipswich, sir. Sam’s my older brother, and um, Patricia… well, she’s just a girl,” Harry said, playing it up a bit, hoping the two would go off after the two supposed teens while he kept to simple everyday names.

The second man frowned. “Thanks, lad. Now, do you know if Patricia knew about magic?” That drew a groan, and a glare from the one called Byron while the second man scowled, thwacking him on the shoulder. “Patricia’s not a magical name, Byron. She might be a muggle-born, but…”

“Oh, no, sir,” Harry said in his best innocent tone, drawing on all his time tricking Petunia and hiding things from her and the other Dursleys as he pushed on this sudden weakness. So, most magic users want to hide away, make certain that nonmagicals don’t see them? They could feel the magic on my ship, but only after the spells hiding it and me failed. Nice! I just have to get these two out of here.

“She’s not a muggle-born,” Harry continued, using the strange term back at the man. “In fact, she’d never seen magic until we started using it on the ship. That really impressed Patricia, sir. It even got Sam a, er, an extra long kiss, sir. And, um, I think that she said something about calling her parents and telling them what all was going on.”

“Snog, the word is snog, and I hope he really savored it, Joe. You’ll get by because you’re a minor, but your brother’s gonna be answering some significant questions for a long while behind bars,” Bryon growled. “You stay put right here, lad. We’ll be back to make sure you get home safe.”

Harry nodded and watched as both men, now scowling angrily, marched up the bluffs, pulling out short sticks that Harry recognized as wands from the books he’d read. What they were going to do with them Harry didn’t care. Instead, he reached for the two Invisibility Crystals, slamming his hands down on them so hard that it hurt his hands, pouring out his magic into the Invisibility spell within. As the crystals glowed, Harry grabbed up his pole and pushed off as hard as he could.

He was able to push on the pole several times, and the ship was slowly being pulled away from the shore by the waves when a shout arose from behind him. “It’s a dead end! And the point Me spell didn’t work. That kid, he’s up to something!”

Before the Aurors could race down to the beach, Harry grabbed up his Wind Geode. A powerful burst of magic drove the wind into Bonaventure’s sail and he was away. He had to quickly turn the wheel and change the sails to get past several rocks, but then he was out of the ocean as shouts of shock and anger resounded behind him.

Unfortunately for Harry, the waves of the ocean were still not exactly nice to a small ship like his. And realizing he could power the wind or calm the waves, Harry decided to take his chance with the waves for a few hours, until he was well away from the shoreline. Then, gasping in air and feeling a dull throbbing in his head, Harry dropped the Wind Geode back into his pocket. “CALM. CALM.” He murmured, picturing the same effect he’d used the night before, wishing he had the spare geode up here..

While the spell on his glasses had let Harry see last night, there really was no comparison in terms of daytime. He could see far more in terms of depth and detail. Soon, he slowly stopped powering the calming spell as much and grinned as the ship began to buck and heave in a more controlled manner.  This matched what he had thought the ocean would be like when he first set out, and he laughed wildly. “WOOO!!”

A few seagulls flew overhead, cawing down, unable to see his ship for now, but they’d heard him, while others were nearly smacked flat by the ship they couldn’t see coming through their flock as they rested on the waves. Seeing that, Harry laughed aloud, staring all around him at the vista of the ocean around him, dotted with a few distant ships but none were close, the sun above warming the day. It was the most amazing sight he had ever seen, and he loved it. “Woohoo!” he shouted, laughing as he once more went to work on the sails.

Harry’s good feelings lasted for most of that day as, having learned his lesson, he kept the shoreline in sight to his left, pushing further north. Despite how hard he’d pushed himself the night before, Harry had recovered quite well. His head still hurt from time to time, and his arms started to get sore quickly as the wind began to feel colder as he moved northward. He was unwilling to go back and pass by London again having been pushed this way the day before for feat that the two men he’d left that morning or others like them would be on the lookout for him in that direction.

The afternoon was just too nice to care about that, though, and Harry enjoyed pushing himself, the pain in his arms just making him bear down harder. Eventually, though, the waves grew, the sun began to fall, and the fun faded as the chill started to set in worse. But Harry had kept the shore in sight for a reason, and as the sun started to set, he turned Bonaventure toward it. “Only this time, I’ll shut down all my enchantments if I don’t have enough energy left to power one of the Invisibility Crystals.”

Over the next three weeks, Harry made his way north.  He developed instincts on when it was time to make for shore, when he’d pushed himself or when the ocean was going to get rough, and always kept the shore in sight.  He also built up his muscles and magic, able to keep several spells going at once, a heating spell through his third geode, a wind spell through the Wind Geode, and the Calming spell without any medium to help.  It was hard, and not a day went by that Harry didn’t fall asleep exhausted, but the good outweighed the bad tremendously.

While life on the ocean was far harder than Harry had ever thought, the ocean was just as glorious as he imagined.  The green and varicolored blue of the ocean, the sun beaming down, with the sound of seagulls in the distance, it was all amazing to a boy from Surrey, who had never seen so much sky in his life.  Heck, he saw in the distance to his starboard what looked like whales in the distance, and saw several seals swimming along at one point.

Rounding the topmost portion of Scotland, whose name Harry couldn’t remember, which put him, quite ironically, very close to the man who had left him with the Dursleys, Harry found himself heading southward again. As he did, he put what he knew were the Outer Hebrides Islands on his starboard side occasionally, able to see both them and the shoreline of Scotland to his port.  Here, the oceans were much calmer, and Harry made even better time pushing through, using his wind spell to push his little ship as fast as he could, grinning all the while.

Just as the last of the Hebrides began to disappear to one side, Harry turned towards the port.  Over the next early days he moved from island to Scotland proper, foraging for food on the land. Unfortunately for his conscience, this amounted to stealing food from a few places rather than hunting or anything similar most of the time.  On one tiny island he was able to snare a few hares using information from the books he’d read, but most of his food came from sneaking into and raiding the pantries of places like golf courses and taverns in small, ridiculously small to Harry, villages and towns.

Harry had hoped to follow the coastline all the way back down into what he remembered was called the Irish sea, spending the nights aboard ship and getting used to that rather than sleeping in his cot as the ship was pulled up onto the shore. 

In this, Harry’s hopes were dashed almost instantly.  Just as he began to see something in the distance that looked like another shoreline, most probably Northern Ireland, the ocean proved itself to be an unpredictable mistress. Harry just had time to wonder if he’d be better served pushing on and making land somewhere in Ireland or turning again towards Britain, a squall came out of nowhere, dropping several inches worth of incredibly chilly rain on Harry and his ship within a few moments.

This made working the ropes harder. The sails, once wet, didn’t react as they had before, and the rain just generally made Harry miserable. While he could keep a heating charm on himself while also keeping his Wind Geode powered to push him along, the waves were so nasty he could barely fight them, and the dampness of the rain was still soaking through his clothing, which, in this case, was a large (on him) hoody and thick workman’s pants.

Somehow, though, he was able to make shore again and bedded down to the night, once more exhausted.  But when he snuck into a nearby town later that night, he found that the squall had pushed him well off his coarse. Instead of being on the interior side of Northern Ireland and facing into the Irish Sea, he had been pushed back and out and had made shore near the northern tip of Northern Ireland.

Here, Harry had to make a choice, one he pondered as he sat, hidden under his Invisibility Crystal in a pub frequented by mariners.   So, this time of year there’s a lot of squalls, contrary winds and so forth between Ireland and Scotland, which would make it really hard to get back into the Irish Sea.  One of the mariners had just explained that to a tourist of some kind as if he was speaking to a small child, which Harry appreciated even if the idea of being talked down to like that would have infuriated Harry if it happened to him.  But after that, the Irish sea will be just as calm as I thought.  Or, I can keep on going, using the power of the winds coming down from the north to push me along Ireland’s Atlantic shore.  It’ll be easier to start with, but once I start south again it’ll start getting harder and mistier.  I haven’t had to deal with much mist except in the mornings before this.

After a few moments, Harry stood up, making his way to wait by the door, ducking behind and out when someone opened it from the outside.  I, I don’t like the idea of going back over the same places I’ve been.  The people who stuck me with the Dursleys or other magicals might still be searching for me.  No, onward it is.

For a few days, this seemed the right course.  The wind coming in from further out to sea pushed Bonaventure along with no need for Harry to help, letting him empower his Calming Spell to a high degree, letting the ship move along at a brisk pace that few electrical boats could have kept up with.

The cold became worse and worse, but Harry could deal with that too.  Indeed, the exercising he’d given his magic seemed to be allowing him to shoulder larger loads, magically speaking, than he had back in Surrey. 

Yet when he started to go south, just like Harry had feared, the wind and weather turned against him.  Within two days, Harry found himself first becalmed, forced to use his Wind Geode to push on, and then, early the next morning, just as he was getting up to speed once more after spending another night ashore, the Bonaventure found itself in another nasty squall mixed with hail and rain.

This was Harry’s worst test yet, and with the pelting form the hail causing him physical pain even through his hood, Harry could barely keep two spells going at a time, eventually draining his Invisibility Crystals for the power stored within. Calming the waves made Harry fight his way through the wind, losing headway and he completely lost control of his course as the storm hammered his ship. He kept fighting, though, unwilling to let it beat him, ignoring the throbbing of his head and the agony of his arms.

So busy was he with his sails and trying to survive the storm that Harry didn’t see the lights on the horizon of a ship coming toward him.

This came back to Harry’s mind a moment later as a larger ship, a trawler, came up out of the dark to his port side. “Halloo the yacht. Ya look like you’re in distress…. What in the name of me olde Gram…”

The voice trailed off, and Harry found himself caught in a small spotlight. Staring through it, Harry could barely make out the silhouettes of several men aboard the ship, all of them wearing waterproof coats, although Harry wagered they were warmer than the one he was wearing currently. There seemed to be a discussion for a few moments, and then an older voice shouted out, his voice amplified by a megaphone to be heard over the storm and the waves. “Where do you hail from, lad?”

That voice almost reminded Harry of Mister Mattis, and despite his exhaustion Harry found himself smiling even as he pondered how to answer. Perhaps it was that and the knowledge that Mister Mattis had helped him in his own way, or perhaps Harry was just too tired after the exertions of the day because he answered honestly. “Er, nowhere, sir. I’m trying to leave a place behind, really!” Harry bellowed out as loud as he could.

That caused several of the men aboard the ship to break out into whispers until that older voice growled them into silence, then shouted, “Throw us a line, laddie. We’ll pull you alongside our ship for the night. Ain’t no way any man o’ the sea would let someone out here alone to sink in this storm.”

This caused some further consternation from the others aboard, some of them shouting about it being too dangerous.  But the captain would not be dissuaded, and the ship started to move even closer.

Having no choice and no energy to try and come up with a reason to try and get away, Harry used a floating spell to help him hurl the line he used to tie his ship down across. They pulled his ship through the waves with a few grunting heaves, and shouts of “HANDSOMELY!” And soon, as the storm petered out, Harry’s vessel was pulled side to side with the much larger ship.  There, Harry found himself staring up at a group of tattooed middle-aged men with beards and accents like he’d never heard save in a few commercials as they muttered to one another, staring back down at him. Irish, I think.

Beyond their accent Harry couldn’t hear much about what they were actually saying, but Harry had spent the time they had been pulling his ship in hiding his crystals in his pockets, just in case. He now stood looking up at them until one man, shorter but older than the others, pushed through the crowd by the gunwales, growling over his shoulder, “And we will do what I say we will, Morgain. Wait until we learn more of this, aye?”

Whatever response he gave seemed to satisfy the man, and he turned back to stare down at Harry. “Ya sound like a Sassanach, laddie. Be ye an Englisher?”

“Er, well, I’m from Surrey, sir. Um, I’d say that makes me British, but um, let's just say it isn’t something I care much about,” Harry answered honestly. Something about this old man intimidated him, and he did not want to get on his bad side by trying to lie.

“Hah! At least ye got some sense, aye? Permission to come aboard?” the old man asked.

Harry had read that several times in books he’d read in the library, and he nodded, saluting crisply. “Permission granted, skipper.”

Several of the fishermen laughed at that, but the old man simply grunted and, astonishing his crew, clambered over the side of his ship before dropping to Harry’s. The man had to time his leap right or be caught between the ships, but did so easily that Harry didn’t notice any hesitation. The ship rocked a bit but tied to the large ship. That was all that happened despite the waves and the storm above still hitting both ships, causing them to rise and fall.

The old man gazed down at Harry, noting how small he was, how tense he was, ready to bolt despite his obvious exhaustion. Now, if I try to touch this lad on the shoulder, why do I think he’ll flinch like I’m going to hit him? Reminds me too much of too many boys and girls I saw after the war and me cousin. And this ship… it looks old fashioned but new… “Names Captain Aigell. I ain’t gonna ask why you’re out here, lad. No seaman’s gonna ask you why you’re on the ocean unless they’re very close to ya. But… you’re a bairn, lad. The sea will eat you alive. And that ain’t something any proper seaman would allow either.”

Without another word, Aigell moved to stand by the wheel, looking at it in the light of the spotlight at the sails, the mast. Then he got down on his knees and stared at the joints between the planks, grunting in surprise from what he could see with his penlight.

“I built it,” Harry blurted, causing the old man to look at him. “Um, that is, I built this ship. It, um, it took me a few years, but I, um, I needed, I, I wanted…”

“Stop. Like I said, lad, I don’t care about yer reasons,” Aigell grunted. Without asking, he looked inside the ship, seeing the cot and how spare it was. He noticed the small cold box, the clothing strewn around the place, the lack of anything soft. Then he looked back at Harry, frowning at his overlarge clothing, then around at the ship.

“Tell you what, lad. We’re not due back in port until late Autumn, but we can turn around sharpish to drop your ship off well enough.” The difference in the two ships sizes, and the fact his ship was metal and the kid’s wooden made Aingell confident they could get back to Kellybegs without too much trouble. “You serve on my ship. We’ll tow yours behind us. Impress me enough, an’ I won’t go ta the government about ya. I might even look the other way when you take your ship and go elsewhere, aye?”

Harry nodded rapidly, and Aigell gestured him over to his ship. “In that case, Welcome ta the Mary’s Grace.”

Moments later, Harry was given a bunk aboard the ship, and one of the other fishermen came to Aigell. “You were impressed by the ship, captain, I could tell.”

“Tsk. It’s the most put-together wooden ship I’ve ever damn seen. Don’t know how the boy did it, but I don’t think he was lying about being the one to put it together. He’s got the hands of someone who’s been at work fer far longer than he should’ve been at his age. And he’s got the eyes. The eyes of someone dying to explore and to flee alike,” Aigell said. Just like me cousin, curse Uncle Jord to Davy Jone’s hell. “I’ll not go easy on him, and if any of you do, I’ll be on your asses. But I…”

“Cap’n,” A second fisherman interjected, poking his head around the side of the second. “That bairn, he’s got scars on him. On his back. Looks like it came from a belt. We saw ‘em when he stripped down to change into dry clothing. Just thought ya’d want to know. And ain’t ever heard of an ID.”

Fuckin’ hell. Just like my cousin, damn it. “Like I said, let’s see how he works out, aye? If nothin’ else, the boy’s motivated. He knows something about ships and survived out here for at least a few days on that dinghy little boat. Let’s see if we can put some muscles on him to stay out here on the ocean,” Aigell stated.

OOOOOOO

“Nearly a full season, and nothing,” Albus murmured, shaking his head. “A new year here in Hogwarts about to begin, and now my time is not going to be wholly my own once more. And nothing. No sign of any strange magical phenomena or anything on the ocean that could have come from him. I still haven’t been able to discern his full magical signature. Whatever he was doing, I have no idea, and short of confiscating every book in that library that mentioned magic, I have no recourse. My attempt to discretely get the muggle authorities involved spun out of control, and although they are still searching for young Harry, the Dursleys will no longer be available for the Blood Wards going forward.”

Albus had asked one of his Auror acquaintances to drop off a description of Harry Potter to the police in Surrey. They had taken a missing child case very seriously and had investigated the school and the Dursleys. While the cases against the principal, nurse and teacher at the school were simply for neglect and gross misconduct, the Dursleys had been convicted of child abuse. Vernon had then compounded things by trying to fight the police when they attempted to arrest the trio. Dudley would be sent to his Aunt Marge, while Vernon and Petunia would remain in jail.

Had Albus wished, he might have been able to interfere and get them off on lighter charges. He did not, however. The Dursleys had done too good a job at what he had wanted: to have Harry beaten, broken, and looking at magic and the Magical World as his salvation. Unfortunately, Harry had discovered magic in his duress and had broken his bridle most dramatically.

Albus snorted as he continued to talk to himself. “Then again, I suppose if he can keep hiding from Fawkes and everyone else, I suppose we will discover what Harry has been up to when the Hogwarts letters go out.”

That magic, copied by other schools since, was built on an enchantment that had been developed in ancient Egypt that connected to the ley lines themselves. There was a whole ceremony the headmaster had to do every year to write down the names of the Muggleborn that had been discovered in the United Kingdom, while the names of the pureblooded children were added automatically upon their birth. So, too had Harry, thanks to his being a scion of the Most Noble House of Potter.

Sighing, Albus looked at the time and stood up. It was almost time for the opening ceremony, and he had to be down there in his chair when the students began to arrive in the Great Hall. “Yes, that spell is my only hope right now unless one of my contacts discovers something. Still, I have time to wait. Something, alas, that becomes easier as one ages.” With that, he closed the door to his office, making his way down the spiral staircase. He had a ceremony to get to, and far more things to do than just worry about Harry Potter.

OOOOOOO

“Tie that line better, Potter, else those fish’ll jump out. If they do, I’ll have ya on night watch until yer old an’ gray!”

“It’s tied already, you old miser!” Harry shouted back, even as he moved to pull on the line in question. There was a little bit more play in it than there should have, and Harry grimaced, bending to tighten the line. He didn’t look up at the gruff bark of laughter from Aingell or the coarse laughter of the other men aboard, although when he straightened, his grimace was gone, and he shrugged, a novice acknowledging the master.

“Good. Now get out on the bowsprit and take soundings. We’re too close to land after that blasted storm last night.” Even gasoline-powered ships could be pushed off course in the Atlantic, especially small ships like the Mary’s Grace, especially when it was towing Harry’s even smaller Bonaventure. Although, frankly, even Aingell was surprised that the little ship hadn’t been capsized during one of the many storms they’d run into on occasion over the past few months.

Nodding, Harry took the weighted and knot-studded rope from a grinning fisherman, Alic, the youngest aboard who had previously been on this duty. Harry just grinned back, rushing forward and clambering over the gunwale onto the bowsprit, clambering out like a monkey despite only using one arm and his legs. Soon, he was perched at the tip of the bowsprit, lowering the line as he stared down into the water.

Moments later, he was shouting instructions, and the ship turned northwest for a bit before coming back online. Four more times, he spotted shoals and the ocean’s floor coming up at them faster than Aingell was happy about, but soon, he was simply shouting, “All Clear.”

Harry was so busy that he didn’t even notice a few ships nearby or the fact they were coming in to land until a voice he’d not heard before over the past four months. “Ahoy, Aingell, where’d ya find the scrawny one?”

“I ain’t scrawny fer my age, barnacle face!” Harry shouted back, having gotten used to the ways of the crew of the Mary’s Grace. If you didn’t give as good as you got, they would continue to taunt you until you did or broke.

The other man laughed, but he and several other fishermen were watching with some interest as the Mary’s Grace continued on its course. Harry was soon called off the bowsprit, and he hurried to join the crew in pulling in the nets. When it came time to tie up, Harry, Alic, and the other youngest aboard jumped across, tying the ship down, though Harry stumbled, shaking his head as the docks didn’t move under his feet like the deck of a ship.

“Easy there, Harry. Getting your dryland legs under you can take a bit,” Alic said, holding Harry’s shoulder in a way that, four months back would have had Harry flinching and shying away. Now, he simply nodded, twitching only a bit as the man’s hand landed.

As Harry moved to help unload the crab-filled crates, two other captains approached Aingell, glancing at the youth, while Aingell smiled after him, an expression he would never let Harry see. But then again, Harry Potter had indeed impressed Aingell from the first and had grown. Ye lord, has he grown.

The Harry Potter that Aingell had first met had been a scrawny boy, wiry, aye, but with little real muscle despite the look in his eyes of someone willing to challenge the ocean and a fear of what he had left behind. He’d worn clothing too damned big for him by half and a coat that, for all its size, had tears in it that let in the rain, with wild hair that had more often than not obscured his eyes, hidden as they were behind glasses.

Those glasses were still there, having somehow survived everything aboard Mary’s Grace. Aingell knew that Harry had taken to somehow strapping them in place with tape but for courtesy's sake, hadn’t officially noticed.

Beyond that, the changes in Harry, both in terms of clothing and general demeanor, were startling. He now stood straight instead of stooped, ready to flee. The youth had learned to trust again, something that had nearly been lost. Although still scrawny, Harry was now a short sparkplug, his arms and legs showing powerful muscles, showcased right now by a muscle-t that he had won off Alic and had shrunk down to fit him in successive washings. While before, his hands had shown evidence of hard work with wood and earth, now his arms were rope scared, his skin tanned by sun and wind. Although it would take years for him to look as weathered as even Alic or Railey, the other youngest aboard. Even his hair had been somewhat tamed, cut back away from his forehead, showing off a nasty-looking lightning bolt scar.

That scar gave Aingell the willies whenever he saw it. It looked almost like someone had made a cut there deliberately, which was, well, if Aingell ever ran into a man who marked a bairn, a baby according to how long Harry said he’d had the scar as if he were some sort of sacrifice, the man might not be walking away.

Harry’s clothing had also changed. His overlarge pants had been tailored to fit him now after Trumond, Aingell’s second, had taught him how to use needle and thread. The youth was still working on most of his clothing, but he had several good pants and underwear enough now.

And that’s only what you can see on the surface. The lad’s learned, by god, has he ever! Always asking questions he was, always interested in learning more even when he should’ve been sleepin’. Aingell would never admit it, but not only Had Harry helped the ship find several fishing shoals, more than repaying the effort it took to tow the Bonaventure, but AIngell had actually taken a liking to the boy. And I hate kids.

“What’s up with the youngster, Aingell? You take in a charity case?” one of the other captains joked.

“Does he look like a charity case to you, Jergen?” Aingell answered back. “He’s more than earned his bunk and bread on my ship.”

“Has he? That’s interestin’,” the second captain to come up to Aingell smirked. “Now, the story behind him is what exactly? He sounds like a redcoat.”

“Hah, aye, he does, Bura. But not by choice, ya ken?” Aingell whispered back. “He’s got the scars to prove that. You both remember the small wooden yacht I helped tow into port at the start of the season?”

Both other men twitched at that, looking between Aingell and Harry. “Aye, I do that. So, he’s runaway then? That’s a right nice little ship he’s got, even if it’s a sailing ship rather than a powered one. Been over to look at it a time or two since I hit port meself three days ago. Did he steal…”

“Said he made it. I’ve asked him a lot of questions, and he knew all the proper things, even if he mixed and matched. Took the way the Japs put together their houses and ships for some reason with how we hear in Europe put our keels down, but did it right well from what I saw.  No one’s messed with it, have they?”

“Hah, no.  Few of us in port to do aught during the season, and I’ve heard from me son that the ship gives them an odd feeling. Many a local lad’s gone over to look at it, but they all say the same thing.  Like it’s haunted or someat.”

“HAH!” Aingell grunted. “There’s nothing ghostlike about Potter. A lad’s that’s been forced to grow up fast, to be sure, but able and willing.  There’s nothing ghastly or scary about him.”

Jergen snorted. “So he ran away to sea, only did so in style. Smart lad.”

“Still an Englisher,” Bura retorted before shaking his head. “And you say he worked out well enough?”

“Aye. Pulled a man’s weight and then some,” Aingell said firmly. He then smirked. “Just don’t play dice with the whippersnapper. He’s got some scary hand-eye coordination that lets him win more than he should. Not always, but he won more than he should have against men like Targe and Morgain.”

Hearing the names of two truly notorious gamblers who were long standing members of Aingell’s crew, the other captains laughed, then fell silent as Harry made his way over to them. He nodded his head respectfully to the two unknown captains, then looked at Aingell. “Skipper. We’ve made port and the season’s over. I don’t want to be any more of a burden than I’ve already been, and um… well, Bonaventure’s probably taking up space that I’ll eventually have to pay for,” Harry added, looking a bit sheepish.

Aingell snorted. “If ye    r wonderin’ about whether I’ll turn around now and tell the local gardai about ya, then ya don’t need to worry. I’m a man of me word, not me nor any man of my crew say anything about ya. You were a good hand, Potter, and ya earned your way, just like I was telling these two.”

 Knowing that was the most praise Aingell ever gave anyone, Harry’s eyes widened behind his glasses, and he quickly bobbed his head. “Thank you, Skipper. I learned a lot too.”

“Aye, ya did that.” Aingell snorted, then turned away, shouting at his men. The season was over, and once they sold the last of their catch, the crew would head home to families, wives or drink. Mostly, it had to be said, to drink among Aingell’s crew, even those who had homes. He was death on drink aboard ship, but what a man did in port was no business of his unless the man didn’t show up when Mary’s Grace left port.

Knowing he was dismissed, Harry heading along the docks to his ship, hopping aboard. Watching the youngster go, until he hopped aboat the mystery ship the other two captains shook their heads, wondering about his story, but not caring enough to ask. Soon, the youth was setting his sails.

“He’s alone on that ship? It mighty be a right tidy little sailing ship, but…”

Aingell grunted. “Its what he wants.  Besides, so long as he hugs the coast, he should be able to make it down to the Celtic Sea.  Potter knows he got lucky, and the ocean only needs one chance to kill you.  That’s enough.”

The other two captains still looked concerned, but nodded anyway.  Neither were going to get in the way of a youngster’s desire to go to sea, no matter how unusual a road he took to it. 

Out at sea once more, Harry marveled at the ease with which he could now control the ropes that in turn controlled the sails. “I still have to rely on my Calming Spell a bit, but even so, this is way easier. Working on the Mary’s Grace really let me build up my muscles.”

For a moment, Harry pictured himself as one of the boxers that Vernon liked to watch on the television, with massive muscles and equally large chests. Then he burst into laughter. “Hah! No, I doubt that’ll ever be me. Still, it was nice to work alongside so many other fishermen to learn from them. Hehehe, and not just about being a sailor either. I bet I could make Petunia have a heart attack with some of the curses I’ve learned.”

That was another thing that Harry had learned from his time with the older sailors. He’d learned to believe in other people again. Mister Mattis had, for the longest time, been the only person to ever be even vaguely nice to him. The rough amusement the crew of the Mary’s Grace had towards him at first, then the acceptance after he’d toughed through every sore muscle, empty stomach and storm the sea could toss at them, was a balm on his soul. He’d needed to hide his magic, sure, but the first time his shirt shirt and been forced to take it off, when the men around him had seen his scars, not a one had said anything. When he’d admitted he didn’t know how to play cards or dice, none had cared.

Well, except for Targe, who’d taken advantage of Harry several times, making Harry pay for days in the only coin he had: taking more of the work aboard the ship. Because of that, Harry had learned a lot, even if the work had been insanely hard. Wind, wave, cold, working the nets, keeping the deck free of ice occasionally, that had all been hard as hell, but it had been an amazing experience all the same.

For the next two weeks, Harry hugged the western coastline of Ireland, fighting the cold weather for a time until he pushed south of County Mayo. At least, I think it’s called that, Harry reflected, staring to his port side for a moment where the shoreline could be seen. I wish I’d been able to go into town to grab a few maps, but… I, I really don’t want to go back to stealing. It was a means to an end before. Doing more of it now, when I’m well away from the Dursleys and anyone trying to find me, it seems wrong.

Harry hadn’t used any magic beyond his Invisibility Crystals, and even then, rarely. At first, he’d been too tired then Harry had wondered about the two magical policemen who had found him on the shore, wondering how they’d done so. But now, out alone on the ocean, Harry once more began to use his magic, delighting in it and the waves under Bonaventure, whooping in delight as the waves grew. “God, I love the ocean!”

Setting his Wind Geode down, Harry decided to challenge himself. “Wind, Wind, push!” he chanted. He’d been able to concentrate on three spells.  First was the Calm Zone on the ocean, like an aura around the ship. Aura was another word that Harry had read about in some of the books that mentioned magic. It seemed to work best for explaining both the effects of his Calm Zone and the Invisibility Crystal’s effects.  The second spell was the Wind Spell, and the third a heat spell.

 But now, concentrating on both the Calm Zone and the Wind Spell without the help of a medium for either, Harry expected it to be really hard. It had been those first few days, even with the geodes to focus through. Yet, to his astonishment, Harry found it was easier. “Wh, what is this? Why is this easier?!”

For nearly an hour, Harry kept both spells going, before cutting off the Calm Zone, perplexed as he felt better than he had… ever after using his magic for so long without break. “The heck is going on, shouldn’t I at least have a headache right now?”

For another hour, the reason why he still felt good eluded Harry. Then, as night fell and Harry began to look eastward, hoping to see a small shore he could come close to for the night. Then it finally occurred to him. “I, I’m physically healthier than I’ve ever been before. That must be it!” Harry exclaimed, then grinned. “There must be a connection between my being healthy and my magical power. Well, no more fried foods for me. Healthy eating for this lad from now on.”

That night, Harry canceled the spells he was using, then drained the power back out of his stones, staring at his Wind Geode thoughtfully as the final tingle of magic disappeared from it. “Hmm… I wonder, I wonder if there was also something else. Wind and rock are kind of opposites. Weren’t there a few stories that talked about elements? Something to think about.”

Something else Harry was thinking about was his run-in with the two magical policemen. They had apparently been able to track him, and while at the time, Harry had wondered if they could do so because his Invisibility Crystal had lost power. Or if they could somehow discern he was using it as well. So for tonight, Harry decided to hide his ship in the lee of a small series of stones, tying the ship there so that it simply road the waves between the two stones. When I go further south, I’ll need to worry about other ships spotting me, but for tonight, lets see if I can hide the nonmagical way.

This worked. No one bothered Harry that first night once more on his own, and the next day, Harry woke up with the dawn, at which point he was away again. The next night, Harry settled down in a similar position off what he thought was County Clare, or could have been Galway. Again, Harry’s mastery of Ireland’s geography wasn’t the best. He knew he was heading south, and had sailed his way through a few small islands to his west while keeping the main island of Ireland to his east, but that was about it.

Regardless of where he was, though, Harry bedded down for the night under one of his Invisibility Crystals without anyone seeing him. This, despite several ships being near enough to spot him in the morning. He passed so close to some of the ships they could not have avoided seeing him, but the Invisibility Crystal was up to protecting him even so.

With that mystery solved and becoming more and more used to casting spells on the wind and waves around him, Harry could think more about the future. “Not where to go, though. Now, now that I’m used to the ocean, I think I’ll just go wherever the wind takes me. South for now, though. I’ve had enough of being cold. France first, then Portugal, and from there, who knows. Maybe the Med, or around Africa, although the Med sounds way better right now.”

However, for now Harry set those thoughts aside. “Let’s think of ways to make that even better. If I go to another country, I’ll have to learn how to speak their language for one thing. A bigger ice locker… and one maybe run on electricity rather than my Ice Geode. Even if my Invisibility Crystals work, there’s no need to tempt fate. And… maybe adding an engine?”

Harry wasn’t certain how he’d go about doing that at all, but it might be necessary going forward. If Harry was stuck in a storm riding it out and making headway would be impossible. Worse, though, Harry wondered if the Bonaventure was even large enough to continue to deal with the ocean once he moved away from Ireland. “I don’t want to just hug the coastline all the time. It’s dangerous as all get out, and if my Invisibility Crystals fail, it’ll put me in danger of being discovered. And whatever else, I don’t want other magic users to find me. I don’t know why they’re after me, why they put me with the Dursleys, but I am not going to go back there, not ever!”

With that in mind, Harry put to shore in the middle of the night in what he thought was a place called Fenit Village. Alic had mentioned the place as being a good place to make port if you wanted to go hunting, although what for Harry had no idea. For some reason, when he’d asked, the other men had glared Alic into silence, while he’d just looked embarrassed.

He found an out of the way place to tie up Bonaventure, and then empowered one of the Invisibility Crystals with enough power to cover it for several days, then headed into the village early the next morning. He had some questions to ask, and knew very, very well there was one place that would have all the answers he wanted. To that end, he walked up to a young woman pushing a pram, and, after touching his forelock politely, asked, “Excuse me, ma’am, but could you tell me where the local library is?”

His good manners won the day, and the woman happily gave him directions. Soon, Harry was ensconced in the library, where he began his third favorite pastime, beaten only by sailing and using magic: reading. This library was smaller than the one back in Surrey, but it still had enough books to help Harry. Specifically, it had dozens of maps along the walls both of Ireland and the surrounding seas, nautical data that Harry had read about, but had not known how to read prior to his time aboard the Mary’s Grace.  

These, he came back for on his second night in Fenit Village. He’d spent half the first night practicing a new spell, an image copy spell that could transcribe one thing onto another. Sneaking into the library proved hard, as he had to go through a window rather than the door, having noticed some electronic security on the door, but he was able to copy the maps onto a notebook he had won in a game of cards. It was quite ratty, but most of the pages were blank, letting Harry copy segments of the map one after another, labeling each with a pen from the librarian’s desk as he went.

However, doing this, Harry discovered a weakness in his Invisibility Crystal’s coverage.

“Ya see,” a man’s voice said in Gaelic from outside the library.

Hearing that, Harry froze, canceling his last copy spell and pushing the geode into his pocket. But too late.

“Aye, I see it,” the other voice said in the same language. Harry had picked up a lot of the language over the past six months, although he couldn’t speak it very well. The next moment, that was mute as one of the guards flashed his light through the same window that Harry had entered the library from. Luckily, Harry was near the entrance, while he’d entered near the back. “Hmmm… don’t see anything. Go round the other side, let’s see if one of us can spot anything before we call the curators and get ‘em to open up.”

The other man moved, as did Harry. He ducked under the librarian’s desk, fearful that maybe his Invisibility Crystal wasn’t working right, or that something else had given him away. Then he saw flashes of light from above the beam of the garda’s torch catching, and Harry gaped. Those weird panels that let someone see around the bookshelves! Lobsters gnaw at me toes, the copy spell must’ve been flashing off them.

A moment later, Harry saw another torch beam from the other side of the small building. For several moments, the two police moved around the building, flashing their lights inside, and Harry sat huddled where he was. If I get out of this, I swear I’ll cut down on the breaking and entering, the thieving. I promise!

“Ah can’t see nothing and no one in there now. Ya think they somehow scarpered?”

“Don’t know. Let’s have one of us here tomorrow morning just in case. It’s nothing like there’s anything really precious in there, but even so it’s strange.”

“Aye. Maybe we should ask if there’s been anyone suspicious around?”

And there goes my staying here for much longer. Drat, Harry thought mildly, waiting until the two garda moved on. Then he was out the window and moved off quickly, heading back to the Bonaventure. The next day, he sailed with the tide, heading away and south from Fenit village, his mind full of barely formed plans and owning a set of maps that would cover him until he left Ireland behind.

A storm and two days later, Harry put in at dock in Bantry Bay. This was another port that he’d heard of while on the Mary’s Mercy and he entered it slowly, knowing that the bottom here was sometimes treacherous. But Harry still made port easily enough and then spent a few days going around hidden thanks to his Invisibility Crystal, the second one hiding his ship for now. He pushed out into the woods outside the town, finding the same kind of trees there that he’d used when building Bonaventure back in Surrey.

“Okay…” Harry breathed, speaking to himself as he stood in the forest, looking around at the woods. “I doubt that my knocking a tree down would go unnoticed, and, frankly, I don’t even know that what I want is even possible. But these trees would do. Wait, let’s think this through, one, two, three. Aingell always said do it right once, not the third time. Wasted effort kills.”

With that, Harry sat on a tree trunk, one that was molding but still solid enough for him to sit on as he leaned back, writing down his plans. “First, see if I can change the shape of something without really changing what it is made of. The Bonaventure needs to be bigger to survive the deep ocean, at least another fifteen feet. But to do that, I’ll need to stretch the ship out, without thinning it. Wood’s not putty, but it can become too thin to be trusted. So I want to just sort of… meld the wood together, then change the interior, hollowing it out. This is going to be almost entirely magic-based rather than magic and knowledge, but that can’t be helped.”

Putting the notebook aside, Harry stood up and moved around, grabbing several twigs, making certain they were oak before piling them beside his chair. “Experimenting’s the only way to know if I can do that. Do it small, then scale up, like I did back when I was designing the Bonaventure in the first place. Break it into parts, and test each spell on it’s own.”

Having written some of that down shorthand, Harry moved on to what else he wanted. “An engine for the ship. A real one, not one for a rowboat. I want to at least know what all that would entail. Hmm… take a look at the underside of a ship? Either in a drydock or diving under the water. Ugh… wait!” Harry frowned, then grinned, linking that to another idea and circling it. “Use spells to let me stay under the water. Maybe some kind of, of globe of air? No, a bubble? Hmm… Maybe a glass tank to put over my head.

Setting that aside, Harry put down what else he wanted to do. “Make a comfortable bunk aboard the Bonaventure, or at least find a comfortable mattress. I don’t have to sleep on something as hard as the floor any longer. I got used to being at least marginally comfortable in my rack on the Mary’s Grace, and that was a bloody hammock. I… could I maybe make the wood soft? No, too much trouble. A larger storage area. The small cold box I have won’t be enough going forward. The Cold Geode’s a great idea, but hmm…”

Harry sighed faintly, then shook his head. “And finally, two big problems.  Unless I want to keep on hugging the shoreline forever, I need some way to… to create a spell or enchantment that can keep watch while I get some sleep.  I, I was damned lucky when that storm pushed me west away from the Irish Sea. There’s no way I can keep my ship going on my own more than a few hours out of sight of land.”

He then chuckled ruefully. “I also need to earn some money. I’m not going to go around stealing everything I need. That’s not right, not now that I’m away from the Dursleys.”

Humming thoughtfully, Harry scratched at his lightning bolt scar, then smirked. “Well, I can start with my experiments now and then see if any captain in the port’s hiring. It’s out of season for large-scale fishing, but there are different types of fishing.”

The next day, after nearly half a night’s worth of some interesting wood melding and shaping, Harry introduced himself to a captain of a fishing ship that seemed to be family-owned. Harry had chosen this ship because one of the workers aboard had a broken arm.

The captain, a large, middle-aged man younger but taller than Aingell stared at Harry thoughtfully. “Ya not from around here, I don’t knows ya from a barnacle on me ship’s arse. Why should I trust you to know your stuff?”

“Because I’m asking for less than half of what you’d pay a full crewmate. You can also put me to the test. I’ll work for you for free for a day, and you can make your decision then.”

“Where’d you come from, lad?” The man with the broken arm asked. He seemed a jolly sort, bearing up with his injury with ease and with more meat on his bones than muscle.

Seeing no point in lying, Harry shrugged. “I came in on my ship.”

“You own your own ship?”

“I built my own ship,” Harry corrected the captain’s querulous query. “It’s a small sloop, made for one person. Me.”

Harry said this firmly, staring into the older man’s eyes. His time aboard the Mary’s Grace had allowed him to somewhat move on from the trauma of his time with the Dursleys. No longer did he think it was something wrong with him, something to be ashamed about. Rather, his desire to escape them had turned into the reason for everything he’d done since, and he was willing to admit that.

“What’d bring a laddie as young as---”

“Stephen!” the captain barked, scowling at his son, who shut up quickly. “Ya don’t ask that question, not of someone who ran away ta sea. But…” turning back to Harry, the captain shot out several questions about ships, sailing, fishing, and more. Harry answered them all. He’d served at nearly every position bar navigator, captain and steersman aboard the Mary’s Grace, and knew it all.

After more than fifteen minutes, while other fishermen came and went around them and several ships put out to sea, the captain, who had, between questions given his name as Shawn Tooley finally shook his head. “Aye, ya know your stuff. You’ve served on a trawler or somethin’ similar before by the answers ya gave. Your eyes are the only issue I’ve got with ya boy.”

“Harry,” Harry answered instantly, keeping a scowl off his face with difficulty. “I will answer to lad, laddie, kid, Potter, or anything else bar boy, brat or… or freak.”

That last word had nearly stuck in his throat, btu Harry got it out. And from the looks in the eyes of the three men, one of whom had been silent and watching from where he stood in the hold, his head barely visible above the edge, they all seemed to be making the same kind of connection the crew of the Mary’s Grace had. On that ship, most of the men had come from hard families, and had little sympathy to share, treating Harry like one of them after a time, respecting the way he’d been able to run away from whoever had hurt him.

These three were all visibly shocked, but after a moment, Shawn just nodded. “Aye, I’ll remember that. But your eyes. How good are you without those glasses?”

“I’m near-sighted. These allow me to see better at distances. But I wouldn’t worry. Like you said, I’ve served on a trawler for a full season, and while my glasses sometimes got frozen to my face or covered with spray, they’re still here.” Harry answered with a faint smile. His glasses were not made out of simple copper or anything like that any longer. They looked them, but his glasses had been transfigured to be titanium framed, with the actual glass beign ready to receive any spell Harry needed them to.

“HAH! You’ve got confidence, laddie, I’ll give you that. Tell ya what, I’ll take you out today, and if you do well enough, we’ll make it a longer-term arrangement until Stephen’s arm is healed up. Fair?”

“Fair, sir, so long as it includes food while aboard,” Harry answered.

Stephen and the unintroduced man laughed at that, and Shawn snorted. “Trust me lad, if the missus catches wind of me having a youngster like you aboard and I don’t feed you, I might as well not come back to port.”

OOOOOOO

Albus sighed wearily. Another summer gone, and Harry had yet to be found anywhere within the United Kingdom. “Harry still lives, but he is not within the British Isles, I know this much. Or… or Harry has gotten even better at hiding his magic from anyone detecting it. He was already quite good at that, far too good for my presence of mind. Still… he is alive. I will have to keep on taking comfort in that. My plans going forward are not ruined just yet. So long as he is in some fashion malleable, can be led, and has not succumbed to the Dark. Voldemort’s spirit has yet to gather enough energy to be dangerous to anything more than a mouse, and my scrying spells can detect it well enough for now, unlike young Harry.”

OOOOOOO

Shawn’s wife had indeed found out about Harry, and Harry found himself welcomed into the crowded Tooley house. The daughter of fisherfolk that had lived in Bantry Bay since the time of the missionaries, she took one look at Harry and instantly decided to feed him twice as much as he really needed. Harry tried to demur on more than one occasions, but she was having none of it.

Bella Tooley was something Harry had never dealt with before. A middle-aged woman with a good paunch on her, she was gregarious, friendly and determined, completely unlike any woman Harry had met before except Mrs. Peterson, his first homeroom teacher. Whose abrupt transfer was one of the many that had made Harry so suspicious of other magicals in the UK. Bella wasn’t going anywhere, though, and once it became clear that Harry wasn’t willing to be taken to the church, and that her husband wasn’t willing to try and trick him into going, she in turn became determined to make certain he had what life skills she thought he needed, giving him books on math, manners and more, making certain he read the paper every morning after the others were done with it.

She also wanted to teach him cooking, Yet the look in Harrys eyes though when she had him cook alongside her once was enough to stop that in its tracks. Harry was willing to cook for himself. But he would never enjoy it. Not after being forced to cook for the Dursleys since he could stand on a footstool and reach the counter.

Regardless, the next three months as Stephen’s arm healed and he then rebuilt his strength was extremely pleasant. Harry loved being out at sea every day, as he would on the Bonaventure, liked having someone else cook, and earned some nice money. Enough to buy a nice mattress for his ship, a small generator, blankets and food. Bella and Stephen had even insisted he take some of Stephen’s clothing from when he was younger. The other brother, Hawke, had never warmed to Harry, but that seemed to be his general personality.

Regardless, by the time that winter came to Bantry Bay, Harry was ready to move on and with Stephen’s arm healed, the Tooley crew no longer needed him. The goodbyes with Shawn and Stephen were quick, but Harry bowed out of coming home with them for one more meal. “I, um, no offense, sir, but um, your wife seems the huggy sort, and er, I don’t…”

“HA! That’s some wise words from a lad like you. Still, get you gone, Potter. I’ll deal with me wife’s tears well enough.” Shawn chuckled, shaking his head, before frowning. “Besides, it might be best ya don’t tell me more about your ship or where you’re going. Bella’d try to meddle. It’s be for your own good in her mind, but I can tell ya’d hate it.”

Harry nodded firmly, and, after shaking his head and taking the cash due him for the day’s work, then turned and rapidly disappeared in between the various crates and flotsam dotting the docks. Behind him, Stephen turned to his father. “You know, we’ve never seen his ship, right? Are you sure it even exists?”

Hawke grunted. “No idea. But I tried to follow him one night. The lad knows how to disappear. One moment there, the next gone. Uncanny.”

“Huh. Well, regardless, I think the kid can look after himself, aye? Now, let’s get this catch over to the quay. The sooner we’re done, the sooner we can get home.”

Five days later, the Bonaventure that silently left port unseen by any, as Harry had despite a distraught Bella’s best efforts, was markedly different than the small sloop Harry had first taken out to the ocean. It was longer abeam by three feet, and longer from aft to prow by twelve. It was still small, and the interior still needed work. Melding new wood to his ship and then shifting the interior was tough, despite three months of nightly practice. The interior was much larger, along with Harry’s bunk was also larger, so that Harry could actually roll several times side to side on his new matress. There was even a chair built into the side of the ship, along with a table so Harry could eat inside. Several walls were lined with the copies of his maps, and he’d even splurged and bought a bookcase rated to be used aboard a small ship, attaching it to the wall complete with cage-like doors. A camping style cooker and an enlarged cold box finished the interior for now.

Harry knew his ship was a work in progress despite all that, though. Still, that was fine with him. “After all, a home should be a work in progress, right? Changing and growing with you,” he mused as his wind spell caused the sails to billow out and he moved on through the waves, grinning at the familiar up down motion. “Pity about the engine, though.”

Harry’s exploration into that, and worse, installing one into his ship, had proven that he didn’t know enough about electricity, engines, or construction to even try it. For now, magical wind power would be his only form of locomotion. But Harry had solved that by another large-scale use of what some of the books that featured magic called transfiguration. He had changed the physical nature of the sails of his ship, making it like what could be found on racing ships after seeing one in port. With that, and the amount of wind his Wind spell could create, Harry was able to push his little ship along well beyond what anyone else could think of.

Now, Harry felt it was time to challenge the open ocean and see if he could get across to the continent. And that was what he was going to do. “All ahead full!” He shouted, grinning under the light of a sunny day, heading out of Bantry Bay and south.

End Chapter

So I wasn’t able to Grammarly this entirely, but I feel like I did enough for a one-shot. I also had a lot of fun figuring out how Harry would figure out his magic in turn. I know that the whole child-abusing Dursleys thing is a bit much, but I did have that trope involved in this fic in the outline.

I wanted to show more, but I think we will be getting one more chapter of adventure on the high seas before Harry is really introduced to the Magical world. But that doesn’t mean he will be dealing with entirely with OCs…

I might write up another chapter of this at some point when I’m too busy with RL to devote enough time to more established fics.

Have a Happy New year, everybody!