A/N: Last chapter, guys! The sequel is currently in progress. I want to finish at least a sizable chunk of it before I post it, so expect that to be at least a little while. It'll update regularly once I start, barring unforeseen circumstances. Thanks for enjoying and reviewing, everyone! It's been pretty fantastic.

That winter worked out much better than the previous year. Harry was prepared well in advance, and had a large stockpile of food and a warm cave to sleep in before the first frost. The self-warming cloak he'd been given in Wiltshire last year was indispensable. It meant that Harry was able to move around outside more freely than in the past. It also meant that the snake didn't go into hibernation underground, but instead kept him company by sleeping most of the winter away on his collarbone.

By the time the snow was beginning to melt, Harry was on the move again, trading boons for food and useful trinkets. He found that if he stuck to dealing with children who tasted like magic, he would get more interesting trades. He was stockpiling quite a collection of chocolate frog cards. He had been introduced to magic sweets at Halloween last year when he had happened to come upon a magic family during his rounds, and had found that he quite liked Ice Mice, but nothing beat chocolate frogs. Sometimes children would trade him food or trinkets or even sickles and galleons (which Harry had decided to accept on the off chance that he found another magic marketplace) just for the right card.

But mostly, the list of boons requested of Harry went along the same lines:

"Can you make me smarter/stronger/faster?" Harry only said yes to these questions if he liked the person, and gave them the corresponding amulet.

"Can you make everyone like me?" Confidence amulet.

"Can you make me invisible/read minds/fly?" Harry usually said no to these. Except for the last. He gave the ones he really liked giddy stingers.

"Can my boon be three more boons?" No, is what Harry always said to this and all the variations on it. The people who asked this question got "magic stones" most of the time, no matter what they requested next, unless they were particularly obnoxious. Then they got insecurity amulets.

Harry ended up near Liverpool by the end of summer. He had found that he liked the ocean, and frequently walked along the coast as long as there were no major towns or cities in his way. One day, Harry reached a harbour and saw a largish boat getting ready to set sail. There wasn't anyone around at the moment.

Harry knew that wouldn't last long, so he thought quickly. He knew from his map book that he was on an island and that there were other islands nearby, and even an entire enormous continent to the east. He was on the west side of his island, which meant that it wasn't entirely likely that he would go to the continent, but still. He thought Ireland might be interesting.

Harry darted around the rock he'd been crouched behind, dashed along the pier, and climbed aboard the ship. There were a lot of cars onboard, and Harry crouched and ran between them, avoiding the small groups of people milling around until he found an empty truck with a covered bed to crawl into. Tucking himself down below the window line, he took stock of his situation. He thought this might have been a good decision.

He heard the boat's horn blast several times after a long while, and after peeking through the dirty window, surmised that they were leaving.

"What are we doing?" the snake asked as he wound through Harry's fingers. "We're moving, but we're not."

"We're on the water," Harry said, feeling a rush of excitement. "We're going somewhere new."

"On the water?" the snake seemed baffled, flicking its tongue out to taste the air. "What kind of creature are you?"

"I'm an elf," Harry reminded him, grinning. "And anyway, it's nearly autumn. That means I'm ten by now. I wanted to do something different this year."

"I'm three," the snake said, curling his tail around Harry's thumb. "You don't see me nattering on about it and dragging my companions onto the water like some kind of unnatural mammal-fish thing."

"Elf," Harry said.

"Daft," the snake corrected.

When the truck lurched a few hours later, Harry jerked out of a doze and blinked at his surroundings, confused. It was dusk, and they appeared to have docked.

He rubbed his eyes and made sure the snake and his bag were still secure, then slipped out of the pickup truck and hurried over to the last row of cars, peering past them at the new land he'd managed to make it to. He frowned at it. He could see fields and forest, but they were beyond what looked like an almost impenetrable wall of houses and streets and concrete and people. Behind the taste of salt and sea and exhaust, Harry could only taste stale. He hoped the rest of his new land didn't taste the same. The snake poked his head out and confirmed Harry's negative view of the town.

"We're not staying here, are we?" he asked, curling around Harry's neck. "It's awful."

"No," Harry said. "We're getting out of here as quickly as possible."

It was going to be difficult, though. He focused on a car park he could see nearby and disappeared to the rocky beach in front of it, then walked as calmly as possible toward a nearby bridge.

As he got closer, he realized with horror that the bridge was lifting itself up, out of the way of a boat. He couldn't walk across a bridge like that. He peered through the gathering darkness at the other side of the water and disappeared after he felt he had a good enough grasp on it.

He was on a road now. Bright lights flashed in his eyes as cars sped past, pressing Harry back against the railing. He walked along the sidewalk next to the water and stared at the trees he couldn't quite see well enough to disappear to. When there was finally a gap in the traffic, Harry dashed across and disappeared into the trees, only to encounter chain link and wooden slats not far in. The trees were little more than a sound barrier.

Harry was ready to start hating his new land with a passion when he finally found a break in the houses, one that revealed a real copse of trees. He investigated, and slumped in relief when he realized he had finally found the edge of the wild areas. This appeared to be a park, but he could keep walking until it was behind him. He wondered briefly if he really had made it to Ireland.

The wind blew, and Harry shivered. He'd have to find a warm place to sleep for the night. It was nearly time to start searching for a winter place.

It took two days and several detours around towns, but Harry found a nice forest. He had to climb over a stone wall near a road to get in, but otherwise, the only sign of humans were a few roads and trails within the forest that reached dead ends after a while and were easy to avoid.

Harry found a village nearby and stocked up on canned food, and when winter came he and his snake survived reasonably well, though there was a scare midwinter when Harry woke up one morning feeling extremely ill. He huddled under his self-warming cloak inside the small lean-to he'd devised from fallen branches, leaves, and moss at the beginning of the winter and sniffled as he flipped through his books, looking for something that would make him feel better.

His snake actually noticed Harry's distress enough to wake up and hiss soothingly at him. "It's not natural, going out in these temperatures," the snake explained. "You'll feel better if you get warm and sleep."

It took a few tries, but Harry finally started up a fire at the entrance of his lean-to and managed to boil some willow bark he found buried in the depths of his bag. The tea did make him feel better. He soon fell asleep, the snake hissing a soft, vulgar song that Harry had taught him several months ago about a snake that encountered an acromantula and ate it whole.

It didn't occur to Harry to figure out where in Ireland he might be until spring arrived. He set out for the main road outside his forest to try to find a signpost of some kind that he could use to find his location, but he couldn't find any of the names on the signpost on his map.

There was nothing in his immediate vicinity but small villages, though. Harry supposed that they might not bother writing the names of those down. He kept going west, away from the town he'd arrived in on the boat, and encountered water that same day. He frowned. This wasn't just a lake. This was the ocean. Harry stood on the edge of a cliff overlooking the water and frowned. He had come from the ocean in the east.

Harry turned around and headed east again, and sure enough, by the next day he had reached ocean again, rocky cliffs and all.

It didn't make sense. There wasn't a part of Ireland that was quite this skinny. At the relaxed speed Harry was walking, it should have taken him about a week to get from one shore to another in Ireland, at even the narrowest parts.

Harry decided to be methodical about things, and followed the shoreline south. Eventually he found a slightly larger than usual town. It was called Castletown, and Harry compared that to his map of Ireland with increasing distress. It was right on the water. It shouldn't be hard to find, but there was no Castletown on the water in Ireland.

If he wasn't in Ireland, where was he? Harry sat down on the beach where he'd found the sign and flipped to the back of his mapbook, scanning the index for Castletown. There were several of them. He flipped to each page and examined them thoroughly, but none of them were on the water, until he found the page titled 'Isle of Mann'.

That looked right. Harry sighed in relief and took a better look at the island he had landed on.

It was three days walk at its longest. It was positively tiny. Harry got up and kept walking along the beach, away from the town. He resolved to follow the shoreline and see how long it took him.

Two weeks later, Harry was feeling that distress again. The island was very pretty, but it was still an island. A small island. He was starting to feel claustrophobic.

He hadn't met many animals, outside of a few disgruntled goats and a couple feral cats that both hissed at the snake when they noticed it. The snake always hissed back, and Harry hissed at both of them to be quiet, which usually sent the cats running. The sheep here were alarming and had way too many horns. He didn't like this island.

He decided to get back to the harbour he'd arrived by and try to get a ferry back to England, where he at least had space to move around.

His first mistake had been taking the boat to the island in the first place. His second mistake was pausing on the way to Douglas when he tasted magic and following the trail to a small shed near a ramshackle cottage.

He ducked inside the barn, and just as he'd suspected, it was a larger-on-the-inside pub that reeked of magic.

It looked like a place for tourists, which made Harry immediately wary, but no one looked at him so he kept moving, looking around for an easy target. There was a woman sitting alone at a small table, giggling into her tankard. She was definitely a tourist, by the way she was dressed.

Harry had found that people that tasted like magic tended to dress oddly when trying to mix among the stale people, and this woman was no different. She had a pair of wellingtons on under a pinstriped skirt and a tie-dye t shirt. She must have been planning to 'blend in' later on with the locals. Harry thought the magical people were going about it all wrong. He just didn't mix with humans at all, stale or magical, unless they were having a boon.

Like right now, for instance.

"Hello," Harry said, standing next to the woman's table. She leapt in surprise and blinked owlishly at him.

"Hello, dear," she answered. "Aren't you precious?"

Harry wrinkled his nose at her. "I'm not," he denied, and got down to business. "I'm an elf. It's tradition among the elves of the Isle of Mann to welcome one special guest to our island every year by allowing them to make a trade with us," he told her. "This year, you've been chosen."

She beamed at him. "Oh, isn't that just delightful! They didn't have elves last time I came here!"

Harry stared at her. "Right," he continued eventually. "So what kind of boon would you like? The elves can provide you with anything within reason."

"Okay, honey!" she said, and put her chin in her hand. Finally she dimpled at him. "How about you go get my steak and kidney pie from the front?"

"For your ferry ticket?" Harry asked, smiling back at her. She beamed at him and pulled it out.

"How did you know I came the muggle way?" she asked, setting it on the table to show him. "It's so quaint, isn't it?"

Harry peered at it, certain he could find someone later to explain when Thursday at three o'clock was. He didn't want to go into town unless he was able to leave immediately after. He dutifully went up to the front and brought her food back when her order came up, and when he set the plate down, he palmed the ticket and stuck it in his bag.

"Have a lovely night, ma'am," he said. She beamed at him.

"You too, honey!" she said, picking up her knife and fork. Harry was nearly to the door when she suddenly shouted.

"Hey! Hey, he took my ferry ticket!"

Harry bolted, pulling the door open and dashing out, ready to disappear. He was a second too late, though. One of the magical people by the door acted quickly, grabbing him by the elbow as he dashed away. He set his arm on fire to make them let go, but the woman was already there, frowning down at him with her wand drawn.

"You made a trade," Harry told her stubbornly, trying to pull away from the man who still had him by the arm. Outside the pub, no one else was around. He needed to get away. "Let go of me!" He was panicking inside. He couldn't disappear unless the man let him go.

"I didn't think you were serious!" the woman snapped, suddenly looking a lot less tipsy than she had. "Where are your parents, young man?"

"I told you, I'm an elf!" he said, glaring. "Now let me go."

"You're not an elf," she said. "Give me back my ticket."

"I am!" he insisted. "You can bugger off if you don't believe me."

She put a hand to her mouth. The man holding Harry's arm jostled him.

"Watch your language, kid! What's your name?"

"Elves don't tell humans their names," Harry sneered. "You lot aren't careful enough with them."

The woman pursed her lips. "Look, just give me back my ferry ticket!"

"We had a fair trade," Harry said. "I did what you asked. You agreed that the ticket would be my payment."

"I didn't think you were serious!" She crossed her arms, trying to look foreboding. Harry hadn't had to worry about a foreboding adult since the Dursleys, though. He just glared back.

"I was," he said. "Elves don't joke about trades."

"House elves don't make trades," the man said. "We ain't stupid, kid."

"I'm not a bloody house elf," Harry snapped, ignoring the way the man tugged at his arm again. "I'm a forest elf. There's a bleeding difference, and it's not my fault you humans are all a bunch of clay brained, fangless pricks that only notice other species wandering around when they're useful to you."

He had gotten that last bit from a dwarf, and he thought it was a particularly clever bit of rhetoric. The two humans disagreed if their faces were any indication.

"Look, kid," the man tried again. Harry huffed at him and shoved his hair out of his eyes, ready to snap out another irritated demand to be released. The woman interrupted his attempted interruption with a gasp, suddenly staring at him with wide eyes.

"His scar!" she said, suddenly way too close to Harry for comfort. He stumbled back toward the door, struggling against the man's grip.

"Did you see his scar?" she asked the man. "It looked like a lightning bolt! That's just like the Boy-Who-Lived's scar, isn't it? Do you think this is where he vanished to?"

The man knelt down and grabbed Harry's other arm. Harry stared at them both with wide eyes and struggled harder. "Let's see your forehead, kid."

Harry leaned as far away from the woman's hand as he could, but she managed to push his fringe back eventually. The two of them gasped. Harry set the man's arm on fire this time. He yelped when he finally noticed, letting Harry go. Harry stumbled away and disappeared before either of them could grab him again.

He reappeared at the edge of the forest and kept going, jumping as far as he could see. He reached the shoreline like that, barely stopping before he disappeared himself right into the sea.

He sat down on the edge of the cliff face, panting and staring back in the direction he'd come from. No one had followed, thankfully. They never did when he did that.

Whenever she had been planning to leave wouldn't be soon enough, now. The woman would know what ferry he was trying to leave on, too, and she might try to catch him.

He had to get off this bloody island.

Harry slept in the highest tree he could find that night, feeling absolutely trapped and miserable.

"I should have bitten them," the snake said with regret. "I am sorry for not helping."

"It's okay," Harry said, rubbing his face with one palm as he leaned back against the trunk and let one of his feet dangle. "If you'd bitten them, they probably would've just searched harder for us."

The next morning, Harry popped down from the tree into an ambush. A dark haired man in a dark cloak appeared from nowhere the moment Harry's feet touched the ground, and stared at him. Harry stared back, appalled.

"Harry Potter," the man said with relief, reaching a hand out to him. Harry stumbled back toward his tree instead, momentarily stunned. How did this man know his name?

"We've been looking for you, Harry," the man said, in a soft voice that sounded like it was far more used to scolding than soothing. "The Dursleys-"

Harry did not wait around to hear more. This was his biggest nightmare, come true. He disappeared immediately, back to the cliff face he'd ended up at yesterday. It was close enough that he didn't even really have to think about it, and when he got there, he started disappearing north, aiming for Douglas and the ferry.

The dark-cloaked man was waiting when Harry arrived at the docks, and Harry felt like crying. He was looking around as though he knew Harry was near but couldn't quite spot him, which was good, because Harry was trying really hard to go unnoticed right then.

Harry squinted at the boat that had just docked. It wouldn't leave for a while; the people on board were still milling around with their vehicles, waiting to get off.

He couldn't wait where he was. The dark-cloaked man would almost certainly find him, given enough time. Harry disappeared back to the nearby forest, ever vigilant in case the man followed, and hunkered down in a tall tree. If he got on the boat before it was ready to leave, the dark-cloaked man might notice and then Harry would be trapped on a boat with him. Judging by the way he had been waiting when Harry woke up, the man had a way to find him.

His only hope was getting back to the main island, where the dark-cloaked man would have a lot more ground to cover and Harry would have a lot more room to hide.

And the only way to do that was to get on that ferry without the dark-cloaked man catching him. Drawing him away might work. Harry hated doing this kind of thing, but he was desperate. He was high enough in the tree that he could see the docks from where he sat, and when the ferry had finished reloading and looked ready to leave, Harry braced himself.

"Ready?" he asked. The snake hissed an agreement and wound himself tightly around Harry's wrist.

Harry disappeared back to where he'd been hiding, got his bearings, and reappeared right in front of the dark-cloaked man, who his wand, startled. Harry stared at him for a split second with wide eyes, then disappeared again, reappearing a hundred feet away where the dark-cloaked man would just barely be able to see him. Sure enough, the dark-cloaked man noticed him and disappeared himself. Harry didn't wait. He disappeared again, a hundred feet away from his last position, and sure enough, when he reappeared, the man was standing where he'd been, looking around for him. Harry disappeared again before he could be spotted, and popped onto the boat as it set off into the open sea.

He slid underneath a station wagon, heart pounding. He thought that stood a chance of having actually worked.

At least, he thought that until the dark-cloaked man's face appeared in the space between the tyres, filled with irritation.

"I do not have time for this," he said, grabbing Harry by the ankle and dragging him out from under the vehicle.

He ignored Harry's shouts and struggles and pulled him close, disappearing them together. Harry could feel from the pressure that it was a much further distance than he'd ever travelled alone.

When they reappeared, Harry stumbled away from the dark-cloaked man, frantically taking in his new surroundings. He was in a mountainous, forested area. There was a small town directly behind them, and they stood at a set of huge gates. Beyond the gates was a castle, larger than any of the ones Harry had been to before. Never mind taste; his entire being was filled with the richness of the magic in this place.

The dark-cloaked man grabbed him by the arm and dragged him through the gates, and Harry felt the shimmer of magic close over him in a sticky embrace. He could feel the restrictions settling over him, and knew that if he tried to disappear, he'd fail.

He had to find a way to escape.