After half an hour of a monumental sulk session in which Harry felt thoroughly sorry for himself, he finally roused himself and started thinking about his next step. He knew he couldn't continue to live at Privet Drive. Since he believed the Ministry to now be completely in Voldemort's pocket it stood to reason that Voldemort would find it only to easy to find out his location from them. He didn't want to go to the Burrow as he refused to trust Ron and by extension Ron's family, no matter how much he liked them. He didn't know where Hermione lived and after her refusal to communicate with him, really didn't want to bother with her either. Sirius was out of the question as he was supposed to be with Lupin. He refused to even consider going to Dumbledore for help, thinking back to all the times that Dumbledore had failed him. That left him without anyone he could go and stay with. This led him to a rather horrible realisation.
"I have to find a way to stay on my own, far away from anyplace that Voldemort can get to."
He considered his options, thanks to his parents, he had a considerable amount of galleons at his disposal, however he was unable to access them while he was stuck at Privet Drive. The main obstacle was that he was still underage and this severely limited his options.
"I could just run away and find a place to stay on my own, but what if they find me; they'll just send me back here. So what I need to do is figure out a way so that they'll never be able to send me back or even better find me."
He briefly contemplated blowing the house up and faking his own death. "Shouldn't be that hard to do" he thought. "Wait till everyone's out of the house, sever the gas line, leave a candle burning somewhere and when the house fills with gas - BOOM. No more house, everyone thinks I'm dead, Voldemort stops coming from me, and I can finally live life on my own terms."
He spent a few blissful minutes imagining the faces of the Dursleys when they came back to their home to find it nothing but a smoking hole in the ground. "Serve them right, treating me the way they do. Would do them good to rough it for a while. He he he."
Unfortunately he soon found several flaws with the plan. "What if Petunia or Dudley came back home early? I don't know how long it'll take for the house to blow up after all, could take hours for the gas to build up. Even if it blows up correctly, they could find out I've taken money from my vault, then they'll probably get suspicious. Probably toss me in Azkaban as well. I'll have to come up with a better plan. Pity, I really - really wanted to blow up this damn house."
The faintest outline of a plan glimmering in his mind he called out to Dobby. "Dobby if I give you my key - can you make a withdrawal from Gringotts for me?"
"Of course Master Harry, Dobby be fetching things from Gringotts all the time for bad former master."
"Excellent, so could you just hop over to Gringotts, get some money - say a hundred galleons, then go over to Flourish and Bott's. Tell them to give you any book that covers American and European wizard towns, settlements or places like Diagon Alley. They probably have something in the travel section. Make sure you don't let on that you're buying it for me okay."
"Of course Harry Potter Sir, Dobby be doing that right away," said Dobby as he vanished with a cracking sound.
....
The next morning Harry was poring over the guidebooks that Dobby had heard from him. Just then he heard a loud, echoing crack which broke the sleepy silence just like a gunshot. Harry had become very familiar with that sound. It was exactly the same sound that Dobby made when he was apparating. He would have assumed it was Dobby, but Dobby was even now pottering around Harry's room putting stuff away and cleaning up. This meant that it had to be another wizard who was apparating close by. Harry wondered who it could be, when he felt a chill run down his spine. It could not be any of the people he knew, since they would surely have informed him before coming over and he hadn't received any letters in days. That left him with only one conclusion -
The Death Eaters had come for him.