Disclaimer: Harry Potter belongs to J. K. Rowling; the original characters are completely mine.

*~*~*


Last time:

Two crossroads away, Caleb picked him up and together they made their way to the bus station. From there they took the bus to Hastings -on the southeast coast of England- in order to get an international portkey to their first destination. A few stops after they boarded the rest of their group entered the bus.

Late at night they finally arrived and Skye led them all to a small wizarding shop. An old and shady looking man looked at them and asked gruffly, "Where to?".

"Dubai.", answered Skye.

"That's 15 galleons.", rasped the man and went to the back of the shop to retrieve an old-looking book, "Here it is."

Tia silently payed the price and the group went outside into a small alley. There they activated the portkey and were swished away to the United Arab Emirates.


*~*~*

Surfing the Sand

Upon arriving on the outskirts of Dubai, Tariq took out his cell phone and talked to someone in rapid Arabic.

For half an hour the group waited, then a convoy with three black jeeps came to pick them up.

"I didn't know you knew someone in Dubai", mentioned Harry.

"Well, my people usually have relatives all over the world.", answered Tariq.

"Because you're Arabic or because you're vampire?"

"Both, actually.", stated Tariq.

All of them crawled into the jeeps. Harry went with Tariq and Shun to sit in the first one, Caleb and the twins sat in the middle one, and Skye and Tia rode in the last jeep.

"Man, I'm beat. What time is it in Dubai? Two o'clock in the morning? I really need to sleep.", stated Shun.

Tariq teased, "Wow, Shun, I believe this is the first time in nearly three days that you uttered one whole sentence."

"Shut up.", grumbled the Chinese mage and looked to Harry for support.

Said wizard sat slumped in one corner of the jeep and slept calmly, oblivious to his best friends' small squabble. Tariq and Shun silently agreed to let him sleep for a while since they knew how hard Harry had worked for the last few days at the Dursley's. The convoy drove for nearly two hours, the last part of the way, they drove through what seemed to be a private park which was astonishingly green, considering Dubai was a desert country.

"Hmm", mumbled Harry as he woke up, "is it day already? It's so bright."

"That's because we're closer to the equator than before. During the summer months sun starts rising between two and three in the morning and now it's already four am.", explained Tariq.

"The park looks beautiful, where exactly are we?", asked Harry.

"This park and the estate belong to my mother's family. Since it's very hot here in summer none of my relatives will be here. We have the whole house for ourselves and can train you."

"And you still have a lot to learn.", stressed Shun. "You're already stronger than most of the Hogwarts students thanks to your training but compared to us you still can't hold yourself up."

"Twist the knife in the wound, why don't you?", mumbled Harry and looked back out of the window.

He considered himself fairly strong and it was true if you measured the raw power he had at his disposal.

On the other hand his friends had enjoyed a completely different and much harder magical education than him. Fueled by their families, friends, clans and schools, all of his friends had a vast knowledge on many kinds of magic as well as the power to back their claims up.

*~*~*

He realized several months ago that even though Hogwarts claimed to be one of the best schools around, there were many, many schools better than that because they didn't stop at the so-called light magic and took care to amplify their students natural abilities. In other words: Other schools treated their students as individuals and made sure that everyone was taken care of. Hogwarts, however, stuck with four houses and once you were sorted, everyone was certain that they knew all there was to know about your character, strengths and future.

There actually were many abilities that couldn't even be classified as light or dark, such as turning into an animagus but Hogwarts also neglected that subject, calling it advanced transformation that only the strongest wizards could manage. It took Harry a while to accept that the Hogwarts teachers didn't know everything about magic and blatantly lied in some cases in order to keep control on the young wizards and witches.

Outside of Britain, it was a fact that as long as the students received proper instructions nearly everyone could turn into an animagus.

Harry guessed that one of the reason for not making that knowledge public in Britain was that it would be incredibly difficult to monitor so many animagi.

Also the Minister and Dumbledore would hate it if there were too many people getting too powerful. This way they couldn't be sure to keep their precious positions. And if there was one thing both agreed about, it was that they weren't willing to share or lose the power they had over wizarding Britain.

Therefore they worked together to make up laws and rules that wouldn't allow anyone to climb the ladder of power.

*~*~*

Harry stopped thinking about Dumbledore and his ministrations because they always managed to ruin his mood. Once he developed his full potential and had some fun weeks (or months) with his friends, he might be willing to dedicate some time to that particular problem. As it was he had enough on his plate, trying to take control his life.

With these thoughts he noticed that the jeeps had stopped in front of a beautiful mansion and everyone else already stood in front of the door.

Harry exited the car and went to his friends who were waiting for him to wake up from his daydreaming and join them. Then they entered the house and were welcomed by an older man in a suit.

"This is Yazeed, the housekeeper. If you have any questions about the house or any troubles you can go to him.", introduced Tariq the man.

"Salamu aleikum.", greeted Yazeed.

The rest answered with varying degrees of "Hello", only Caleb knew the proper answer and said, "Aleikum a'salamu."

After a short trip through the mansion (which was fairly small, it 'only' had 12 bedrooms, 1 kitchen, 5 bathrooms, 1 huge library, 2 modern training rooms, 1 swimming pool and 2 living rooms), Yazeed led everyone to their respective rooms (the couples in the group were also separated since it just wasn't proper, explained Yazeed).

Once Harry was in his room, he didn't bother to change his clothes. He was dead on his feet and just fell on the bed. It was just before six in the morning.

'Tomorrow', he promised, 'I'll look at my room more closely....now....sleep...'

With that last thought he drifted off.

It had been a very long day.

Author's Note:

This is what I do instead of learning. XD

What do you think???

I already have some ideas what they could do in Dubai, there is actually one very small hint what they'll definitely do there. ;-)

After that I can only continue writing if I know where to send them next, so please vote on my poll!!!