Similar to Harry Potter?

I have just watched "Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire" for the second time this evening and it is better viewing this time around. This is the fourth film and book of the series and shows the main characters getting the horn. In fact the actors are looking too old for 14 year old teenagers (though the guy who plays 16 year old Justin in Hollyoaks looks around 20 - its those sideburns). Anyway the film is great in the first and last thirds. There is too much of this ball stuff in the middle to interest me - teen romanaces have lost their charm over the years.

Now I do remember starting to write a longish short story about a university at the edge of time where several characters in their late teens are transported from various points on this world (and other planets) to a place that exists at the edge of the universe (edge of time). It is a comedy spoof in the vain of Hitch-hikers guide but set in a university where magic and science collide. This is seriously of the Harry Potter brand but with an element of physical law manipulation and occult magic too. Unformed at the time I believe that this story was started a good two years before J.K.Rowling started Harry Potter. If finished, edited, re-written and distributed may have ended up being more Harry Potter than anything else (just by lowering the humour, the character's ages and sticking to fantasy magic).

Now my dilemma exists thus - are the ideas worth exploring further or am I better with a free-form time format or dream world as an alternative universe format? What seems true is that ideas last and travel across the subconscious in the population. Maybe hundreds of people had similar ideas at that time but Rowling was the only one with the vision and determination to succeed. Maybe now hundreds of people are designing an AI to surpass human intelligence...