Harry Potter and the Philadelphia School for Higher Magic Learning

Disclaimer: I don't own anything you recognize... and not much else.

Chapter One: Are you nuts?

Harry lay on his back in the back yard of number four Privet Drive, he had been back for a week now, for his fifth summer after his fifth year at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry.

"Only one more summer after this." He said to himself as he stood to go inside. Harry was halfway to the door when he was surrounded by a ring of purple flames. "What the...!" Just as Harry was going to yell for help he disappeared.

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"Are you sure Raff? I mean there's seven of them, we've never had seven arrive on the same day before." Harry distinguished it as a mans voice, and a strong baritone at that, although he thought it had a strange accent. He couldn't place where it was from though.

"Look Conn... I don't do the picking... so accept the fact that we have seven new trainees would you." Replied a soft feminine voice, again with a strange accent... this made Harry frown, where was he... and what were these people talking about.

"Look the black haired one is waking up." The baritone said. Harry opened his eyes at this... what they don't know I'm the Boy-Who-Lived?!? He thought. Thank Merlin. As Harry opened his eyes he was surrounded by three forms. Two male one female they all looked to be about nineteen to twenty one years old. The girl Raff is what they called her? Harry thought, Odd name.

She stood at about 5'6, she was slim, and well defined from what Harry could tell. She had short chocolate brown hair that just hit her shoulders, it had red, blonde and black highlights in it. She was wearing flip-flops, a short denim skirt and a white halter top. The thing that shocked him the most were her green eyes, they were as brilliant as his own, but what amazed Harry about them was the flecks of purple in them.

The guy to her right was slightly taller at 5'7, again well built. He had dark curly brown hair. His eyes were grey, with orange flecks. He too was wearing flip-flops, a pear of khaki pants and a wife beater. The other guy was dressed similarly to his friend. But he stood at an impressive 5'11 and was very well built, the kind of muscles Harry assumed one could only get from playing sports their whole life. His hair was a lighter brown than the girls, but not blonde. His eyes were a mix of red, yellow and black flecks. All together they made an impressive sight. Harry noticed that they were all carrying weapons, varying from daggers to guns to throwing discs.

"Where am I?" Harry asked. "And who are you?" He continued, taking in his surroundings, having fought Voldemort so many times the one thing he learned was to always take in your surroundings.

Harry noticed that he was in a sort of 'Hospital Wing' and just as the one voice said there were six other forms on other beds. He looked from one to another. Harry began to panic when he noticed that all of the other occupants were Hogwarts students. There was Draco Malfoy, Blaise Zambini, Seamus Finnigan, Justin Flinch-Fletchy, and Ginny Weasley. Just then a ring of purple fire surrounded another bed and another body appeared. It was Lavender Brown.

"Another one!! Rafferty!!" The man Harry was assuming was Conn yelled, waking up the other occupants of the room.

"Harry? Draco? What's going on?" Ginny asked as she sat up in bed.

"I don't know Gin, but did you just call Malfoy Draco?" Harry asked as he got off his bed and walked to Ginny who was now standing in the middle of the room.

"Hey lay of Nia would you Potter" Draco said as he walked over to stand on the other side of Ginny.

"Guys would you stop fighting! Christ!" Ginny screamed.

"Look their children, they wont be able to handle the training. Send them all back." The voice Harry recognized as Conn said. At this the room fell silent.

"Who the hell are you calling a child?" Draco asked. "I'll have you know that Harry here has faced more than I bet any of you have." He pointed at the three people standing in front of him.

"Thanks Malfoy, but I'm sure you've been through hell too.... And if Gin can trust you then I'm willing to set aside our war for now. So we can gang up on these asses." Harry replied.

"Deal." Draco stuck out his hand and Harry took it.

"Ha! You both owe me twenty dollars and a pack of smokes." Came a voice from the third stranger standing in the room. Again silence fell, the Hogwarts students all exchanged glances, and then turned to the three strangers.

"Explain. Now." Harry said, taking a step forward while crossing his arms.

"Right, lets go to your apartment." The female said as she walked out the door, not turning to see if they followed.

"Should we?" Ginny asked the others.

"We don't have any other choice" Harry said as the two men walked out. "Come on, or we'll lose them." Harry finished by striding towards the door, he turned and saw that the others were following him.

Once out of the room Harry noticed that they were in a rather large building, where he didn't know. But the three strangers were leading them outside. To the streets of a city. It was rather dirty, Harry noticed, but the people were friendly. They walked five blocks before they were led into a building and then into an elevator. So were in a muggle city. But we obviously got here by magic... interesting Thought Harry as he and the other seven students watched as the elevator numbers climbed. When they reached the 15th floor it stopped and a little compartment on the keypad opened. At which point man that exclaimed to have won a bet pulled out a ring of keys and placed a random one in the key hole that was now visible. The doors to the elevator opened to display a rather large flat.

"Well don't just stand there all day and come in." one of the guys said sending the other two into peels of laughter.

"Hey, that you guys?" Another male voice asked from the right.

"Who else would it be Kurtty?" the still nameless guy replied in the direction the voice of Kurtty came from.

"Point taken." Kurtty replied as he walked out of a doorway. He was tall at 6'3, built like the other two men but not as much as the 'nameless one' wearing the same type of clothes. He had brown hair with brown eyes that had golden flecks in them that would change to red every once in a while. "Hi I'm Kurt, but these goons call me Kurtty." He said to the Hogwarts students.

"Ah we finally get a name." Draco sneered.

"What! Guys you know the first thing your supposed to do when new recruits wake up is introduce yourselves." Kurt yelled at his three friends. He then heaved a sigh and turned back to Harry and his friends. "My apologies. From left to right... Matt; a.k.a. Conn, Kathalynn; a.k.a. Raff or Kat, and Zach; a.k.a. Que. And its my guess that he won any bet they made. Right?" Kurt said turning to his friends.

"Yup!" Zach Cheered. "which reminds me... pay up!" He said as he extended his hands to the other two. Kat sigh and snapped her fingers and a pack of Marlboro Light Menthols appeared out of thin air. "I don't want conjured."

"Fine. I'll buy you a pack later then." Kat replied as she handed him a twenty dollar bill. Then proceeded to pack the cigarettes as she flopped into a chair. Matt pulled out a twenty and handed it to Zach and then pulled out a pack of Marlboro Lights from his other pocket and handed them over too. "Why don't you all sit down?" Kat sad as she gestured to the two large leather sofas and four recliners that made up the sitting area, while unwrapping her cigarettes and pulling one out. "Matt light?"

"Sure." He replied as he snapped his fingers and a flame appeared on the tip of his pointer finger, he held it up to Kat's cigarette as she inhaled.

"Thanks." She said as she waited for the teens to sit.

The Hogwarts teens sat down on the two couches and two of the arm chairs leaving only two left. Kurt and Matt took them as Zach walked over to Kat and picked her up, then sat and Kat fell on his lap. She let out a squeal and then turned and smacked him.

"Let me know when your going to do that." She sighed. "Right, explanations. First off, this is your apartment, or flat as you British people call it. Second we are Higher's and so are you."

"A Higher is a person that has the ability to do magic, at the snap of a finger, some also control the elements, like Matt can control fire, so he is a Higher Fire Elemental." Zach continued.

"You'll be going to the Philadelphia School for Higher Magic Learning or P.S.H.M.L. as we like to call it." Matt explained. "The chance to study here is a rare one, only those that go to the school know of its existence. It will take you three years to complete, you will learn many things, in many ways, you will learn to control your mind, which is the first step, then when you control your mind you move on to your body."

"You will do this by learning martial arts, sword fighting, knife throwing, dagger dancing, and how to use muddle weaponry like guns." Kurt continued. "once you master these areas, which generally take a year and a half to two years, you move onto your magic, this will take a year and is the step the four of us have just started, we are going to be your 'mentors' we live on the floor above you. There is a spiral stair case that leads up there from in the ruckus room."

"Of course you will only be staying at this apartment on breaks. We move to the school in three days. That will give you plenty of time to get your supplies. We will be taking you shopping on South Street tomorrow afternoon." Kat continued.

"Any questions?" Matt asked.

"Yeah, I have one, no strike that two, one; are you nuts? And two; why not tomorrow morning?" Seamus asked.

"ok first no we are not nuts, and two because we wont be waking up until after noon." Zach replied. "Any more? No, alright here are your keys. See you tomorrow." Zach handed over the ring of keys he used to unlock the elevator door.

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Once the four mentors left the Hogwarts students all stood up and started to explore. They found that they all had their own bedroom suet's, the suet's consisted of a large bedroom, a large bathroom and also a large closet that had every kind of clothes you could think of.

There was a large kitchen and pantry that was full of any kind of food you could think of. Harry immediately stuck a bag of microwaveable popcorn in the microwave, and laughed as Draco and Blaise stared at it in awe. Harry ended up popping two more bags, one for each of them. The group then moved on to discover the 'ruckus' room. This sent Harry into explanation mode.

There was a large entertainment center with two six foot high bookshelves on either side that rotated. One bookshelf had DVD's and the other CD's. the entertainment center consisted of a large flat-plasma screen TV. A massive stereo system a DVD player and every game system that Harry knew of. On shelves below the entertainment center were a few hundred games.

On the other side of the room was a poker table with cards and what looked like three thousand poker chips. A foosballs table, a pool table, a dart board and a bar. To the left of the bar was the stair case that Kurt mentioned.

The eight students settled in for a night of games, as Harry explained the rules of Texas Hold em'.

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The next afternoon Kat and Zach walked down the spiral stairs to find the ruckus room a mess, and teens sleeping all over the place.

"Guess they found out that the bar has booze." Zach said with a laugh.

"Yes we did. And we found the stash of weed in the poker table too." Harry said as he walked into the ruckus room from the kitchen carrying a cup of coffee. "Now is it just me or does time go slower in there apartments? Because we've gone to bed and woken up like a billion times, and watched like half of the movies. Not to mention we put a large dent in the 'booze'" Harry sat in one of the chairs around the poker table. Soon followed by his friends as most of them have just woken up. Ginny walked in from the kitchen also carrying a cup of coffee.

"Your right Harry. Time does move slower here, only one day had passed in the real world, and for every second that passes in the real world, a month passes in here."

"There you are, I woke up and you weren't there. Next time wake me up would you." Ginny said as she sat on Harry's lap.

"Oh now look who won a bet. That would be a touch up on my tattoo if I remember correctly!" Kat said with triumph, while Zach scowled.

"Fine we'll do that today. By the looks of the poker table these guys have been designing tattoo's too." Zach said as he picked up a sketch.

"Yeah we all want to get two." Draco said as he lit a Marlboro Light and sat next to Lavender.

"Alright. Why don't all of you get ready and we'll meet in the sitting room in an hour." Kat said as she stood up and pulled Zach to the stairs.

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Well that's it, let me know what you think. Bad, good, keep going, stop... drop a line. Later.

Emily