Welcome to the third chapter of our ongoing series, which answers the question: In Harry Potter, what if instead of magic, it’s Dota 2?

Previous Chapters:

Oct 27 2014: 01 The Wardmaster

Jan 02 2015: 02 The Fogwards Express

Jan 09 2015: 03 The Shuffling

——————-

The Fogwards Pubtrain

“Do you have any idea what house you’ll be in?” Hermione asked.

Harry stared back at her. “What are houses?”

“You don’t know? All students at Fogwards are shuffled into houses at the beginning of the year. It’s in the handbook, didn’t you read it?”

Before he could answer, there was a knock on the door of their compartment and a round-faced, bespectacled boy wearing an oversized t-shirt came in. He looked tearful.

“Sorry,” he mumbled. “Have you seen my cat?”

When they all shook their heads, he wailed, “I’ve lost my Passion!”

“What?” Ron and Harry asked together.

“My cat, Passion Mao. He’s also my courier.”

When they shook their heads, he wailed, “He keeps getting away from me! ”

“He’ll turn up,” said Harry.

“Well, if you see him, let me know,” said the boy miserably. He adjusted his glasses and gave a little salute as he left. “Jacky Mao, signing off.”

“What was that?” asked Ron.

“I think he’s on a different spectrum,” answered Hermione.

“Well, I wouldn’t go that far…”

Hermione continued, “That’s why he wears the glasses, of course.”

“Oh.” Ron looked embarrassed.

“In any case, if you two aren’t going to do anything, I’ll go and help him look for his cat,” Hermione said with an air of condescension as she rose and exited the compartment.

A few moments passed, and Ron looked into the aisle to make sure she was gone. “Whatever house I’m in, I hope she’s not in it.”

The door opened again, and this time three boys entered. One had a cloak emblazoned with two bull cows framed by a yellow circle.

“Is it true?” he said. “They’re saying all down the train that Harry Potter’s in this compartment. So it’s you, is it?”

“Yes,” said Harry. He was looking at the other boys. Both of them were thickset and looked extremely mean. Standing on either side of the pale boy, they looked like bodyguards.

“Oh, these are my supports, Crabbe and Goyle,” said the boy carelessly, noticing where Harry was looking. “And my name’s Malfho, Jimmy ‘Demon’ Malfho.”

Ron gave a slight cough, which might have been hiding a snigger. Jimmy Malfho looked at him.

“You find that funny? You? A Weasley? Red hair, low MMR, and the most underfarmed parents in the world.”

Ron sagged in his seat.

He turned back to Harry. “You’ll soon find out some Dota families are much better than others.”

He held out his hand to shake Harry’s, but Harry didn’t take it.

“I’d be careful if I were you, Potter,” Demon said slowly. “Don’t play like your parents did. You hang around with feeders like Weasley and ixMike, and it’ll rub off on you.”

Both Harry and Ron stood up.

“Say that again,” Ron said, his face as red as his hair.

“Oh, you’re going to fight us, are you?” Demon sneered.

“Unless you get out now,” said Harry, more bravely than he felt, because Demon, Crabbe, and Goyle were a lot bigger than him and Ron.

Demon hesitated for a moment, then turned.

“Come on boys, there’s a gym in the first class car.”

Before leaving, Goyle reached toward the pack of Chocolate Hexes next to Ron — Ron leapt forward, but Harry was faster, drawing his wand and pointing it at Goyle’s hand. A red blast streaked forward, incinerating Goyle’s hand in an explosion of red mist.

Goyle’s scream was quickly cut off as he lost consciousness.

“Crabbe, do something!!” Malfho yelled.

“I only have a buckler recipe!” Crabbe protested. “I bought all the wards…”

The two boys hastily left the compartment, dragging Goyle’s inert body.

“Well played,” said Ron, but Harry noticed a hint of something in Ron’s eyes. Fear.

——————-

The Fogwards Great Hall

Harry had never even imagined such a strange and splendid place. It was lit by thousands and thousands of what looked like yellow sticks with eyeballs, planted in strategic places around the room. The sides of the hall were lined with stone figures, one of which was encased in ice. At the top of the hall was another long table where the teachers were sitting.

The first years walked in a line facing the other students, with the teachers behind them. Mainly to avoid all the staring eyes, Harry looked upward and saw that where the ceiling should have been there was a gaping void. As he stared into the emptiness, he heard Hermione whisper, “It’s bewitched to look like the sky. I read about it in Fogwards, A History.”

Harry quickly looked down again as Professor Finol silently placed a four-legged stool in front of the first years. On top of the stool he placed a large brown cowboy hat with a brass buckle at its front. The stool trembled, as if it couldn’t bear the hat’s weight.

Hermione whispered from next to Harry and Ron, “It’s the shuffle hat!”

For a few seconds, there was complete silence. Then the hat twitched. Loud music began to play, and the hat magically began to sing:

Shuffle hat is in the house… tonight!

Everybody just have a new team!

And we gonna make you lose… your mid!

We just wanna see you… change teammates.

Every day I’m shuffling

Shuffling shuffling

The hat went on for several minutes. Nobody danced. One of the older boys muttered, “Every fucking year.”

“So we’ve just got to try on the singing hat?” Ron whispered to Harry. “I’ll kill Fred, he was going on about having to go fight mud golems.”

Professor Finol now stepped forward holding a long roll of parchment. “When I call your name, you will put on the hat and sit on the stool to be shuffled,” he announced.

“Anwar, Arif!”

A brown-skinned boy stumbled out of line, put on the hat, which fell right down over his eyes, and sat down. A moment’s pause —

“SlitheriNA!” shouted the hat.

The table on the right cheered and clapped as he went to sit down at with SlitheriNA.

“Barshack, Artsiom!”

“GяўffiйdФr!” shouted the hat, and the boy ran off to the appropriate table to many shouts of “Davai!!”

Finol continued announcing names.

“Broecker, Max!”

“Ravencleu!”

The table second from the left clapped this time; several Ravencleus stood up to shake hands with Max as he joined them.

Sometimes, Harry noticed, the hat shouted out the house at once, but for others it took a little while to decide. “Clarke, Shane,” the thin-haired boy next to Harry in the line, sat on the stool for almost a whole minute before the hat declared him a Ravencleu.

“Am I the only girl in our year?!” asked Hermione, exasperated.

“Cook, Tyler” then became a member of SlytheriNA.

Perhaps it was Harry’s imagination, after all he’d heard about SlytheriNA, but he thought they looked like an unpleasant lot. He was starting to feel definitely sick now. He remembered being picked for teams during gym at his old school. He had always been last to be chosen.

The process continued, name after name after name.

“Granger, Hermione!” Hermione almost ran to the stool and jammed the hat eagerly on her head. “GяўffiйdФr!” shouted the hat. Hermione walked over and began speaking in perfect Russian. Ron groaned.

More names were called.

“Lu, Chao!”

“中国PUFF!”

A horrible thought struck Harry, as horrible thoughts always do when you’re very nervous. What if he wasn’t chosen at all? What if he just sat there with the hat over his eyes for ages, until Professor Finol jerked it off his head, and said there had obviously been a mistake and he’d better get back on the train?

Jimmy Malfho swaggered forward when his name was called and got his wish at once: the hat had barely touched his head when it screamed, “SlytheriNA!”

Ho went to join his friends Crabbe and Goyle, looking pleased with himself.

There weren’t many people left now. “Mao” … “Nielsen” … “Ng” … “Pivcaev” … and then, at last — “Potter, Harry!”

As Harry stepped forward, whispers suddenly broke out like little hissing fires all over the hall.

“Potter, did she say?”

“The Harry Potter?”

The last thing Harry saw before the hat dropped over his eyes was the hall full of people craning to get a good look at him. Suddenly he was looking at the black inside of the hat. He waited.

“Hmm,” said a small voice in his ear. “Difficult. Very difficult. Plenty of courage to dive towers, I see. Not a bad drafting mind either. A nice thirst to prove yourself, now that’s interesting.”

The hat waited, and said quietly, “I sense much rage in you, Harry Potter.”

Harry gripped the edges of the stool and thought, Not SlytheriNA, not SlytheriNA, NOT SlytheriNA!

The hat dramatically paused, then announced its verdict with conviction. The hall was silent, and even Ron and Hermione were too shocked to speak.

Harry Potter had been shuffled into SlytheriNA.