The Shyish Student
is a crossover Quest run by Oksbad and hosted on Sufficient Velocity. It follows the story of a young apprentice from Amethyst College of Magic in Warhammer Fantasy named Zagreus Nyx who ends up transported to the world of Harry Potter after he gets caught in in the crossfire of a Skaven attack on his college. He is quickly found by Dumbledore and offered the chance to stay at Hogwarts until he finds a way to return home. Now Zagreus must balance his new academic and social responsibilities with his mission to discover a way back to his own world, all while contending with various threats both new and familiar.
[The Shyish Student] contains examples of:
- Burn the Witch!: Zagreus was nearly burnt at the stake by a wandering witch hunter when his magic first manifested as a child.
- Culture Clash: Zagreus was born and raised on a Renaissance-esque Death World and thus many of his values and beliefs clash with those of the wizarding world and 1990’s Britain.
- Zagreus talks quite casually of the deaths of his various neighbors and of witnessing road wardens stringing up bandit corpses.
- Later, when Zagreus learns that wolves have been killed off in Britain his first thought his of how lucky they are and admits that he can’t quite bring himself to be sorry for the animals.
- Dark Is Not Evil: Goes both ways, surprisingly.
- Zagreus is, due to years of channeling Shyish, extremely pale and speaks with raspy, hoarse voice. He prefers dark cloathing, has a rather macabre sense of aesthetic, regularly hangs out with ghosts and as a consequence of childhood on a Death World where war, plauge and starvation were commonplace, considers things like that completely normal. He is, nevertheless, good-natured and almost unfallingly polite, with a strong sense of justice and duty.
- On the other hand, Zagreus is shocked to learn that hexes - which register to his witchsight as Dhar, a.k.a. the most evil, corruptive and dangerous kind of magic - are used almost everyday in Wizarding World and taught to children.
- Death of a Child: While viewing Zagreus’ memories through the pensieve to prove that he really is from another world, he and Dumbledore come across a scene of a young Zag playing a game of pretend with the other children of his village. Zagreus then notes to himself that a lot of them had already died by the time he left for Altdorf.
- Zagreus also had a younger brother who died in infancy.
- Wrong Context Magic: Zagreus studied the magic in the Warhammer world, where casters draw on the Winds of Magic that blow through the world, each corresponding to specific elemental and conceptual forces, and shaping them with raw will. In the Wizarding World there are no Winds and magic is cast by drawing energy from wizard's soul, which is then shaped by the wand through incantations and movements. It takes a lot of effort for Zagreus to cast even basic spells under this purview
