Welcome, dear readers, to "Partial Knowledge Sucks". In this side story to "Knowledge Comes at the Price", I'll be dropping a SI / Outsider in my little crossover with knowledge of both universes but not of the setting itself.
I hope you'll have a good time reading this.
"Souls don't break, they bend."
Old Soul, New Beginnings, Future Problems
Leah Campbell was a normal girl.
Well, as long as you omitted that, on the day of her 11th anniversary, she'd received a letter inviting her to acquire a wand, a cauldron, numerous grimoires and school robes, among other things, in order to attend a certain learning institution in the northern parts of England on the 1rst of September 1991.
So really, apart from being a witch, Leah Campbell was a perfectly normal girl.
Except for, you know, being the first muggle-born in the last twenty-something years to be sorted in Slytherin, the House of Cunning and Ambition which was so utterly prejudiced that even half-blood magicals were considered a rarity in their ranks and consecutively semi-ostracized.
See? Leah Campbell was a completely normal girl, aside from being a lone sheep in a vipers' nest.
Oh, and there was that bit about her being an extraplanar soul reincarnated into a universe she'd firmly believed to be entirely fictional until the arrival of the aforementioned letter, but that hardly even mattered.
Leah Campbell was, without a doubt, the most boringly normal twenty-three-year old twelve-year old girl in all of Great Britain.
And so, we find her on the 1rst of November 1992, normally eating her breakfast in the Great Hall in the company of her fellow second year Slytherins. Specifically, the so-called 'grey faction' of the House, Tracey Davis and Daphne Greengrass, and by association, Theodore Nott and Blaise Zabini with whom they were on speaking terms.
The witch was finishing her bowl of cereals, listening to her sort-of friends discuss the topic of caffeine addiction and how it could potentially cause one to dive into the dark arts, when a clear, vibrant noise resonated repeatedly around the room.
"May I have your attention, please?" requested Hogwarts' headmaster Albus Dumbledore, smiling benevolently as he stood at the staff table and hit his glass with a silver spoon.
Silence quickly fell on the hall.
"Thank you."
It happened in the blink of an eye.
Something shifted and the aging Headmaster disappeared. In his place stood someone else, someone that Leah recognized instantly, knowing full well of his achievements thanks to her extra-universal baggage. This was Albus Dumbledore, master of the arcanes, archwizard at the pinnacle of his art, vanquisher of Gellert Grindelwald and bane of Voldemort.
It was simultaneously humbling and pants-shittingly terrifying.
"I usually try to avoid feeding rumors and keep this sort of speech to a minimum, but the staff and myself found it important to inform you of a new development."
His eyes swept the room, much like the shiver than crawled up the second year's spine - and basically everyone else's in the student body.
"Yesterday evening, Professor Flitwick discovered that one of his students was bullied by fellow Housemates, but the situation is now resolved and the offenders will be punished accordingly." revealed the old wizard, looking quite displeased with the House of the wise.
Wait, a bullied Ravenclaw... was he talking about Luna Lovegood? If so, why was Flitwick aware of the issue? Wasn't it supposed to last up to and beyond Harry's fifth year? Unless it was a butterfly effect, caused by her existence in this dimension? Was that possible? Everything had been following canon up until now, as far as she could tell, but if things had started to change, then could she still rely on her foreknowledge and memories? Would her plan for this year even work now?
"However, this incident revealed a more pressing and concerning issue." continued the Headmaster, ignorant of the young witch's panicked thoughts.
His wand moved and green lights appeared to phase through the sky-viewing ceiling, fusing to form a… TV screen. Huh, not something she'd expected to see in Hogwarts, but why not. Oooh, nice quality too. That would be Professor Flitwick's arm, she believed, and that…
Her brain short-circuited as she recognized the person facing the half-goblin in what had to be extracted memories.
Now, the twice-born witch didn't know the man per say, but she definitely knew the design of his leather armor - a stylized bird crowing at the full moon, emblazoned on the torso.
"Meet Azra Nightwielder." Dumbledore uselessly introduced the stranger. "Hogwarts student, thief and -"
"BUUUULLSHIIIIT!"
Her shout drew every eye on her, along with a 'I beg your pardon?' from Dumbledore and a simultaneous 'Ms. Campbell!' from a scandalized McGonagall. She occulted the two of them, the only voice she registered being that of her Head of House asking a sharp yet slightly concerned 'Is there a problem, Ms. Campbell?'
"A problem? He's a bloody Nightingale. A Nightingale! In Hogwarts! Of course there's a problem!"
She was standing now, motioning at the looping scene on the screen, not caring at bit about the incredulous looks she was receiving or the hushed whispers circulating the room.
"Why is this happening? WHY?! I was doing great! I layed low for an entire year, didn't draw unwanted attention from anyone even remotely important, avoided the mirror and the stone... hell, I even endured Quirrellmort's lessons. And now that I'm finally ready to meddle with the plot and twist the entire timeline as far away from canon as possible, this shit happens! That's great. Just... great! Apparently, dying and getting reincarnated into a bloody fictional universe to deal with Tom 'Moldyshorts' Riddle and his army of Death Munchers wasn't messy enough. No, alternate universes crossovers are the way to go and now I get a freaking Nightingale, which means Nocturnal, which means Elder Scrolls, which means WE'RE IN SOME DEEP SHIT!... also, that there's a Liminal Bridge leading straight to Evergloam somewhere around. Knowing my tropes, probably in the Room of Requirement or the Chamber of Secret or something. Now, don't get me wrong, I love Nocturnal. She's one of the eldest Princes, has dominion over bloody luck and freaking shadows, and her whole 'crowing ravens on the forearms, cleavage down to the navel' look is awesome. Hell, the Skyrim thieves' guild questline was one of my favorites after the Dark Brotherhood one. But Nocturnal found her way here, so it's only a matter of time before the other Princes join the ride, along with the Aedra and the other Et'Ada chilling in Aetherius. Bloody hell, I don't even know how she managed that, because it doesn't make any sort of sense in the cosmology. What's Earth in relation to Mundus? A second mortal realm? An alternate one like Lyg? A plane of Oblivion? An old Kalpa? A burgeon of the next one? Something out of the GodHead entirely? Or just an abnormal scale? And how's the Wizarding World going to handle actual deities when they themselves don't have any entity even approaching that level? I mean, sure, the embodiment of Death is a thing, but it's not actually interacting with anyone, you know, aside from the three… Peverell… brothers… oh! Oooo~oh, this clusterfuck is working on crossover rules. This is bad. This is very bad! I'm calling it right now, Death isn't a thing here, the Peverells were from Nirn and the Hallows are going to be Daedric Artifacts. Fuck, I can see it already. The Cloak could be Nocturnal's, obviously, the Wand probably Mehrunes Dagon's, death and chaos are totally his thing, and then the Stone would be Si…this'... FU~UCK! Oh fuck, fuck, fuck, the snake fucker used an artifact from the Dread Father to make one of his bloody horcruxes. The N'wah is going to get us all killed because he was stupid enough to use the freaking Resurrection Stone as a phylactery. And now Sithis is going to pop the universe like a freaking soap bubble because he's only like, two or three steps removed from the GodHead, and he totally can. Fu~uck, we're so so dead it's not even funny. FUCK!"
At that point, Leah was on her knees, unleashing a litany of frantic F words over and over again, completely lost to the world and stuck in her panicked terror. Why was this happening? She hadn't relived an entire childhood and strategized how to fix the upcoming six years just to be erased from existence because the half-blood son of a squib was too afraid of death to deal with it like a reasonable human being, dammit! The only way this could get any worse was if her family name came with a set of supernatural attachments. Then she'd also have to deal with angels and demons ducking it out and the mess that was her new life would reach biblical proportions, literally!
A firm hand grasping her left shoulder anchored her back unto reality and she met the frowning face of Severus Snape.
"Ms. Campbell." forcefully said her Head of House. "You're having a panic attack, you need to calm down. Now!"
"...calm down." she mumbled, still dazed and frightened. "... yeah, sure, I can do that…"
"Do so." insisted the wizard, kneeling beside her. "Breath in, hold… breath out, hold… again… again… good, keep at it."
The young witch complied, gradually recovering from her episode.
"I… think I'm good now." she finally decided, smiling at the Potion Master. "Thank you Professor."
"You're welcome." replied the man, sounding almost kind as he helped her to her feet.
Only then did she remember exactly where she was.
That is, in the middle of the Great Hall, in front of every single student and staff member currently housed in Hogwarts' School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, all of whom seemed torn between puzzled terror and exited amazement.
Fuu~uck!
"Quite the informational rant you just gave, Ms. Campbell -" idly commented Albus Dumbledore, eyes twinkling yet keeping the edge they'd gained at the start of his own speech. "- but I find myself with some seriously puzzling questions now. Would it be terribly rude of me to ask for some clarification?"
Once upon a time, Leah Campbell had been a normal girl.
That time had just been shot twice in the head and buried in a shallow grave, somewhere in the dust of the Mojave desert.
"… ever heard of the multiverse theory?"