Fanfic / Walpurgis Nights

As they lay with their broken bodies bleeding out and their soul gems slowly giving into corruption, they thought that it would be the end for them, that they were doomed to become monsters. What they didn't know was that there was a second chance waiting for them and all others like them: a second chance to live, a second chance to love, a second chance to heal.

And all it would cost them was everything.

Walpurgis Nights is a Puella Magi Madoka Magica fanfic written by Taker Foxx, and an Alternate Universe spinoff of his other work, Resonance Days. It is currently finished in the original version on Tumblr, but is being rewritten on Archive of Our Own.

In a therapist's office in Freehaven, two witches recount how they woke up tied to a clocktower in a thunderstorm, with no memories of who they are except for their names; Kriemhild Gretchen and Homulilly. The therapist tells them that they are dead, but that this is not the end. The witches have been given a second chance, at the cost of their old lives, and they have a long road of adjustment in front of them. Luckily, they won't walk it alone, accompanied both by each other and by old friends with new names.

The completed fic can be found here on the writer's Tumblr, while the Ao3 rewrite can be read here.

Beware Late Arrival Spoilers for Resonance Days and Puella Magi Madoka Magica alike.

Walpurgis Tropes

• Adaptation Expansion:
  • Because the plot is following two arriving witches (Gretchen and Homulilly) instead of a magical girl and a witch who are actively being pursued by the Big Bad, a lot more of how society works and functions is focused on and given greater detail. In particular a full procedure is established for introducing new arrivals to the aferlife, where in Resonance Days the situation at hand kept Kyoko and Oktavia from participating in it despite being in place.
  • The nature of Walpurgisnacht and how it is said to be a fusion of multiple witches is expanded on, being a type of witch that is a fusion of several Witches that occurs naturally but rarely. They can be made up of as few as two witches or as many as twenty-eight.
• Adaptational Job Change: Instead of working at the Nautilus Platform harvesting mermaid eggs and seaweed as Mami and Charlotte did, Caneloro works at the local bakery The Honey Hive as a manager and Charlotte works at a bookstore.
• Adaptational Nice Guy: Ophelia is a lot nicer than Kyoko, as the loss of her more traumatic memories leave her a lot less jaded and irritable. She's still the one most likely to get into trouble between herself, Oktavia, Charlotte, and Candeloro, but is overall a more well-adjusted, friendly sort.
• Aerith and Bob: Witch names tend to work like this. Usually they're not entirely made up, often being relatively common names or names taken from history and culture, and can be sorted into names that sound perfectly normal, names that sound unusual for the culture the witch is from, and names that you normally wouldn't see in modern times. The first category has Cynthia or Annabelle, the second has Oktavia and Charlotte (both Japanese), and the third has Kriemhild and Ophelia.
• Age Lift: In Resonance Days, Kyoko and Oktavia are the same mental age as when they died, having only spent a short time in the afterlife. In Walpurgis Nights, on the other hand, the two died at the same time as Mami and Charlotte, and the story follows two characters who died some time later. As a result, Ophelia and Oktavia are both in their twenties.
• Ambiguous Situation:
  • At the end of the four's origin story arc, Ophelia sees a vision of her original self, Kyoko, asking her to take care of everyone for her. While Dr. Cynthia already described the idea of the old self still being around in some form as an expanded take on the original continuities 'do not call witches by their old name' concept, the above is something beyond what that entails and what it exactly means is hard to say.
  • Where is the Walpurgisnacht that Homura and Madoka slew before they turned into witches? It would have arrived some time before they did but there is of yet no indication of where or who it was. In addition, Word of God clarified that it wasn't the twenty-eight member Walpurgisnacht that Dr. Cynthia mentioned.
• Arbitrary Skepticism: One girl in Homulilly and Gretchen's class thinks that everything with aliens and incubators and wishes sounds ridiculous, with a few other agreeing. Another girl points out that compared to everything, it's not the weirdest thing they've all been through- unscrewing her head like a screw to make her point.
• Ascended Extra:
  • Homura and Madoka in Resonance Days are The Ghost, ironically for being the two human characters whose names comes up frequently while still alive, with their witch counterpart Homulilly and Gretchen being two of the main characters in Walpurgis Nights.
  • Dr. Cynthia, mentioned a few times in the spin-off stories, appears prominently here as a major supporting character.
• Clockworks Area: Doomsday Clock, the spawn site Homulilly and Gretchen woke up at, is made up of giant interlocking gears and clocktowers, intermittently turning like a giant clock. Whenever it turns, the endless rainfall reverts directions.
• Cursed with Awesome: Gretchen is initially disturbed at how her entire legs are replaced with weird black wires, but quickly realizes they're actually very useful when trying to escape from her bindings at the spawn site she woke up at.
• Crucified Hero Shot: When Ophelia woke up in the afterlife, she was crucified and impaled with a spear, echoing the crucifixion of christ.
• Darker and Edgier: How witches arrive in the afterlife is a lot, lot, more creepy and unsettling than in Resonance Days. In Resonance Days, Oktavia was left in a tub of scalding hot water and Charlotte was in a chair next to a hospital bed surrounded by a lot of medical equipment. Their 'starting points' in Walpurgis, by contrast, involve being stabbed by her own weapons and having her hands crushed, and being force-fed sweets before being set on fire, respectively.
• Death by Adaptation: Strictly speaking only Homura. Madoka, Kyoko, Mami, Sayaka, and Charlotte all die multiple times during the events of the original anime, and are resurrected by the Reset Button. Only Madoka and Sayaka remain dead (or something adjacent) in the final episode. Homura, on the other hand, never dies in any timeloop in the show, but here died in one of the earliest timeloops, and as a result, everyone else remained dead as well.
• Dramatic Irony: When Gretchen finds herself with a weird bow against her throat, and Homulilly with a buckler tied to her hands, she dismisses them and throws them away, unaware that they were their magical girl weapons in life.
• Embarrassing First Name: Gretchen goes by her last name because she doesn't think she looks like a Kriemhild.
• Emergent Human: All witches wake up in the afterlife with no memory of their lives save basic information and their new names. This story in particular focus on Homulilly and Kriemhild Gretchen, two witches who just went through that and are now starting to rebuild their identities from scratch.
• Flaming Hair: Ophelia's witch remnant is her hair being made of fire. She has to wear a special covering and fireproof her everything as a result.
• Foreshadowing: In the fourth chapter, before the rest of the cast is introduced, Cynthia mentions that a four-witch Walpurgisnacht arrived in Freehaven some years before Homulilly and Gretchen, hinting at the freehaven four's future appearance.
• Fowl-Mouthed Parrot: Cheese the Parrot, who pretty much only repeats a certain set of words that Ophelia once said. These words being her losing her cool at a really bad wrestling match, so Cheese is infamous for having a very foul mouth.
• Freakiness Shame: Homulilly thinks everyone will be scared of her for her skeletal arms and shoulders and wears long gloves to hide them. Working on this is a long term project by Gretchen, Dr. Cynthia, and Ophelia.
• Glowing Eyes: Gretchen's eyes glow slightly as part of her witch remnant.
• Happily Married: Like Mami and Charlotte in Resonance Days, Candeloro and Charlotte. Oktavia and Ophelia are this in all but name, as they aren't the types to actually marry as Cynthia describes it.
• High School AU: Due to the focus shifting from Kyoko and company trying to get her sister back from Reibey to the arrival of two new witches to the afterlife, we get to see the normal methods of integration. They just so happen to involve classes, dorms, and supervisors. Ophelia even mentions having tons of demerits back when she was in the system.
• Last-Name Basis: Kriemhild Gretchen tends to just go by Gretchen, since Kriemhild is difficult to pronounce for someone not used to germanic languages.
• Lighter and Softer: Compared to Resonance Days. Walpurgis Nights is plenty dark and features some fairly heavy moments, but compared to the misery suffered by Resonance Days' main cast, everyone in this fic is living their best afterlife.
• Losing Your Head: One of the girls in Homulilly's and Gretchen's class can remove her head like a screw, either outright or just slightly to work as Exorcist Head, which she uses to great effect to intimidate a troublemaker in class. It works a bit too well, in fact, sending the entire class into chaos.
• Merger of Souls: Two or more witches that merge into a Walpurgisnacht are rumored in universe to have their souls combined until they are killed, and even after they split back apart (as was the case with Gretchen and Homulilly, and the quartet of Charlotte, Candeloro, Oktavia, and Ophelia), their souls remain connected and build on each other forever after, and they usually stick together afterwards in the afterlife. While not confirmed fact in universe, it is apparent that the two former Walpurgisnachts we do see in story remain close, and the one massive one that Dr. Cynthia mentions, made up of twenty-eight witches, live and work together in a machine shop somewhere outside of Freehaven.
• Mythology Gag: According to Cynthia, the usual worst-case scenario for arrival in the afterlife is a magical girl arriving with a witch they used to know, which is exactly what happens in Resonance Days.
• Offscreen Moment of Awesome: Madoka and Homura defeated two Walpurgisnachts. One made of their former friends and Charlotte, the other the canonical one at the end of the time loop. The latter being a Heroic Sacrifice as they were left without magic and a slowly corrupting set of soul gems without a Grief Seed on hand.
• Only One Name: Most witches have just one name, with Oktavia von Seckendorff and Kriemhild Gretchen standing out.
• Parental Hypocrisy: One that saves everyone's bacon over being applied. While Ophelia and company are quite willing to admit that they snuck out all of the time as new witches, Gretchen and Homulilly, who despite being their same physical age and their old friends, are their juniors in the afterlife. And being led around by a piece of bad news named Brooklyn as part of a scam that targets new witches, let alone one that has even more sinister undertones, warrants immediate intervention. That being said, afterwards Ophelia is quick to ask for them to be let off easily for being hoodwinked, repeatedly, in lieu of a personal reward.
• Plant Person: Downplayed. Homulilly has a spiderlily growing out of her head.
• Point of Divergence: The fic spins off from one of the earlier timelines Homura went through, and there are two significant points that diverge from the events of the canon timeline, or even from Resonance Days;
  • Diverging from Resonance Days: Kyoko, Mami, and Sayaka all turned into witches in Charlotte's labyrinth, whereas in the show and original fic, only Mami died, and remained a magical girl. This means that they all ended up in the afterlife together and with no memories of their living lives, and as such are much better adjusted and have a healthier relationship. Ophelia being a witch with burning hair also means that she wasn't immediately identified as Kyoko Sakura, so she hasn't had any trouble with the Void Walkers.
  • Diverging from the events of the show: In a timeline where only Madoka and Homura are left to fight Walpurgisnacht, Madoka doesn't have one griefseed left, meaning that she has no way of healing Homura's soulgem and let her reset the timeline, so they both turn into witches.
• Reincarnation Friendship: While the bond that forms between a Magical Girl and Witch who die at the same time is more focused on in Resonance Days, the friendships that the dead Witches had before witching out and dying do have a similar effect. Gretchen and Homulilly feel like they know Oktavia, Candeloro, and Ophelia from somewhere, and the three in turn hit it up with the two very quickly with a similar feeling of familiarity. It is particularly noteworthy in Homulilly's case, who struggles to connect with most people but very quickly and easily bonds with the three, as well as Charlotte to a lesser extent.
• Rule of Symbolism: The way each witch arrive in the afterlife is reflective of who they were in life, and rather heavy on the symbolism.
  • Gretchen and Homulilly are fused to a massive clock, since in life they were both caught up in Homura's timeloop.
  • Ophelia was crucified and impaled with her own spear, in a church filled with creepy dummies, since her wish caused her preacher father to unwittingly brainwash his congregation.
  • Oktavia had her hands crushed, since her wish was to heal the hands of Kyosuke Kamijou.
  • Candeloro was repeatedly crushed by car wrecks, since she made her wish after nearly dying in a car crash.
• Shrinking Violet: Homulilly is a shy as pre Break the Cutie Homura in canon, but with added hang-ups caused by dying, freakiness shame of her having skeletal arms, and feeling like she killed her past self by existing. She barely wants to interact with anyone other than Gretchen, and later Candeloro, Oktavia, Ophelia, and Charlotte, and some of the staff to a lesser extent, and ends up being one of the harder witches in her batch not because she is prone to misbehaving, but because of just how timid and co-dependent on Gretchen she is, a problem even Homulilly recognizes she has.
• Theme Initials: Unintentionally, but still. Of the Freehaven Four, both romantic couples have the same initial; Ophelia and Oktavia are a couple, as are Charlotte and Candeloro.
• Troubling Unchildlike Behavior: One of the Magical Girls in Homulily and Gretchen's class's first reaction to seeing wild monkeys is wanting to cut off their tails. This disturbs everyone involved, as otherwise this girl was actually pretty amiable.
• Weird Weather: Not uncommon in spawn sites, Doomsday Clock has perpetual rainfall that every time the giant clockworks turn changes direction, so that half the time the rain rises from the ground to the sky.
• What If?: The universe diverges based on a version of the third timeline where Sayaka, Kyoko, and Mami all witch out during Charlotte's witch fight and Madoka and Homura lack a grief seed at the end to restore Homura to full power and Mercy Kill Madoka before going on to the fourth timeline.
• When She Smiles: Homulilly usually doesn't smile much due to being too much of a Shrinking Violet, but she cracks a small smile after Cynthia gives them the rundown on how Walpurgisnacht witches are soulbound, meaning that she and Gretchen will probably be together forever. Gretchen notices and gives a wide grin herself.
• The Xenophile: Gretchen thinks aliens are really cool and is excited about meeting them.

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