Atsuko Kagari and the School For Witches

*Atsuko Kagari and the School For Witches* is a fan remake of the *Little Witch Academia* franchise and the first installment of the *Atsuko Kagari series* written by Private Winters. It is published on both Fanfiction and Archive of Our Own on July 5, 2019. It is currently a work in progress.

The Fanfiction version went on hiatus for several months due to the website being banned in Private Winter's home country, with updates only resuming on July 15, 2020. However, the Archive of Our Own version is still receiving updates normally.

## Summary

After watching one of Shiny Chariot's performances as a little girl, Kagari Atsuko became motivated to follow in her idol's footsteps, and enrolled in the same school that Chariot studied at. But all sorts of hilarity ensues when she finds out that studying magic is actually less exciting than she thought.

## Cast

Note: As the story is currently a work-in-progress, the list below only includes characters that have already appeared in it as of the latest chapter.

* Atsuko "Akko" Kagari
* Liselotte "Lotte" Jansson
* Sucy Mambavaran
* Diana Cavendish
* Hannah England
* Barbara Parker
* Amanda O'Neil
* Jasminka Antonenko
* Constanze Amalie Von Braunschbank Albretschberger
* Chariot Du Nord
* Ursula Callistis
* Alcor
* Miranda Holbrooke
* Anne Finneran
* Adrien Nelson
* Lukic
* Chloe Dubois
* Avery Buckland
* Mary Robinson
* Blair Streiga
* Shiny Rod/ Claiomh Solais
* Annabel Creme the 12th/ Mary-Ann Lait
* Shooting Star

## Differences from canon

1. Akko's arrival at Blytonbury has her accompanied by her parents, while in canon she arrived by herself.
2. Instead of Hannah and Barbara, Avery is accompanied by Mary and Blair when Akko first arrives at the Leyline Terminal.
3. Lotte wasn't carrying a huge load upon arriving at the Leyline Terminal.
4. Lotte's full name here is actually Liselotte Jansson, with Lotte being a shortening of Liselotte much like how Akko is a shortening of Atsuko.
5. Shiny Chariot also had a career in acting, rather than being just a performer. Likewise, she has already graduated Luna Nova when she began performing and acting, rather than having it be her part time job.
6. The turbulence in the Leyline has a different origin. In canon, it is caused by the salt in Akko's jar of pickled plums, but here it is a completely random natural occurence that just happened to occur at that time.
7. Akko and Lotte never fell into the Forest of Arcturus. Likewise, Akko acquired Shiny Rod from inside the Leyline due to her determination being proof of her worthiness to wield it.
8. Chloe is just a background character in canon, whereas here she is as much of a major character as Akko and Lotte are.
9. As Diana was not yet enrolled into Luna Nova prior to this story, Hannah and Barbara hang out with Chloe instead before Diana arrived.
10. Akko first met Sucy during the matriculation ceremony rather than at Blytonbury.
11. All of the Background Witches (including Avery, Mary, Blair, and Chloe) have their last names given.
12. Molly McIntyre's teammates were not Elsa and Amelia. She is instead sorted with Elizabeth - an unused character seen in the concept art of *The Enchanted Parade* - and a currently unnamed third member into the Gray Coven.
13. Luna Nova has no issues with the use of modern gadgetry on campus. However, Finneran does express distaste for them.
14. It turns out Shiny Rod in this story is intelligent and can speak. It considers "Shiny Rod" to be a repulsive nickname and insists on being called Claiomh Solais, which Akko refuses (due to the difficulty in pronouncing it) much to its chagrin.
15. The name of Annabel Creme here doesn't actually belong to any person, like in canon. *Unlike* canon, however, it isn't an inherited pseudonym either. Rather, it is actually the curse where whoever inherits Annabel's fountain pen gets her identity hijacked and overwritten, causing literally everyone in the world to believe the new owner of the pen to have always been Annabel Creme.
16. Much like Shiny Rod being able to speak, Shooting Star can also speak in this universe. It appears that Shiny Rod hates Shooting Star due to an incident in the past.
17. Nelson encourages her students to wear safety gear like she usually does during broom flight lessons, much to the traditionalist Diana's chagrin who questioned the necessity of such idea.
18. Diana is shown to be more traditionalist than in canon, one of her noticeable flaws Pvt\_Winters added due to their personal contempt toward the character's portrayal as a "jack-of-all-trades, master-of-all" flawless Mary Sue-ish character in the first cour of the anime.

## Other notes

* This story was originally published under the title *Luna Nova: School For Witches*. It was eventually changed to *Atsuko Kagari and the School For Witches* due to Private Winters realizing that the original title sounded very lame. Another reason for the title change is so that Winters can make a *Harry Potter* reference.
* Curiously, Ursula Callistis and Chariot Du Nord are tagged as two separate characters in the Archive of Our Own version of the story. Despite it being no secret to the entire LWA fandom that the two are the same person...
* Croix Merides has a brief cameo in Chapter 1, where she appeared as the stage technician of Chariot's Japan performance rushing to fix a malfunction that occured all of a sudden.
* Hannah and Barbara in the series are much worse. Here, they are less bullies and more of *abusers*, and it is implied that they've abused Lotte enough that she experiences PTSD from their mere presence. They also displayed certain traits which alarmingly fit to those of antisocial personality disorder which their canon counterparts lacked.
* Avery, Mary, and Blair's last names are taken straight from Superevilbadguy's *Bats and Brooms: The Luna Nova Fast Pitch Witches*.
* Akko's Japanese accent caused her pronunciation of Ursula Callistis's name to sound like "Ashura Karisutisu", which is how her name is actually pronounced in Japanese.
* During her visit to the *Nightfall* convention in Blytonbury, Lotte briefly identifies one of the cosplayers as "the reanimated skeleton of a British redcoat". This may be a reference to Headmistress Holbrooke's father, who is indeed a British redcoat (accidentally) reanimated as a skeleton in episode 9 of the anime.
* GreatBen810's answer for the tiebreaker question in the *Nightfall* Trivia quiz is "The neighbor's name is Sefeia!" Sefeia is the anglicization of Sifla, the name of mythical witch around Jennifer the Witch's caliber who guarded Doras Hill from the official novel, *The Nonsensical Witch and the Country of Fairies*.
* Annabel Creme the 12th reveals her real name as Mary-Ann Lait. This may be a reference to *Akko Kagari and the Evil Within*, the second book of Red Reef's *Akko Kagari Universe*, where she also reveals that to be her real name, albeit under a much friendlier circumstance.
* In Chapter 15, Finneran begins her scolding of Green Coven with "Why is it, when something happens, it's always you three?!", a line from the *Harry Potter* series made famous by its film adaptations.
* Chapter 15 revealed that Diana's full name is Diana Reinhardt-Cavendish. Reinhardt is the surname of her father from Omaomae's *Mending Hearts* trilogy which consisted of *Heart of Iron*, *Heart of Steel*, and *Heart of Titanium*.
* In the afterword of the fanfic's Chapter 5, Pvt\_Winters made it clear that they won't ship Akko and Diana because of such dynamic being one of instances of "Rivals Equal Romance" scenarios which admittedly had been overdone, nor shipping any characters in the series. By contrast, they displayed a more moderate view regarding Lotte x Sucy and admitted Luz x Amity being their favorite *The Owl House* character ship, latter which ironic considering Luz x Amity being similar to Diana x Akko in many respects.
	+ On a related note, their distaste toward Diana x Akko ship saw them sparking a controversy which outraged Little Witch Academia fandom as expected through their Dianakko Week 2020 Collection in which the collection had a certain running gag which inadvertently painted them as a misogynist, something they bitterly acknowledged in the afterword of the Chapter 24.