Walpurgis Night

[Martha]

<Snip some of Catlady's research>

Martha:
Wow - thanks for that! And there was me all set to trawl through the 
entire internet. ;-) To tell the truth, I didn't think there was any 
connection with the Klee painting itself, but the name jumped out at 
me, and I got all excited, because I'm a fangirl.

Catlady:
> The specific Walburga appears to bave been a healer and a Muggle
> (information about her is below), so I imagine that the group 
Knights
> of Walpurgis was either named after a different Walburga or simply
> after Walpurgis Night. I imagine that the Knights of Walpurgis were
> founded as a violent type of "Wizard Defense League", attempting to
> prevent Muggle abuse of wizards by the consistently unsuccessful 
means
> of taking revenge (by killing a few Muggles) for each abuse of a
> wizard. They may have liked the sound of 'purge' and 'pure' in
> 'Walpurgis'.

Martha again:
I like the Defence League idea. I'm fascinated by the whole Walpurgis 
thing, but I can't see any immediate connections with the Death 
Eaters as we know them in canon, so I like the idea that they were 
originally set up as a sort of minority resistance group, and over 
time gained power and influence and all the rest of it (I'd imagine 
partly because Muggles no longer cared about witch-hunting of actual 
witches and got into witch-hunting communists and so on instead). So 
within the world and particularly within Wizarding society, they 
became the elite, and that's how we ended up with Death Eaters. Still 
doesn't explain why that particular name was used, though, other than 
that fact it's a great word (and, as you pointed out, it sounds 
like "purge"). 

~ Martha, who wants to be in a heavy metal band called the Knights of 
Walpurgis (Hello Hogsmeade! We are the Knights of Walpurgis! Are you 
ready to ROCK?")