hushpiper | HP Marya Morevna: Chatlog (Reply)

A while back, I was on a Harry Potter kick, and I retold the story of Marya Morevna/The Death of Koschei the Deathless in the Harry Potter universe to a good friend. It was great fun, and I'd love to adapt it into an actual Harry Potter fic sometime. So I figured, the best way to start is to clean up the chat logs and put them somewhere I'll remember them--and others can enjoy them!

So that's this post. There are some things here that I wasn't quite able to adapt into the HP world, so I'm open to suggestions about that. Hopefully y'all enjoy it as much as we did.

Hush

there's one in particular which I think would work super well if retold as taking place in the past of the harry potter world: marya morevna

Hush

(oh but side note: there's a whole category of songs AND stories where a musical instrument is made out of a murdered person's body, and when it's played it tells the story of the person's murder, usually leading to the murderer's execution. that should be told way more often.)

Hush

(I kinda collect recordings of it)

Ipecac

You briefly mentioned the corpse instrument in the context of writing a fanfic that's like it, but I didn't know you collect recordings of it and whatnot.

Hush

yeah, that's one of the main ones I collect. it's not an exhaustive collection, but I have it in a bunch of different languages. folklore puts me in a hoarding sort of mood, as soon as I read/hear one story I want five more versions of it lol

Ipecac

That's interesting. I really didn't know that about you. I get the appeal though, especially where you compared it to fanfic.

Hush

it's also good for jazz and blues, which kinda work the same way, everybody doing their own take on a song, sometimes with no idea who wrote it. "in the pines" is one of my favorites in that category

Hush

but! harry potter

Ipecac

Yes, Harry Potter.

Hush

so, telling the story in harry potter terms: there once was a muggle prince who had three sisters. their mother and father told the prince on their deathbeds, to give them away in marriage to the first suitors who come to woo them, and he agreed

Hush

one day, with great magical fanfare--claps of thunder, the ceiling splitting open, showy charms like that--in flies a falcon, who turns into a young wizard, an animagus, and asks to marry the oldest sister. she agrees.

Hush

the same thing happens with the other two sisters, a year apart each: the second oldest marries an animagus whose form is an eagle, and the youngest marries an animagus whose form is a raven.

Hush

but you know, then they go and live with their husbands, and the prince is lonely, so he decides to go on a journey.

Hush

as he's riding, one day he comes over a hill to see the scene of a recently ended battle, and a whole army lying dead. as he picks his way through the battlefield, he finds a living man who tells him the victor was the army of the fair princess marya morevna

Hush

so he goes on until he finds her tent, and she (a muggle like himself) invites him to stay with her for a while. she decides she likes him, and marries him (he's smitten, of course, but that's secondary), and carries him off to live in her kingdom.

Hush

at some point in their happy married life, she decides to go off and fight another war, leaving home affairs to her husband (whose name is ivan), and tells him he has free rein of everything, except that he must not look in one specific closet.

Hush

so of course he does.

Ipecac

Because of course. May as well have put a forbidden apple in there for good measure.

Hush

of course

Hush

(note, the "don't look in this one place" story element is common but always the husband telling the wife not to look, so it's a fun gender-swap here)

Hush

so: he opens the closet. inside, there's a wizened old man, chained up with a really excessive size and amount of chains

Ipecac

I'm imagining Mr. T, but an old white dude.

Hush

yes, but skinny, incredibly skinny. the old man tells ivan that he's been chained up there for ten years, during which time he hasn't eaten or drunk anything, and he asks ivan for water to drink.

Ipecac

Still a funny mental image.

Hush

lol yes

Hush

very unwisely, ivan gives him bucket after bucket of water to drink, and the old man slowly regains his strength--becoming much more Mr. T-like--until he stands up, breaks all the chains at once

Hush

and tells ivan that he will never see his marya morevna again, and turns into a whoosh of black smoke (in the way of dark wizards) and flies out the window. ivan later receives word that she's been kidnapped

Ipecac

I love how that black smoke description is so vivid.

Hush

presumably it was passed down in the pages of black wizards weekly until voldemort found it and taught it to the death eaters

Ipecac

I love that there's enough news in this secret society to justify a weekly periodical.

Hush

and enough dark wizards lol

Hush

so ivan is like "oh shit I gotta go find her" and goes out on a journey to find her, but first he goes to each of his wizard brothers in law for advice. he and his sisters catch up, hugs and kisses, and then he tells the story of what's happened

Hush

and his brothers in law go "oh you done fucked up, that was koschei the deathless"

Ipecac

That's actually delightful and I didn't expect the lovely family reunion.

Hush

it'd been a long time, he missed them! he'd meant to visit earlier but, you know, he was newly wed and all that

Hush

so the wizards get him caught up: koschei is a powerful dark wizard, who had been defeated by marya morevna herself--purely through strength and cunning, since she was a muggle; the story doesn't say how she did that, which is a crying shame because it sounds fucking lit--BUT the problem is, he can't be killed.

Ipecac

Damn, I'd pay hella money to have that story made into a movie.

Hush

right? marya morevna is badass as hell

Hush

you see, koschei had created a horcrux: he placed his soul inside a needle, which was inside an egg inside a golden chest buried under an oak tree on a mystical island called Bouyan, which appeared and disappeared with the tides and was very hard to get to, if you could even find it.

Hush

you could only kill him by destroying that needle, but since nobody was able to do that, marya morevna simply held him in captivity without food and water, which weakened him enough that he couldn't escape.

Ipecac

But... Why inside an egg?

Hush

I mean, if you want the out-of-story reason, there are some traditional amulets in... I think it was turkey, thereabouts? that are shaped like a needle inside an egg, iirc.

Hush

so idk, maybe he thought it was appropriate

Hush

in one version the egg is inside a duck, which is inside a hare, which nests in a hollow log by a pond on bouyan

Ipecac

What the fuck.

Hush

yeah

Hush

you can see why I went with the egg in a golden chest version

Ipecac

Thank you. I can absolutely accept a needle in an egg now. Wizards are big on symbolism, and ducks aren't big on bring inside hares.

Hush

hahaha yes, I'm glad it works

Hush

ivan's like "well I gotta get my sexy badass wife back", so his wizard brothers give him directions and each ask him for some item belonging to him that was made of silver--cutlery, a snuffbox, that sort of thing--to remember him by

Hush

and so, ivan goes riding until he comes to where marya morevna is. the story, weirdly enough, does not give any details as to what that place is like, just that it's where koschei lives. I'm gonna say it's some creepy castle, something appropriate for an evil wizard

Hush

ivan sneaks in while koschei is out hunting--the stories

Hush

*the stories say koschei rides some wild, superfast horse with a non-standard amount of legs, but since this is harry potter (and I haven't re-read the magical beasts book recently) I'm gonna say he rides a thestral

Ipecac

Fair. Thestral is a solid choice. But also how did he know where she was? Is it just well known where koschei lives?

Hush

in the stories ivan just like, rides around until he finds it? but that's lame, so we can say his wizard brothers-in-law gave him either directions or some kind of charmed object that would lead him to marya morevna (who is always, always referred to with her full name btw, no I don't know why, but I like it)

Ipecac

I like this change, it's way better than the wandering. The full name sounds way more badass.

Hush

she's badass enough rit saying her full name

Ipecac

It sounds so weird to just say marya.

Hush

so: ivan sneaks in while koschei is out hunting with his thestral and finds marya morevna, who (after kissing and hugging him tight) is like "WHY DID YOU LET HIM OUT I SPECIFICALLY TOLD YOU NOT TO"

Hush

and ivan is like "sorry I'm so sorry although to be fair you could have just told me you had an evil wizard there instead of being all mysterious about it but that's neither here nor there, please forgive me and let's get out of here"

Ipecac

If I were her, that'd always be the first thing I told anyone. Like, just so you know I'm a colossal badass and that closet has an unkillable wizard in it.

Hush

indeed. I suppose she might've been keeping it secret for fear that somebody might come to free him--maybe he has friends, maybe she was just concerned about well-meaning adventurers who would try to come kill him themselves and inevitably fail

Hush

I think some modern versions of the story have it that koschei and marya morevna were previously in some kind of relationship

Hush

hence why he takes her captive to live with him in his creepy wizard tower rather than just killing her or whatever

Hush

so maybe she has some leftover feelings, or maybe she's just like "nobody knows this guy like I do, so I've gotta keep him close"

Ipecac

Or maybe she just likes secrets. Most sexy badasses do from what I've heard.

Hush

that too

Hush

also, given the animagus brothers-in-law know about it, that kinda implies either they were involved, or it's not a secret to wizards--OR they didn't know, and just correctly concluded from ivan's description that it was koschei, and were like "wtf, so when he disappeared it was bc he was chained up in a muggle warrior princess's closet? how did that even happen?"

Hush

so, they go... but koschei is too fast, and catches up to them and steals marya morevna back. since folklore likes things to go in groups of three, they do this three times, and the first two times koschei refrains from hurting ivan out of thanks for giving him water, and ivan does a lot of weeping over losing his wife over and over again.

Ipecac

Sounds super tedious though, so I love the rule of threes handwave.

Hush

yeah, it has some fun little repeating wording with koschei's horse telling him all the shit they can do before going to get them and still be able to catch up to them, bc koschei's horse is so ridiculously fast and can also talk, but it really takes too long to tell

Hush

though there is a nice little exchange where marya morevna is like "ivan! he's going to chop you up into little pieces!" and ivan is like "let him! I cannot live without you!"

Ipecac

Oh damn, that's bold as hell.

Hush

they're a cute couple, even if he's kinda dumb and she's kinda too good for him. he must be super good looking

Ipecac

Or just really funny. Or maybe he's good in bed.

Hush

or all of the above!

Ipecac

He's no sexy badass, but he's quite a catch.

Hush

maybe they're really your typical fairy tale couple, but genderswapped. so he's got all the traits of a fairy tale woman: beautiful, faithful, loved by all he meets, etc etc

Ipecac

This is the kind of gender equality that I'm here for.

Hush

SO the third time koschei catches up to them (and this upcoming part is harder to translate into harry potter terms so we'll have to come back to that), he chops ivan up into little pieces just like marya morevna said, puts the chunks into a barrel, seals it up, and throws it into the ocean

Ipecac

That seems... Overkill...

Hush

it's very unnecessary

Hush

when this happens, the silver things ivan had given to his brothers-in-law all turn black: they had placed a spell on them to track his well-being

Hush

the eagle flies out to sea, finds the barrel, and drags it ashore, while the falcon and raven go to get "the water of life" and "the water of death" respectively

Ipecac

Because of course you need both. Why wouldn't you?

Hush

very important to have both

Hush

then they all get together, take his pieces out of the barrel and arrange them properly. they sprinkle the pieces with the water of death, and they all join together so the body is whole again. then they sprinkle the body with the water of life, and ivan wakes up and is like "wow how long was I asleep?"

Hush

and his brothers-in-law are like "you would've been sleeping much longer if it wasn't for us, now come visit us!" and he's like "nay! for I must go get my sexy badass wife"

Hush

ivan is nothing if not determined

Hush

and that whole section with the water of life and death might have to be changed to fit into the harry potter universe, since resurrecting the dead is a deathly-hallows-only thing

Ipecac

Yeah, that's kind of a bit beyond the limitations of most HP stuff. Unless it's like Shin (heart guy) in Dorohedoro where he used magic to cut him up into little pieces, but in a way where he's still alive and in agony.

Ipecac

Hence the barrel into the sea.

Hush

I was about to reference a character in one piece who can do that, but you haven't met them yet. but yes, I think that's a pretty rad idea. then the brothers-in-law undo the curse. it makes the whole spell on the pieces of silver even more important, since if they hadn't been keeping an eye on him, he'd just be like that forever, drifting around on the sea in pieces.

Hush

not unlike koschei's imprisonment in the closet

Ipecac

Seems like he'd be totally into making people suffer for extended periods instead of killing them because of his time in the closet. teehee.

Hush

teeheehee

Hush

so ivan goes back to koschei's creepy castle, but this time ivan decides to be smart about it, so instead of running away with marya morevna, he sneaks in and asks her to ask koschei where he got such a fast horse. so she does, and koschei says he got it from baba yaga

Hush

he also gives directions to where baba yaga lives, which are appropriately ridiculous (beyond thrice nine lands in the thirtieth kingdom on the other side of a fiery river and up your ass etc)

Ipecac

The real baba yaga was inside our ass all along.

Hush

now, I don't know what kind of harry potter worldbuilding to do with baba yaga. is she a witch? she's ridiculously powerful if so. but she's also kinda amoral, so even though she has a tendency to kill people in terrible ways for tiny mistakes, she's more of a trickster figure?

Hush

so idk, maybe she's some kind of... fey thing? we have veela in the harry potter universe, so maybe there's other kinds of fey?

Hush

or, I guess hags are a thing in the harry potter universe (according to some wikis), so she can just be a hag

Ipecac

Babbitty Rabbity perhaps?

Hush

something like that

Ipecac

Dumb fucking name though.

Hush

incredibly dumb lol

Hush

either way, baba yaga exists, she's super powerful, and she has a herd of superfast thestrals. the deal is, you watch her herds for three days without losing a single one and she'll give you a foal, but if you lose any she'll kill you and put your head on a pike. but being herself, she plays dirty, and secretly orders the thestrals to actively run away from you.

Hush

prince ivan, in the way of fairy tales, does good deeds to various talking animals etc on his way to baba yaga's house, and so each day when the thestrals run away, they pay back the favor by gathering the thestrals up again

Hush

on the third day, the bees who had just finished rounding up the thestrals were like "okay we're done, but baba yaga's probably gonna kill you anyway, so sneak into her stable and steal the colt you'll find there, and ride away on it"

Ipecac

Could've just done that on the first day...

Hush

right

Hush

but nah, he's a good kid, he keeps end of the bargain up until it's clear the other person's not gonna keep theirs

Hush

*his end

Ipecac

One of the reasons he's with such a sexy badass.

Hush

exactly

Hush

he does so, and with the help of the various beings he's helped, he gets away. (clearly this whole section needs to be translated into harry potter terms, but we'll leave that for later. it's a sub-episode, it can be replaced with basically anything so long as he ends up with some mega fast form of transport it's fine. bonus points if he comes out with the moral high ground, having shown his good character.)

Ipecac

Agreed. It could be a rocket powered bicycle fueled by moral superiority if needed.

Hush

only starts for someone pure of heart

Hush

this is in the past though, mind, so the muggles haven't invented bicycles yet

Hush

well, he goes home and fattens up the colt, lets it grow up a bit, and it is indeed super mega awesome fast

Ipecac

Ah, so it's even cooler that he has one that's rocket powered.

Hush

that's a good point

Hush

so with his steed or other form of transportation, he goes again to where marya morevna is, and she's like "WTF YOU'RE ALIVE???" (and there's lots of hugging and kissing and crying) and she goes "how??" and he goes "oh, thus and thus," because weird fairy tale wording. "now come away with me! my ride is way faster than his"

Ipecac

I just realized I'm more invested in their relationship than I expected.

Hush

valid, they're one of the very best fairy tale relationships

Hush

so they ride away, and koschei realizes what has happened, but this time when he asks his thestral how long it'll take to catch up to them it's like "who knows, his ride is faster than me". koschei goes "fuck this shit, I'm chasing them anyway"

Hush

but when he arrives at the place where they are, they're ready for him. they knock him out and cut his head off. then they cremate his body, and--because he's still immortal, remember, his soul's still in his horcrux--they put his head in a barrel and toss it in the sea, then scatter his ashes to the four winds

Hush

then they go home, have a raucous party with his sisters and their husbands, who agree that marya morevna is badass and sexy as hell and worth all the trouble to rescue, and they live happily ever after

Ipecac

I love the approval. Mostly the way you worded it.

Hush

and then, many many many years later, in the present, someone finds a barrel washed up on some shore. when they open it up, they find a shriveled, disembodied head inside. it opens its eyes and says, "water! give me water!"

Hush

DUN DUN DUUUUUN

Hush

and then you write a fanfic where harry potter goes and kills koschei, since he's the expert on horcruxes and all that

Ipecac

I'll be honest, I kind of lost how this began. Was this a real life legend that you adapted to be HP themed yourself? Or an already existing thing? I loved it, and it's made for an entertaining day. I just lost the original motivation somewhere along the way.

Hush

\o/ entertainment achieved!

Hush

this is an existing russian fairy tale--called "marya morevna" or "the death of koschei the deathless", but the first name is clearly superior--which I think would be great adapted to harry potter

Hush

I like the idea of the harry potter characters feverishly trying to research this guy to find out where his horcrux might be, and one of them (probably ron) is like "wait. do you think... muggles might... have stories?"

Hush

and hermione is like !!!, stands up and runs straight to the closest muggle library

Hush

where they find out that in fact it was a badass couple of muggles who defeated him the first time around, bc fuck wizard supremacy

Ipecac

Entertainment definitely achieved. I figured it was probably Russian somewhere along the way just because of Baba Yaga. This would definitely be a solid adaptation and a really good lead in to a magical story.

Hush

the story of how harry realizes that working as an auror for the ministry of magic is actually kind of lame and he doesn't need the money anyway, he'd rather run around hunting dark wizards as a free agent

Hush

like, the potters were independently wealthy already and now he's also inherited the black family fortune from sirius. he doesn't have to work. and the ministry sucks, we all know this

And there it ends!