Thanks again to TheDivaDivine, for making this a much better chapter….we follow Draco for a bit, and Severus has an epiphany.

Please keep those reviews coming, they help me a lot. Oh, and I promise, I will get to Neville and Luna soon….I had no idea there was such demand for them!

8080808

He-Who-Waits watched the dappled light filtered down on the dark green of the vines twisting around the thick trunk of the tree on which he perched. His mind was blissfully empty, as he focused only on the task at hand. There…a fluttering…no, she would make nothing so conspicuous, it was merely an insect.

Then he saw it, the sliver of tan flesh peaking out of the shadow of a giant root. He darted down silently and swung over the root, and he was greeted by a flashing white smile in a beautiful oval face.

"Good, good. You get better every time. Soon you will be able to go with the seekers, if you so choose." Her black eyes carried a twinkle of pride for him.

Seeker. A word from his past, bringing memories of soaring high above a cheering green and silver crowd, the glory of victory, and the frustration of losing time and again to that freakish scarred Gryffindor idiot….No, he wouldn't think of it. He looked instead at the beautiful girl curled elegantly on the forest floor, a short sheer gown of white cotton hugging her lithe brown body, revealing glimpses of her thighs that made his heart race. He almost blushed when he recalled that he was dressed in nothing but a loincloth. He still couldn't quite bring himself to be entirely comfortable with the ensemble.

"Ella, it will be quite some time before I don't embarrass myself and scare off any game." To her, a seeker was a hunter, whether of game or herbs or the enchanted feathers of the quetzal, not a flyer on a broomstick who chased a silly bewitched ball.

"He-Who-Waits should not underestimate himself so." He smiled, remembering the first time she had given him his new name, the first time she had accosted him, speaking broken English, in front of the hut he and his mother shared. He had spent a full week doing nothing but staring into space, sitting in front of the hut soaking himself in hurt and anger and despair as Snape and his mother had talked at him, told him things that had destroyed his whole world. But this beautiful girl had been brave enough to come up to him, to encourage him to explore the forest. She had called him He-Who-Waits, and it felt good to be a new person, with a new name, and to do something else than wallow.

He was brought back to the present as Ixchel, normally reticent and quiet, unsure of the new language she spoke with him, continued her speech. "You have come far. You would do well here, if you choose to stay." She looked away suddenly, biting her lip in a nervous fashion. He was surprised at her disquietude. She was normally possessed of an unearthly calm, a serenity that had given him a measure of peace. He supposed that it might not have been her nature state, but a part of her training to be a priestess.

"You are nervous, Ixchel. Am I to blame?" He sat down on the ground at her side. She still would not look at him. He wasn't used to caring this much what anyone thought of him. Anyone but his father. Or whoever he had thought was his father. A cold knot of anger hardened in his stomach, but he tried to push it away.

She turned back, as though reading his thoughts, and she brushed his cheek with her small hand. He closed his eyes, his heart skipped a beat at her touch. She had never touched him on purpose before, but each casual brush against him had tortured him for days afterward. He could not get used to needing someone this badly.

Her hand returned to wrap itself around her knees, and she stared at the ground, following a trial of leafcutter ants a few feet away. He waited, with patience he had struggled to acquire, for her to speak again.

"The Chel'Nicha is in two weeks, He-Who-Waits. And I must choose." He blinked. He knew it was some kind of coming of age ceremony, and special for her, as she would become a priestess then, but she had never divulged any more details of the nature of this ceremony.

"Choose what, Ella?"

"Choose my path. Old or new. Or something else."

He waited again, knowing there was more, but that she would not be pushed. She was stubborn, and reticent, and beautiful, and she had enough good in her to ease the guilty ache he felt whenever his thoughts drifted to the world he had left, and his own actions there. There was a brief flash of a vision of a weakened old man, offering him sanctuary. Sanctuary he hadn't been brave enough to take. He pushed the memory away violently.

"Something else?"

She breathed in, her eyes distant. "Our ways are strange to you, yet you have adopted them. Still, we are changing. We have to change. To be a priestess, to be a true priestess in the old way I must live up to my name. I must become my namesake, the moon, Ixchel." She paused, and he struggled to remain silent, keeping a tight rein on the part of himself that took no heed to others, that was impatient and intolerant and hateful.

"To be Ixchel, to be the Goddess, must pass through the phases of life in a holy state. I am the Maiden now. But I must soon become a Woman. And eventually a Mother."

He felt a tightness in his chest, and heat flooded him with thoughts of what Ixchel becoming a woman would entail.

"You have to choose a mate?" He swallowed nervously.

"At least, I must choose a partner for that night at least." She blushed, and her eyes traced his face for a moment, before returning to the ground.

He ran a shaking hand through brown-black hair that was long enough to frame his face now. It still shocked him not to see the blond it once was, and he was grateful that there were few mirrors here. After a few days in Chen'Itza, he had decided to abandon all magic, and had thrown his wand into the forest in a fit of rage. He had tried to remove all the glamour spells from him that his mother had cast to affect their escape. But there had been nothing to remove. His hair had never been blond, though it had been such a part of his identity, the blond hair that was so like Lucius Malfoy's, the man he had thought to be his father. This brown mop was his real hair, and in the days after he had learned the truth. His mother's hair was not blond either, but dark brown like Aunt Bellatrix. And Snape's hair was black, of course.

He reached out a hand, longing to touch the long black waves that caressed Ella's shoulders. "Who…what will you do?"

"Most girls choose a friend, someone they fancy from the tribe, to represent the young Corn God. Some choose an older, wiser man, to represent the Jaguar Hunter. Very rarely, as few from the outside world come to us, someone has chosen to be with him, to learn from Kukulkan."

Hope flared in his heart. A desperate, yearning hope. "Kukulkan? The feathered serpent?"

She smiled softly. "You remember. It is a hard path, to follow Kukulkan. It is a quest. To bring learning back, to help the tribe to survive." Her hand reached out, and captured his, though she did not meet his eyes again. "I would have to leave Chen'Itza. To follow…the man of my choice. To see his world, and learn its lessons, and bring them home."

He stared at their joined hands. Did she mean Snape? Oh gods, no. "He has nothing to teach you. He can't leave anyway." His tone carried viciousness, all the anger he felt. His father, no matter who he was, always seemed to determined to steal want he wanted.

She looked at him, her brow furrowed. "I think you could teach me much, Draco. I think you could show me your world."

His stomach flip-flopped again. He hadn't heard that name in months, and never from her lips. He wasn't sure if he had ever wanted to hear it again, but from her, her soft accent gave it a new feeling.

"I can't go back, not to who I was. I would be killed, and I don't think you would like who I was. I don't think I did." Snape…his father… had told him of the Vow, of Snape's own duplicity, of the true nature of the Death Eaters, of his true allegiance to the Light. Draco had sat like a stone, unmoving, unseeing, and unresponsive, but he had heard everything. He had heard his mother tell him that Lucius Malfoy was not his father, that everything that had driven him from his earliest memories was a lie. He was not a pureblood, not a sainted Malfoy, and if any one of his old "friends" knew he would most likely be killed. He had wanted to scream, to rail in denial, to beat both of them to a bloody pulp. But then he saw Dumbledore's face in front of him, and the green light that took his life, and he had remained silent. Did he really want to be any of those things anymore?

"Nevertheless, I need you to be Draco. The Itza need it as well. There is an Evil present in the world right now. I feel it even now, crawling through the minds of the People." She stared into his grey eyes. "I feel that trail that it has left through yours." Ixchel had powers he did not fully understand, but any Occulmency he had learned from Snape was useless against her. It was useless to hide his emotions from her, and it had been that that had attracted him to her in the first place. He couldn't hide, and the fact that she still tried to talk with him, and had learned English at an amazing rate to do so, had broken through the barriers he had so carefully constructed around himself in the weeks after their arrival here.

"I can help you." It was a whisper, but it reverberated in his head, like the words of Dumbledore himself. Could she really help? Could he? Could he fight back against his father, against Lucius Malfoy and the Dark Lord and those like him? Fight to have a life of his own choosing, rather than sit and wait for Death to find him? The small woman who looked intently at him seemed to think he could.

"So….umm….would you have to be a mother immediately?" he gulped again nervously. Still, the thought of a child didn't scare him half so much as he thought it would. It was a new beginning after all, something he was desperate to find.

She laughed, and smiled at his sudden change of topic. "No, but I must make a beginning within a year. I would only be with you…away from Chen'Itza for a year."

"I could not return with you?" Fear gripped him again, awaiting her answer. To have her, the one truly good thing in his life, the only thing he had earned himself, with no help from his parents or his name or lineage or money, to have her taken from him, along with his yet-non-existent child, would be too much for him to bear.

"Only if you choose to. You must decide then."

"I wouldn't abandon my family." His voice was steely. He was not Lucius Malfoy, he was…well, he wasn't HeWhoWaits either…he was Draco. He had to be…she needed him to be.

She rose, and knelt in front of him, and leaned forward, her long hair a black waterfall around her. She pressed her lips to his, in a chaste kiss, unpracticed and naïve. Draco however, was hardly inexperienced, but he had never cared for Pansy Parkinson or any of his other myriad conquests as he did for this woman. He wrapped his arms around her and pulled her to his chest, and kissed her with the pent up passion of four months in her presence, dreaming of her, smelling her scent and longing to feel her skin against his.

She drew back, and he was pleased by the dazed look in her eyes. "I think…I think I shall enjoy the Chel'Nicha more than I ever dreamed."

80808080808

The ghostly light touches wakened her, but she remained perfectly still. Perhaps this time he would be fooled, and he would leave her be. She waited for the pain, for the icy grip of his hands on her thighs, the punishment of his body in herself, the cruel voice taunting her, but pain didn't come. Instead, nimble fingers stroked the inside of her elbows, the side of her breasts. Warm breath blew across her skin, leaving goosebumps in its wake.

"Severus," she mumbled, as a heady joy filled her. The fingers caressed a path to her thighs, parting them slightly, and her eyes flew open as she felt hot breath against her most intimate parts.

"Severus!" He gave her a wicked grin, and his tongue lapped against her folds, parting them and sending sparks up her spine. She let out a little scream, and clutched at the long dark hair that she had dreamed of for so long, and trembled as his tongue stroked her, driving her insane with pleasure she could barely comprehend. Time slowed to a crawl, and she felt herself arch off the floor, rigid with tension. She was so close, so very close…

He whispered, whether at her entrance or in her mind, she wasn't sure, but his rich voice filled her mind with wicked images. "Let go, Cissy. You are free."

Two fingers plunged inside of her, and she exploded, finding a pleasure she had not realized existed. Panting, she opened her eyes to find him above her, staring into her face as though she was going to disappear and he was trying to memorize her face.

She smiled, and moved her hips upward, brushing his arousal. He groaned, and leaned forward to kiss her, and she wrapped herself in him as he filled her, bringing sweet fulfillment to a heart grown cold and hard with years of pain. When they came back to themselves, his face was inches from hers, brushing her brown hair, finally her natural color after twenty years of glamour charms, from her face, his eyes filled with cautious hope. "I do not deserve you."

She cupped his face in her hands. Words poured from her heart, words she had not dared even think before. "You are the only good thing I have ever had, Severus Snape. And you helped me create the only good in my life, my son. I love you."

He leaned in to kiss her again, when his eyes glazed with a sharp look of awe. "Cissy…Cissy, you are brilliant. You….you might have just given me the answer I have searched for." He scrambled up, and she felt bereft at the loss of him. Then he shook his head, and sat back beside her. "I…I have to do this. I have to make it right. But…you won't leave me?" He did not have to say the word "Again" but it was there between them, nevertheless

She looked at him sadly. "Severus, I will not be the one to leave this time. But I will be here, waiting, when you return."