A/N- TA-DA! Here's Chapter 2! This came together faster than I was expecting, it's not super likely that updates will continue to be this quick.

Disclaimer- I am once again NOT JK Rowling. I know you are all very disappointed by this, but life isn't fair.

Shoutout to the guest reviewer who correctly guessed that the name Macondo is from the novel 100 Years of Solitude, by Gabriel García Márquez. This story really won't bear any resemblance to that book, but I like the name.


Chapter 2- The Beginning, Part 2

She stepped out into a memory.


She was standing behind a door in one of the old cliff dwellings, looking at herself from three years ago. The younger Maya was leaning against the wall and looking through a hole between two boards.

She remembered this. She'd been sent to fetch some herbs by Abuela Caoimhe, but she'd gotten turned around coming back and wound up in an older section of the caves. There had been footsteps, and she'd run into one of the houses and hidden because children weren't supposed to be in that area.

Two boys from the village had come into the main room of the house, and she'd been effectively trapped. It was Diego O'Neill and Carlos Santoya, two boys from the village. They had a bottle with them, and they sat down and began to pass it back and forth. Diego was fifteen and had just attempted the Apprenticeship Trials and failed, and they were complaining about it.

"At least you know you'll do better than O'Connor's little half-breed. I heard she's only being passed forward every year because that vieja Rosa is insisting." Carlos said, glancing up at Diego to see if that met with approval. He was a year younger than Diego and had always idolized him, doing whatever he suggested and following him around like a little puppy.

"Yeah, you're probably right," Diego replied, smirking. "There's no way some little Wandling bitch is going to make it through the Trials. Not in one piece, at least."

Both laughed, and then Diego suddenly threw the mostly-empty bottle against the door where Maya was hiding. She flinched back at the same time as her younger self, trying in vain to catch the twelve-year-old and prevent what she knew came next.

Her hands passed straight through her own shoulders, and her younger version hit the floor with a dull thud that felt incredibly loud.

The boys on the other side of the door went silent.

The younger Maya tucked herself into a corner and curled into a ball.

The door crashed open and Diego stood in the doorway.

There was a cruel smile on his face as he looked down at her. "Well, fancy meeting you here, little Wandling. We were just talking about you." He reached down and grabbed hold of the front of the shirt, dragging her out into the other room. He threw her down into a corner, then leered down at her. "So you think you can spy on us, huh?"

The figure of her younger self glared up at him, and pushed herself up to a standing position. If she couldn't escape, she wasn't going to take this without a fight. "I was here first."

"Oh, is that right? Because do you know what we do to spies? They get what they deserve. Especially little arrogant Wandling bitches who think they own the island, like you!"

Carlos stepped forward and grabbed Diego's shoulder, pulling him back slightly. He looked nervous. "Diego, she's just a kid. Let's just let her go. She won't tell anybody. Will you, kid?"

The look in his eyes begged her to say yes, and she nodded. "I won't. I'm not supposed to be here either, anyway."

Diego scowled. "Fine. Not worth our trouble, anyway." He stepped closer, crowding her into the corner again, and bent down to whisper in her ear. "Because I promise you, if anyone finds out about this, I will make sure you get exactly what little spies deserve, me entiendes?

She glared at him defiantly, but nodded again. He stepped to the side, and she dodged around him and sprinted out of the room and down the hall, back towards where she thought the main classrooms were. I hate them! she heard her younger self whisper as she ran to keep up with the memory. Diego and his family had always been very clear about their disapproval of her family- her mother's choice to marry a wizard from outside Macondo, the fact that they'd had a child, and especially the fact that she and her father had been allowed to move back to Macondo after Mara's death.

The scene faded away just as she reached the door of her classroom, and then she was standing next to her twelve-year-old self again, later that same evening, as she stood outside the course that had been set up in the arena for the Trials. It wouldn't be torn down until tomorrow. The square around the training arena was filled with people doing their evening shopping before heading home after work, so she'd have an audience. At twelve years old, this had seemed like the perfect way to prove her point. Now, she thought back and winced at how dangerous it had been. The course had been designed for fifteen-year-olds who'd had seven years of education, and the control and precision that went along with that. It was NOT designed for a twelve-year-old with only two years of practical training under her belt.

The memory-Maya stepped through the gate into the course. She followed along, watching herself use bursts of controlled magic to move herself across the first room, landing only on the red tiles in the ground and avoiding all the others. They were booby-trapped to turn to mud and trap her legs. She followed herself through the next few obstacles, which were navigated relatively easily. Even at twelve, she'd had an honestly quite impressive level of range and control.

Everything was fine until the fifth obstacle- the water one. Prospective apprentices had to use water magic to swim through a tank where the water was enchanted to cling to their clothing and try to drag them down. If they had a water affinity or had practiced enough, they could counteract the enchantment and swim through easily.

She was not a water-mage, and she hadn't reached that level of instruction yet.

She watched herself jump in and begin to swim through, fighting through the pull of the water. Rather than following, she looked up at the stands surrounding the arena. A crowd had begun to form, watching the spectacle. Someone had run to get the Elders, and she saw them arrive, Abuela Rosa running ahead of the others at an impressive speed for her age. Her eyes went wide as a man whispered in her ear, telling her just who it was that had decided to attempt the course without supervision.

She glanced back in time to see herself beginning to struggle, halfway through the section where the pull of the water was the strongest. She kicked frantically, trying to resist the pull, but her skinny child's limbs just didn't have the strength. A woman in the crowd screamed, and Abuela Rosa was white-faced and hardly even breathing. Her father came running up, closely followed by her uncle Antonio, and one of the Elders, a man named Darrin Castello, turned to explain what was going on.

Her father's expression took her breath away, he looked absolutely terrified. She hadn't seen this the first time- she'd been too busy trying not to drown at this point. A couple of men were at the opening of the course trying to get the gate open- the protocols that prevented interference had engaged automatically when she'd closed it on her way in, but she hadn't known that the safety measures had to be turned on separately. Normally the course was enchanted to sense when a candidate was in real danger and stop the Trial, but those spells were turned off right now.

Just as memory-Maya stopped struggling as she ran out of air, she saw her father break away from Darrin and run down to the beginning of the course. A couple of people tried to pull him back, but he shrugged them off and kept going. He ignored the people pulling at the gate and turned his wand on the stone wall next to it, casting something that blasted the stone aside in large chunks. He ran through, ignoring the panicked shouts behind him, and someone frantically jumped through the hole after him to hit the button that triggered the safety enchantments. They kicked in just as her dad reached the first obstacle, so he simply ran right through, reaching the tank just as her memory self lost consciousness and the scene began to fade.


She found herself standing back inside the dark chamber of the cave, breathing hard and heart pounding with adrenaline. She'd almost drowned that day. The Abuelas had decided afterwards that her complete determination to complete the course at all costs must have prevented her magic from saving her. Her father had dived in and pulled her out just as the safety protocols engaged. They'd asked her why she'd done it and she had tearfully choked out the whole story, explaining that she just wanted to prove that she belonged.

The adults stepped in, and the bullying mostly stopped after that. Carlos had apologized soon after the incident, and eventually became something of a friend. Diego was the only one who didn't let it go completely- he seemed to hate her even more from that moment onwards, although he didn't go out of his way to target her, and the adults did their best to keep them from being alone together after that. And even he stopped after she'd been in the practical classes for a couple more years and was good enough to fight back.

Another glowing door appeared, and she stepped through.


She was eleven, and her father had taken her to England to buy her a wand. He'd argued with the rest of the family for days, before finally insisting that he was her father, and that he and her mother had always wanted their daughter raised to know both kinds of magic. They hadn't been happy, but they hadn't stopped Sean from leaving with her either.

They walked into Ollivander's, and she gasped as the feeling of strong magic washed over her as she stepped through the door.

"Well well, Sean O'Connor. Aspen and unicorn hair, ten inches, moderately bendy. And who do we have here?" He looked down at her memory self, and she remembered that it felt as if he was staring through her, into her soul. She swallowed, squared her shoulders, and replied, "Maya O'Connor Trujillo, sir."

He'd chuckled, then muttered something about "birds of a feather" while a piece of knotted string measured her by itself and he rummaged through his shelves, pulling boxes out seemingly at random.

It took nine wands before she found the right one. Cedar and dragon heartstring, eleven and a half inches, fairly flexible. She watched her younger self's eyes light up, and remembered the warm feeling of her magic flowing through her arm, into her wand, and out in a shower of golden sparkes.

Her father had taken her for ice cream, and then back home. He'd spent every evening he could spare teaching her to use her new wand. By the time she was fourteen and he started taking her on research trips in the summers, she'd been able to do what he said was most of the useful parts of the Hogwarts curriculum. She still maintained that Hogwarts was an absolutely bizarre name for a school.


She was six, and her father hadn't been home for three days. They were out of food, and she was hungry. She finally broke down and called Tío Antonio for help, and he came to get her. Her father didn't come home for another two days, and when he did, he was so drunk he could barely stand. It was the angriest she'd ever seen her uncle and grandfather.

She watched as her memory-self listened outside the door. The yelling was so loud that she could have heard it from the other side of the house. Finally her father broke down sobbing, and the others calmed down enough to remember to cast a silencing spell.

She never found out what exactly was said, but after that she stayed in Casa Trujillo with the rest of the family, and she didn't see her father for a while. The adults wouldn't tell her what was happening and just said that he was "sick, but he's getting better and he'll come see you as soon as he can, mija."

When he finally came home, her dad was better- he wasn't drinking anymore, and he at least shaved and changed his clothes everyday. He hugged her for the first time since her mother had died and cried into her hair. He wasn't completely better- he was always a little bit sad, especially around the anniversary of her mother's death, but he smiled a lot more and played with her again. They kept living with the familia after that, and her cousins Kieran and Aiden became like her brothers.


The memories came quickly after that, one after another.


Coming back to Macondo from England, when she was five. They were brought to the Council Chamber, and everyone looked so angry. Mama Sofía, her mother's mother, had whisked her away, taking her into a kitchen and making her a cup of hot chocolate.


Her father scooping her up out of bed in their house in England, holding her tightly. He'd been crying and he smelled like smoke. She'd asked where Mamá was, and he didn't answer


She was three, and watching her younger self running around a comfortable-looking, English style sitting room with three other children. Two were boys with matching red hair and freckles, and the third was a girl with bright blue hair. Her mother and three other women were sitting nearby, and the red-haired and the blonde women were both holding babies.


She was watching her mother, holding a very young memory-Maya in her arms. She stood at the window, singing softly. Her father came up from behind and wrapped them in his arms, bending down to kiss baby Maya on the top of her head.


Finally, no more doors appeared. She knelt on the floor, tears streaming down her face. She felt wrung-out and exhausted, as if she'd been awake for days. For all she knew, she had been.

She didn't know how long she sat there in the darkness, breathing heavily and trying to get her emotions under control. Finally, the darkness began to lighten to white again, and before she knew it, she was once again sitting on the ground in the grassland, with the blue sky overhead. This time she didn't try to move or look for anyone, she just sat and waited. She wasn't sure she had the strength to stand right now.

Just as she finally got herself under control and started to feel calm, she spotted two figures approaching in the distance. One she recognized as her mother, and the second was an older white-haired woman she didn't recognize. She stood as they came close, and leaned into a hug from her mother. They all sat down in the grass, and the elderly woman spoke first.

"Child, my name is Bridgid O'Connor. I am your father's great great grandmother. Do you know why you are here?"

"Mamá said that Magic has a task for me."

"That's correct." The woman nodded. She raised her hands, and the landscape around them shifted, becoming a series of blurred, indistinct shapes, until finally it settled again and they were sitting on a forest floor somewhere Maya didn't recognize. She waved her hand to indicate the trees around them. "What do you see, child?"

"A forest?" Maya asked, confused. Where is she going with this?

"Yes child, that part is obvious." She sighed and turned to Mara. "You said she was intelligent! What am I supposed to do with this?"

"You could try explaining better, abuela," Mara answered dryly.

Bridgid chuckled, and her stern face split into a thousand wrinkles as she smiled. "I always said my great great grandson made a good choice in you."

She turned back to Maya. "You must see, child. Not with your eyes, but with your magic. Close your eyes, meditate, and then reach out with your mind's eye. Then, tell me what you see. Go on, we don't have all day!"

I thought time didn't mean anything here. Maya thought huffily as she closed her eyes. She felt a light whack of a hand against the back of her head. "Hey!" Her eyes flew open.

"I heard that."

"I didn't say anything!"

"No, but your face did. Focus, child!"

Scowling, Maya settled back and closed her eyes. She started as she'd been taught as a child, meditating until she could feel the pulse of the magic within her core. Then, she gently reached out with the magic, stretching out the channeling links that spread outward from her core and trying to sense the ambient magic that was always present in the environment.

She barely managed to hold her focus on her meditation when she realized what Abuela Bridgid had wanted her to see. There was almost nothing. Very little ambient magic in the air or earth, and as she reached out to feel the innate magic present in all the living creatures in the forest, she realized that they also had very little magic within them, and what they did have felt…weak, somehow. It's like it's dying. She was used to the richness of Macondo, a magic that was so ever-present that sensing it around her was as easy and natural as breathing. This was…horrifying. She could almost feel the pain of the earth at how depleted it was.

She brought herself out of her meditation and opened her eyes to see Abuela Bridgid's green ones staring back at her. "So now you see, child. Magic is fading. The children of magic have forgotten the old ways, and every living thing suffers as a result. The use of wands and the abandonment of the old traditions have depleted Magic so much that she can barely sustain herself."

She shook herself mentally. "Why are you showing me this?"

"Because this is the task you are to be given." Mara replied. "As I said before, you are unique in the sense that you fully understand both cultures. You've been chosen by magic to bridge the gap, to go to the wand-users and tell them what is happening. Teach them to remember their traditions. If they start now, it's still possible to fix things. If they don't, then things will continue to escalate until the decay spreads beyond just the local areas that are affected right now and begins to harm the entire planet."

"How am I supposed to do something like that? Do I just walk up to the British Minister of Magic and say 'Hi, I'm an uneducated bumpkin from the other side of the world. You're destroying a sentient force you don't believe in, would you please stop?' Because I really don't think that's going to work. Hey, that hurt!"

Abuela Bridgid had whacked her on the back of the head again, harder this time. "You must learn to look beyond yourself, child. If Magic has given you a task, do you not think that you'll be given help to complete it?"

She nodded grudgingly, rubbing the back of her head.

Mara took over. "We're going to leave you soon, so that you can be given some final instructions before you're returned back to the living world. I'll leave you with this- trust in magic, trust in your companions, and trust in yourself. There's a reason why Belief is the first tenet of magic that we teach to children. You can do this, but you have to believe that you can."

Maya nodded. "I'll try, Mamá. Te prometo. I promise."

Mara nodded, and as she did the landscape began to fade away again, turning back to the blackness of the empty cavern. The two women were the last to go, and she heard her mother whisper "I love you!" as she vanished into the darkness.

Unlike before, the cave didn't stay dark for long. It gradually began to lighten to grey, and she realized that this time she could see the walls of the cave around her. It wasn't as big as she'd been expecting- about the size of Casa Trujillo, which wasn't a particularly small house, but far smaller than it had felt at the beginning of her vision. Maybe that was part of the magic of the cave.

She noticed a bit of movement in the wall in front of her, and walked closer to see. She blinked in astonishment- there was a face staring out at her from the cave wall! It was the face of a little man wearing a top hat, blinking and turning side to side as if alive, but it was made of the same grey stone as the wall. She reached out in wonderment to see if the skin felt like stone, and the stone eyes snapped around to meet her own, scowling. "Hey! No touchy! How would you feel if some random person came up and just poked you in the cheek!"

"Um…I'm sorry? Wha-who are you?"

"Apology accepted. Now, where was I? Oh, that's right! The prophecy! How good are you at memorization? Because I don't have a millennium!"

"Pretty good, I think?" She dimly realized that this was probably supposed to be a strange experience, but given everything else that had happened today, it was hard to feel surprised. "And you still haven't told me who you are."

"I am Myself." The fact that this was Myself with a capital M, like a name, was conveyed in his tone. "But no, that's not a good name. Call me…Tim! Yes, Tim! Now, what was it again? Something about a rat and a fox and a dog…bloody menagerie, really…ah, yes!" He drew himself up (Maya tried not to wonder too much about how a disembodied face in a rock wall managed to communicate the impression of squaring one's shoulders back) and began to recite:

"The Rat and Fox will come, bearing a message from the seven headed Snake;

They will promise much but carry only destruction.

The Raven journeys with the Wolves across the sea;

Together they will save the Stag from a fate worse than death.

"The Dragon and the Phoenix will be their allies;

The old traditions will be remembered once again.

The Weasel will be saved from the Viper;

The Snake's head will betray his secret.

"Together with the Phoenix they will fly to the aid of the Stag;

The Snake shall be unmasked for all to see.

The Dog shall be lost to the Shadow;

But the Raven and the Dragon shall join together, and he shall be saved."

Maya blinked. What on earth was that supposed to mean?

"Oh, and I'm to tell you that the Raven is you, apparently. Not much to look at, but appearances can be deceiving, I guess."

"Um…that's all? It's not very good, is it? It doesn't even rhyme." Dimly she realized that it probably wasn't wise to risk angering the mysterious entity of unknown power, but she was so tired that it seemed her brain just wasn't keeping up with her mouth.

'Tim' glared at her. "Well what were you expecting, a clearly annotated map with step-by-step instructions? It's a prophecy, girl! You're supposed to be immensely grateful, not turn into a literary critic!" He sighed. "Now like I said, I don't have a millennium, so let's hear it. I've been told I can't leave until you have it memorized, and I have a hot date with a Djinn next week, so hurry up!"

"Um…the Rat and the Snake come, with a message from the Fox-"

"NO! Ugh, mortals. Your brains are so tiny. Here it is again."


She had no idea how long it took exactly, but after many repetitions and many, many insults from Tim, he was satisfied.

"Finally! One of the Tuatha Dé would have gotten it ages ago, I have no idea how your lot ever defeated them in the first place. I'd say it's been fun, but really it hasn't. Have fun with the war and everything!"

"Wait, what? What do you mean, 'the war?'" But he was gone, and in front of her was only the rough stone of the cave wall. She turned to look around, and realized that there was now light shining down from a ventilation shaft high above, allowing her to see the cave properly. For all the wonders she'd just seen, it appeared to be just an ordinary cave. She shivered, then walked back across to the door and opened it with a creak, to see that all three Abuelas were there, waiting.

They looked at her as if shocked to see her. Abuela Rosa jumped forward to catch her as her legs buckled, and Maya realized that she was more tired than she'd ever been in her life. Her brain felt fuzzy, as if there were a thousand bees buzzing around inside, and she was absolutely starving.

"Oh thank goodness, Mija! We thought…well, you've been inside nearly two weeks!"

Maya's last thought before she lost consciousness was that Tim was definitely going to be late for his date.


A/N- Hope you all enjoyed the chapter. It's long, like longer than the other two chapters put together, but I couldn't find a good place to split it. We should start to see more of the action and faster pace in the next chapter, now that we've got most of the set-up out of the way.

Also- writing prophecies is HARD! I have a whole new respect for those people who actually manage to write decent Sorting Hat songs. I'm aware mine isn't great, but honestly it's not like Rowling really did a whole lot better with hers.