Elena had already been exposed to the horrors of Uram's madness, but Persephone felt the sudden urge to be violently ill. It was fairly clear what Uram had planned for her... all of his victims had been young, untouched and female. Fortunately he was more interested in killing Elena with Raphael watching than he was in murdering her.

Also lucky was the fact that he hadn't bothered to remove her jacket, and likely wasn't aware of who she was. For once her penchant for going as a human had saved her life.

And Dmitri had said clinging to the last vestiges of her human life was pointless. Who was laughing now?

Feeling around, she realized the idiot hadn't taken her wand. He obviously didn't realize what it was, or had ignored it in favor of Elena.

Persephone slowly came closer to Elena.

When I give the signal, close your eyes.

Elena blinked once, then twice. At least she heard it.

Persephone flicked a rock at the vampire in the cage. Uram turned to face him. Elena firmly shut her eyes as much as she could.

"SOLARIS MAXIMA!"

The Sun charm. When used it could replicate the full light of the sun on a summer's day...but when combined with the 'maxima' spell, that power was amplified until it was bright enough to pass for the hottest part of the day in a desert. Certain creatures were very sensitive to light, and this was designed to hurt them.

And when you weren't expecting it, it could cause one hell of a distraction and signal your allies where you were. Especially at night.

Persephone's wand came out of it's holster, and she started slinging spell after spell with precision.

Her job was to protect the both of them until help arrived, and there was no way Raphael had missed that signal flare.

Uram looked pissed, but the light had blinded him good and Persephone was keeping the shield charm at maximum all around them. Unless he had the wit or knowledge to come from below, he wasn't getting anywhere near them. Elena was busy trying to direct Raphael to where they were, and Persephone kept them alive.

"If we get out of this mess you can call me Seph," said Persephone to Elena.

"I'll keep that in mind," said Elena, grimacing. "Can you get to my weapons?"

"Not unless you want this bastard at our throats. It's hard enough maintaining the damn shield!"

Persephone wisely didn't mention the thing was weakening. She didn't need Uram to get incentive to come even harder at them.

Suddenly the wall exploded in blue fire. Raphael had arrived. And he was beyond pissed.

Persephone was exhausted, but they couldn't rest. Not while the archangels were going at it like above them, slinging angelfire like it was nothing.

However spotting her satchel, she had an idea. There was enough of Uram's signature that she could do something without exposing them.

Good thing she had Dobby tell her exactly how he had gotten those bludgers to go after her and her alone. It was an old charm, but she had learned it in case she ever wanted to do some damage to the Death Eaters while on a broom.

She set the charm on the bludgers she had gotten the same day she had bought a replacement broom...and let them loose.

The cry of pain from above said volumes.

You shouldn't interfere.

It's not like they'll go after you. Consider them a distraction set only to damage him. Those things hurt like a bitch when they have the standard safety charms. Those don't.

And hadn't that been a bitch and a half to remove. Normal bludgers could break bones and wood beams, but not much else.

Remove the charms that kept the players safe...and suddenly you were dealing with a pair of enchanted wrecking balls capable of not just breaking bones, but breaking bodies. She had tested them out once without the charms, and they had blown a hole through steel girders.

Neither archangel could drain magical energy. They didn't know how. Elena, having had her ankle broken by Uram before Persephone woke up and distracted him, limped over to the table and got her special gun meant to wound angels.

And when the chance came, Elena took careful aim...and started to fire at Uram.

Her distraction was more than enough for Raphael to kill the bastard.

The two bludgers, having dealt quite a bit of damage to the Angel of Blood, hovered for a moment.

Persephone cast the charm that had them return to her side where she secured them in the box. It was a specially developed one for referees to reclaim them without injury.

But Elena looked exhausted. Some of the hits Uram had sent had gotten to her, since the charm had been weaker near the back and was stronger where Persephone had been.

Her body wouldn't take much more abuse.

That's when the most horrifying thing happened.

She began to fall.

Persephone didn't cry. She knew something Elena's friend Sara didn't.

"You shouldn't cry, you know."

Sara turned to her, beyond furious. Ransom looked equally pissed.

"If you're going to tell me that she's gone..." started Sara, but Persephone held up a tired hand.

"She's not dead. Luna has never been wrong and she saw Elena become immortal," said Persephone.

"What."

"Soul bonds are tricky. And considering the damage that bastard did to her, conversion will be a long process that will leave her comatose. But she's alive and she will come back to you."

Sara and Ransom stared at her.

"How can we trust you?"

"Don't trust me. Trust Luna. Like I said, she's never wrong about this. She predicted I'd find my wings before I was dragged into a war that had nothing to do with me, and she was right. She sees things no one else can, and that includes brief glimpses of the future. Even if it does drive Dmitri crazy."

The two stared at her.

"So what does this mean?"

"It means my mother's house arrest will be temporarily lifted until Raphael is healed enough to retake the reigns. And then she'll have to take the post she declined last time," said Persephone with a grimace.

Then, to the shock of both, she carefully removed her jacket to reveal fire colored wings. She put the jacket in her back before taking off.

They honestly had no idea she was an angel.

Lilium was not a happy angel. Well, a re-acknowledged archangel. Because she had the power and the ability to take out an archangel, she had 'returned' among her kind to take Uram's place. The monster that had tried to kill her daughter.

The problem was the mess Uram had left in his wake, both in New York and in his own lands. While she had to cede a portion of them to keep the others in the Cadre happy (mostly Michaela, who hated her on sight), the fact of the matter was that she had to deal with a position she never wanted, while it was unclear if a second archangel would be needed or not.

Raphael had been silent since the battle, and Dmitri was holding his place until he either healed or it was clear that he was gone.

Persephone had taken to spending time with Luna, as she was still recovering from using so much magic in order to defend herself and Elena.

Elena, who would soon be the subject of quite a bit of talk because she was the first Made angel in living knowledge.

On the plus side, she was no longer house arrest.

Though right now Lilium was seriously tempted to use her daughter's very effective method of hiding her wings to slip into the crowd and disappear among the humans. People would automatically assume was a vampire, not an angel when they realized she wasn't aging. So long as no one saw her wings, no one would realize the truth.

Sadly, she didn't think she could get away with it. The world was so connected these days that they only way to pull it off was in the rural areas.

The others still thought her daughter weak for embracing her former human identity.

But it was that penchant for hiding her true nature that had spared her the lion's share of the torture Uram could have subjected her to. The fact he hadn't realized she was an angel had spared her life.

Persephone, as a gesture of 'goodwill' towards Raphael considering her mother was taking Uram's place, had been sent to live at the Tower until he woke. She agreed to work as Dmitri's right-hand angel, since she could fly faster than some of the senior ones at the Tower.

Considering after the first two months, the Guild became suspicious of Elena's survival, her presence made it somewhat easier than it could have been. Primarily because she could walk into places and go unseen by either side since she had a way of hiding her wings so effectively.

If Jason was the bat in the night, Persephone was an owl.

She had perfected the art of hiding in plain sight years ago with the Dursely family. It was the most effective way of avoiding getting hit by her 'aunt'.

Needless to say Persephone was beyond thrilled to find out there wasn't even a drop of the blood in her family line.

In any case while Jason ran the spy rings outside the city, Dmitri had her investigate inside the city limits. New York was the central hub of Raphael's power base in North America. And Jason didn't have that much time on his hands that he could keep track of things inside the city as well.

So Dmitri sent out Persephone to hunt down even hints of possible trouble, since Uram had been able to slip into the city so easily.

Persephone had inherited one very useful ability from James. The Black family magic that was considered a lost trait. Shapeshifting.

Of the magical communities, only two in Europe HAD the ability and both were Blacks by blood.

Persephone and her close cousin, Nymphadora (say my first name and DIE) Tonks.

Persephone couldn't change the color of her wings, or their shape, but the rest was easy. She could even adjust her age if she wanted to, and she abused that trick repeatedly, turning herself into a twenty-five year old instead of the 18 year old she was.

Dmitri made sure to get her a 'legal' driver's license that was filed in all the appropriate places. Her codename in the Tower was "Seraph", so her ID read the name Sarah Black.

Now if only she would quit 'accidentally' poisoning the idiots she brought in...and Dmitri could really do without the mocking laughter Venom always had in his voice when he helped her fill out the damn reports.

The two of them had a strange brother-sister relationship going on...and were coincidentally the only two people in the entire Tower who could drink snake venom and get a buzz more potent than any drug. Their bodies naturally made anti-venom, broke it down, and left them the high. It wasn't damaging, but it did make them more lethal if they bit someone.

At this point Venom was openly curious if any vampires Made by Persephone would have that same 'snake-eye' quality he had gotten when he left mortality in the dust.

Her body produced the toxin, but the level of it in her blood had yet to develop into a high enough amount that expunging it was necessary. And there was no way to tell if the toxin she produced would have snake-like characteristics until after she Made a vampire.

Either way she would go to the Refuge once a month to be tested just in case.

Though in her flippant words, she'd probably reach that point when she started experiencing 'fang ache' and craved something other than chocolate.

Venom had hit Dmitri and Illium with his coffee from laughing when she said that. The older vampire had not been pleased. Illium just started a prank war involving icy cold water balloons.

At three months, Raphael woke. And while it normally wasn't considered, the use of magical healing potions advanced his healing factor considerably.

Persephone went into England and bought as many potions and healer's books as she could find, and the ingredients to make them in bulk. They were discreetly taken to Refuge for Keir to play with.

At six months, Persephone argued with Raphael over breaking the truth to Elena's friend about why she wouldn't be up and running anytime soon.

At seven, she spent an entire month at Refuge by Elena telling her what an idiot she had bonded herself to. (Illium had to bite back his laughter a few times while listening in, and Raphael had a pained look on his face twice).

Finally at nine months he agreed, but only to shut her up about it and only if Persephone placed the Fidelius charm around the information with Raphael the Secret Keeper.

Sara had been shocked...but eventually accepted the truth especially when Persephone gave her multiple pictures of Elena out cold in a bed with growing wings. They hadn't come in all at once, and Persephone had personally had someone take a picture every time a new one grew in as a time-lapse thing.

She was sure Elena would be fascinated to see it all at once.

Still, seeing those photos of the feathers slowly emerging from her best friend's back, Sara couldn't deny the obvious. And Persephone made a blood oath that the first thing they would do was to call her within hours of Elena waking up. Considering she was so close to his hunter, Raphael agreed that could be arranged.

The last thing he needed was to end up on Elena's bad side so soon after waking, and Sara was close enough to Elena that she knew when to keep her mouth shut.

Ten months, and Lilium's position in eastern Europe had solidified, the people who had once stood by in terror of their archangel 'overlord' now accepting of their stern, if much easier to live with 'overlady'. She had done away with most of what was left of Uram's vampires, giving them the choice of either leaving or being 'disposed of' if they didn't suit her tastes for court.

Sirius and Remus were part of said court, and had both undergone a transformation.

Sirius had been tested and confirmed he could handle the toxin that Made vampires, and had promptly cut almost all ties to magical Britain until their attitude towards them changed. He took half the Black family fortune, and the rest he gave to Andromeda, his second cousin. Narcissa he handed over most of the ancestral jewelry, though there was some squabbling between the sisters over who got what piece. The Black Family library was now safely secured inside Lilium's castle, with all the books sorted over which was safe for people to read and which required a certain level of knowledge in the 'dark arts'.

Without Dumbledore's pacifistic philosophy to hold him back, Sirius found he had a knack for that particular brand of magic...much to his disgust. To be fair, he would have centuries to get over that disdain for that brand of magic.

Remus, as it turned out, was an offshoot of one of Neha's earlier experiments. Much, much earlier. She had once dabbled in wolves until she found her passion for serpents.

She never expected that the vampire would accidentally spawn an entire species unique to the bloodline, or that they could infect others.

The only way to 'cure' the disease (and it was a disease at this point) was to Make the infected a vampire.

Remus stated in no uncertain terms he would only be 'Made' if it were Lilium or Persephone who turned him. And while he found magical vampires repugnant (the two species having a very long-standing feud because of the werewolf's origins) Made vampires never made him want to rip their throats out.

The two were part of Lilium's Guard, acting almost like the Seven did for Raphael.

Eleven months, and Raphael feared his beloved would never wake. However given that the transformation from mortal to angel had never been documented (a fact Keir was grateful Persephone decided to undertake, if only as a hobby) there was simply no telling when Elena would awaken. That, coupled with the fact her body had been so bady damaged it would have taken months for her to transition from human to vampire meant it was possible it was simply going to take a little while longer.

That didn't stop Sara from ordering a "strike" on all Hunts until she had confirmation from Elena herself that she still lived. Raphael was not pleased, but there was little he could do about it.

Finally, at twelve months, Elena opened her eyes for the first time since Uram went on a rampage...and she had Raphael to greet her, followed shortly by Persephone who gleefully took pictures once she got over her temporary freak-out. Two hours later Elena called Sara...shocking her best friend/sister into a waking state as she had been sleeping on her desk.