A/N: I write these opening author notes after writing the chapter. At the moment though I am only half way through this chapter… around 2k words… but I felt it necessary to explain what I had planned for the chapter compared to how it is turning out. So… this is what was going to be Chapter 20:

The Reflectorium Charm

Lemons

Severus and Tempest have words

Lunch with Harry

Meeting with Kingsley

So far nothing on that list has made it into this chapter. I blame my lovely friend Dash entirely for this veering from plan as I read her latest chapter of 'Your Secret to Collect' before I started writing and believe I got inspired by an altercation between Tom Riddle and Lucius Malfoy. Well she blamed me for not reigning in her writing yesterday on said chapter so it's fair turnabout that I blame her for inspiring my (*cough* J.K's) characters going off the deep end.

I shall not keep you any longer with my incessant babbling and blaming. Enjoy… and please remember to review.

Chapter 20 – Soul on Fire

Hermione, Severus and Eileen all headed toward the master bedroom. Hermione had told them that it was better for her to lay down when the spell was cast as it was expected she would feel light-headed as the mirroring effect took hold.

"So…" Severus began, trying to keep his nerves in check as he watched Hermione make herself comfortable on his bed, "Who casts this charm? You or me? My memory is rather rusty on the specifics?"

"Oh, we need an external caster, like with an unbreakable vow." Hermione said, pleased to tell Severus something he was unsure of; know-it-all tendencies died hard, it seemed. "I was hoping your mother would serve as ours. I can't see your sister wanting to do it somehow." Hermione replied matter-of-factly but turned to Eileen with hopeful eyes.

"Of course I will, dear. This is a very brave thing you're doing for my son and I couldn't be more grateful. It seems I am twice indebted to you for protecting my baby."

"Mother!"

Hermione giggled as Eileen's face showed her to be completely unapologetic for embarrassing her son a little. It's what mother's do and she had been painfully hidden from being his mother for too many years.

"I do this gladly, Eileen. Please don't feel indebted to me. Severus has protected me and my friends in one way or another for seven years and while that certainly isn't why I'm doing this – to repay the favour – I think it makes sense that I should be allowed to do so anyway. Besides, why wouldn't I do this to protect the…"

"Love of your life?" Snape interjected. "Don't think I missed that little proclamation just because I did not mention it at the time."

"Of course you didn't miss it. You never miss anything. You were a spy for almost twenty years. And on top of that, I didn't intend for you to miss it." She responded to him with a sweet smile and the love she felt for the love of her life shining in her eyes.

He smiled back - an expression so genuinely heartfelt that Hermione wondered for a second if Severus had let his occlumency shields die completely in that moment. That smile took her breath away; it reached his eyes and made them twinkle just as surely as if Dumbledore had been standing before her. A thought she'd cringe over later. In Hermione's opinion – and probably his mother's too – Severus Snape's heart and soul were lit up brighter than a Christmas tree and in that moment he made the entire room glow with a very contagious joy.

"Okay, you two – enough mushy stuff. You can declare and proclaim all those lovey-dovey gooey feelings later. Right now, we have a spell to cast."

"Yes. Right." Hermione said evenly, suddenly all business. "Do you have the book Severus, so your mum can look over the specifics? It's called…"

"The Compendium of Ashes – A Grey Practitioners Guide to Advanced Charms."

Three pairs of eyes – one pair black as a starless night, one as golden as sunlight through honey and a third as dark brown as the richest chocolate – all snapped toward the bedroom door. It was as if they'd forgotten the prodigal daughter/sister was in the house.

Tempest stood against the door frame, her eyes narrowed suspiciously as she took in the positions of her most loathsome family members and the mudblood. The latter was on the large four poster bed, looking simultaneously self-righteous, in love and some lesser form of fierce. Her brother seemed to have abandoned his impassive, unreadable façade and now wore his love for the little witch like a badge of honour as he moved to sit beside her and take her hand. Finally, the mother, heiress to great Prince fortune, who had abandoned her daughter and sided with that old coot Dumbledore and his ridiculous band of misfits and outcasts.

So this was what was left of her blood relatives – both blood traitors whom had fought against her father and seen his end, and the end of her beloved Anton; she supressed the thought of having to tell her own daughter that her father was gone as it twisted in her mind and made her stomach roil. Jewels was a sweet girl and this news was going to break her little Hufflepuff heart. Of course it was too soon to know for sure where her daughter would be placed in Hogwarts but much to her dissatisfaction and palatable denial, Tempest had an inkling that her baby would be a bleeding heart badger.

Perhaps the news of her father's passing, even her grandfather's vanquish would pull a rage and thirst for vengeance out of my precious Jewels. I can only hope.

"What do you want, Tempest?" Hermione suddenly said, breaking the tense silence of the last ninety seconds. "We're busy."

"Tut, tut, tut; such disrespect! Brother, I just can't understand what you see in this… this… thing. She isn't even pretty enough that she should be able to tempt you with womanly wiles. Is it the bird's nest that attracts you? We all know how much you loved that fiery parrot of Dumbledore's. Or maybe it's the itty bitty titties that set you off? Honestly, after the last mudblood obsession you had, I though your interest swayed more towards someone with at least a handful worth of cleavage."

Severus was drawing his wand to blast his sister out of the room with a low impact bombarda but Eileen step away from the bed, her eyes trained on the now incensed Gryffindor. Having seen Hermione's outbursts at Mr Potter and Mr Weasley for disrespecting the sanctity of the library, she knew the young muggleborn witch was about to explode. And Hermione did not disappoint.

Waves of fury rolled off of her and she launched herself from the bed, diving at her future sister-in-law, transforming on the fly into a flurry of scarlet and gold feathers. Flames combusted into existence around her as the phoenix animagus burst out of its human host and flew with purpose at the startled dark witch.

Hermione's beak aimed directly for Tempest's eyes, much as Fawkes had done with the basilisk in Harry's stories of the Chamber of Secrets. Blind fury boiled in the depths of her soul at the gaul, the audacity, the fucking balls of this… this… vile excuse for a witch who had berated her and her love. She wouldn't stand for it, she would not bear witness to such sickening prejudice hippogriff dung any longer. The war was over, she'd had enough and this bitch of a sister-in-law was going to learn some respect or pay the price.

It seemed, in her mental dressing down of Snape's sister, she hadn't realised quite how tied to her emotions, the flames of her transformation were. The fires of her change had been fuelled by such immense hatred – hatred of every time she'd been called a mudblood, every time she'd felt rejected, ostracised, or ridiculed by this magical world; every time she had felt alone and every time she had walked away for fear of losing her temper, that temper now exploded. So great was her ire that her raging inferno had transformed too and instead of the benign, cleansing, rejuvenating flames of phoenix fire, she unleashed the very fires of hell from her body and fiendfyre licked at the robes of the bitch in front of her.

"Hermione…" she heard being yelled, repeatedly but it was muffled, distant. She could barely hear it through the red fog of fury that smoked her vision and she could not associate the name with herself. Hermione found herself lost to an endless and perpetual cycle of anger and fire - the rage fed the fires and the flames fed back into the fury. She was lost to it, burning…

"Hermione. Stop!" Pleaded Severus. While his own anger was palpable, he had only just discovered he had a sister and the woman he loved was currently hell bent on killing her. Even if he felt Tempest deserved the inferno for her comments, he knew Hermione would be overcome with guilt if she succeeded in killing the woman. It took only seconds for him to realise that the flames were not usual phoenix fire but fiendfyre and he knew that her rage was blinding her to the fact.

He watched his mother cast the aquamenti spell over and over trying to expel the flames but he knew it was useless. This fire was a combination of phoenix fire, dragon fire and fiendfyre. Possibly, Hermione was the only witch in the world who could produce such a powerful display and keep it burning.

The fog dispersed, the flames parted, the ire cooled as Hermione's view shifted to a completely different scene. Severus had his wanted pointed at her over the heavily charred remains of Tempest's body. Eileen sat in a corner, sobbing, silent tears aimed at the floor, refusing to see, refusing to accept the loss of her temperamental daughter.

"I could never love you after this." Severus's words cut through the fire like ice cold rain. The hatred in his eyes, the cold soul-freezing hate in that impenetrable black gaze directed at her made her whole soul shiver. She was no longer lost to the fires and anger but lost in the abyss of that eternal black gaze.

He was just about to grab her, burning and consequences be damned; he'd make her swim in his soul again to calm her, praying that the dark, cool abyss like waters would douse her fire, when it all stopped. He had only taken three steps towards her but had caught the eyes of the fiery bird as he moved forward and it seemed like his aura had done the hard work for him.

Tempest scrambled away while she had the chance, scorched robes and a few defensive burns on her arms, muttering something along the lines of "crazy bitch". He'd have to deal with her later.

Hermione was still in her phoenix form but perched now on the floor, very still and looking almost cold in comparison to moments ago. She hadn't turned to ash to revert to human form as she had in the garden the day before, she was just very still. Severus approached her cautiously, making no sudden movements.

"Hermione…" he called softly, "Hermione, can you hear me?"

The room remained silent; Hermione remained a statue of red and gold near the door.

Twenty minutes later, after performing every spell he could think of to revive her, awaken her, even reignite her inferno, he sat back resigned that he couldn't reach her alone and looked to his mother who had remained silent as she watched her son's desperate attempts to bring Hermione back to him.

Eileen was unsure she would be able to do anything or the poor girl. The situation felt a little out of step; Hermione was one of the brightest and compassion people to ever grace the magical world but she had attacked so viciously that it was as if she were taken over, possessed by someone or something else. Eileen felt torn… she owed Hermione so much, the girl had saved her son but had also just almost killed her daughter.

At her son's desperate, pleading expression, the witch knew she could deny him nothing. Not after all he'd been through. He deserved the happiness Hermione could give him and they would get her back together.

An hour had passed. Eileen and Severus had researched all they could about phoenixes; emotion based magical fires, combination of dragon fire and phoenix fire (something that had apparently never been seen before and so in terms of research was a dead end). Severus had even asked Weston if he could shed some light upon Hermione's affliction.

"Miss Hermione is lost in the abyss, Master. Her soul detached from her body and I suspects that it is now residing in yours, Master."

Severus looked like Voldemort had just reappeared and slapped him across the face, such was his shock. Hermione Granger was floating around in his soul somewhere; had completely abandoned her own body and somehow set up residence inside his. It was impossible. It was ridiculous. It was true.

As soon as the elf had said so, as improbable as it seemed, Severus had begun searching for her. He felt that he knew his own soul well; he knew it to be a place that darkened with each loss and sacrifice, an entity which became less substantial with every promise, vow or dark mark he had forced himself or been forced into taking. When Hermione had been there just this morning, she had found it peaceful and a way of completing her acceptance by the elements. The four elements had reached out to her and she had easily accepted three but until this morning, until she had completely relinquished herself to him, the fourth had been elusive.

Her lioness animagus was her earth connection… he could sense that right away; he Gryffindor side was strongest and had given the abyss of his soul a sandy foundation of surety. He could feel his dark soul was shaped by that very deep down foundation she had created. She was a blanked of golden sand in the dark turbulent seas of his soul and he relished the feel of her there.

It seemed the fire elementals had blessed her as well, overly blessed her if her outburst earlier had been anything to go by, which of course it was. Within Hermione it seemed air and fire were heavily connected and fed each other as surely as her fire had fed her anger and vice versa. He could not recall a time when he had seen her on a broomstick but it seemed as a phoenix she had accepted the freedom that flight provided, just as she had used the fires of her animagus form to cleanse her anger.

That left only a water connection to find and it seemed that connection was to him… Severus's emotionally driven soul; the place where he hid his emotions, the place that was buried deeper than anything else behind his occlumency shields was her connection to water… an escape to where she could feel and drown in her emotions.

The connection felt incomplete still in his analysis. As his mother brought him a cup of tea, he examined his memory of her soul form as it swam through his. A dragon was a being of fire, but she already had the acceptance of the fire elementals, so why did the form remain a dragon but switch to the aquatic variety? It didn't make sense. The answer was niggling just out of reach and it was annoying him. He knew the answer; it was sitting there waiting for him obscured by…

"What was that?" Eileen said suddenly, breaking his thoughts.

"What?"

Severus's eyes snapped up to his mother in an instant who was eyeing him strangely. His wand was already in his hand and he scanned the room with it.

"Your eyes, darling, they flashed purple. Dark purple really, more like…"

"INDIGO!" Severus shouted and jumped to his feet as if he were a boy half his age. "Oh, of course, why didn't I see it before? Her acceptance by the elements, her intellect, her triple form, quadruple if you count her human one. Mother, you're a genius."

He moved to her quickly and kissed her cheek.

"Weston," he called, excitement brimming within him.

The elf popped in within seconds at the sound of his Master's call.

"What can Weston do for you Master?" he asked, bowing.

"Weston, I need you to go to Harry Potter and Minister Shacklebolt and tell them something important has come up and Hermione and I need to reschedule for tomorrow. Assure them that we are both perfectly fine and let them know, I promise to explain everything when I see them. Then bring Draco here. Do not take no for an answer. It is vital that he return with you."

"Yes Master." Weston said, excited by his unusual chores and the chance to meet the famous Harry Potter.

"Mother, Hermione is an Indigo Child…"

A/N: And there I leave this relatively short chapter with no charm, no lemons and no meeting. I promise they are all still to come but this part of the plot apparently wanted to come first and who am I to complain when particular vipers are nipping at my brain… namely the Draco viper, the Elements viper and the Indigo viper – persuasive little things they are too.

Hope you enjoyed me getting back into the cliffies… I have been too nice for too long in not giving any serious one so now the evil Slytherin witch is back (me, not Tempest - lol) and going to leave you hanging for a little bit while I work on 'Are You Okay?'

Please, favourite, follow and review if you don't do so already. Reviews make me smile, and make me write more, I'm really wanting to hit the 200 mark for reviews on this chapter… give a girl a hand with that x

Love and Indigo Blessings

Moon Out!