HUGE thanks to Mr. Cinch, Mama Cinch, Vickih, Kiraboo, and Steve-o the Arsonist for the VAST amounts of beta help with this story! You guys are beyond awesome, and I cannot thank you enough. This is my very first AU, so I needed lots of hand-holding.

Disclaimer: Obviously, Supernatural does not belong to me. This is for fun, not profit.

August 12, 1958

Hannah closed her eyes and forced herself to rest. She would need all her strength to cross safely to the otherworld and back. She took in a long, deep breath. The comforting scents of binding herbs and oils filled the air, bringing so many memories to the surface.

In her almost three centuries, Hannah had lived a good life, an honest life, serving and protecting the Winchester family. So many generations had come and gone. So many other angels had been brought forth in this building, and others like it, to protect the many branches of the bloodline as it split and grew. But the years, though kind, still passed, and Hannah knew she would soon reach the end of her long life. The fledgling they would raise up and bind today would stay by her side, learning and growing, until the day she died, after which it would take her place protecting the Winchesters.

She glanced over to Henry, who was bustling about the room, making the final preparations for the ceremony. The candles provided a warm light, glowing over the aged but well-tended wooden floors of the binding room, but failing to penetrate the darkness deeply enough to see the vaulted ceiling. Henry clicked his tongue as he worked, betraying his nervousness despite all the research and preparation he'd done. Raising an angel was difficult and dangerous, and he'd never participated in the ritual before. She smiled softly as she watched him, her mind drifting fondly back over memories of him throughout the years. Of course she loved him, as she did all Winchesters. But from the day he was born, Henry had always been special to her.

"It's almost time," she said softly. "Everything is ready?"

Henry's eyes flicked rapidly over the sigils drawn on the floor. He glanced to the herbs and candles on the altar, at the parchments with the incantations, and at the silver knife and bowl in the center of it all. "It's ready." He blew out a steadying breath. "I'm ready."

Hannah rose to her feet and approached the altar. As she stepped over the devil's trap on the floor, she felt the tug of its power slipping against her grace, unable to find purchase, repelled by the binding magic that fused her grace to the Winchester line. She spoke the first part of the incantation, a long, complex passage in Enochian so old it was barely recognizable to a speaker of modern Enochian. Henry lit the candles on the altar and picked up the silver blade, ready to do his part the moment she returned.

Spreading her ethereal wings wide, Hannah drew power through her bond with the Winchesters, just enough to get her to the other side and back. She directed the power through her wings, her link to the non-physical plane of the otherworld. Working delicately to avoid detection by the innumerable demons there, she flitted her awareness through the link until she found what she sought in the ether – a strong, healthy fledgling.

The instant she found him, she forced her way through the barrier into the otherworld, snatched the fledgling, and vanished, allowing herself to be snapped back to the binding room by the sigils surrounding the devil's trap on the floor. In the split second she was on the other side, she had heard the keening screech of demons – she'd been seen. They wouldn't have much time now.

She reappeared before the altar, arms clamped tightly around the shrieking child as he fought her. One of his wings slipped free and she struggled to contain the wildly flapping appendage before he could disrupt the altar.

"Now, Henry! We have to hurry. They're coming!" The fledgling clawed and bit like the animal he was, straining to free himself. He was strong for one so small, but even at her venerable age, Hannah was stronger. He was but a demon and a child, and she was an angel, after all.

Henry had flinched and frozen at her reappearance with the screaming boy, but responded to her command immediately. He began reading from the parchment, tossing herbs into the silver bowl as he chanted. As he uttered the last words of the spell, he sliced open the meaty part of his palm and trickled blood over the herbs in the bowl.

"Blood of the earth to anchor you in the physical plane." Henry's voice shook, but his hands remained steady.

Hannah shifted the struggling child to one arm and gripped one of his hands, prying the fingers open, and holding it above the bowl. For the first time, Henry looked reluctant rather than nervous, but only for an instant. The demon child gave an ear-splitting scream as Henry sliced open his hand as he'd done to his own.

"Blood of the otherworld to take of the ether."

The child's blood dripped into the bowl, mixing with the herbs and Winchester blood, beginning the bond that would link the fledgling to the human bloodline and change him from demon to angel.

Hannah held her palm over the bowl. Her blood and the second Enochian evocation would finish the binding, allowing the newborn angel to straddle the separation between the worlds – able to live permanently in the physical world, but still able to cross to the otherworld.

But before Henry could add her blood to the bowl and finish the ceremony, the binding room erupted in chaos as multiple demons burst through the barrier, howling obscenities and brandishing blades. Their enormous, black, flapping wings made the six or seven demons seem like dozens. Most of them materialized outside the devil's trap, but one appeared within it.

"He's mine, angel! You will not have him!" the demon screamed.

The demon lashed out with her wings, destroying their carefully assembled altar and flinging Henry outside the relative safety of the trap.

"Henry!"

Hannah lunged forward, drawing her angel blade. The demon was fast, flinging herself against the trap's barrier to dodge Hannah's strike and rebounding with a lunge of her own, forcing Hannah to drop the wailing fledgling to keep him from harm and deflect the blow with her blade. The demon snatched up the child, who clung to her, sobbing.

"It's too late, demon," Hannah snapped. "He's already been bound!"

"No!" the demon hissed. Looking down at the boy, her face contorted with hatred. "NO!"

She shoved the boy away and threw herself at Hannah with a howl, but in her rage, she was careless. Hannah feigned to the right and buried her blade deep into the demon's chest.

Before she could retrieve her weapon, something heavy struck her from behind, knocking her to the floor. Henry had been thrown into her by one of the other demons still circling the trap.

"Hannah!" Henry's face was nearly unrecognizable under the blood and swelling.

Instinctively, Hannah reached out to him, touching a relatively unscathed bit of skin on his cheek and sending a brief and thoroughly insufficient surge of healing energy into him. Henry rolled off of her and to his feet, the short silver knife still in his hand.

For nearly two whole seconds, nothing happened. The six living demons were on the outside of the devil's trap, while the angel, the human, and the fledgling were untouchable within. But then one of the demons managed to split the wooden floor with a shrieking snap, breaking the ward and all six of the beasts howled and attacked.

Henry – brave and kind Henry – bellowed his own challenge and charged into their midst before Hannah could stop him. He died almost instantly, and Hannah was thankful for the small mercy of his broken neck as two of the demons tore into his body in their fury. She knew she wouldn't survive this fight, either. There were too many of them, and she was too weak. So in the instant between Henry's death and Hannah's own, she made a choice.

Henry was dead, but there was one more Winchester. She threw herself toward the terrified fledgling who was clinging to the dead demon, and drew every bit of power she could from Henry's young son. John was only a boy, but he gave her enough strength to protect the fledgling. Just as the raging demons reached her, she got a hand on the newborn angel and shoved him away. She didn't know where she'd sent him, but as she died, she hoped desperately that it was far enough away to keep him safe.