Three Sisters and a Brother

Prologue

Penny Halliwell sighed heavily, shutting the Book of Shadows. Flipping through the pages of the tome, whenever she had a horrible day and she had more than her fair share of those in her life she would always sooth her. Their family had been through so much that it made her feel better when she thought of the generations of women who had flipped through it before her.

It made her feel better to think that all those women had their own troubles had been where she was now, flipping through all of these pages just as she was doing right now and they had all managed to overcome whatever had troubled them. If they hadn't, then she would not be able to be here right now, being concerned for the future of their family.

And how could she not be? She had checked the family tree, she had checked it over and over again to see if she was wrong, to find any sort of explanation for how it could have happened but she could not find anything. Every Warren witch who had been born into their family had all been women, any sons that were listed were ones that had been adopted in.

Her finger had traced her brother's name, next to her own. She hadn't thought about Gordon in such a long time, he had been the child of two mortals that had come to her Mother and her cousin for protection as they had done something, Penny couldn't remember what, to anger a powerful coven of warlocks. Her Mother had been able to vanquish the warlocks but they hadn't been able to save Gordon's parents.

At the time, her brother had been a newborn, literally only a few days old, and without a name. His parents had been on the run from that coven for so long that they had given birth to him on the side of the road to the city and because they had to keep going that they didn't even have the time to give him a name, they had said that they would give him one once the coven had been dealt with and they were safe.

But they never had that chance to do that. The baby had needed a home and her Father, Penny remembered him as a gentle man with kind eyes and with a great talent at playing the piano, had always wanted a son and her Mother had agreed with him and so a few weeks later the baby, who had a new name that he now shared with his new father, had been brought home and Penny finally had a brother.

It had been a happy childhood, for the most part considering that Warlocks and Demons were something of a constant threat and as Penny was the one with an actual power meant that she had to spend most of her time making sure that her brother was protected, and almost all her memories were sweet ones.

But childhood didn't last forever and when children grew, they began to notice things. And it didn't take Gordon long to notice that his mother and his sister had powers that he and his Father did not. To the credit of their parents neither of them lied, once Gordon was old enough to question they told him the truth, that he was adopted but that did not make him any less their son.

But magic was power and if Penelope Halliwell learned anything it was that men would alway want power more than anything else and Gordon had not been any different in that regard, her brother yes his blood had never made any difference to her when it came to that but he was still a man, still weak and far too easily corrupted.

It had been subtle things at first, looking back at it. Gordon would start to sneer whenever Penny would use her magic for something, for anything. He would tell her that it was personal gain and that their Father didn't like it when she used magic anyway, unless she was using it to defend herself from a demon or a warlock.

Penny had just laughed at him, why not? After all he was just her stupid little mortal brother, what did he know about being a witch? What did he know about magic?

Looking back, she had to wonder if that had played a part in what would happen later and if she had acted differently then maybe it would have made a difference but she could not have known at the time, she was just a little girl and she thought that her little brother was be annoying because what else was the point of little siblings?

But time moved on, and what started as just her brother trying to make her use less magic became something much more than that. He had started to spend time with other witchies, he studied the occult as best as he could and started to spend less and less time at home, and when he was at home he snapped at all of them.

It had been Aunt Phoebe, well she wasn't really her Aunt as Phoebe had only been her Mother's cousin and not her sister but she had been around the manor almost her entire life and Penny and Gordon had taken to calling her aunt and neither she nor their Mother had made any effort to stop them from doing so, who had warned them that she had seen this behavior before.

Pearl Russell was another cousin of her Mother and Aunt Phoebe. she had fallen in love with a powerful warlock who was still out there somewhere even to this day who had corrupted her and turned her against her family. But he had only been able to corrupt her because of her feelings that were already there, a massive well of resentment to her cousins because the both of them were more powerful than she was.

Her Mother and her Aunt didn't have any choice, they had to vanquish their cousin. It was not a story that was easy for them to tell, they had told Penny when she had turned seventeen and the both of them had a bit too much to drink. It was horrible and she had months and months of nightmares about it, nightmares which she had never told her Mother about as she had not wanted her to feel worse than she already did.

All that was left of Pearl Russell in the whole world now was her old sofa which had been placed in the attic, out of sight and out of mind unless you had to come up to the attic often which as witches her Mother and Aunt often had to do. Why they had never gotten rid of it she really couldn't say, maybe they wanted to keep it so that they could use it to remind them both of better times.

Or maybe it had simply felt wrong to eradicate all trace of their cousin completely, whatever else she was she had still been a part of the family and nothing could alter that fact. It was an odd thing to keep as a reminder of her but it was what they had chosen to keep, it was something at the very least. Something real, something that you could touch.

It was more than she could say for her brother.

It was nineteen forty-seven, their Father had died during the war and Penny had to think that had played a part in it as well, and Gordon had just turned sixteen. Their Mother hadn't wanted to believe that her son was following the same path as her cousin had and so she had all but banished her cousin from the manor and she turned a blind eye to any of her brother's behavior that could set of an alarm bell.

And that was when the bodies started to turn up.

Women, young women, with a stab wound in their backs. All found in different areas of the city and on the surface there did not seem to be anything that connected them but then the police did not know what they should be looking for. They were witches, all of them and all of them had been murdered by some coward of a warlock who could not even look them in the eye as he killed them and stole their powers.

But...it wasn't a warlock. She almost wished that it had been, she did wish that it had been. She wished that it had been the Source of all Evil himself as even that would have been better than the truth.

It was Gordon.

He knew all of the witches, or at least knew of them, through their Mother or their Aunt or through her and the power stealing athame that he had used had come out of their attic. A trophey from a very stupid warlock who had tried to steal Aunt Phoebe's powers and had been vanquished in a cloud of ice. He had killed all of those witches and he had stolen their powers.

Mother had screamed when she had found out, she had begged for it not to be true. And when Gordon attacked them, the both of them, with one of the powers that he had stolen from one of the witches she hadn't even tried to defend herself. If Penny had not been there, her Mother would have died that day she did not doubt it.

Gordon at the time might have had more powers than she had, but he was not a witch. Not only did he not know how to use the powers that he had stolen, but his body had not been built to handle magic. It was burning him up, he was going to die unless something wasn't done and whatever was going to be done quickly.

She had forced Gordon back and got her Mother back to the relative safety of the manor and called Phoebe back to come and help her, Mother had basically been comatose at this point so there had been no arguments about that point at the very least, and it was decided that they would brew a power stripping potion for him and then they would turn him over to the police.

It had to be done, he had killed people. Innocents. He was her brother and she loved him, but that didn't change what needed to be he done.

Turned out, they did not need to have bothered with brewing the potion.

He had taken in so many powers that, with the stress of their brief duel pilled on top of that, it had caused his heart to burst when he had been running down the street.

When her Mother had come back to them, she choose not to acknowlege that Gordon had ever existed in the first place. She sold of anything of his that could be considered valuable and then she burned the rest of it, including all of his pictures and his birth certificate and Penny knew better than to ever bring up his name ever again.

The only thing in the entire manor that pointed to the fact that her brother had existed was his name on the family tree, and honestly that probably only survived because her Mother had forgotten about that. Despite everything, Penny did not hate her brother. She still loved him and she still missed him even to this day but he had taught her a very valuable lesson and one that she had never forgotten.

Men could not be trusted with magic, even if they were born with it. Even if they were meant to have it.

It was now or never.

She moved away from the Book of Shadows, over to the potion table in the middle of the attic where the mixture had been cooling for the last half an hour. It had been a very long time since she had needed to make a batch of power stripping potion. She had prayed that she would never need to do it again but she didn't have any choice.

It was cool to the touch, so Penny filled a vial with it and began to walk down the attic stairs and then made her way over to the nursery where her daughter and her...her newest grandchild, would be waiting.

Patty was sitting in a handcarved rocking chair, the baby was laying in her arms but from where Penny was standing in the doorway she couldn't tell if he was sleeping or not. The sun shinning through the nursery window turned her daughter's light brown hair into pure gold and the soft smile on her face made her look even more beautiful than she actually was.

Penny didn't say anything or making a move towards her daughter, she was never going to forgive her for this and so Penny just wanted to enjoy the peaceful moment for a little while longer.

It did not last very much longer as her daughter glanced up to see her standing in the doorway and the soft smile on her face fell away to be quickly replaced with a frown as she rose from the rocking chair. "Mother." Her voice was clipped and cold and it didn't sound like her daughter, not at all. Anger didn't suit Patty, but it did make her terrifying.

Her daughter walked over to the crib in the corner of the room and laid the baby down in it, tucking him in, before turning around to face her. Her hand was resting on the side of the crib as she looked at her, looking at the vial in her hands. And she really was lucky that her daughter didn't channel her power through her eyes, and that she was naturally immune to it, other wise she would probably be so frozen that her daughter wouldn't be able to unfreeze her.

"Mother, we have been over this. I do not want to have this argument with you again, I've agreed to bind his powers just like the girls but that is all I am willing to do." Patty had that look in her eyes, it was the same sort of look she had when she told her that she was going to marry Victor. It was a look that said nothing Penny was going to say was going to change her mind.

But she had to try, if nothing else then to say that she did.

"Patricia, please listen to me." Calling her daughter by her full name and telling her please were so unsusal that she knew that she got her daughter's attention. "There has never been a boy born into our familes, not since Melinda Warren herself. I don't know how this could have happened but something has gone wrong, deeply wrong."

"There is nothing wrong with my son-

"That he's your son is what's wrong!" Penny shouted at her daughter which bought her a glare from her and set the babe in the crib to whimpering, Penny bit her lip and waited for Penny to sooth the boy before she continued. "Patty, I am sorry. But I have seen what magic does to men, I have seen it a thousand, thousand times before. For our safety, and for his, you need to let me give him this potion so I can strip him of his powers."

"No."

"Patty, our family's destiny-"

"Oh, this is nothing to do with our family!" Patty hissed at her, it might have been a shout if not for the baby. "If it was, then you wouldn't even be suggesting taking Chris's powers. Prue has telekinesis, Piper can freeze time and Phoebe has visions. It only makes sense that Chris will have the fourth power, Melinda said that the Charmed Ones would be four siblings. Siblings, not sisters."

Penny bit her lip, took a deep breath and put out her answer to that idea. "If it is true, if Prue, Piper, Phoebe and Chris are the Charmed Ones, then why did Chris not come back with the girls from the future during all that horror that warlock."

Patty frowned and Penny knew that she had not thought of that, aside from everything that had gone wrong that day, not the least of which being that they had to bind Prue, Piper and unborn Phoebe's powers, it had been so wondeful to see that all of her girls would grow into strong and beautiful and powerful women and witches but that was the point.

There were only three of them. Three, not four. No sign of another sibling. No brother. No sister.

"I don't know, there was clearly something that the girls weren't telling us." Obviously, they couldn't tell them much about the future but even so they were very careful with their words. "Any maybe your right, maybe this wasn't the way it was meant to be. Maybe the future has changed somehow but whatever it is, I don't care. I am not stripping Chris of his powers, I am his Mother and that is the end of it."

"Patty-"

"No, stop it right now, I mean it Mother." Patty said with a glare. "I had to give up my daughter to protect her Mother, you have no idea how much that kills me. To know that someone else is holding her right now, to know that someone else is bathing her and feeding her and that one day she is going to be calling some other women Mom, that kills me. But I will take that pain happily because I know that she is safe. Chris is safe, and he is safer with powers. I am not going to strip them from him, I will not."

Patty marched over to her and took the potion vial from her hands before Penny could stop her, she was about to use her power to bring the vial back to her but she didn't. Instead, she threw the vial out of the window and the sound of breaking glass reached her ears, it sounded like the future breaking apart, Penny let out a heavy sigh, her eyes falling shut. "This is a mistake."

"Maybe or maybe not, but he has a chance. That's the best I can give him."

From downstairs, the sound of the door opening reached them and the squealing of three little girls as well as Victor's words echoed out, trying to keep a handle on them. Penny left the nursery, she didn't feel like being with them at the moment and so she walked back up to the attic and sat herself down with the family tree on Aunt Pearl's couch.

At the very bottom of the tree where her granddaughter's names and with a sigh she added one more, four names stared back at her now. Not three. Four siblings, four children, four grandchildren, four Charmed Ones.

Three sisters and a brother.

"Don't let this be a mistake."

Well, here we are again.

I think it's safe to say that Three Sisters and a brother was my most popular Charmed story and it's one that I have always wanted to get back to at someone point, with a couple of serious alterations.

For example, in this version of reality why was Chris not there during the events of That 70's Episode, well, you'll just have to wait and see for that.

However, unlike my original story do not expect the next to lead directly into the events of the series, instead we are going to see the Charmed Ones being raised together and I plan to write about Phoebe leaving for New York in full, instead of it just being flashbacks.

With a ton of love,

DiscordantSymphony