One minute he was asleep and dreaming he was exploring the sewers and tunnels under Manhattan, and the next, he was jarred awake by the screaming and yelling coming from outside his bedroom.

"Alex, I'm first in the bathroom!" One voice screamed. "Stay out!"

"I don't see your name on it!"

"I knew you'd say that!" The first voice continued. "So I put it there!"

There was a sound of grumbling, feet stomping through the hall and the sound of a cardboard sign being torn down and ripped to shreds. This was the routine practically every morning - the sound of brother against sister fighting for bathroom privileges. Pedestrians out on the street looked up to the residence above Waverly Submarine Sandwich shop and rolled their eyes. The Russo kids were fighting again. The youngest of the three, Max Russo, just groaned in neglected and forgotten dismay, buried his face into his pillow and pulled his blankets over his head, hoping to return to the mystery of the sunken city under New York City. Downstairs, Jerry Russo barely had his breakfast toast in his mouth when he stopped, paused and tilted his head up to the third floor.

"Jerry," His wife looked to him. "Aren't you going to handle that?"

"Me?" He reacted hesitant. "Why is it always me? Why do I got to handle it?"

"Because it's your turn!" Theresa flared her eyes and gestured with the spatula she used to flip the pancakes on the stove. Grousing and grumbling, Jerry just burned and turned disgusted to have to dispel the punishments if but to turn back from the spiral staircase to the bedrooms, grab another piece of toast and then re-continue his journey up to his teenage son and daughter. His feet ascending the stairs, his mood turning even sourer by the moment, he arrived at the bathroom door with the angriest face he could muster. His nineteen-year-old son emerged happy, content and twirling a wand in his fingers.

"What…." He screamed the first word and then lowered his voice for the rest. "…Is going on up here?" He was more annoyed than angry. "Can't I get through one morning without a battle for the bathroom?"

"Oh…" Justin smiled while checking his chin for signs of a beard. "I fixed things. I gave Alex her own bathroom."

"Her own bathroom?" Jerry relaxed and his eyebrows went up intrigued. "Oh, well, that works…" He mulled it over peripherally in his mind. "That should fix things right there. Good work, son…" He patted his son to the shoulder, turned to get some breakfast before his progeny came charging down and then stopped in an alarmed state and swung around agitated and nervous.

"Her own bathroom?" He rushed into the kid's bathroom, looking around hurriedly and frantic, pulling the shower curtain aside, peering under the sink, into the linen closet and even into the water tank of the toilet. Where was she? Where did Justin put his sister? She wasn't in the drawers or the medicine cabinet! The frantic father spun around looking up and around then heard the sound of tapping on glass. He turned to the window and looked down over Waverly Place, nearly pulling down the curtains in the process. Where was she? Where was the tapping coming from? From over his shoulder, he noticed movement and found her inside the reflection of the mirror. She was through the looking glass!

"Alex!" Jerry freaked. It was like looking through a window into a non-existent room. Within the reflection was the mirror version of the kid's bathroom, and with it was the additional image of Alex Russo soundlessly pounding at the other side of the glass, her voice trapped in that temporary mystic realm as she pounded and screamed at her father through the mirror. The sound of her voice was not coming through the mirror. She was shivering and jumping up and down in her nightgown and robe as she froze from the coldness of the alien world to which she was exiled. She was hysterical to get back.

"Alex!" Jerry shook the mirror and gave her an earthquake, looking back as she warned him not to do that by shaking her head and waving her arms. Her eyes flittered from the cold; her lips were quivering and turning blue as Jerry pressed his hands to the mirror. "I'll get you out of there!" Jerry realized his kids were using magic again and rushed out of the bathroom, past the door to Max's room and nearly ran into Justin coming in his bathrobe for his shower. Looking up to his angry father, Justin felt himself grabbed by the collar, dragged forcibly to the bathroom and pushed to the sink where he eyed his sister face to face.

"Get your sister out of that mirror!" Jerry ordered him.

"Can't I get a shower first?" Justin shined with a clever grin. "I mean, listen… it's just so quiet…" Sarcastically tilting his head back, he enjoyed the quiet as Alex pounded and screamed from inside the mirror. Jerry tilted his head back and enjoyed the quiet himself for all of three seconds.

"Yeah, you're right. It is. Well, I guess you…" He recalled his urgency. "What, no! Your sister doesn't have that kind of time! She's freezing in there!" He pointed to her shivering in the mirror. Justin looked back confusingly distracted.

"It's cold in there?"

"Yes!"

"Why?"

"I don't know! It just is!"

Alex's head turned back and forth like a lighthouse to watch her brother and father discussing the incident.

"Okay," Justin pulled his wand. "Selfish and rude you are, selfish and rude forever you will be…"

"Spare me the commentary!" Jerry rolled his eyes.

"Return home at the count of three, one-two-three…" Justin tapped at his sister's reflection in the glass and the barrier in the glass fell apart, Alex falling through in an immaterial form, falling head first to the floor and landing on her back with her robe and nightgown flailing around her body. If the cold wasn't bad enough, hitting her head and bashing her head was worse enough. Stammering and still exhaling frozen air from her lungs, Alex jumped up swinging at Justin; she would have hit him if the coldness in her bones didn't affect her aim.

"Oh, princess…" Jerry lifted his daughter up shivering and shaking, carrying her to her bedroom and laying her on her bed to pull her blankets up around her to warm up. She had ice in her hair and on the tip of her nose. Her face was white and her fingers were curled up from the cold. Shaking and trembling from the mirror, she reached to her father and hugged him hard.

"Aw…" He hugged her back. "I love you too."

"N-No, I jus-just n-need to w-warm up…" Her teeth were chattering. Jerry just grinned and held her tight, but Alex was already considering her revenge. Her chattered teeth gritted together, her bluish lips pulled back into a snarl and her brown eyes turned to the sound of water going through the pipes of the residence. Just the picture of Justin grinning to himself to have got the shower first fueled every unmoral brain cell in her head.

"J-Justin is not g-getting away with this." Her voice hissed from her lips.

"Alex, please, please…" Jerry held her and pleaded with her. "You've terrorized Justin so many times, and I've let you off the hook. Just let him have it just this once. Please! For once, be the bigger person and back down…"

"Oh, daddy…" Alex grinned through her shivering bones like an innocent little girl. "I'm afraid I just don't work that way." She made a face that was evil incarnate and whipped out her wand from her robe, directing it to the direction of the bathroom with a silent enchantment on her lips. Justin started screaming.

"I said 'please!'" Jerry cringed to see what she was capable of.

"Jerry!" Theresa called from downstairs. "Why is there chocolate syrup coming from the kitchen sink?"

Jerry looked back to Alex, the worst daughter in the world…

"I'm fixing it!" Jerry hollered back and looked to the hall. Standing in his robe tied shut, Justin stood there coated in cold chocolate syrup from his head down over his face and dripping off his body to the floor. Footprints in chocolate down the hall marked his angry path from the bathroom to confront her. He was angry. His brown eyes furrowed with extreme hatred.

"Oh, look…" Alex broke the tense silence. "Justin is out of the shower. I guess it's my turn now." She strolled forward for a nice hot shower that fogged up the bathroom and maybe the downstairs, but Justin impeded her path.

"No!" He shook his finger at her as if she was a bad pet. "No! You are not getting your own way, Alex." He was so angry his voice was coarse and hard as verbal concrete. "This house does not revolve around you. You do not always have get your own way!"

"Of course, I do…" Alex still shivered a bit as she stood him off with a twirl of her wand. "Now, get out of my way, or else…"

"Enough!" Jerry roared. "New rule… no more using spells against your brothers and sisters!"

"That's already a rule!" Jerry reminded his father with a swipe of his hand, a swipe of chocolate from his arm landing on Alex's pink carpeted walls. "And Alex has broken it a million times. Dad, for the love of God, take her wand away!"

"Stay out of this, Justin!"

"Hey, guys!" Justin and Alex's younger brother, Max, stood in the hallway drinking chocolate syrup from a plastic cup. "There's chocolate syrup coming from the shower. Santa Claus finally got my letter!" He grinned satisfied from his unhealthy sugar buzz and returned to fill up his cup. His father and siblings looked to him then returned their attention back to the current incident.

"Okay, enough!" Jerry tried for the last time to be a father who could be friends with his kids. "Alex, get rid of the chocolate and let Justin finish his shower..."

The spoiled rotten daughter in Alex scowled at that edict.

"No….." Max was screaming his distaste for that spell before Alex had even turned the syrup in the pipes back to water.

"Then wait your-own-freaking-turn." Jerry finished his thought with a disgusted grimace. "This house does not revolve around you, it revolves around me! I pay the bills, I do most of the work around here and…" He raised his voice for Theresa to hear. "I cover the majority of the discipline around here!"

He waited for a response from her before continuing.

"Dad…" Justin tapped his father's shoulder with chocolate dripping from his finger. "The wand thing…"

"No more fighting!" Jerry screamed waving his arms and getting a bit dizzy from that outburst. He turned and tramped toward the hall to return to the downstairs for a cold waiting breakfast, leaving behind two angry and hostile teenagers to stew and brood in their forced co-habitation.

"I wish you wasn't my sister!" Justin stared her down.

Jerry turned around after hearing that.

"I wish you wasn't my brother!" Alex reciprocated the feeling.

"Okay you two…" Jerry turned to them. "I want you to…" He noticed both their wands had started glowing. The tip of Justin's wand was glowing brightly at the same time as Alex's wand. Both of them were glowing together in unison growing brighter and brighter. Alex looked at what was happening, looked to her father and back to Justin; the both of them mystified as to what was happening. Justin tried shaking his wand to stop it glowing.

"Justin!" Jerry started reaching toward him. "Drop the wand! Drop your wand!"

"Dad, what's happening?" Justin watched as the light from their wands continued growing brighter and brighter. Alex tossed her wand to him and the light grew even brighter until the three of them were blinded by its brilliance. Jerry reached out to stop whatever spell was happening, but he was too late. Unable to see what was happening, he turned his head from the light and reached to take his son's wand… instead grabbing nothing but air. Justin felt the world vanish from under his feet as the light faded away…