Disclaimer: Anything that you might recognize is not owned by me. Harry Potter and all the characters (except for Alex) are owned by J.K. Rowling. Charmed is owned by The WB network. The song is owned by Switchfoot.
Chapter 1:
Everything inside me looks like everything I hate
You are the hope I have for change
You are the only chance I'll take.
-On Fire, Switchfoot.
You know, if asked to describe myself, I'd call myself normal. Maybe a little weird, okay fine, I'm a lot weird. I'm really sarcastic, bitter, cynical and angry and I have a twisted sense of humour. Anyway as I was saying… wait, you ask why I am like that. Well aren't we all?
Don't we all pretend that we're really strong and that we don't need anyone or anything to make us feel better about our self? Don't we all build metaphorical walls and hide behind them just so no one can hurt us? Don't we all just have very few friends, the less people you know and trust the better; that way you have less people likely to abandon you when they get tired of you. Don't we all not care about what people think about us cause, hey, who gives a damn about what the others think about me, I only care what the people I care about think about me. Don't we all pretend that we don't believe in the love crap and fairytales are for idiots?
Well, okay, so not ALL of us think like that, but I do. And trust me there are quite a few people out there who think like me; well least I used to think like that. Not that I've completely changed now, let's just say my views are a lot more moderate now, and I'm not that jaded anymore. Seven years at Hogwarts and the people around me changed that. You see to understand how things are different now, you have to understand how things were back then for me, and why they were the way they were y'know. And when I say Hogwarts changed me, I don't mean just the magic part helped. 'Cause you see, I've been surrounded by magic ever since I was born, but just the atmosphere, the people, that's what helped the most.
Magic; as a child I was always taught that magic was in the blood, that it was passed through generations, there could be times where it skipped a generation or two, but magic always stayed in the family. If someone didn't have magical ancestors, then they could never have magic in them. You see, my family was a very powerful family when it came to magic, now it's only my grandmother, her sister and me, but once upon a time (it's not a fairy tale, mind you) people traveled from all over to ask us for help, magical help. I was also taught that while magic made us different from others, it didn't make us better than them, it simply gave us an opportunity to help others, the ones who couldn't help themselves, the ones that needed help; I was taught that our powers weren't for ourselves, but for others, several times I learnt that personal gain is a no-no the hard way. There were many times I caught myself thinking if we saved the ones that couldn't save themselves cause we had that kind of power, then who would save us?
Anyway we witches went to normal schools and high schools and colleges and worked, we didn't have special magical occupations; magical lives as such. We didn't wear black robes or pointed hats and we certainly did not wave around wands and cackle while mixing something vile in a huge black pot that hung over a fire. And we most definitely did not have a black raven cawing in the background. As a child I hated the stereotypes that people associated witches with, we weren't some evil, ugly spinsters who didn't have anything better to do than wreck havoc in other people's lives.
You see, my grandmother and her sisters were really powerful witches, the Charmed Ones. Yeah I bet you've heard of them, so I'm not going to go into the details of their power and stuff. People believe that my grandmothers had happy endings, that after seven years of non stop fighting evil, it all calmed down and that they all settled down and had kids of their own, but that's not what really happened. To make a very long story short, my grand-aunt Paige died while saving one of her charges, Luke. After her death her husband moved to New Jersey to be closer to his family along with the twins and Henry Jr. I still see them occasionally on Christmas (if I'm not spending it at Hogwarts) or over the summer. They aren't much into magic though.
My other grand-aunt Phoebe's husband, Cooper too was killed in a surprise demon attack on the manor. Heart-broken, Grandma Phoebe never married again. They never had any kids.
My grandmother, Grams, their sister, Piper, well she had a roller coaster ride too. My uncle, Wyatt, was so sick of magic and the 'bad luck' that it had bought our family, ran away from home at a some-what young age, no one ever saw him again, and he warned Grams against keeping an eye on him through magic. My aunt, Melinda, lives in a gorgeous apartment in the city. She went to fashion school in New York and is a brilliant designer. I'm pretty close to her. She gets lots of designer clothes for free which she passes on to me. Hence my extensive and ridiculously beautiful wardrobe. She helps Grams and Aunt Phoebe keep the demons in line while I'm away.
My dad, Chris, fell in love with a beautiful woman and soon she got pregnant with me. They then got married and I was born. (Yes, it happened in that order) But fate had other plans for our little family too; after my dad died when I turned five, my mother couldn't bear to even look at my anymore. She said that I reminded her too much of him. So she left. Just like that. That's when I moved to San Francisco and I have lived with Grams and Grandma Phoebe in the manor ever since.
So, back to what I was originally saying, about magic, and the horrible stereotypes; I hated them and I hated Halloween where people paraded the streets dressed as evil witches and monstrous werewolves and blood-thirsty vampires. People didn't know the truth about werewolves or vampires or witches or anything magical so they distorted my world into something convenient for them.
Seeing how magic had not done anything remotely good for my family, I never had faith in it, much like my Uncle Wyatt. Still I never thought of running away, I loved whatever was left of my family too much for that. But I never used my magic much, and being a charmed descendant I had a lot of it. I have whitelighter powers; orbing and healing. I also have telekinesis (the whitelighter in me makes it work differently) and faint telepathy, my Aunt Prue's powers, and my Aunt Phoebe's power of empathy. I can do the normal chanting spells crap, but I was never the one for rhyming, so someone had to write the spells for me.
Every time I saw someone dressed as an 'evil witch' my blood would boil and all I wanted to do was rip that fucking wart off the person's nose and shove it up their… well where the sun doesn't shine, if you know what I mean. Not all witches were evil; it's not who we are but what we do that defines us, right? I mean people back in the seventeenth century just burned women on the stake because they were different, because they had the power to do good but people couldn't understand it so they feared it and tried to get rid of it. I'm not saying that all witches are good, no, there are bad witches and there is bad magic, just like there are two sides to everything. But if we don't try to understand the difference between the two and just randomly work towards eradicating it, then what's the difference between good and evil? If a bunch of people hundreds of years ago didn't bother understanding us, and if people don't bother understanding us now, then how can we say that we've progressed? That we are a civilization? What's civil about any of this? Progress isn't just about technology, it's also about the thinking and beliefs.
So from an early age I was were angry and bitter. I mean here I was a young part Wicca part white-lighter part human (my mother was/is human and my dad is a witch-lighter), living among humans, but not really one of them.
But it all got even more complicated the year I turned eleven; I got a letter that seemed to be written on really old and thick paper (or parchment as I now know it's called) with a really cool emblem that said Hogwarts and had a lion, a serpent, a badger and an eagle. Also there was a saying in Latin, Draco Dormiens Nunquam Titillandos. I remember laughing when I read that; never tickle a sleeping dragon. The letter itself seemed very weird then and I had looked to my grams for some kind of explanation, I remember her having this really serene, knowing expression on her face.
Later that day, this really weird looking man, with a really long silvery beard and even longer hair, in this plum coloured suit that smelled of mothballs came calling. Looking at him, I couldn't help but feel suspicious, but one look into his twinkling blue eyes, I relaxed. I could trust him. His name, it turns out, was Albus Dumbledore, and he explained to me about Hogwarts. It was real, the stupid black robes and pointed hats and boiling cauldrons and swishing wands was all fucking real. But these people were good witches too. So once again everything I believed in had just collapsed in front of my eyes. Magic had a way of doing that to you, and man, I hated magic.
One of the major reasons why I didn't want to go to Hogwarts was that I'd have to make new friends, something that I had never quite succeeded in. I had met Lily when I was a couple of months old and told her about me when we turned five. She had accepted it and slowly she started to learn the truth about my family. She had accepted it all, without any question and I will always be grateful to her for that. Making new friends would mean I would have to open up to them, trust them, more importantly tell them about me and hope to God they would accept me. I'm not hesitant to tell people about me just because of what I am, also because of who I am. You see, the Halliwells, they are sort of like magical royalty of sorts. Not that it make us a cent richer, only a lot more famous. I was hesitant to leave grams and Aunt Phoebe too. I wasn't much of an adjusting person.
On Gram's insistence, on my tenth birthday I had adopted my father's middle name as my second last name in order to avoid unwanted questions. So now I was Alexandria (my birth-mother didn't want a name starting with the traditional 'P') Jane (no trivia pertaining to this name) Halliwell (we all had to take on that name, Grandma Penny demanded that of us) Perry. I'll say that again, Alexandria Jane Halliwell Perry. If anyone asked I'd just say Alex Perry, though.
With a lot of coaxing, my family managed to convince me to give Hogwarts a try. But that would mean I wouldn't be able to go to the boarding school in England with my best friend, Lily. Yeah you see Lily Evans and I had been friends ever since I can remember. You remember me telling you about my dad's beautiful wife, well she was British and my dad had moved to England to be with her. She had gone to Hogwarts herself, which is why I had those abilities as well. After his death and my subsequent abandonment, I moved to San Francisco and I had to leave my best friend behind. Needless to say we kept in touch and always met during the holidays.
Really pissed off, I nearly refused to go to Hogwarts. It's one thing to not have a normal life, but to give up the people that accepted my not-so-normal one was another thing. I was already confused about my 'ethnicity' as such, about myself, my powers, and now giving up a person who had accepted me for who I was when I myself hadn't done that, it was too much. Without Lily, I felt lost. So Grams sat me down and told me what her mother had told her and Aunt Phoebe when they had questioned their life and destiny after Aunt Prue's death. I can still remember her words as if it had been just yesterday that she had said them to me, "I know it's a lot, sweetie. More than anybody should have to deal with, but you're going to have to deal with it the best way you know how. Leaving people behind, learning about your new abilities... this is your path. This is your destiny. Get angry at it, cry about it, but don't fight it. Or it'll consume you." Just like it did your Uncle Wyatt; she didn't say it out loud, but I know that's what she was thinking, just like I was thinking it too.
And so I called Lily and told her how I wasn't going to go to school with her and she said in an uncomfortable voice that she, too, was going to go to another school. Understanding that she didn't want to talk about it, and at that moment I didn't either, I had simply hung up. I didn't feel any anger towards Lily for not going to 'our' school or that she hadn't told me about it sooner, sometimes you keep the thing that you're dreading to most to do for the last moment, hoping that maybe you won't have to do it after all.
And so I went to London with Aunt Phoebe and Grams. On platform 10 3/4th, that took a little while to find, I remember this weird nervous feeling that settled at the bottom of my stomach. All those kids, people, trunks, the owls, the noise, the excitement, it had been so overwhelming. Looking at the magnificent and scarlet Hogwarts Express, I couldn't quell the excitement that took over me too. I had turned to grams Grandma Phoebe and Aunt Mel and very unlike me, enveloped them all into one huge smothering hug. "I'm going to miss you so much," I had fiercely whispered, "I love you all." They'd hugged me back and said that they loved me too. Then I turned and climbed onto the train and didn't look back once as the train pulled away from the station.
Hogwarts, here I come.
Unlike other people, I didn't have to drag along a heavy trunk, mine had been shrunk thanks to Gram's spell and I had the counter spell in my pocket, that I would have to chant before getting off the train so that it would be brought to the school later along with everyone else's.
Anyway, there I had been walking through the corridors, looking for an empty compartment, when I walked past a couple of guys, four of them actually, they were really noisy and loud, but they'd had that companionship amongst them that achingly reminded me of Lily and me. I know, you must be thinking, how can I know that by just bumping into them? Well you forget my empathy, and they were still behind me, laughing and talking away, hence I can deduce things with my great deductive skills.
Suddenly out of nowhere I'd heard a shriek, "Lexie?" And then bam! I was flat on the floor on my back, a throbbing skull where I'd bumped in on the ground, a lot of red clouding my vision and a very loud voice yelling in my ear, "Oh my god! Lexie, what in the world are you doing here!"
Even though I was being crushed to death (it's not that Lily is fat or something, it's just that I'm really tiny. Sometimes the best of us are beaten by something as stupid as genes. I inherited Grams silky hair, although her's is brown, my is midnight black. I inherited Aunt Phoebe's petite frame and her love for exercise and martial arts. But I also inherited our family's pitiful height when it comes to women. At age eleven, I was only four feet eight inches and I wanted to kill someone or something because of that. I looked like some child from a third world country no offence meant to anyone all short and skinny. I still managed to roll my eyes as I awkwardly patted her on her back, "Oxygen Lils or I might just die." Since I was so winded, it hadn't come out quite the way I planned it to and she took it as a grunt of approval, continuing to hug the life out of me. Then someone came to my rescue, or least tried to.
"Erm, you girls need some help?"
This time I successfully managed to shove Lily off me and stand up. Throwing a smile her way, I looked at the person who had asked if we needed any help. It was one of those boys, and I could tell he meant well even if I didn't have empathetic powers, his warm but tired amber eyes said it all. The boy was a little too tall for his age; a little too thin but not third-world-country-looking like I was; his face had premature lines and several scars. Biting back a retort, I forced myself to be nice, "Nah, its okay. Thanks anyway." I even smiled, hah Aunt Phoebe, I can be nice!
He grinned widely and thrust his hand forward, "American, eh. I'm Remus Lupin."
I shook his hand, "Yup, I'm Alex Perry."
"Lily Evans. British, Long live the Queen."
He had a nice laugh, a genuine one where he threw his head back and the sides of his eyes crinkled, it was a hearty laugh. "Nice to meet you too, but I must get back to my friends." With that he walked towards his friends, who had disappeared into a compartment.
Later that journey, Lily and I had found ourselves an empty compartment and talked. She'd explained how she'd got the letter, but didn't want to tell me anything yet since she knew of my hatred towards black robes and wands and such. She was scared that I'd hate her and never speak to her for going to a place that endorsed the things that I so hated. I had laughed and thrown my arms around her, only Lily could think something like that. I loved Lily like a sister. She was always so thoughtful of others feelings, so concerned about me and tried every possible way she knew to make me feel comfortable with myself and around others. As she talked animatedly about her trip to Diagon Alley, I tuned myself out; just looking at her, listening to her pleasant voice, man I felt so at ease around her. Lily was a very pretty girl; the kind you knew would grow up to become beautiful. She had long, dark red hair, silky and slightly wavy; vivid green eyes, not the murky green that most people have, but the real, emerald green ones; pale complexion dotted with freckles. She was taller than me, five-two already; the bitch. She was sure going to break hearts when she grew up, if not now.
Anyway, we continued talking and I told her about my trip to Diagon Alley and how it had nearly driven me insane, how Aunt Phoebe actually had to drag me into Madame Malkin's to get robes for school and how I'd been very rude to Ollivander when he's asked me to try out several wands.
Together we'd laughed as we tried out the all the sweets that the lady with the food trolley had; Lily was a little scared of the chocolate frogs at first, and I had loved the Bertie Bott's jelly beans till I had the vomit flavoured one, after that I was a little wary of them. Least to say that my first trip to Hogwarts was memorable, and I knew my years there would be too. I knew that there would be several other obstacles concerning my roots and magic, my thoughts and my feelings, but with my best friend right there next to me, I remember thinking, 'Bring it on.'