Title: The Halliwell Coven

Author: Shae Vizla

Rating: T

Genre: Family / Adventure

Pairing: Patty / Victor (past and future), Patty / Sam (past)

Warnings: Allusions to child abuse, etc.

Disclamer: I do not have any legal rights to Harry Potter and / or Charmed.

Summary: AU. A three and half years old Harry Potter is snatched from the clutches of the Dursleys and collected by distant relatives, the Halliwell. With Penny, Patty and the girls, Harry is going to form a powerful coven united by love and magic.

Note: In this parallel universe, Patty Halliwell broke things with Sam not long after they put Paige up for adoption and she defeated the aquatic demon with the help of her mother.

Chapter 01 - An angel would like to watch over you.

April 14, 1984

Little Whinging was one of these commuter towns not far from London inhabited by fairly well-off, middle-class people. The houses were all identical and to a critical eye the village quite fit the stereotype of the suburbs: bland and predictable. Which was probably the objective sought by its inhabitants, most of all for the couple living at 4 Privet Drive: Vernon and Petunia Dursley.

It was not yet midnight, but the streets of Little Whinging were deserted and most of the houses were plunged into darkness. Therefore no one noticed the lone figure standing on the sidewalk in front of 4 Privet Drive. If someone had looked out the window, they would have seen a blond man with green eyes wearing simple, but comfortable clothes, standing under a street lamp. The man had agreeable traits but they were now frozen in a serious expression.

The man was called Leo Wyatt and during his lifetime, he had been a doctor on the Pacific battlefields of World War II. He died protecting one of his patients but then became a Whitelighter, some kind of guardian angel charged to guide future witches and Whitelighters in the path of good. One of his wards lived at 4 Privet Drive but to his greatest frustration, he was unable to reach him, despite the fact that his charge, a little boy who was not yet four years- old, regularly called for anybody's help.

Leo Wyatt had been a Whitelighter for over forty years and never in his afterlife, or even his life, had he met more odious people than the Dursleys. If asked he could even affirm that he had met friendliest demons than Vernon and Petunia Dursley and their offspring, which was really saying something. The Dursley were petty and had rigid and narrow minds. It might have been bearable and inconsequential if unfortunate circumstances hadn't made them the guardians of his charge: their nephew Harry Potter.

Harry was an adorable little boy who had kept his innocence and kindness despite the mental, and sometimes physical, abuse constantly inflicted to him by his family. But Leo was concerned that it would not last. While a very powerful magical child, a cruel trick of fate had landed him in the hands of a family of mortals who knew about the existence of magic and yet did everything to deny it even the thought of it. They even seemed to believe they could "purge" the child of any magic by abusing him constantly. Normally, in a case like this, with a young witch mistreated because of their magic, Leo would have simply grabbed the child and taken them to Magic School. There they would have been quickly given a good adoptive family. When he saw, heard or more often felt what the mortals were doing to his young charge, Leo's fingers itched to do just that and some more…

Unfortunately, the case of the young Harry was particularly complex and the Elders were unable to come to an agreement about his fate. Indeed, Harry was a witch as well as a wizard as he was linked to two forms of magic: his parents had been wands users and belonged to a different magical community that the one the Elders were in charge of. His father's family, the Potter, had very old and strong ties in this community, dating back to its foundation, while his mother was born into a strong and ancient family of witches, the Campbell, and surprisingly had been able to channel her magic via a wand and to became the other sort of witch despite the fact that neither the woman nor her mother had inherited active or passive powers.

At least three prophecies concerned the child between the two magical communities and the Elders were unable to determine whether they should leave him where the wands users had placed him (as he supposedly was to become their saviour) or if they should welcome the child in their community and train him as such. As the two magical communities ended any form of communication after the Separation, which had followed the Witch Hunts, and because the Elders were reluctant to change this situation due to its possible fateful consequences, things were incredibly complicated. Not to mention that the child was surrounded by a powerful protection related to the blood of his mother that even his own Whitelighter could not break, probably the reason behind his placement in the Dursleys' home in the first place. As the young witch/wizard was too young to go to public school and rarely left his relative's property Leo was reduced to stand, usually invisible, on the edge of the wards around the property and use his powers of perception to monitor his charge, feeling helpless.

Leo orbed in Magic School after spending several hours in front of the house of Surrey. When the sun had risen, he make himself invisible and heard the Dursleys brutally awaken their ward to prepare breakfast, father and son filling their fat bellies while Harry was denied any food and insulted profusely. Leo wondered angrily how any human being could be as cruel toward a child, much more towards a blood relative. Not only was their behaviour towards Harry atrocious and would definitely become worse as he grew and developed his powers, but Petunia and Vernon Dursley also taught very bad habits to their son that could only be prejudicial to him in later life.

Leo had finally left, frustrated to be helpless to the suffering of his young charge, before going to find his mentor Gideon. Unsurprisingly, he found him in the library of Magic School, sitting at a table surrounded by several stacks of books, most likely doing research for one of his classes. The Elder had come up with the idea to create a magical school to train future generations of witches twenty years ago, but his project had struggled to establish itself as most witches' families preferred to send their children into mortal schools (they thought it allowed them to better adapt to the society of mortals) while teaching magic directly from parent to child, as all bloodlines did for generations.

The school's first students were mainly orphans who had no other way to learn magic, although some families had also agreed to send their children out of respect for the Elders. Over the years, the school had gained an ear-to-mouth reputation and its inaccessibility to demons helped a lot. The numbers of students increased significantly as the first students gave birth to their own children and choose to send them along to Magic School. Some former students had even joined the staff of teachers.

Leo coughed to signal his presence and waited patiently as Gideon slipped a bookmark inside the book he was reading and even wrote a few lines before putting off his pencil.

"Oh hello Leo, Eva Beckman asked me a very interesting question about the Vampiric Wars of the Twelfth Century and... oh my, you seem troubled. I'm not an empath, but I can feel the frustration coming out of every pore of your skin. A problem with one of your charge, perhaps? I hope none one died…

"No, it's just... I've spent the last hours in England, near the house where little Harry Potter lives."

"Ah, the young Mr. Potter, I better understand your sullen mood... A very interesting child, promised to a bright future."

"If he manages to reach his magical maturity or even adulthood, which is not a given considering the care provided by his legal guardians," replied the Whitelighter dully.

"It's indeed most unfortunate that the wand users placed the poor child among mortals so intolerant towards magic. It was something that we hadn't considered and the protection spell his mother placed on him as well as the fact that he falls under two magical jurisdictions do not help things any."

"Is there really nothing that can be done?"

"I'm afraid there isn't. As you know, my colleagues and I are divided on the subject and the Separation greatly limits our actions despite the fact his birth was prophesized by a prophecy concerning the two communities. Many of us are hesitant to claim a child who has such a crucial role in another prophecy concerning solely another magical community, though we suspect he's also mentioned in a prophecy that only concerns our own community as well. The fact that it was the leader of the British Wizarding World who has decided to place him under this roof obviously complicates things further."

"I'm not persuaded this wizard has Harry's best interest at heart. I even found very suspicious that he placed the child with the Dursleys. Such a hate for magical users can only have deep roots and can't be new…"

"Albus Dumbledore is indeed a man who always has an agenda in mind and tends to forget that he does not manipulate pawns on a chessboard, but human beings. Unfortunately, we cannot do anything for now as the Elders have decided to wait at least until the young Harry reaches the age he will go to school and thus leave the limits of the protection before putting the issue back on session."

"But anything could have happened to him by then!"

"I'm well aware of it, but our options are limited by the duality of his magic. As you know, James Potter was the direct descendant of the third Peverell brother, Ignotus, and the legitimate heir of one of the three Deathly Hallows, the Invisibility Cloak. His wife, however, Lily Evans, descended by her father from the eldest son, Antioch, through a long line of mortals. The three brothers formed in their time a powerful magical triad that had a great impact on the wand users' community through their many discoveries in terms of magic. The Separation wouldn't grant us any rights on the child if not for Rose, the maternal grandmother of young Harry, who descended from a line of powerful American witches, the Campbells, although Rose never developed powers, nor knew of the existence of magic within her family. Her sister Janice was the only one of John Halliwell's three children to have powers."

"Halliwell?" Leo breathed.

"It's amusing, isn't it? Two lines of witches who carried the same name at some point in time. In fact, it's actually quite common because most witches' lines are feminine and therefore change their first names at every generation since women take the name of their husbands in most mortal civilizations."

Gideon continued to babble about witches' lines and families bearing the same surname with very different powers, which sometimes gave birth to quite amusing anecdotes but the Whitelighter wasn't really listening anymore. Instead, he thought about the formidable matriarch of the Warren clan he had met as a young Whitelighter and wondered if the name was really only a coincidence.

After another teacher came to get Gideon to resolve an issue, Leo made discreet enquiries on the Evans family in the mortals' archives and discovered that Rose Halliwell had immigrated to England after marrying a mortal named Jack Evans in 1954. Before that, she lived in New York and had one older brother and one older sister. His sister, Janice, had died in 1981 but the most interesting was that her brother, Allen Barclay Halliwell, who died in 1957. Leaving a widow, Penelope Halliwell, born Johnson, and a daughter, Patricia.

Leo remembered Allen perfectly, whose death marked the beginning of the legend of the relentless witch who was Penny Halliwell, matriarch of the Warren Witches. But above all, his discovery meant that Patty Halliwell and her three daughters, who were destined to receive the Power of Three, were all blood relatives of Harry on the maternal side.

The ultimate argument to allow Harry to stay with the Dursleys was the protection around 4 Privet Drive, rendered highly powerful by Harry living alongside two members of his mother's blood family, his aunt and cousin. Leo couldn't be certain but thought the wards will be even more powerful if the child lived with four relatives, although the relationship was more distant. The fact that these relatives were also powerful witches would probably enhance the protection, not to mention that Penny Halliwell was a force not to be underestimated when it came to protecting her own, was just a bonus.

Leo wondered briefly whether he should present his findings to the Elders, and then allowed himself a little smirk as he remembered that Penny inspired terror even among his superiors, deciding to go find the Halliwell directly instead. Every second his charge spent with the Dursleys was too long and he knew that things would go much faster if Penny was involved...

Notes:

Another of my stories translated in English! The French version of the Halliwell Coven is my most popular fic. I'm currently reworking it in French and taking the opportunities to also translate it in English now that I have a beta to help me with the translation, the awesome butterfly83.

Concerning the timeline, the Halliwell Coven follows the one of the Charmed show until not long after Paige's birth. As announced in the introduction, Patty broke up with her Whitelighter Sam not long after they put their daughter up for adoption (I will develop why in the next chapter) and Penny helped her vanquish the demon into the lake, so Patty didn't die in 1978.

Vocabulary:

-In the Charmed World, a good magical user is called a witch, regardless their gender, and have active and/or passive powers. Prue's telekinesy is an active power while Phoebe's premonition is considered a passive one. They also have the abilities to make potions and use spells. A witch risks losing or tainting her and his powers if they are uses for personal gains or against an innocent, thus becoming an evil witch or a warlock (a warlock is an evil male descendant of a witch).

-In the Harry Potter World, magical users use wands to focus their magical power. Male magical users are called wizards and female are witches. Light and dark magicks don't have anything to do with good and bad, despite what most people in their world think in modern time, but with intern and external magic.

Light Arts is the branch of magic that use the residual magic of the users, traveling in their body. A light spell could be used to kill (remember the trio and the troll, Ron could have killed it with a first year spell). Like everything, it's the intention that counts in magic above all. You could use all your reserve and become fatigued, but it didn't affect your magical core or your body.

Dark magic is different from black magic, even if the darkest spells can be considered as black magic. Part of that qualified of Dark arts in the HP world was in truth misplaced by the British Ministry who became very intolerant (or ignorant) towards this branch of magic. In the origin, dark magic meant magic that wasn't practiced in the outside, but in the intimacy: family magic, blood rituals, old rites that should be practiced at night (ex: Samhain).

Real dark arts were the appellation for spells that finds their source of power in the body, mental and core of the wizard. Dark spell have a backlash and some of them let the user drained and sometimes unbalanced for hours or days on end. There is a price to pay to use them and as the time passed, most wizards weren't powerful enough or willing to pay it. Overusage of dark spell can become addictive (most wizard are addicted to magic in general and use it for anything) or damage the mental functions.. It must be also said that most dark spells can only be annulled by a dark counterspell.

Betaed par butterfly83.