What If Dan Accepted Magic?
By JustEs
Author's Notes: A different site is having a fanfic contest, going through the various seasons of Charmed and asking a "What if" question. "What if Dan accepted magic?" was the question for Season Two. The specific rules for this contest were:
"Dan may find out about magic at any point during Season Two. When he does, he must ultimately accept it.
The story may occur at any time after "Witch Trial."
This story may be about Dan accepting magic or it may be about any time after that. If it is about a time after he accepts magic, it must be assumed that he did (although reflecting back on that is allowed).
The story may focus on Dan or he may be a secondary character to the Charmed Ones.
Dan is the only character required to be in this story and all canon characters are allowed to show up in this story, but if they are from a later season than the time of the story and are more than one-time guests, there must be a reason."
This is my entry. I hope you like it.
Piper sat in her office at P3, doing the books from the previous night. She and her sisters were on "Charmed duty" the night before, saving an innocent from a demon, so her manager had put the receipts and cash in the safe in the office, knowing Piper would want to do the deposit herself.
Thinking of the previous night, she sighed. Times like this she really missed Leo. The warlock hurt Phoebe before the sisters could vanquish him and without their whitelighter to heal her, they had to take her to the hospital and trying to come up with a reason for how Phoebe got her injury was interesting. Things were so much easier when Leo could just heal any injury caused by evil. And she could've just frozen the fireball the demon threw at Phoebe, call for Leo, have him come in, grab them and orb them and their innocent back to the Manor where they could figure out how to vanquish the warlock without anyone getting hurt, including the innocent and Phoebe.
Of course, if Leo hadn't gone against the rules and healed her when she died of oroya fever, she wouldn't even be here. But she did wish that the Elders hadn't decided to punish Leo by taking him away and not letting him come back. It had been a month since the last time they saw him or heard anything from the Elders and now the sisters no longer expect him back, nor did they think they'd get a substitute whitelighter. They were now all on their own.
Now Piper smiled. Thank God for Dan! If he wasn't around, she wasn't sure what she would've done. Of course he was upset when she called out Leo's name rather than his after Leo healed her, but once she explained to Dan that Leo was gone and wasn't coming back, things were fine again.
She smiled even larger when the door opened and Dan walked in the door, smiling at her. Yeah, he didn't make her heart go pitty-pat the way seeing Leo always did and she knew she could never love Dan the way she would always love Leo, but Dan was here. And, most important of all, because Dan didn't know the family secret, he treated her as if she was normal. Her sisters kept insisting that she should tell him, but remembering Andy's reaction when he found out about the family secret, Piper just didn't want to find out what Dan's reaction would be, and she enjoyed pretending that they was just a normal woman living a normal life and not a witch, no matter how much she liked saving innocents.
"So?" Dan asked as he came over and kissed her. "Are you ready to go to the bank?"
"Just about. I balance just fine. Just have to write up the deposit slip."
She smiled thinking how nice it was that Dan always wanted to walk her to the bank so she would be safe even carrying that much cash. If only he knew she didn't need his help at all. No, it was best that he didn't know.
But that changed when they walked into the door of the bank – right in the midst of a robbery! Piper longed to just freeze the place and take the gun away from the robber. But she knew she couldn't do that – not and expose magic to all of these people, especially to Dan! No, they'd just have to do whatever the robber told them to do and let him escape and then she'd call Darryl and hopefully he'd be able to catch the thief.
But that changed when suddenly the robber grabbed Piper, putting the gun to her head, trying to use her as a hostage. That quickly decided her. Since he'd grabbed her arms and not her hands, she quickly froze the room, slipped out of his grasp, found a pot of flowers and knocked him over the head, even as the room unfroze. The funny thing is everyone thought that Dan had saved them and she didn't do anything to let them think otherwise, and fortunately neither did Dan.
Or at least he didn't until they were out of the bank and she ended up having to tell him the whole thing, including the fact that she and her sisters were witches, but they were good witches, ones who did good things with her powers like saving those people in the bank, and magic was real. She also told him about Leo being their guardian angel, the reason why he hung around the house so much.
Dan had to admit that yes, magic was real, but that didn't stop him from being angry. "You always told me that you could tell me anything but you didn't tell me about this? I never want to see you again!"