Author's Notes: I'm happy to see that people like this story so much so far :) I had a lot of fun writing this. This was actually my first fiction of Charmed (the other ones I've written came later, after another story I had written that I'll be putting up later). Thanks for all the well wishings with the story:-D

Upon orbing back to the manor, Chris managed to get them into the living room before the innocent began fighting him to let him go. He stumbled back and landed on the couch, which seemed to make him freak out even more.

"Oh God," he said quickly, fumbling around to try and stand up. All he managed to do was get himself sitting up on the couch, where he felt at his side. When he pulled up his shirt there was a cut across his skin. It wasn't very deep but it was bleeding. He winced at the sight of it.

"You gonna be okay?" Chris asked, raising an eyebrow before turning to call for his brother. "Wyatt? Wyatt!" He lowered his voice. "My brother can heal your wound, don't worry."

"Chris?" The sound of his mother, Piper's, voice came from within the kitchen. There was the sound of feet moving across the ground, and she set the basket of laundry she had near the staircase before she move into the living room. "I'm gonna need you to fold those clothes before—" Piper paused when she saw the boy sitting on her couch. "…And who is this?"

"An innocent," Chris explained. "The one I—and Wyatt—" his brother appeared on the staircase when he spoke, "figured was going to be attacked next by the warlock."

"Well, I'll be damned," Wyatt said. "You were right."

"There'll be time for that later," Piper said. She pointed to the innocent, who was gripping his side and making a slight face. "We need you to heal him."

"How did you—"

"Oh please, Chris, like I haven't been doing this for decades. I know what a hurt innocent looks like." Piper chortled, and gave her younger son a knowing smile. Patting his arm, she gestured to the laundry basket by the stairs. "When you get him all squared away I want you to fold those for me. You were supposed to this morning but you left too quickly."

"Yes, Mom. I'll get to it sometime tonight."

"Tonight," she echoed, and with a look that meant serious business, Piper turned around and headed back toward the stairs, which she went up and disappeared, calling after Leo in the process.

While Chris and Piper talked Wyatt had healed the guy, who was now gripping his side and looked positively surprised.

"You know," he said, "I'd…heard stories about whitelighters and stuff from my dad, but I didn't know you guys could actually do that."

Wyatt and Chris shared a look with one another. It was Chris who spoke. "So was your dad a witch?"

"Well, that's kind of the keyword there…was." The boy shifted on the couch. "He had powers, but he wanted to have a normal life with my mom, so he bound them for her. He never really liked them much. But that was after they had me. I mean, my dad bound my powers, too, before they showed up, so I never really actually got to use 'em. I just knew I was supposed to have 'em…"

"So…wait." Wyatt raised an eyebrow. "You mean your dad and you both had powers, but he bound them because he wanted to have a normal life? He can't still be alive, can he? Warlocks don't come after you unless there's a power for them to steal."

"No, he, uh, he died just a few months ago, actually. Old age."

"His dad dying must have undone the binding," Chris mused aloud. "Kind of like what happened with mom and everyone when Grams died."

"What's your power?" Wyatt asked suddenly. "If it's taken this long to show up…"

The innocent on the couch had a thoughtful look on his face. "I think my dad's was called Astral Projection. So it's probably that, or at least some form of it. I used it earlier this week by mistake. I was late for class, and all of the sudden, I found myself outside of my apartment and in a bathroom. Then I was back in my apartment again. I blacked out in between, so I know it wasn't just some…teleporting thing."

"Can powers take that long to show up?" Chris asked, though mostly to himself. "Wyatt, go look that up in the Book of Shadows, will you?"

"Yeah…yeah, no problem." Wyatt looked upward and quickly disintegrated into the little white-blue orbs of light, transporting himself into the attic.

The boy looked somewhat surprised again. "Heard about that, too, but I didn't really ever see it in action…"

"Why would your dad bind your guys' powers, but not keep from telling you about magic?" Chris looked confused. "It doesn't make any sense…"

"I don't know. And…my name's Nathan, by the way."

"Huh?"

"My name. It's Nathan. I'm not just 'some innocent'." He smiled a little.

"Oh." Chris furrowed his brow. "Well, I forgot to ask your name. Sorry. I'm Chris."

"Nice to meet ya." Nathan stuck his hand out and extended it to Chris, who took it and shook it as firmly as he could, despite the fact that he was somewhat distracted.

"That demon's gonna be coming back. So we need to get you prepared for it, and make sure we can kill him next time. I just wanted to get you out of there before anything else was destroyed. He'll probably go back to your dorm to try and kill you, so I think that you should stay here for right now. I'm sure mom and dad'll understand."

"Well, thanks. But I, uh, still need to get my homework from there. Class tomorrow, and all."

"Yeah, I have class, too. Right now, though, that's really not all that important. Getting this warlock out of the way first is the top priority." Chris gestured toward the stairs. "Come on, we're gonna go up to the attic and help my brother find out what he can."

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Because protecting Nathan had sort of fallen on Chris' shoulders (as Wyatt had left), Wyatt decided to give up his bed for him and sleep on the couch. If something happened, Chris knew that he would be in the room and would be able to orb Nathan to safety. But with the minor cloaking ability that he had begun to practice with from his whitelighter heritage, and with the magical safety of the manor, there probably wouldn't be anything to worry about.

Still, Chris didn't sleep much that night. Every time he felt himself dozing off he would smack or pinch himself to keep from falling asleep. He wasn't going to let this innocent die like the last two had. They didn't deserve it. When the morning finally came he had somewhat large, dark circles under his eyes and he felt kind of delirious. Chris was a heavy sleeper—one had to be living in the manor—and usually he got about eight hours. He was running on empty fuel.

That morning, Chris took Nathan downstairs for breakfast. The manor smelled of bacon, eggs and pancakes, all of which were family favorites. When the two boys stepped into the kitchen Piper greeted them with a good morning from over her shoulder, gesturing for them to take a seat at the table, where Leo, Melinda and Wyatt all were. Nathan thanked her and took a seat but Chris moved around the other side of the island to the coffee pot. He needed coffee, and badly.

"You know that stuff isn't good for you," Piper said to him. "And I've been meaning to get rid of it for a while…hmm." She flipped the eggs with her spatula, then stared at the coffee pot. "Maybe this afternoon."

"I need coffee," Chris said, rubbing his eyes. "I was on watch last night. Just making sure the demon didn't attack." He ignored his mother's stare, pouring some coffee into a cup he had grabbed from the shelf above it.

"You can't get rid of it anyways, Piper," Leo chimed in. "You know I like having coffee with breakfast."

Piper smirked faintly. "It's not good for you, either. And when you cook breakfast, you can decide what you have to drink. You need to drink more water, anyways. That's why you've got it in your glass."

Leo only chuckled and shook his head. Things were quiet for just a moment, while Piper put the eggs on their plates and Chris sipped at his coffee. Nathan sat there at the table kind of awkwardly, Melinda staring at him with a polite smile, but the silence was broken by Wyatt.

"So, what's on your agenda today, Dad?"

That seemed to start up the conversation again. Chris noticed that Melinda was staring at Nathan, and he moved toward the table, still sipping at his coffee. "He's an innocent."

"I wondered why Wyatt was sleeping on the couch. But I gotta admit, it was nice not waking up to his loud snoring." When Wyatt tried to interject Melinda just laughed. "I can hear you all the way through the walls! You're a nightmare. I don't know how Chris stands it."

"You get used to it," Chris said, as an amused, but tired sort of smile appeared on his face. He took another sip of his coffee. "Wyatt, I'm gonna skip out on classes today and go back with Nathan and see if we can't kill the warlock that's chasing after him. Were you going to help?"

Before Wyatt could open his mouth, Piper said in a very tight sort of tone, "You're not skipping out on any more classes this week. You've already missed several, and you weren't fighting demons then."

Chris looked a little uncomfortable. "How'd you know about that?"

Piper raised an eyebrow. "I'm your mother. You think I don't know what you do?"

"Anyways," Chris said, giving his mother a look, "after classes I'm gonna go and track the guy down. He's sure to have left something behind at Nathan's dorm for us to scry for him. That way we can get him."

"Can't," Wyatt said. "I've got a class this afternoon and then one tonight." He looked at Piper with a grin on his face. "Gotta be a good boy and go."

"That's why I said after classes. But fine, I'll do it on my own." The grin fell off of Wyatt's face then, which Chris ignored. "Nathan—"

"—Can stay here for the day," Piper broke in. "Going back to his dorm is going to be too dangerous if the warlock's after him. I'll keep an eye on him, and I'll get him excused."

"How?" Chris asked, blinking.

"Not your worry. You need to get to class. You've been missing too much math. Any more, and you're going to be too far behind."

Melinda laughed, but Chris ignored that, too. Instead he took a seat at his spot, looking over his breakfast. He wasn't all that hungry, seeing as he stayed up all night, and so he just picked at it, eating a piece of bacon here and a small portion of his eggs there. He didn't even touch the pancakes. His mother always made them just right, but he didn't think that he could handle any of them right now. Maybe later, for lunch or something.

He turned to Nathan, who was in the middle of thanking Piper for the breakfast. "So, I'll go grab your homework for you, then bring it back here. If Mom's gonna get you off of classes for the day, I guess it gives you extra time to do it, right?"

"Well, there's classes tomorrow," Nathan said, "but yeah, that's cool. Thanks. It's gonna be on my desk. The guy didn't destroy it, did he?"

"Don't think so," Chris said. "I threw him on it, but I think he just stumbled down it and hit the floor. I'm just hoping nobody called the police or anything from the noises…"

"We'd have heard about it in the paper," Leo said. "So I think we're in the clear."

"Well, in that case, no reason to worry much." Chris finished off his coffee, looking to Wyatt. He sent a look to the clock on the wall, and he got up quickly. "Shit." Piper gave him a look. "Sorry. Crap. Whatever. I've got class in about twenty minutes. I can't grab your stuff. Wyatt, will you do it?"

"Yeah, sure. Room 203, right?"

Chris smirked. "Yeah, room 203. There was a pattern."

Wyatt rolled his eyes. "Yeah, yeah, whatever. I'll grab it." After finishing off a piece of toast and another slice of bacon he said, "You wanna come with me, Nathan?" The other boy agreed, and so Wyatt gripped his hand, orbing the two of them to the dorm room to grab Nathan's homework.

Melinda, after Chris had mentioned the time, was already up and grabbing her things. She gave Leo and Piper hugs and then darted out the back door, on her way to school. That left just Chris and his parents, but he didn't plan on staying very long. He had things to do as well, and if he didn't go to class, his mother was probably going to kill him.

"All right, I'm gonna go grab my things and then get to class, too. I'll be back later this afternoon. See you guys."

"Love you," Piper said, to which Chris replied with a dismissive sort of 'uh huh' before orbing out. Now that she and Leo were alone, she pushed her food around her plate before she stood up and began walking around the table to pick up everyone else's plates. Half the food she had made was still uneaten, which was bothersome. She scraped it off of Chris' plate and then put the plate in the sink, sighing a little. "He's so much like Prue sometimes. It makes me worry. He's…way too serious for his own good."

"He'll be fine," Leo said. He took a sip of his coffee, moving away from the table and stepping behind Piper at the sink. He wrapped his arms around her and gave her a kiss on the top of the head. "He's old enough to know how to take care of himself. And if he doesn't, he's smart enough to know to come to us with his questions. He had to get his stubbornness from somewhere, right?"

"Yeah…you're right. But wouldn't that be you over her?" Piper smiled in amusement.

Leo laughed.