Disclaimer: I don't own Spider-Man- the character was created by Marvel Comics and this version appeared in the movie directed by Sam Raimi-, nor do I own the Charmed Ones, who were created by the very talented Constance M. Burge

Feedback: This is a risky story I'm attempting; I'd like to know it's appreciated

Webs and Witches

"OK…" Leo said, staring at Piper and Paige incredulously after they'd finished explaining the situation to him and Cole; the two men had come back at such a late hour that the sisters had considered it better for them to get a rest than to explain the addition of Peter to their little group. Phoebe had left to help Peter scout around the city before Leo and Cole had even woken up, but, given how long the two men had slept (It had been around eleven before they woke up) that was understanding. "So, you're telling me that Paige ran into Spider-Man's civilian identity, was rescued by him, and now Phoebe's helping him check out locations where you detected warlock activity last night?"

Piper nodded. "Pretty much, yeah," she said, looking at Leo inquiringly. "You have a problem with that? If it's about the publicity he gets, it seems to be pretty much biased against him; he's actually a fairly decent guy. Besides, this is his city we're trying to help; wouldn't you want to do what you could to protect San Francisco, even if you weren't used the threat you'd be dealing with?"

"But can you be sure this guy's telling the truth about himself?" Leo said, as Cole just rolled his eyes slightly and glanced over in the direction of the door as though wondering whether he should just leave until this whole mess had been cleared up. He knew Leo meant well, but Cole was strongly reminded of Leo's suspicions about him when he'd first come back; a whole lot of hot air about nothing. "Do you have any evidence that he's not the one who's lying through his teeth, and the newspapers aren't the-"

"Uh, hello?" a voice said from the window, accompanied by a slight tapping. "Can we come in?"

"Seriously, today would be good; a lot's been going on lately," a second voice said.

Glancing over at the window, Leo was surprised to see Phoebe floating outside it, dressed in a brown outfit and what looked like a black woollen mask, with the red-and-blue form of Spider-Man perched on the wall beside her and waving politely at the four people in the room.

"Peter!" Paige smiled, as she got up and walked over to the window, raising it up to allow her sister and the wall-crawler to enter, Spider-Man removing his mask to reveal a pleasant-looking young man who smiled over idly at Leo and Cole.

"Oh, this is Leo and Cole; Cole's the one in the business suit and Leo's the one in the plaid shirt," Paige added, indicating the two men on the sofa who were looking at Peter in surprise.

"Ah, I see," Peter said, nodding politely at them as he tossed the mask off to one side and held out a hand for them. "Good to meet you guys at last; Paige told me a lot about you two."

"We've been getting a bit of an earful about you since we woke up," Cole said, smiling over at Peter as he took the offered hand. "All of it good, of course; got to say, I'm glad to have you on our team for this problem."

"Thanks," Peter said, smiling back at the ex-demon as he glanced over at Leo with a smile on his face, but the smile faded when he noticed the somewhat dark way that Leo was looking at him.

"Something up that I should know about?" the young man asked, noting the slightly suspicious expression on the Whitelighter's face.

"In a way," Leo replied, staring back at Peter with a sceptical expression on his face. "It's you; I'm really not sure about having you fight with us."

"Ah," Peter said, as he nodded slightly in understand. "Let me guess; the Daily Bugle articles?"

"Well, they had to be based on something," Leo said, staring back at Peter as the wall-crawled stood up to look Leo directly in the eyes. "Or are you telling me that the publisher just wrote all that stuff because he felt like it?"

"Seems like it at times," Peter retorted, staring harshly back at Leo. "Look, right now, you can believe me, or believe the papers; just take into account that I have never had any means of protesting against what that guy says about me, OK?"

Sighing, he turned to look back at the Charmed Ones and Cole. "Anyway, sorry to cut and run but I have to get back to my apartment; left a few films back there that I need to develop, otherwise I'll be booted out for not paying the rent."

"Hey, no worries," Paige said, smiling as she stood up and walked over to him. "Just focus on where you want to go and I'll orb us there; we'll be there and back before you know it."

Leo was about to say something, but the look Paige shot him as she began to orb out stopped any argument that he might have come up with.

As the two of them vanished, Leo sighed thoughtfully as he studied a point on the ceiling above him.

He had to admit, he was probably judging Peter a bit too harshly; after all, he'd been wrong about Cole's motives, and they knew for a fact that Cole had been evil, but, when they'd given him a chance, he'd proven that he was on their side. Why should Spider-Man be any different? If nothing else, he was originally a human; unlike Cole, he, at least, wasn't meant to be evil…

But still, there was still that nagging feeling in Leo's mind that he should be sceptical of anyone who was assumed to be evil by someone in authority. He knew that it was a bit of a narrow-minded view, but still… almost sixty years of having beings who were almost literally archangels as his superiors did tend to give one a fairly trusting attitude towards anyone in charge.

On the other hand, wasn't it possible for everyone to be wrong at some point or another, even 'angels'…?

Leo shook his head; he couldn't start trying to doubt everyone in a position of authority. That way lay madness…

And he couldn't deal with that right now; they had enough problems with these disappearances as it was without him starting to question his mental state.

In a distant room, the chief warlock smiled as he felt the seeds of doubt spread through the mind of the Whitelighter. It was really shocking how easy it was to penetrate the 'angel's' mental defences; the Elders evidently hadn't thought it was that much of a concern to protect their minds.

He just wished it had been more effective. What he was doing at the moment- making the Whitelighter doubt their new ally- was good, but only a few faint ideas of doubt would never be enough to make the Whitelighter drive Spider-Man away from the Charmed Ones. It might have worked in most cases, but this Whitelighter had already demonstrated a willingness to go against the norm by marrying a witch; a few little promptings of distrust were hardly enough to get through the kind of will that was prepared to do something like that.

If only he had some alternative means of driving the wall-crawler away from the Charmed Ones, he might feel a bit more confident with the possibility of them achieving their goal. Witches were easy enough to predict- the 'rules' they had to follow about using their magic did limit them in some regards- but factor in a rogue element like Spider-Man and his hopes of success were significantly reduced…

He shrugged nonchalantly as he settled back into his throne, grateful that he was alone at the moment; he wasn't in the mood for answering anybody's questions about what he'd been trying to do at the moment.

He had little alternative but to buy his time until something better came up, he supposed. After all, not even the Charmed Ones could stay together all the time, correct? All he needed to do was wait until he had at least one of them on their own (With the Whitelighter nearby so he knew about it, of course) and then…

He smiled.

If all went according to plan, he and his fellow members of the Coven of Beelzebub would have the perfect sacrifices necessary to awake their lord and replenish his power.

As they materialised in the middle of an apartment, Paige was briefly surprised at the simplicity of the room. She knew that Peter was only in college, and the Spider-Man thing must have made money difficult, but still…

Geez, she had never been gladder to have her sisters to help in her new role as a witch. It may have been hard at times, but at least they were always there to help her cover the bills…

"Hey; you've got a message," she said, indicating Peter's telephone as he grabbed a few roles of film from a table and walked through a smaller door that looked like a closet at first glance. "OK if I play it?"

"Go ahead; doubt it's anything major anyway," Peter called back through the door; Paige briefly wondered how he was able to focus on their conversation while developing photos as well, but just shrugged it off and tapped the button. After all, photography had never really interested her that much; she liked taking pictures, but actually developing them had never really appealed to her.

Shrugging, Paige sat down on the bed and tapped the blinking button that indicated there was a message.

"Hey, Peter; it's Harry," a voice said. "Just thought I'd let you know, that party I told you about- you know, the one to celebrate the new science division- and managed to get a couple of extra tickets at the end of it all, even after inviting most of the people we knew back in high school. Know you probably won't have any use for the second ticket, but still, if you can make it, wouldn't mind seeing you again; seeing as how you won't have time to pick the ticket up before the party, I've just stuck you on the guest list with 'Possible Plus One'. The party kicks off at seven-thirty tonight; it's in my dad's penthouse block at the top of the Oscorp building. Don't be too late!"

As the message stopped, Paige glanced in the direction of the closet and was surprised to see Peter standing there, staring at the phone with wide eyes; she hadn't even heard him open the door.

"Harry?" he said, staring at the phone before groaning and staring up at the ceiling. "Aw, crap…"

"Is that bad?" Paige asked, as she got up to look inquiringly at Peter.

"Depends on how you look at it," Peter replied, shrugging helplessly as he looked at Paige. "He's pretty much my oldest friend, and I haven't seen him in a while, but there's something I haven't been able to tell him and he… well, he keeps on bugging me about it when I can't."

"Something about the webs?" Paige asked, indicating the costume that Peter was still wearing.

"Yeah… pretty much," Peter said, nodding sadly as he looked at Paige. "You know about the Green Goblin, right?" Paige nodded, and Peter continued. "Well, after that whole fight on the bridge- he'd discovered who I was under the mask, by the way- we slugged it out in an abandoned building, and I learned that he was really Norman Osborn, Harry's father."

"What?" Paige said, looking at Peter in surprise. "How'd that happen?"

Peter shrugged. "I have a few theories, but nothing definite," he said apologetically. "Best guess; he was experimenting with these performance enhancers his company was rumoured to be setting up, tried them on himself, and the results weren't quite what he was expecting." Sighing, he looked down at the floor once again, his head bowed in shame. "We were facing each other and… and he used some kind of remote control to send his gilder flying towards my back. I got out the way, thanks to my spider-sense, but…"

"The damn glider hit him instead and you haven't been able to figure out a way to tell Harry what really happened, huh?" Paige asked, raising an eyebrow as she looked sympathetically at Peter. "Tough break."

Peter's eyes narrowed slightly as he looked over at Paige, a more-than slightly angry expression on his face.

"'Tough break'?"he said, staring incredulously at his... girlfriend, for lack of any other term. "I killed the guy, Paige! I knew there was something behind me, and I just dodged it, with Norman right in front of me! How is that not murder?"

"Well, for one thing, you didn't want to kill him," Paige pointed out as she sat beside Peter, staring critically at him. "For another, you couldn't have known about it; from what you've told me, your spider-sense is just an instinct thing letting you know what way to jump or duck of whatever. Are you telling me you could have known that you had a sharp object pointing at your back that would turn you into a human shish-kebab and that it would hit Norman instead if you got out of the way?"

"Well, no, but…" Peter began uncertainly.

"There you are; you didn't kill him," Paige said, as she looked at Paige. "If you 'killed' him, you'd have known he was in danger as well andmade up your mind not to dosomething about it. You just sensed a threat and acted accordingly; it's not your fault that the other guy couldn't do the same thing."

Peter just looked ahead thoughtfully for a few moments, and then smiled and nodded.

"Yeah… good point, I guess," he said, as he looked back at Paige. "Thanks."

Grinning, Paige leaned over and kissed him briefly on the lips.

"You're welcome," she said casually, before she leaned back and looked at Peter. "Anyway, enough with the moping about; you'd better get going if you want to make that party, you've only got a couple of hours."

"But… what about the warlock thing?" Peter said, looking incredulously at Paige. "I can't just cut out to spend time with my friends; what if you guys need me?"

Paige chuckled slightly as she looked back at Peter. "Hey; your friend said he had two tickets, right?" she grinned, indicating herself. "Solution seems pretty simple; I'll be your date for the evening. That way, if Piper and Phoebe need you, I can just orb you back in a jiffy, and all's well and good, right?"

Peter's eyes widened slightly in surprise. A part of him was almost ashamed to admit that he hadn't thought of that himself…

But, at the same time, he knew why he hadn't.

A part of him was worried that Mary Jane would be at the party- she and Harry had, fortunately, remained friends even after the break-up- and he didn't want to have to deal with having her and Paige in the same room; it might get more than a bit awkward...

But, on the other hand, he wouldn't mind the chance to show up to a party with somebody for once. Anyway, it was only a party; it wasn't like it was anything particularly major, right?

He made up his mind.

"Yeah, sounds good," he said, smiling gratefully at Paige.

"Great!" Paige said, smiling back at him. "Just grab a tux and I'll orb us back to the hotel room; might as well tell Phoebe and Piper about this before we bail out on them."