Disclaimer: You all know the drill – characters off "Charmed" aren't mine, and I'm not making any money from this piece.

Note: This is set in the 'twinverse' aka the future created in Present's future, Future's past, though that doesn't need to have been read to understand this.

Teaser: Simple things always seem hard when you're 10. Simple assignments always get a lot more complex when you're a member of the Halliwell Family.

Not Your Typical Family

Jamie stared at the sheet of paper in front of him with a growing sense of dread. It wasn't a bad report card, not a letter informing him of imminent doom – as one may have deduced from the look on his face – but it might as well have been. It was almost as bad, afterall. And it could lead to both.

Every other kid in the class was marvelling over the sheet. It outlined an assignment so simple that it would be hard to mess it up – unless you were like Jamie. Their directions? Write about your family and its members. Include what makes each of them special, and why they are important to you. Feature at least 5 members of your family. This assignment will be presented to the class when it is completed.

For everyone else, an easy and straightforward task. For Jamie, a conundrum. His family, well they were special all right. Very special indeed. They were Halliwells – and the most unique family that Jamie had ever met. But he couldn't exactly write what really made them all special. He didn't think that 'Everyone in my family has magical powers. My Aunt and my Mother are the two most powerful witches in the world, and my Uncle Leo is their guardian angel,' would go down too well.

At best, he'd get ridiculed by his classmates when he presented, and get a Zero grade for handing in fantasy as a report. At worst, he'd get carted off to the loony-bin and live out the rest of his days encased in a straight-jacket in a padded room. And that would be a lot of days. He was only 10, afterall.

"Jamie?"

Jamie raised an irritated eyebrow at his best friend. Couldn't Mike see he was thinking?

"What?"

"You might wanna answer to attendance. It's the fifth time you've been called, and Ms Mac's startin' to look impatient."

"It's not as if she doesn't know I'm here," Jamie muttered, raising his hand none-the-less. The assignment sitting in front of him was sapping all enthusiasm he had for it being the last period of the day.

"Are you back with us now, Jamie?" his teacher asked, shooting him a slightly-forced smiled, "My goodness. The assignment must have captured your imagination. I'll expect a masterpiece from you then, shall I?"

Jamie mumbled something about there being a lot to write about in his family. He was relieved when Ms. Mac finally turned her attention back to attendance and away from his distraction. What he had said was nothing less than the truth – there was an awful lot to write about.

It was just that he couldn't exactly use a lot of it.

Moodily, Jamie shoved the assignment sheet in to the back of his book, and gratefully turned his mind to the actual topic of the lesson. He had an hour in which he didn't have to think about how to prune the fantastic – yet true – story of his family into something less fantastic, less truthful, and altogether more believable.

……

My family is very unique. We all live in a big house together – the Halliwell Manor. In the one house I live with my older and younger sisters, my mother, my Aunt Piper and Uncle Leo and their four kids, and my Uncle Jesse and his four. My Aunt Paige used to live with us too, but she got killed a few months ago. The house is very crowded with 11 of us kids and 4 adults. My dad also used to live with us once, but he decided to leave three years ago, just before my little sister was born.

Every few years people say they should move out and make more room, but whenever people try, it never happens. My family is very close-knit, and has been in a lot of fights together.

Jamie read that over. It wasn't too bad, really. Except the end didn't make sense without demons being mentioned. They were a close family and they had been in lots of fights did work, but it didn't sound right. Everything was so much more interesting when magic was involved. He looked at his other piece of paper – what he'd actually wanted to write

'My family is real unique. Mostly because we've all got magic powers, but also because there's 15 of us living in the one house and we haven't killed anyone yet. Except Aunt Paige – but that wasn't us, that was demons, so we didn't do it. It's really crowded, but it's better than us splitting up, because that just makes it heaps easier for demons to attack. Strength in numbers, my Mom always says. That's important with us Halliwells. Family is really important to us too, because we face death a lot. Everyone was real sad when Aunt Paige got killed, and that made us all weaker, til we got mad. That made us stronger, and we vanquished that demon's ass back to hell. My dad used to live with us too, but he was an ass, and he ran off because he couldn't hack being normal in a world where he had to live surrounded by magic.'

His Mom probably wouldn't like some of the language he had used in there either. But it was all true. And it had been much easier to write than this revised introduction.

Jamie had actually began to warm to this assignment as a challenge, after he'd got home and yelled at Clayre for a while. She was good for yelling at, because mostly she could figure out when you were actually mad at her or when you were mad at someone else and just taking it out on her. When it was the latter, she was good at talking it through with them and trying to help out with the problem. She said that she wanted to be a counsellor when she grew up. Which meant that she wanted to be paid for what she did for them all for free.

But Clayre had pointed out that he was going to have to make up alternate stories his entire life, and that even if what they told the world wasn't the truth, at least they could make it as truthful as they could. In other words, leave in all the details, just take out the references to demons and magic.

For an older sister, Claire was okay. And she never punched him in the arm when he yelled at her when he wasn't really mad at her – not like Kyra did to Riley. Kyra had a short temper when it came to her younger brother, sometimes. Jamie was kind of glad that she was his cousin and not his sister.

But what he had so far, that was the easy bit, because that was just the introduction to the 'specialness' that was the Halliwell clan. Now, he had to tell people about the individual members.

He had already decided who to use, and his reasons. Each was very different to them, but he sort of liked the think that he was tributing them.

Aunt Paige, as a sort of tribute to her memory, and to say why she had been so special, and why it had been so horrible when she had been taken away from them.

Uncle Jesse – the one non-magical calm in among the storm of magical powers.

Clayre – his older sister, the rock of the whole family.

Kyra – the one who gave him chances, didn't treat him as much of a kid as the other older ones did. Jamie was caught in the middle; not littlie, but not old. Ky tried to even that out and pull him upward.

And of course, his Mom. Just because she was.

He was under no illusion that everyone else wasn't just as special, but his was a big family, and they'd all end up being mentioned anyway. He was a pretty smart kid – he knew it was better for him to write a decent amount on a few people than a little bit on everyone. Plus, he had several older cousins and a sister who had done the fourth grade before him. They'd all known Ms Mac, and they all knew what she looked for in homework stuff. It was really useful, at times.

Though, none of them had had to do this piece. Apparently it was a new addition, getting kids to talk more about their families.

…..

He had never really expected how long it could take to write why people meant a lot to him. They just did – it wasn't something he'd ever actually had to classify before. It had been a good thing that Ms Mac had given them two whole weeks to work on the thing, because otherwise, he'd never have finished it on time. It had been hard, but now he was proud of what he had produced.

But that really, really didn't mean that he wanted to read it out to the class. Why couldn't this be one of those reports that you just handed to the teacher and forgot about, until you got it back with a grade and a few comments scribbled on the bottom? He was pretty sure what he had wasn't dumb enough that they were all going to laugh at him – though his Mom had given him a big hug when she'd read it over for him, and had said that it was really good. That was always worrying when it included stuff written about her. He didn't want to sound like a soppy momma's boy.

But from what he'd heard so far, he wasn't likely to. There'd been heaps more soppy than his, from the other boys as well as the girls. And no-one had laughed. He guessed that they all got how important families were, just like he did.

"Jamie? You ready to go?"

He nodded in response to the teacher's question and slowly walked to the front of the classroom. He hated talking in front of them – it made him nervous, and he hated that. He could face demons, ghosts and other nasties that went bump in the night, but stick him in front of a crowd of people and his mouth went all dry.

"My family is real unique," Jamie began, hating that his voice was shaking, "The whole lot of us – that's 11 kids and 4 grown-ups – live together. In that one house, there's me and my sisters Rinna and Clayre, and our Mom of course. But then there's my Aunt Piper and Uncle Leo, and they have four kids – Wyatt, Mel, Caley and Dale. And there's Uncle Jesse, he's got four kids too- my cousins Ky and Jordi, Riley and Pacey. My Aunt Paige used to live with us too, but she died a couple months ago, which was real sad, but we had to move on from it." He grinned, "And yeah, it's real crowded with all of us there. Every couple years someone figured they should move out, but it never works. But we all do okay together, and we haven't killed anyone yet."

He got a laugh from that. "I'd say that most of you have noticed there's an awful lot of kids round here called Halliwell. Me and my sisters and cousins, we all took our name from our mothers, who are sisters. It's sort of a family tradition, that the kids keep the Halliwell name. I guess it came from the fact that there weren't any boys for heaps of generations."

He was settling into a rhythm now, and the fact that no-one was laughing at him – other than when there were actually jokey bits – was probably a good sign.

"Well, the thing said we ought to focus on at least 5 people. That's no problem finding enough with my family, there's so many of us. And they're all great, but I couldn't say about all of them. So, I'm gonna tell you about my Mom and my older sister, My uncle Jesse and cousin Kyra, and Aunt Paige. She's the one who's not around any more, so this whole thing is sort of in her memory."

Jamie stopped, shuffled his note-cards, ran a hand through his hair. This was the hard bit – where he hoped he hadn't turned the sap on too much. He didn't like writing what he felt, really. He was too good at it – which was often a good thing, being good at expressing and all – but in this case could turn out bad. Humiliation wasn't something he wanted. Hopefully it wasn't something he was going to get. He'd tried to keep this as light as he could.

"Well, I'll start with my Mom, I guess. It's logical, I think. You've all got mothers, so I guess you know what I mean when I say she's just great, even when she's nagging me about somthin'. A mom's job and all. But anyway, Mom began out as the youngest of three sisters – her and my Aunts Piper and Prue. Aunt Prue died like forever ago, and that's when they found out they had another sister – half sister really – my Aunt Paige. So then Mom became the middle kid. She said that was mondo hard. And I know what she means, seeing as I'm in the same boat, cept it's even worse for me, because I got two sisters, and I'm a boy stuck in the middle."

He couldn't stop himself pulling his face at that, as he always did. Though in reality, he adored both his sisters most of the time, it was a brother's duty to pull a face when reminded of their existence. Even if it was himself doing the reminding.

"But yeah, before my sister Clayre was born, Mom worked at the paper – the Bayview Mirror- as like an agony aunt person. She knows a lot about that psychology stuff, and she uses it on all of us kids, which is a pain. She met my dad when she was working there, and they fell in love. And along came Clayre. My parents never got married – they said it didn't really mean anything, since neither of them were religious at all. But ,my father moved in to the Halliwell Manor, lived there til four years ago. When Mom was pregnant with my little sister, he decided he'd had enough of the family and nicked off."

Jamie realised he was more-or-less telling his whole life story – the mundane version of it anyway – and not really sticking to what was in the written part of his report. He'd had to change stuff around to speak it – straight reading was just stupid and boring – but he was getting so far off track.

"Clayre was Mom's lifeline when Dad ran off. She was the one who reminded her that Dad wasn't the only one in her life – I was like little, so I didn't get it really – and that us kids needed her, and Rinna who wasn't even born needed her too. So, I guess I get to tell you about my big sister now."

His gaze was wandering around the room, and he was gratified to see that there were still a few pairs of eyes looking on at him in interest. No-one liked presentations – they were always boring – and really just used them as a chance to doodle, once they'd scoped out whether there was actually going to be any bits of interest in. Looked like his family had caught the interest of a couple of his classmates.

"Clayre's a pain in the ass – sorry Miss, but it's the truth. Though, it's kinda her job. Since she's my big sister and all – and she'd tell you I'm the pain. Which isn't wrong neither. I am to her… and she actually puts up with it most of the time. She's a sight nicer than a heap of older sisters I know people have. But bugging sisters is fun, even if they do get pissed at you!"

A general chuckle and nodding of heads went around the classroom – most of the kids had a sibling, and it was the same for all of them too. Siblings were pretty standard in the bugging stakes – key targets.

"She wants to be a counsellor, and I got to say, she'll probably be pretty good at it. She's already our family's mediator and the one that stops us from bickering too much, you know? Well, nothing can completely stop our family from getting up each other, but Clayre's the one anyone goes to when they're pissed, or unhappy at someone, anything like that. She's a few years older than me, but sometimes she acts real old. Even our oldest cousins, they listen to her, even though she's younger. She's mature, I guess."

He rolled his eyes, "Well some of the time. She has her five-year-old moments when she doesn't get her way. I think that's a girl thing."

There was a general outraged 'oi!' from the female population of the class. He grinned at them, "Sorry, sorry. Maybe it's just a females in my family thing."

He continued, outlining Kyra and his Uncle Jesse. Of course, there wasn't that logical a reason why he'd chosen uncle Jess, not that he could explain to the class. But then, guys were rather outnumbered by girls in the Halliwell household – Jesse, Leo, Riley, Jamie, Wyatt and Dale against the 9 girls. All of whom were of rather strong personalities.

His voice hitched a little when he carried over to his Aunt Paige. This was the hardest bit, and he hoped she would have liked what he was going to say about her – he had worked real hard on it to try and get something that would express her to everyone. He missed her – she had been the adult that all the kids went to, when it was something that Clayre couldn't handle.

"I said before, that my Aunt Paige is dead," he began, trying to stop the over-whelming urge for his eyes to tear up. "But I didn't say when, or how, or what kind of person she was."

This was the part of his speech he had had to get his mother's help on – his 10 year old vocabulary just didn't have the means to express some of what he wanted to, and he wanted to do this right.

"You guys might think I sounded casual about it before – and I was, really. It's been nearly eight months since she was taken away from us, and my whole family has had to accept that fact. Aunt Paige was the one who we confided in – she would always have a way to help – and no matter what it was, she always stayed objective, and was always on our side," he paused to insert a important note into that, "Well, unless it was something that was gonna hurt us or someone else. Then she came down like a tonne of bricks!"

He smiled, kind of sadly, "Aunt Paige was our guardian, and crusader. If we had a problem, she'd help us fight it through, make sure we got a good outcome. Our family is real close-knit – we have to be, living so close – but we fight a lot, still. Aunt Paige was always the one in the middle of us kids, with situations that Clayre couldn't hope to handle, especially. She used to work at Children's Services, and she was so good at it. She never forgot that crusading efforts, and up to the time that she died, she saved people."

He bit his lip, gulping back the lump of sadness that was coming up his throar. He wasn't going to try in front of his classmates – no way, no how. "You might have seen how she died on the news. A few kids got kidnapped, and Aunt Paige happened to stumble upon them. The kids got away, thanks to her. But the kidnapper shot my Aunt, and she didn't make it."

Well, that was the official version. In reality, it had been a demon out to possess the kiddies, and she had been ripped apart. But it had sort of looked like she had been blown apart by a high-powered weapon. Or what that always looked like in the movies. Whatever, it hadn't been pretty. He should know. He had been there, with Kyra and Jordyn, Clayre and Riley. They had all been trying to fight the demon, but Aunt Paige had made them get out of there – to get the kids to safety. She had said that she and her sisters could handle it.

When they returned to help, she had already been dead, beyond the help of Uncle Leo, beyond the help of Kyra. Beyond the help of them all, though they had tried, until the sounds of sirens had come and they and they had all been forced to get out of there. Jamie was never going to forget the sight of his mother on her knees, trying to get her sister to wake up. They'd all known there was no use, but you didn't just accept it. You couldn't. It had been the scariest thing Jamie had ever seen. None of them had been able to accept what had happened, and none of them were really over it. They knew that what they did was dangerous, but nothing had ever brought it home so strong before.

He wiped an arm across his face, embarrassed. He knew there were tears there. Biting his lip, he looked up again, "Aunt Paige died a hero. That's never going to make the fact that she died any easier… but it's better than her getting hit by a car or something. We miss her, and out family's kinda been drifting since then. You never know just how close you were to a person til they're not there anymore."

"My whole family is great," he said, the feeling strong in those short words, "And we're not that normal a bunch in a lot of ways. There's a lot of us, and we're all real different. But in the ways that matter, we're always there for each other, and that's what I love the most about my family."

He half-smiled, "Okay, I'm done boring you now. Thank you all for your attention."

There was applause. Jamie liked to think that it was more clapping than an everyday speech got. He hoped so. He had worked hard on this, and it had been really tough not to include the interesting stuff about magic. He knew that his feelings had been pretty clear on his face, but everything he had said had come from the heart. He figured that was what was important when you told people about your family.

"Thank you, Jamie," Ms. Mac said, and Jamie noted the smile on her face, "That was wonderful, and very maturely presented. Your family sounds very special."

Jamie nodded, and smiled to himself. Yes, they were very special. In ways that no-one in the room would ever imagine.

You couldn't get much more special than the Halliwells.