Chris didn't want to argue with his father. It wasn't his main aim to provoke conflict between them, but when Leo had orbed down from Up There to find the sisters and had started throwing his weight around, demanding that Chris tell him where they were rather than sensing them himself Chris couldn't help but argue. Sure, he had been hostile towards his estranged father, but Leo had started it, and Leo deserved to be the scattering of orbs in the middle of the attic.

"He's…" Chris broke off, not able to find the words. "He just…" he let out a frustrated growl, as much because he had allowed Leo to get to him as because he could not express how he felt. A rocking chair suddenly swung wildly back and forth, rumbling across the boards and threatening to tip itself backwards.

"An asshole. Yeah," Ben supplied, sitting down on the couch and leaning forward his elbows on his thighs and his hands clasped in the middle of his apart knees. He put his head back down, staring at his hands as Chris made another furious circuit of the room, taking out his frustration on a stack of cardboard boxes. The side of the bottom one buckled and the top ones wobbled dangerously before settling, Ben looked up and eyed them warily, but Chris just kept pacing.

"I don't know what I'm doing…" Chris said, running a distracted hand through his hair. "I'm meant to be saving Wyatt, not stressing over that." He gestured to the cloud of orbs that used to be his father with an expression of distaste on his face. He lapsed deep into thought, concentrating more on the possible connections between the lower level demon and the upper level one that turned Wyatt than keeping his powers in check.

"Wait-" Chris said, frowning. "That demon was killed with some kind of light dart, right?"

"When?"

"When we were at the bottom of the slope. The one that we questioned killed the other demon that wanted us with a light dart, yeah?"

Ben flashed him a smile of realization. "And that demon was too low-level to have the kind of power. The demon it killed even said so. That means that there must be some kind of power racket going on down there. And the demon at the head could be the one that turns Wyatt, right?"

"Got it. So…" Chris, infused with more energy now, crossed excitedly to the Book of Shadows. "So we need to find out-"

An explosion made Chris jerk up and he realized that it was the orbs in the corner finishing blowing up with a bright burst of flame. Leo reformed in the attic and Chris rolled his eyes, folding his arms over his chest. "What?"

"Just because that doesn't kill me, doesn't mean it doesn't hurt!" Leo yelled, rubbing a point in his chest.

Chris didn't bat an eyelid and replied, "Your negligence as a parent didn't kill me, but that didn't mean it didn't hurt." He fought to keep a straight face, even though saying the words still stung. And he hated that he took pleasure from watching Leo's face fall. He never used to be like this before it all happened… "Look, Leo. I'm kinda busy right now and… yeah."

"How can I make this better if I can't get close to you?" Leo said, taking a step towards Chris. Chris stepped backwards, uncomfortable with the proximity.

"It's just something you've gotta except. I'm not ready to deal with this right now. In fact, I shouldn't be doing this at all. I have a job to do, okay?" It was all to much. To have your dad suddenly return to wanting to be a parent when he had spent so long as an absentee father was daunting. It just made things more confusing, more clouded. And if his thoughts were clouded then he couldn't be expected to do the job he had came here to do, could he?

Leo seemed placated by this and gave a small, understanding smile before his eyes glazed over and he seemed to be staring through the attic wall. A dark shadow passed over his brain, and something akin to a nasty little voice that he had felt earlier started whispering malicious things at him. It was back, worming through his thoughts and digging through his suspicions.

He's not really your son. Look at him. Would you raise a kid that way?

Chris was leaning over the book, flipping through the pages, determination etched across his face. Of course Leo could raise a kid like that. He had the determination, and the courage and the intelligence…

"No…" Leo's lips barely moved but both Ben and Chris looked up in confusion.

"Did you say something?"

Don't trust him. The voice took on a more commanding, almost desperate tone. He's working on turning your sons. That's what he came back from the future to do. He thinks he can use Wyatt to rule.

"Leo?"

You know Wyatt. That angel of a kid in his playpen. He wouldn't be evil… Wait… Is he even in the playpen? What have these guys done to him?

Leo's heart clenched with fear, an empty playpen running through his mind. No, this was all wrong. Chris was a good person, a good brother to Wyatt. He was trying to save the future…

Ah, but is he really? That's a question one should ask, isn't it? Wyatt's gone…

Leo was dimly aware of one of the attic's other occupants talking to him, but the words were hollow and he didn't catch their meanings. He barely caught separate syllables. The distrust and fear began to build within the Elder, just as it hard earlier. Who was Chris really? And why did he always seem to have a hidden agenda?

The two witches came forwards towards Leo cautiously and slowly. Chris tried to say something, but he wasn't really sure what to say and his good intentions just petered out. Neither of them noticed the small blue spark that jumped between Leo's forefinger and thumb.

Why would you trust anyone that has fathered the next Source of All Evil?

Leo let out an anguished cry and brought his arm into the air, hitting Ben in the chest and throwing him backwards onto the floor. The witch grunted at sat up, just in time to see Leo unleash a torrent of blue-white lightning at Chris.

Ben flicked his wrist and attracted an old typewriter into the lightning's path. There was a bright display of white sparks and then a loud clunk as the smouldering, melted remains of what had been the typewriter fell to the floor. Leo balled his fists and Chris, thinking that Leo was going to unleash another electrical torrent, raised his arm to deflect it. Leo, however, charged at him and tackled the witch-whitelighter around the waist, sending them both to the floor. Chris was surprised, not realizing that Leo even knew how to pin someone and twisted his head just in time for Leo's fist to graze his ear. The Elder punched the floor and he howled in pain. Ben dived to the other side of the room to grab the object he needed.

"What are you doing to my sons? How dare you do this to my family? Huh!" Leo dragged Chris up by the collar of the shirt.

The pages of the black book crinkled as Ben flicked past them.

"Let petty jealous- Heh. Uh… Let random and completely unprovoked angry rage pass into darkest night,
And these two feuding family members will no longer fight!"

The spell building between them actually blew Leo and Chris apart. The landed on the floor, skidded and led still.

"Crap," Ben muttered darkly. "Just perfect." He looked down guiltily at the book in his hands and closed it gently, tossing it sideways onto the couch. He really wished he could say that that was the first spell he had ever screwed up, but no, it wasn't. Ben walked over to Chris, who was just starting to stir, to help him up.

He extended his arm absently towards his best friend, thinking more about what kind of consequence the backfire to the spell was going to have than what was going on around him and it took him a couple of seconds to realize that there was already an arm there. He blinked and followed the hand up to Leo's face. Ben's jaw dropped. Wow. He'd never known a spell with such a backfire to work before. Explosions and blasting usually meant that the spell had gone wrong. But Leo was being friendly towards his son. That could only mean that the spell had worked, couldn't it?

Chris took his father's hand warily, glaring at Ben as he winced on the way up, his eyes only leaving Leo's face for a second to complete that task. With a swift and sudden movement Leo jerked Chris forward so fast that Chris stumbled and nearly fell on his face and before Ben could raise his hands to blow Leo up for the threatening gesture Leo was hugging Chris.

Ben stood partially frozen in shock, his hands still raised and his mouth still agape. He nearly blew the pair apart in shock and as Leo tightened the embrace and patted Chris on the back Ben saw his friend stiffen in apparent shock as well. When Leo finally broke his grasp and Chris was actually speechless.

"Chris! Dude!" Leo's smile was ear-to-ear and he stood back grinning. "So where's the party?"

"P-party?" Chris asked, forcing the words off of his tongue. He was still shell-shocked from the hug. He swallowed nervously his forehead crinkled into a frown.

"Yeah! It's time to party!" He looked down at himself before striding across the attic towards the door, his robes billowing as he walked. "But these aren't party clothes."

"Did… did he just say 'dude'?" Ben was frozen to the spot, not entirely sure what had just happened. Maybe this was some weird kind of dream. Or maybe it was the after-effects of one-too-many energy balls hitting him. But Leo-

Suddenly he was jerked out of it. Chris had grabbed a handful of his shirt sleeve and was dragging him across the attic after his father.

"I am so going to kill you," the witch muttered, leading Ben down the stairs and towards the master bedroom. The door was open and Leo was standing in front of the chest of drawers in the bedroom he used to share with Piper, tossing his ex-wife's clothes out and onto and around the bed.

Chris blinked as a sweater unfolded midair and soared backwards over Leo's shoulder, landing in a cream woollen heap just shy of Leo's old side of the bed. The Elder slammed that drawer closed and moved onto another one, tossing balled socks about the room.

"Uh- Dad?" He wanted to stop his father before Leo got to Piper's underwear drawer because - yeah. That would be enough to traumatize a guy for a lifetime. He really didn't need to see his dad pawing through his mother's-

You know what? It didn't even bear thinking about.

"Uh your stuff- Your clothes are in the attic, in boxes since, well-" Chris wanted to finish that sentence, 'Since you ran off Up There and abandoned us completely,' but he caught himself, remembering that in this timeline he had driven his father Up There before his time. Which meant that Leo was going to be there even less for him. Chris couldn't tell if that was going to make it better or worse.

"Hey, that's cool, Chris. I'll go change and we'll get this party started!" He cheered as he walked back towards the attic steps, leaving Chris staring confusedly at his back.

Ben wondered if Chris was channelling Bridget with the look he gave him. No one could give The Look as well as those two. At least Bridget, you knew the threat of pain hung over you. Chris… Well he was a bit more unpredictable. "Reverse this spell. Now."

"What, you don't like your new and improved Dad?" Ben asked with a false grin. Chris's intensified glare was all the reply he needed and he rolled his eyes, heading back up to the attic after Leo. "But I'm not going to guarantee that there's a reversal spell in that book…"

"If there's not, then you're going to be telling Mom about it, not me," Chris said, waiting for his friend to enter the attic first.

Leo was standing in the middle of the room buckling the belt on his jeans. As Chris watched Leo shrug into a shirt and button it up he wished he'd given him for time to change.

"Uh yeah…" Chris cleared his throat awkwardly and leant against the doorframe.

Ben was sitting on the couch, rifling through the small black book looking for a reversal spell. He just kept flipping past pages filled with slanting, looping handwriting, scanning the titles but not finding any reversal spells. Spells for freezing, spells for muting, spells for making one party apologize to another, spells for sleeping, spells for pain relief… it just went on and on. It seemed like whichever Halliwell had written this had a lot of time on their hands. Or just a great need for spells to mute people. God, Ben knew how that felt.

"I can't find a reversal spell." Ben said to Chris, looking up as he reached the back cover. None of the spells in here had been to reverse the others' effects. Maybe whoever had written them had not intended for them to be reversed. Chris looked more pensive than angry as Leo finished buttoning his shirt, and Ben wondered if his friend had even heard him.

"Can you make one up?" Chris asked, and Ben knew that he had heard him.

"Yeah," Ben said. His brain had actually been in panic mode, working on one since Leo and Chris had been blasted apart. "Return the magic I cast here-"

"Do you guys have any beer in the house?" Leo asked, pushing past both of them towards the attic stairs. Ben was startled into silence.

"Beer?" Chris echoed in disbelief. "You want beer?"

"Sure. Nice cold one. Damn I'm thirsty." Having descended the two flights of stairs following Leo, the two witches rounded the corner through the dining room and into the kitchen. Leo opened the fridge and pulled out a can of beer. He snapped the lid and threw his head back, chugging it down his throat. He finished the whole can in one sitting, wiped his mouth on the back of his hand and crumpled it, tossing it idly over to the trash bin. It bounced off of the rim and clattered to the floor. Leo scowled, but making no effort to go and retrieve it.

Chris smacked Ben in the stomach with the back of his hand and Ben's voice stuttered back to life with his half finished spell. Leo had opened the fridge again and popped another beer out of the six-pack rings before Ben was even done with the first line.

"Get down!" Leo yelled suddenly, leaping forward and tackling the two witches around the waist bringing them both heavily to the floor. There was a collective grunt as the air left both of their lungs and Ben's head smacked against the tiles, turning the ceiling into a mess of spinning stars.

Ben and Chris rolled slightly to face the doorway, their ribs protesting dully. Expecting to see a demon, Chris reached up for the kitchen island to pull himself into a vague fighting position. Chris didn't see any threat and Leo got up and dusted himself off, grinning.

"Gotcha, didn't I?"

"Yeah," Ben croaked. "That was so funny. Ow…"

Leo's shoe slapped wetly into a brown puddle on the floor and he looked at his beer can and swallowed what remained in it. "Damn. I'm gonna get some more, few buddies, and then we can PARTY!"

"Dad. No. You've gotta stay here so we can reverse the spell- Dad… DAD!" Chris raised his hands to freeze his father's orbing lights but the Elder was too far dematerialized and nothing happened, save for about three small balls of light stopping mid-motion until they, too, eventually winked out.

"Er… Should he be drinking and orbing?" Ben asked, getting up off the floor. Chris just glared at him.

Learning to Tango

"When he orbs in here, I'll freeze him and then you undo the spell, okay? Hopefully he won't remember any of this, because if Mom finds out, she'll probably kill us both. Especially if we don't clean up the mess in her bedroom before she gets back. As you remember she kind of gets a little touchy about misused magic whizzing around everywhere."

Ben rolled his eyes and itched around the edge of a Batman Band-Aid on his elbow. Having caught a glimpse of himself in the mirror above the fireplace in the Dining Room, he knew he had an identical one on his forehead. He smiled to himself as Chris had multiple heart failures over the situation, pressing the sticky edges of the band-aid down harder to prevent them from lifting and revealing a scab. The Charmed Ones were right – his friend was neurotic. Ben wasn't sure when it had happened. Even after Wyatt had turned, Chris hadn't stopped being fun. Perhaps it was coming back to the past and balancing the fate of the world on your shoulders. Yeah. That would do it.

"Come on – when did you stop being fun anyway? Don't you think you're overreacting? I mean, Leo's actually lightened up for once, why is that a bad thing?"

"Because he can't help us with whatever demon turns Wyatt if he's running around getting drunk, can he?" Chris snapped, putting his head in his hands for a couple of seconds to try and focus.

Suddenly he heard the familiar sound of orbing and he looked up, blinking twice to make sure he was actually seeing the scene in front of him. The parlour and the foyer were filled with blue and white orbs coalescing into people around him. In their hands they carried bags of chips and bottles of beer, vodka, rum, Jack Daniels, footballs, basketballs, six packs, silly string and Chris even thought he caught sight of the green glint of absinth.

Wondering how the Elders had managed to ditch their robes so fast and change into street clothes as well as acquiring such a large amount of alcohol, Chris pushed aside his thoughts – most of which, incidentally, were screaming 'Uh-oh,' at him – and raised his hands, freezing all of the Elders in place. He was actually getting tired of freezing people tonight. It required a small amount of concentration to pull it off, even though he was so practiced in doing so and his mind felt scattered tonight. Some part of it was still working on possible leads from the demon they had interrogated down in the Underworld.

"How… What…?"

"Leo must have passed it on somehow," Chris realized. Leo had somehow managed to infect the other Elders with his new party mentality, and it had spread like wildfire. He guessed that this is what you got for being so uptight and repressed all the time. A small chance of a vent and boom, everyone wanted it. "Just say the spell and fix this. My head is starting to hurt."

"Return the magic I cast here,
And let this spell disappear."

"That was pathetic."

"Thanks."

There was a short pause. "Did it work?" Chris wondered, frowning as he looked around at the frozen Elders.

"You tell me," Ben said, waiting for Chris to unfreeze the room's other occupants. With a small hand gesture Chris unfroze the parlour and immediately the noise of orbing finishing off and chatter and raucous laughter filled the room.

"PARTY!" Someone yelled, and then a loud cheer went up.

"I'd say that was a pretty certain 'no'," Ben said, wincing as an Elder dribbled beer down his shirt in his hurry to drink it. It didn't take long for someone to find the stereo and the speakers leapt to life with a bass beat that actually vibrated and the sounds of drums crashing deafened the two witches before the group practically twisted the volume knob off. Chris hadn't even realized that the sisters owned anything like that. At least not yet.

"WHERE'S LEO!" Chris asked, looking around the room at the seething mass of adults dancing and drinking. A female Elder with short, greying hair was already dancing on the dining room table, shouting something that was lost in the noise and swigging from the bottle clutched in her hand. What could be loosely described as a singer blared onto the track, screeching loud enough to make Chris's teeth vibrate inside his head.

"WHAT?"

"LEO! WHERE IS HE?"

"I DON'T KNOW!" Ben frowned and turned around on the sofa, looking around for the Elder. The crystal in the chandelier was actually clinking together from the onslaught of noise.

Angrily Chris pushed himself off of the couch and past a knot of people dancing in the living room doorway. Once in the living room he dropped to his hands and knees, weaving his way in between the mass of legs, squirming as some kind of alcohol dribbled onto his shirt, making it stick to his back. Oh well, at least he'd saved the rug. Behind him Ben was following on two legs, pushing past the crowd.

"DO YOU WANT TO DANCE?" An Elder with her long red hair in a ponytail running down the centre of her back had grabbed his arm and as he tried to pull away from her she held on tighter. "C'MON! LOOSEN UP A LITTLE!" She grabbed his other arm and started jumping up and down wildly, her hair bobbing and swaying violently, whipping Ben in the face several times. Her eyes were closed and when Ben wrenched away from her she nearly fell on her face. She opened them to glare at him, but the crowd had already swallowed him.

A cloud of blue-grey smoke rose from the back of the couch and Ben snatched the cigarette out of the Elder's hand as he brought it back to his lips for a second drag. He has just started to inhale when then the cigarette disappeared and he choked out clouds of smoke, glaring at Ben, obviously thinking the witch had stolen it to take a puff. He looked mildly surprised when Ben flicked it back at his chest, the tip iced over and reached into his pocket for another one.

Ben finally made it to the other side of the room and found Chris with his hand jammed behind the back of the stereo cabinet. He wore a look of concentration on his face, his tongue poking out slightly whilst caught between his teeth.

"Got it!" He muttered triumphantly, wrenching the plug from the socket. Immediately Ben felt himself sag in relief: never had he been so happy to hear so much quiet. In fact, it rang in his ears before the people talking realized that it had gone and started to boo. Chris gripped the plug tighter in his hand and ignored them.

"Did you see Leo anywhere?" Ben asked.

Chris shook his head. "No. That's why the spell didn't work. You cast the spell on him, not the other Elders. So you've got to reverse the magic on him before the magic can be reversed on the rest of them."

"Nice theory."

"You got a better one?"

"Nope. I just wanna know why for once, it can't go smooth. Why is that? Why can't it ever go smooth..." Ben groused, scanning the crowd for Leo. Elders were crammed into the doorways of the room, trying to see what the trouble with the music was. The Elder lounging on the chair smoking waved his hand at the stereo and a single spark cracked through Chris's body from the plug in his hand and he yelped loudly, dropping it to the floor as the appliance surged back to life without the aid of electricity.

Stumbling backwards away from the speakers Ben and Chris managed to fight their way back towards the parlour and then through the dining room into the kitchen, where the noise was blissfully much quieter. Leo was bent over a beer keg on the other side of the kitchen island, attaching the hose to it.

"You made it!" Leo babbled, enthused as he tested the hose, purging the foam down the sink.

"We live here, Leo," Chris reminded him, cocking an eyebrow at his father.

"Yeah, yeah. Listen, you wanna help me roll this in there for the guys?"

"Heh. Sorry, Leo, but-"

"No biggie," Leo promised them, orbing out with the keg.

"Okay, how does he keep managing to evade a stupid two line spell!" Chris exploded, walking back through the dining room. He couldn't see Leo anywhere. "Dammit…"

"Well-"

Something on Chris's left shattered and he looked around, expecting to see that an Elder's elbow had smashed a vase. Instead he had to throw himself on the floor as a demon launched an energy ball at him through the doorway of the sunroom. It shattered the centrepiece at the dancing Elder's feet and she flipped the demon off, moving around the smashed pot.

Ben flicked his wrists and blew the demon up into a blaze of fire, leaving a slight scorch mark on the floor. "Perfect, so we have to deal with demon attacks too?" Ben said, just as Chris yanked him to the floor. A fireball whizzed from the kitchen doorway, smashing into one of the Elder's chests and blowing him off of his feet. He vanished with a display of brilliant white light and an outwards burst of orbs before reappearing several feet behind his original position, brushing at the scorch mark on his shirt. He'd even managed to retain a full can of beer and continued his yelled conversation with his friend as if very little had happened.

Ben flicked his wrists but the demon only staggered backwards, mildly wounded in his left shoulder. Ben formed a fireball of his own and threw it at the demon and it crashed backwards into the cupboard, bringing two shelves worth of crockery to the floor along with the cabinet.

Chris flung a shard of what he vaguely remembered to be his Great-Aunt Peggy's bone china through the demon's heart. It burst outwards as it died; destroying the glass front of the cabinet opposite to the one it had flown into.

"What's going on?" Ben muttered, getting up. A flare of bright white light from the foyer caught their attention, and Chris flung the demon into the wall. It raised its arm and threw an energy ball, which Chris redirected into its chest, vanquishing it.

"I think…" Chris said, thinking on his feet. "I think that because the Elders aren't there to watch over everything anymore-"

"-the demons are coming out in force," Ben finished for him. "For the Nexus, or the Charmed Ones, or the Nexus and the Charmed Ones. Or the Book of Shadows-" He paused. "You really do have a lot of things in your house that are coveted by evil, don't you?"

"Well, isn't this just great? And we're stuck here protecting the Elders. When I can barely hear myself THINK!" As he yelled the last word, practically tearing his throat out a beer bottle dropped to the floor and shattered, seeping through the rug as its owner burst outwards into orbs.

This demon was standing on the half landing, but before Ben could blow it up a fireball knocked him over the back of the couch, onto the laps of three Elders sitting there who were sitting on the piece of furniture, chanting at their friend who was trying to down an entire six-pack at once.

"Hey, man! That looked like it hurt!" One of them said, pausing in his cheering to wave a glowing hand in Ben's direction. Ben got up off of the floor and tossed a disc of ice in the demon's direction, decapitating it in revenge for the fireball. Its head and body disappeared into flames separately, the mouth still screaming as it blazed down to the Wasteland.

"Well, at least the Elders can't get hurt," Ben said, fake cheery as he rejoined Chris at the foot of the stairs. "Well, not unless a-"

"DON'T SAY IT!" Chris yelled, cutting Ben off. "We're jinxed enough as it is…"

Unfortunately it appeared that Ben had already set the jinx in motion and in a cascade of dark orbs a darklighter appeared in the doorway to the sunroom and unleashed an arrow. All of the Elders in the path collectively orbed out, apparently momentarily blinding the darklighter just as Chris twisted his upper body left to avoid being skewered. It stuck, quivering in the banister as the Elders reappeared and the darklighter placed his hands over his eyes, moaning.

Neither of the witches could get a clear shot with the Elders in the way, so Ben wrenched the arrow from the wood, made an astral copy of it and sent it across the room. It flared red for a second before Chris pushed it into the darklighter's back with a flick of two fingers.

"I don't know about you, but I can't keep doing this all night." Ben said, reducing the arrow to ashes and a blob of molten metal in his hand.

"No," Chris agreed, "me neither."

Learning to Tango

"If we could just find Leo then we could reverse the spell…" Ben said, watching Chris pace as he looked through the Book of Shadows. "And there's nothing in here." The heavy tome thudded shut.

They had managed to find a small corner of the sunroom to call their own, and were keeping an eye on the Elders as they looked for a solution to the mess. It was just getting worse and worse as more and more alcohol was consumed. Several of Piper's vases lay in pieces, and the floor was sticky with remnants of something only the Gods could identify.

A blast and the sound of violently scattering orbs snapped Chris's attention through the dining room and towards the kitchen, where there was some kind of commotion going on. Chris rolled his eyes wearily and trudged off to the back of the house, leaving Ben and his headache alone. The ground beneath him was still shaking from the music and it went in perfect sync with the pounding between his eyes.

His memory flicked to a page in the small black book upstairs that had started all of this and, reluctant as he was to try something from there again, he had to do something because the neighbours would be complaining soon…

"No! Put that down!" Ben jumped to his feet, only just in time to catch the Book as it slid off of his lap. Three Elders were playing Frisbee with a dinner plate. At Ben's shout, one missed the catch and it shattered on the white wall in a spray of china shards.

Another dinner plate whizzed across the room and Ben vaguely wondered where they were coming from. A swaying Elder dived for it and landed, sprawled, on the couch. There were general shrieks of opposition from the redhead that had wanted to dance with Ben earlier and the Elder whose lap she was sitting on. The plate-catcher laughed, scrambled up and tossed the china disc through the air. It was mercifully caught this time and the couple on the couch continued their make out session relatively undisturbed.

Ben was nauseated. That was just… Wrong. They could both be like three centuries old. It was worse than your parents. Thankfully Chris marched back from the kitchen, sporting a fresh cut on his arm but otherwise unharmed and distracted him.

Chris's lips moved but Ben caught no trace of the speech that came out and he closed his eyes, took a deep breath and said the spell. He could barely hear his own words and he wondered if it would work before muttering:

"I don't care if I'm being astute,
Let these people quickly MUTE!"

He yelled the last word and the effect was almost instantaneous. The floor stopped quaking and the sound of the clock ticking echoed through the Manor. Ben breathed a sigh of relief, watching the Elders carry on as normal, just without the sound to accompany them. He had to put it to the book's author – she knew how to write a spell. Ben could still tell the tempo of the music by the pain in his skull and Chris, sucking the blood from his arm looked haggard.

"What are we going to do?" Ben asked, rubbing his temples. It did little to alleviate the pain building there but it did help him think somewhat.

Chris's arm dropped to his side, a scab already beginning to form over the cut. "I have an idea. LEO!"

The Elder in question appeared in front of them. Chris was about to ask a question but found Leo's face smeared with a deep pink lipstick. There were only two buttons done up on his shirt, which was wrinkled. Leo said something that didn't come out because of the spell and Ben forced his aching brain to come up with another two-liner.

"I let their noises go and wander,
Restore a voice to this Elder."

"What the hell kind of spell was that? It barely rhymed!"

"Well, you try coming up with spells all night," Ben shot back, irritated. "I don't see you casting any."

"Hey! C'mon now, don't argue! This is a party!"

"So you keep saying," Ben said sourly. "Just stand still for a minute, okay? That's all I ask."

"WHAT is going on here?"

"Uh-oh."

Paige was dodging Elders as she strode across the sunroom to the corner where Ben and Chris were standing. Leo began to slowly edge his way towards the dining room.

"This stinks of backfired spell, just so you know."

"Spell?" Ben tried weakly.

"Don't play dumb with me. I've played dumb too many times to be fooled by someone else playing dumb. Did that make sense?" She got two blank looks in return but ploughed on. "So, what happened?"

Learning to Tango

"Okay. Well the club doesn't close for another hour. Piper will be there afterwards anyway, so we're okay there. As long as we reverse the spell and clean the mess up, she'll never know."

They were having a conference around the kitchen table. Leo had tried to get up twice, but Paige had managed to scare him into sitting back down.

"So, you've got a spell to turn them all back, right? Then fire away."

"Return the magic I cast here,
And let this spell disappear."

Immediately the stereo leapt back into life and Paige jumped at the sudden blare of music from the other side of the house. She pushed herself up from the kitchen chair and curiously pushed her way through the kitchen door. Leo saw his chance to escape and was out of the door just seconds after Paige, followed by Ben and Chris.

All over the Manor there were Elders waking up as if from a trance, looking strangely at the bottles of alcohol in their hands. The couple making out on the couch sprang apart, horrified and the Elder on the dining room table started shrieking and had to be helped down, pulling her skirt down in a vain attempt to cover her legs. The music cut out and more Elders started murmuring groggily, looking down at the street clothes they were sporting.

There was a resounding slap from the alcove opposite the living room and a female Elder ran out, buttoning her top. A male Elder fell out, struggling to pull up his jeans.

The sight would have been comical if the witches hadn't been so worried about the consequences. They stood in the dining room doorway, words failing them.

"What. Happened. Here?" The voice behind them was vibrating with fury, and when the three of them turned there was an Elder there, his eyes blazing with anger, demanding an explanation.

"Uh…"

"Well… Um…"

"Party, dude!" Leo said, clapping him on the shoulder. "We were just having a party. Are you leaving already?"

"Remove your hand."

Leo shoved both of his hands in the back pockets of his jeans, shrugging uncaringly. "Fine, whatever you want, man. I guess it's up to me to have the fun around here." He grabbed a bottle from the table and took a swig, the Jack Daniels burning in his throat. He drained the bottle, clutching the table for support. He tried to put the bottle down but it fell on its side and rolled off the table, shattering on the rug. "What's wrong with you all?" Leo said, finishing off a two-thirds empty can of beer. "You not having fun anymore?"

"I'm going to take a wild guess and say that some kind of demon has got to Leo, who then spread the curse to the rest of us. We'll trust in the Power of Three to fix this, I think."

At the end of the foyer in front of the doors a demon shimmered in, throwing an energy ball at one of the Elders. The Elder burst in a bright spray of lights and then reappeared, sagging against the wall. Groaning, he orbed out. Other began to follow suit as Paige vanquished the demon with one of its own energy balls, and soon only what seemed to be one of the head Elders was left.

"Fix this," he hissed, gesturing towards Leo who seemed to be determined to empty every container full of alcohol in the room before orbing out as well.

"I don't get it," Ben said. "Why did the spell work on everyone but Leo? Seeing as Leo was the start of it all, if it worked on the rest of them, why didn't it work on him?"

"Maybe… maybe it's because he was the start of it." Paige said, narrowing her eyes as she thought.

"Huh?" The reply was collective, and she suppressed a smile.

"Well, I mean, Leo got the full blast of the spell, right? And why would you want to go back to being an uptight adult with a job after being a carefree teenager at a party?"

"So what you're saying is that Leo might not want to go back?"

"Bingo. Give that witch a coconut."

Chris groaned as Leo fell over with a thump face first onto the floor.

"I'm okay!" Came the slurred reassurance before a hand reached for a bottle left by the couch.

"You never know. Maybe Piper won't notice?" Paige said, with a small, hopeful shrug.

Learning to Tango

"THEY DID WHAT?"

"Okay, calm down. It's just a little backfire, everything will be fine-"

"Paige, they turned the Manor into a frat party for God's sake! And they've turned my husband into a teenager. How will everything be fine?"

"Don't get stressed, you'll wrap your car around a pole." She took the cordless to the doorway between the dining room and the sunroom, leaning against the doorframe and watching as Chris and Ben tried every trick they knew to reverse Leo's condition. It didn't look like anything was working, because Leo was still smiling goofily, clutching a bottle of beer by the neck.

"Oh, I'll do more than that. I'll wrap by hands around their necks."

"Uh-huh," Paige replied dryly. "And when was the last time you had to deal with a little backfire of your own?" She smiled as a slightly hissing silence reigned on the line.

"Well- That's not the point, Paige. The point is that magic is not a toy, and-" her voice broke up in a burst of static.

"Hello?"

"I'll be - soon. Tell them to - afraid. Very -" And then the line went dead.

Paige rolled her eyes and put the phone on the table behind her, pulling a face as it crunched into the crumbs of some scattered chips. Ew. She'd have to put that to her ear. She walked into the sunroom and saw her nephew and his friend slump backwards in defeat. "Nothing?" She asked.

"Nada. I don't think we're gonna be able to reverse this until Leo wants it to be."

"I don't want NOTHING!" Leo yelled, punching the air triumphantly and slopping beer all over himself.

"Good for you," Ben said, fake cheery as Leo missed his mouth, pouring the beer into his cheek.

"Another empty." He tried to get up but rolled over and fell to the floor. He started laughing uncontrollably. "I fell down… BUT I GET UP AGAIN! YOU AIN'T EVER GONNA KEEP ME DOWN, CUZ I GET KNOCKED DOWN-"

"Chris?"

Chris didn't need anymore prompting and flicked a hand in Leo's direction, freezing him in place. Again. There had to be a limit to how many times you could do that before someone got immune.

"Oh, a message from your mother," Paige said. "'Be afraid, very afraid.'"

"She is actually gonna kill us." Chris moaned, putting his head in his hands.

"Don't sweat," Paige said. "She'll probably maim you at least a little first."

As it turned out, Piper was in too much shock to do any maiming whatsoever. She walked through the door and tossed her keys onto the table in the foyer, only to find that it was gone. It only went downhill from there. Everywhere she went she found broken glass, spilled liquids, stained rugs and upholstery, cigarettes extinguished in the sunroom's plant pots, torn cushions, upended furniture and Sharpie signatures all over the walls. 'Cecilia 4 Joseph' and 'Jim woz 'ere' and 'I luv ?' being some of her favourites.

She went through the Manor, taking stock of the mess. She didn't even shout when she saw Aunt Peggy's crockery in ruins, or when she found that they had emptied the icemaker all over the floor. She developed an eye twitch when she found a crude lipstick doodle on the bathroom mirror but still didn't yell until she found the pair of discarded boxers hanging from the chandelier that pushed her right over the edge.

"WHAT THE HELL DID YOU DO TO MY HOUSE?" She exploded, breathing hard. She flexed her fingers by her sides, itching to blow something to pieces.

"Piper, we're really sorry." She turned on Ben as he apologized but Leo lurched out of the sunroom and moved to hug her, falling on top of her and nearly knocking them both to the floor and saving Ben's skin.

"Piper… I love you… I'm so sorry I went away…" His tears were soaking into her shirt and she looked momentarily sickened, trying her best to guide his dead weight over to the couch before her knees gave out. His sobs turned into noisy hiccoughs, his words turned too slurred to comprehend.

"Ssh…" Piper comforted gently as they collapsed on the couch. "It'll be… okay…" He threw herself on her, sobbing into her chest and she patted him on the back, suddenly awkward with her husband of three years. She shot death glares at Ben and Chris and even Paige to hide her emotions and as Leo's cries quietened it became clear he'd fallen asleep. She struggled out from under his weight and he flopped to the couch. She tenderly arranged the least damp cushion under his head and then stood up. "I'm… I'm going upstairs for a while…" she said, absently gliding towards the upper floor.

She made her bed in a daze, oblivious to the fact that she had performed that very chore this morning and that someone must have been lying on it to have rumpled it so, and moved around the room tidying obsessively. Leo had said he loved her, and that he was sorry for leaving her…

Without registering the mess on the floor and wondering how it got there, she began to tidy up, folding a cream sweater and placing balled socks in the drawer. She hesitated before opening a drawer in the bottom of the chest but then slid it open, pulling out a red and black plaid shirt and inhaling the scent.

It smelled of Leo.

Learning to Tango

Yeah. That end of the self-pity pool sucked. Heh. Let's never go there again. God, I was awful. So sorry about that everyone, and thanks for all of your shiny reviews. Heh.

Simone1- Heh. Thank you!

minimonkey89- Aw, thanks. That was just what I needed to hear when I was at the 'Everything sucks' stage. Thanks for reviewing.

Stony Angel- YAY! You came back. Well, you didn't go anywhere. But still. I'm a little nuts tonight, go figure. Thanks for reviewing, hun. And thanks for saying you can't wait. Good luck with your bunny as well, by the way.

M J Rosemary- HEH. Thank you. I'm glad I'm doing my bit to keep you in this fandom. It would be a shame to lose you! Thanks for your review.

Chattypandagurl- Nope. Heh, that's why I like 'em. Hopefully there was an insight in this chapter to the reasoning, though.

ilovedrew88- Yes, sleeping is good. Needless to say, I won't be inflicting that on myself for at least another month. Heh. Thank you for reviewing (again! You're really attached, aren't you? Sorry about that. Not so lucky, really) and I'll just go down here now, because there's some white space to fill… Bye…

mizunderstood writer- That disappeared surprisingly quickly, actually. I'm gonna have one a month until I get my final exams out of the way. Gah. Save me. Thank you for reviewing. I should say that too…

As Always- I think he was scared… Yeah. Yelling is bad. Well, for him anyway. And for me, I guess, because it made me all awakeful. And that's not a word. Oh well, let's just skim past that please… Dum dee dum… Heh. Yeah… Did I say thanks? Cuz this is what this bit is meant to be for…