A Shorter chapter this time but I hope you like it anyway.

Disclaimer-Nothing is mine.

And Cole is not going evil in this fic just to keep that in mind, he was Phoebe's soulmate and he always will be. Due to him not going evil a lot of the Season 4 after the next chapter will be skipped. Again I do not think I will include the last season so just keep in mind Henry might pop up in the Season 6/7 arc (never liked Richard anyway).

Please Read and Review.

And Trigger Warnings for this chapter for miscarriage. Please be aware.

Some chapters will involve a time jump including skipping episodes. Just keep that in mind.

In case it's not clear I DESPISE the Elders. There is not one redeeming quality about any of them. I personally was routing for Piper to drag Prue and Phoebe on strike with her in Season 3 when they took Leo away, I was kinda routing for it in Season 7. Let the Charmed Ones go on strike and see how long they last I say.

There are two more chapters of Season 5 left and the mystery of Billie's Dad is one that I have finally mapped out. It doesn't really start properly until Season 6 but we start laying the groundwork now.

Mother Of Invention

Chapter 12-And That's What Really Hurts

The Matthew's girls are fractured, Billie wants answers, Paige asks Cole a question after a demon makes her feel insecure and Piper gives birth on the day that the magic died. Literally. Oh and there's a demon step grandmother in the works as well.

They carried on. Because that was what they did. That was what they do.

Paige and Billie. They carried on.

They fought demons together, worked together, were civil to each other but it was like something was…something was off. Like between everything there was something that they couldn't talk about. There had been this chasm that had opened up between the two of them and it had started when Billie had said that she wanted to know who her father was.

And look…it wasn't that Paige didn't want that. To be honest she was quite curious as well. She too wanted to know what was going on, she wanted to know what had happened to her all those years ago, she wanted to find out if only for her own piece of mind. If Billie had come to her now and said she was pregnant and that she didn't remember having sex well…Paige knew which way her mind would go as God awful as that sounded. She knew it. It was the same way her own mother would have gone. The way any mother would have gone if they cared about their daughter.

But that was the other thing.

If that had happened did she want to know?

She thought about it at night staring up at the ceiling unable to sleep and she thought about weather or not she wanted to know if something had happened to her. She had been in such happy ignorance that she didn't know if it was something she wanted to learn, something she wanted Billie to learn.

She had mentioned it once to Daryl under the guise of visiting with an iced latte and a bear claw and in between chewing he had stared at her with something akin to pity if she looked too hard at him. That she was rapidly learning, was something else that she didn't want.

"Paige, if that did happen I'm not sure what recourse you would have. Legal anyway. I mean even if you could get around the statue of limitations you've worked in the foster system, Cole's worked in the DA. I've been doing this longer than I care to count and we all know what the most likely outcome in He Said, She Said cases are. We don't have to like it but that's the reality. Of course if you did something the other way I wouldn't like to know about it. If I did then I might be tempted to compile lists of people that needed punishment and I don't think that will help either. But…if you want my help you only have to ask, you know that. I just…I just don't know what good it will do"

It was painfully honest and certainly a lot kinder than what she would have gotten if she'd asked anyone else and that was all that Paige had needed.

But the problem was she didn't even know where to start. If it was a drunken hook up between two students that maybe she could rationalise away, if magic had been involved and maybe like her parents death, her magic had forced her to not remember she could understand that. She got it. She got a lot more than she was willing to admit to.

She just didn't know…

Fuck…

She thought about speaking to her sisters about it, to Leo maybe because Leo was their whitelighter and he was able to talk them through anything but the truth was that everyone was geared towards the end of Piper's pregnancy even Cole who delighted in watching home birthing video's to the surprise of all and pointing out all the ways in which demons took their pleasure out of stuff like this and that had they known videos like this existed it would have generated a whole slew of inspiration the kind that even muses didn't give them.

(For a human now he was still delightfully Cole which was just…well…Paige didn't know what it was but she knew that she didn't like it)

Instead she tried to focus on becoming an Aunt. She tried to focus on that, and that was the focus when Piper collapsed. They had been focused on gypsy witchcraft and gypsy magic and other kinds of stuff, learning to become midwives and preparing for a magical baby girl to join them. Paige couldn't help but feel impossibly broody and perhaps impossibly sad all at the same time. There was something about the entire experience that made her feel…broody.

And what that meant she didn't want to think about.

And then the magic, literally died.

It started like this.

Billie had been in the kitchen and then she had screamed which you know in the Halliwell house was not the way to start the morning. Paige had come barrelling into said kitchen forcing Cole to spin in a way that he bemoaned completely ruined his back to anyone and everyone that would listen—eg—Phoebe only to see a unicorn standing there in the kitchen his horn prodding her daughter in the side and Billie claiming she was totally unable to use her magic.

In any other house.

Seriously.

Any other house.

"Billie!"

"Mom!"

"Unicorn" Cole said unhelpfully pointing at the thing as if it was the antichrist.

"Leo?!"

"Oh" Leo said quietly coming into the room from where he had been upstairs trying to keep his wife's blood pressure under control (because this was so the house where you were able to do that). "This cannot be good"

"Unicorn" Cole said again and this time he actually stood on the table pointing and looking at it the way Billie had used to look at spiders when she was little and she would scream for her Momma to kill the scary things.

Oh, it was funny how it was the little things that you missed when you looked back on them.

"Cole get off the furniture"

"Nah Paige, I'm an ex-demon those things are like…hell's horses…get it away…"

"Oh for the love of—"

"We can't use magic?" Phoebe asked as the doorbell rang.

"Billie would you mind?" Leo said staring at the ceiling as if trying to orb his way up to THEM by sheer force of will.

"Sure" Billie said quietly. "But if it's your Dad Aunt Phoebe I'm not sure that I should be the one to answer the door"

"Hon Victor knows all about you and your Mom. He's fine with it honestly. He made peace with Mom and Sam a long time ago. Besides…he's hardly one to talk when it comes to dropping surprise bombshells on us. Everytime he visits it's a surprise"

It was clear that there was an underlying bitterness there but as Paige was the by product of when her Mom and Phoebe's Dad left she didn't think that she was one to ask.

And then there was her own father, the drunk ex-whitelighter now turned into a whitelighter again to say nothing of the fact that she didn't know who the father of her own baby was.

So maybe meeting Victor Halliwell was putting her a bit on edge as well?

"Err…Mom?"

"Yeah?"

"There's a…a demon at the door?"

Any other house.

Several things seemed to happen that day. Her Mom and Aunt Phoebe went to meet the demon about getting magic back (with Cole as a discreet back up) and Leo had gone to deal with the unicorn. That left Piper upstairs with her new step grandmother and Billie downstairs with Victor Halliwell who kept shooting her looks that he thought no doubt were discreet and which were really not.

"Can I help you?" she asked finally and he started.

"Oh no I just…kinda wondering where the blonde came from. You look a lot like your grandmother did but she was a dark haired woman, dyed it blonde once but…"

"Maybe my Dad?"

"Phoebe mentioned…I mean she said that you don't know…"

"No. And neither does my Mom. Were kinda fighting about it at the moment"

"Ah, I guess I can understand that"

"What us fighting?"

"Well…I guess…" he smiled a little ruefully. "Digging up the past might be painful. I'd be worried. Phoebe…forgive me but Phoebe told me a little about what Paige remembers. If It was me I'd be terrified. Especially with all this demon stuff. Supposing it was a demon"

It touched so close to what she feared that she didn't know what to say but he smiled and it was touchingly sweet she thought looking at him.

"You know…if you were my daughter and one of my girls had come to me and said that she didn't know how she got pregnant I know where my mind would have jumped too. And the reality is that she doesn't know that. So I guess for her…it must be very scary. But she loves you so if you want to find out who your Dad is she is going to help you. But…maybe before you decided…I don't know…I'm guessing in the dark now because I don't get a say, I left my kids for years but, I always think maybe Moms should get a lot more slack than they get."

Billie considered that for a moment.

"I guess I never thought of that" she said finally and then because she thought he was the one person in the room who would give it her straight (apart from Cole but she didn't think she would be up for his particular brand of honesty right now) she asked the question that had been bugging her more than she cared to admit.

"You think…you think that if I am half demon or that I was conceived…like that…that, that makes me bad? Evil?"

"No" Victor Halliwell said and his voice rang true of such conviction it was staggering and yet despite it all a balm to Billie's ears.

"No darling I don't think that you are evil. If that is the case then you and your Mom…you find a way to deal with it, and you've got a support network behind you of good, strong, powerful woman. You are a Halliwell and a Matthews and a Gordon, believe me that's more than enough magical juju to counteract one bad guy"

For a second Billie didn't know what to say and then because she didn't know what to say she did what she wanted to do.

She crossed the room and hugged him.

"Thanks" she said into his shoulder and after a pause he wrapped his arm around her and hugged her back. She realised that perhaps for him it was a novel concept too.

"Anytime kid" he said finally. "And I know I'm not your Grandpa, and I get that too but…but you call me anytime you need something okay?"

She nodded against his shoulder and then…

"Would it help if I told you I liked you better than Sam?"

There was a pause and then.

"Yes…yes it really would"

She laughed again but the little moment was interrupted by Piper's scream.

And that was when all hell broke loose.

Literally.

Paige walked into what could only be described as hell.

First there was Victor with the knife literally in his back. Piper collapsed on the stairs (and Paige knew what labour looked like and that was absolutely labour) and the demon with a knife to her sister's throat and then…

Billie on the table and that bitch, Victor's wife had her hands around her daughter's throat.

No magic nor not this bitch was going down.

"HEY!" She snarled running forwards and the woman jumped and Billie kicked out her converse shoe and the force of the kick in the stomach knocked the demon backwards. Billie fell off the table clutching her throat and gasping and Paige took in the glass at her feet and the cut on her forehead and she grabbed the nearest vase and smashed it over the bitch's head.

She fell backwards and Paige booted her in the ribs so hard she knew she had hit her target. Her hand behind her stuck out and Billie took it and Paige stood fully in front of her daughter.

"Give me a reason you bitch" she said staring down at the woman/demon/monster that had dared to hurt her baby girl. "Give me a reason and I swear on the Book of Shadows I will end you in the most painful way imaginable"

The woman heaved a breathe.

"Mom"

"Billie…"

"Mom…were not evil" she said quietly. "Were not."

There was a bang and Paige turned inspiration striking. They were working with some of the most primitive forms of magic imaginable and so…

"Cole chuck me that unicorn dust"

"Oh God do I have too?"

"NOW!"

Looking very much as if he was handling a grenade with the pin pulled out Cole threw her the bag. Paige grabbed a handful of the dust and lobbed it in the woman's direction and she took an immense amount of pleasure in seeing her burn.

Billie rested her head against her Mom's back and Paige turned to wrap her in her arms as the demon was dealt with and Phoebe and Cole got Piper on the table just in time for Leo to run in.

"Victor then Billie" Paige snapped and he nodded healing Victor with the unicorn dust and then Billie and Paige went to go and help her sister but before she could her daughter wrapped both arms around her waist and hugged her close. It was the closest that she and Billie had been in months and Paige realised that she was trembling against her.

"It's okay" she said rubbing Billie's shoulder and tucking her daughter close to her. "It's okay" she said again and she smiled.

"It's not" Billie hiccupped as Piper screamed. "I've been a right bitch Mom"

"No you've not"

"I didn't think that there were reasons you didn't want to know and—"

"No" Paige said bending forwards and cupping her daughter's face so that despite Piper giving birth next to them Billie was the only thing she was focused on.

"No Billie. No you did nothing, nothing wrong. I will help you find out who your Dad is I promise you, you want to walk down this road then I walk down it with you. You know why?"

"Because where the Matthews girls and there is nothing that we can't do as long as we have each other" Billie said her voice breaking and Paige her eyes overbright nodded kissing her daughter on the top of her head and wrapping her arms around.

"Not to break up the touching moment—" Cole began but then Piper screamed and the blue lights were back. The magic was alive and bright and back again and the brightness swirled all around them and Paige felt it settle in her core.

Magic was back.

Billie and Paige were back. The Matthews girls were back.

The baby was born.

A boy, a healthy magical baby boy.

And though it wasn't—not really, it did indeed feel like all was right in the world again.

And there you go, I hope you enjoyed this chapter and I will do my best to bring you the next one sooner than later.

Next Chapter-Penultimate of Season 5-The family adjust to a baby, Cole and Phoebe make a decision, Paige gets broody and then gets kidnapped and the Old Crone knows who Billie's Dad is and sends a message...for a rainy day.

There is going to be a time jump between this chapter and the last of Season 5 with lots of episodes missed because they are not relevant to the plot just so keep you informed.