Hi, so here is a return to this wonderful fandom of Charmed and this time I am attempting to do a Paige story, I love Rose, I love Paige, I just always loved Prue a little bit more. But having rewatched Seasons 4-8 I have to admit the Paige/Billie relationship was one of the few good things that came out of that Season. So this is based on that.

Disclaimer-Nothing here is mine just this plot.

Again this skips over a lot of things and dialogue etc. If you are looking for a word for word, episode for episode story this is not going to be that one.

Also as I forgot to mention it with the last one I will mention it now, I do not have a beta reader and spelling and grammar are not my strongest suit so if I do make mistakes then I do apologise.

This will end Paige/Henry, and will end Leo/Piper, I don't intend to go too much into Season 8 so Henry might make an appearance in the Season 7 arc. Christy ain't gonna be happening and I am not sure if I want to keep Cole good but he might be simply because while I can tolerate Coop that ending was a complete shambles for Phoebe, Cole was the love of her life and Cole was the one she was supposed to end up with.

And this is going to be Phoebe/Cole ending. Since the first chapter that has now been what I have agreed to. Sorry not sorry.

So that over with...

I do not take PMs anymore either, if you have a question please leave a review and I will get back to you in the next chapter, chapter notes.

And on a side note, I like so many other Fanfiction Authors no longer receive notifications via email about reviews/PMs etc. So if you do send any it might be a while, if ever before I get back to you. Please keep that in mind for it is not intentional-If anyone has a fix please let me know.

Please Read and Review.

Also I am not one hundred percent sure what Billie's power actually was and/or if she had an active power etc. So for this story her power is moving things with her hand, (not her mind) and there being no orbing. She's not Prue and therefore her power is not the same as Prue but I will confess it's pretty damn close. Again I don't know what the producers were thinking in Season 8 which is why only two or more chapters will be covered and Zankou will be the last great villain of the story (God knows he was of the series)

And yeah, I hope you enjoy this one, next one will have a bit of a time jump as we move more towards Season 4. Also...I do not intend for Cole to go evil in this fic. So that will take out a huge chunk of Season 4 that I will fill with something else.

Mother Of Invention

Chapter 4-Smile Like You Mean It

As both the Shocker Demon and a Black Knight wreak havoc the Matthews girls have a new problem to face when they are asked if they want to live at the Halliwell house. Life will once again never be the same.

Billie Matthews had not grown up on the traditional fairy tales. Billie Matthews had not grown up traditional at all and maybe that was what had prepared her a little bit more for the mad, bad, crazy life that she was now living? She didn't know. But she had not had the traditional upbringing let's put it like that. And that came with the not traditional fairy tales.

The Evil Enchantress was one of them.

When she had been a little girl it had scared her silly. When she had been thirteen ands he had been discovering boys and how fickle they were she was beginning to think the Enchantress had a point. Why trust a man to do the heavy work when you could do it yourself?

Her Mom had laughed when she had said that tying her hair back in a loose plat. They had stared up at the stars and Billie in her pyjama's had fallen asleep thinking about the Evil Enchantress who had gotten what she had wanted despite everything.

And then her Aunts had knocked on the door.

It was not that Billie disliked them. Since they had become a family (if that was what you were calling it now) they had bonded rather well. Piper had, had them over for Sunday dinner and had cooked everything and anything. Somehow she had found out that Billie loved mushrooms and had piled her plate with them. Her Mom was learning the craft and through her Billie was doing the same thing and it was nice. It was normal (ish).

She had not been anticipating her Aunts turning up though to tell her Mom that not only had Piper's husband (Call me Leo, seriously kid, please) turning up on her doorstep when she had been in her old sweats and had been unable to even so much as conjure up a fork to defend herself with.

And that was when she had found that they were watching her and her Mom.

Which as her Mom said was just…ugh…creepy.

Among other things that she had said but Billie was leaving them out to save her Mom's reputation.

Billie was now back at school.

Considering her daughter had near perfect attendance before the whole 'Charmed' thing had occurred it was not hard for Paige to claim that her baby was sick for two weeks before sending her back. Billie had pouted and then had tried to claim that Leo watching her made her feel uncomfortable when it came to going back to school but Paige was Paige and she had known about her daughters ways a long time ago.

So Billie had gone to school and Paige had gone to the house.

She had been intent on chewing out her sisters for the continued watch of her and her daughter. Also she had wanted to look at the book and figure out if maybe the horrible little fairy tale she had filled her precious baby girl's head with had been just that (or if it had been something more). What she had not been expecting was the offer to move in with Piper and Phoebe.

"Are you out of your freaking mind?"

And then she had gone for the book.

It wasn't that she didn't get it, because she did. And look…it wasn't like she didn't understand that the sisters needed her as the other part of their Power of Three thing and the house was like the dream house, it was just…she was…she was…she wasn't sure.

Prue's room was still Prue's room and all throughout the Black Knight and the Evil Enchantress (which turned out to be real thank you very much fate) had distracted herself from that the truth of the matter was that she couldn't think of it as anything other than Prue's room. She was already taking her biggest of big sisters (that she had never gotten to meet) place within the Power of Three and she was already at the club that she had helped buy and she had already struggled with the very real destiny that had come crashing down on her and her daughter. The thought of taking her room on top of everything else was a bit too much to bare.

"And besides" she said to Leo as she stopped mid vanquish to pick up her daughter from school, "Where would we go?"

"I think the idea is that you have Prue's room and we'd create one for Billie"

"Define create?"

"Billie"

"No seriously Leo define create?"

"Well I have to admit that the perks of being a handman for sixty years have given me a few idea's. I was thinking that if we reduced Prue's walk in closet we could expand down the corridor to create a room for you Billie. Paige would have to have a regular closet not a walk in—"

"Mom can live with that"

"Excuse me little girl?"

Leo laughed shortly.

"So Uncle Leo talk more about my room"

"Oh no Billie, I'm Leo, Uncle makes me sound old"

"Didn't you fight in World War Two?"

"Paige…drive…the faster you drive the more we get to the portal the faster that we get to Phoebe and my wife"

There was a pause and then…

"Leo how hard would it be to add a bathroom?"

Paige despaired she really did.

This was new.

This was really, really new.

Jumping through a portal was new. Billie had stayed directly above ground when her Mom and Phoebe had gone to the dragon world to save Piper or whatever the hell that place had been and she had sat with Leo and Cole who she was also bet had been around for a long time too…

Suddenly history homework was looking at lot better…

"Whatever you are thinking" her Mom said sternly "Don't.

"I wasn't thinking—"

"This is dangerous, very, very dangerous, you want to prove that you can be a part of this new world then you have to earn that right. You stay behind me you use your powers when I say so and you do what I say. If I tell you to leave me and save yourself then you will do you understand?"

Billie wanted to argue that there was no way in hell (which she was guessing was also a real place right about now) that she would leave her mother but the truth was that glare had pinned her into place and there was nothing that she could do to stop it.

Her Mom was not above leaving her here after all.

"Fine"

"Tell me you understand Billie"

"I understand Mom"

She nodded her head up and down and her Mom stared at her for a long second and then she nodded.

And so she stepped into the portal.

The Enchanted Castle was exactly how she had always imagined it.

And by that she meant dark and dreary and depressing. Paige had not known what she was walking into and with Billie it had heightened her sense of protectiveness. The second they had arrived Leo had been engaged in fighting with the guards and so she and Billie hand in hand had gone searching for the evil Enchantress.

Who had been on the bed about to make love.

"Ugh"

"Billie"

"Mom please she looks just like you. It's like…interrupting you when your with a cheap knock off of Glen"

"Billie!"

The Evil Enchantress took that moment to shoot air at them and so that was the end of that. Rebounding with her own magic the witch was easy enough to deflect and she saw the blonde hair belonging to her daughter grabbing the Prince off the bed and he dimly followed her daughter the very definition of pretty but dim.

Christ why had she ever seen him as attractive? Prince Charming was such an illusion.

"How could you do this to me? To us?" the Enchantress said her voice wounded and Paige looked at the previous version of herself, of her past life (she hoped many past lives before Billie was even a twinkle in the milk maid's eye)

"I didn't do anything." She said smiling and feeling the sense of power.

"We did"

And there was Phoebe and Piper at her side, the Power of Three together again and it was oddly comforting to know that she had that back up. After so long being on her own, being the adult as far as her daughter was concerned it was nice to know that she was a part of something that worked well.

Watching the Enchantress turn into dust, the Prince get his happy ending (with both the love of his life and probably something else to boot) and she got a big fat does or perspective and some scorch marks when they finally went back to the apartment.

Sending the sisters, her sisters away she promised them that they would talk in the morning.

"Impressive"

"Billie"

"Mom that was all kinds of awesome. Hey…do you think I have a past life too?"

"Probably, just depends where it crops up. The sisters had theirs in the 1920s, mine was in medieval times—"

"I think I'd have liked to be a fighter pilot"

"Billie you would not have been a fighter pilot"

"Why not?"

"You hate heights, have a thing about enclosed spaces and your math is terrible"

Billie pouted at her. She tried to sit down on the bed but it had collapsed in the middle of the fight so instead she sat down on the floor.

"Thanks for taking me Mom"

"Thanks for doing what I asked"

"No I just…this is hard. I've been working on trying to keep my powers under control but…but today I think I can see a way forwards"

"You mean—"

"I mean—" Billie tilted her head to the side thinking and Paige tried to give her some space so she sat down on the floor leaning back against her grandmother's kitchen island and watching her daughter think on what she wanted to say.

"Mom…if we live with Piper and Phoebe we can get a better grip on what we can do. I think the more I learn I learn with them. And it's not that I don't learn how to use my magic with you but…"

"But we are both learning how to control it at the same time?"

Billie nodded.

"I love our life here" she said looking around the apartment. "I love it Mom…we made…we made this big, crazy wonderful life here and we managed to make it normal but we are not normal. Were witches and we have demons come after us and I don't want to step into the shower and wonder if my Aunt's husband is watching me"

"I'm sure he wasn't" Paige said quietly. Working in the social care system had given her a pretty good understanding of certain things and she knew that Leo had probably been a perfect gentleman. He had been on the lookout for this shocker demon.

"If we do this…and I am not saying that we are" Paige said quietly. "Then we lose whatever anonymity that being here gave us. We didn't get attacked here and we will in that house, your life…your life is going to change. There is no guarantee that you can have your friends round if a demon attacks."

"There's no guarantee that, that won't happen here Mom. We've been living on borrowed time since we found out that we are Charmed."

Paige conceded the point and she tapped her nails on the wooden floor. It wasn't like she hadn't been thinking it herself.

"There's more" she said quietly. "For me there's more. I don't think…I don't think I am ready to walk into that room that once belonged to the sister I never got a chance to meet and watch as Piper and Phoebe box up all her stuff. I don't think that they are either now I think of it"

"Didn't they ask us?"

"Yes"

"Then it sounds like they might be ready. You grieve and then you move on"

Paige who had been looking at the floor looked at her daughter in surprise. "Where did that one come from?"

"I don't know" Billie said quietly. "I just…I thought I heard someone say it once"

And Paige didn't know what to make of that either.

It wasn't as simple as it was made out to be. It involved a long conversation with both her sisters and then another one with her daughter. Leo when she agreed to move in came round the next day with blue prints for what he thought would become Billie's room and then he got to work. Piper who had come round one morning to take some boxes commented that it was nice to see her husband enjoying his work again, that it was nice to see him sink his teeth into a new project and she saw the naturalness that her sister had been lacking in her grief come back. Paige had not been lying. It did get easier. It never went away but it did get easier.

Saying goodbye to the apartment was harder for her than she thought it would be. She had raised her baby here. She had raised Billie from where she was five her to where she was thirteen. There, stamped on the walls was her daughter's growth from child to teenager, from mortal to witch. She had also transformed there, from young woman, to young mother to mature mother. Her motherhood was stamped all over the walls and it was hard to say goodbye to the little hole in the wall that she and Billie had made theirs for so long.

She had given it a niece of her adoptive father's who had two boys herself and she took the piece of wood that had shown her daughter's height (Leo being kind enough to cut it out for her without leaving too much structural damage) and she closed the door on that part of her life and she and Billie finally, four months after being blessed and cursed with being Charmed, moved into the Halliwell manner.

"What do you think?"

Piper didn't know what to think.

And that was putting it mildly.

She tried to catch Phoebe's eye but Phoebe was already grinning her smile as wide as Billie's who was all but jumping up and down in delight. Leo was the same downstairs with Cole giving them this moment but utterly delighted that the project that he had sunk his teeth into had come to completion.

Cole had openly admitted he was just happy that he didn't have to shimmy into a construction site every ten minutes because apparently (like she didn't know) the dust was a bitch to get out of his clothes.

"I think it's nice" she said looking over Prue's room that was now Paige's. And it was. There was nothing of Prue in the room now, nothing that reminded her of the phantom ache and she envisioned that while she would never fully forget the layout of this room when it had been cluttered with photography or that time she had seen Andy's jacket peeking out of the covers that one time after he had died.

This room was Paige's, Paige's with it's artwork and it's colour and it's photos of Billie, school projects that had been stuck on the wall.

"Now mine" Billie said and Piper allowed herself to be led next door.

Leo had reduced Paige's closet a little bit and then knocked down the wall in Gram's room which had been next to Prue's and then turned it into an open room with an interconnecting door through said closets. It meant that Billie and Paige were sharing but they had done that at their old apartment and it gave Paige access to her daughter while allowing Billie some much needed privacy.

Billie's room was a typical teenage room. She had turned the bed so that when she woke up she was directly getting sunlight on her face, had added plants and candles and Leo had knocked up some pretty good bookshelves for her. The TV was a small size and the stacks of DVDs, shoes etc, reminded Piper of when she was a teenager herself and Grams would stand at the top of the stairs and bemoan to wherever they were in the house that they had to clean their rooms and do it fast because she was getting tired of breaking her neck on things.

It was funny the things that you remembered.

Prue was in the past. Paige was in the present.

And now it was time to prove it.

"Shall we?" Phoebe said and Paige went to stand by her side as Billie moved to the doorway to watch but to allow them space to do the vanquish.

"You know one day I'll be able to do this" Billie said quietly.

"Dream on little girl"

But there was a gleam in Billie's eye that told Piper that Paige was vastly misunderstanding her little girls desire to help them out when it came to battling demons and warlocks.

She saw Billie tilt her chin up and felt a flicker of nostalgia.

Prue used to do that too.

Maybe there was more of her sister in Paige and Billie than she had ever let on.

She turned around, turned her thoughts away from the past and squarely fixed them on the future.

A new power of three.

A new room.

A new sister.

A new world.

For better or for worse. A new world.

Now they all just had to find a way to live in it.

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

Next Chapter-Paige goes back to the past to confront what happens to her parents and who knows? Maybe meet her baby's father. Billie' not sure what to make of that either.