Hi, so Season 6 and we are over the halfway mark for this story. As you see we are halfway through and someone else is making his appearance, I might have to give Billie's Dad a happier ending than what he got on the show because the truth is that he is so good to write and his relationship with Paige is so devious. Hands down Zankou was the best thing about Season 7 (we will not mention the cop that shall not be mentioned or whatever the f was being done with Daryl) so I am loving that I have brought him in early.

Disclaimer-Nothing is mine.

Also Zankou and Cole have never met in this story. I don't know if it's more to do with their human sides but I am choosing to believe that while they have heard about each other they have not seen each other face to face in human form.

Disclaimer-Nothing is mine.

Please Read and Review.

We will cover quite a bit in the last fifteen chapters that are Season 6 and Season 7, Season 8 is probably only going to be two chapters if that.

Also if I did make Paige/Zankou a thing how would that sit with you?

In case it was not clear. I DESPISE THE ELDERS, LIKE ALL OF THEM, EVEN THE ONE WHO TRIED TO HELP LEO. I JUST...BIGGEST BUNCH OF HYPOCRITES ON TV.

Hope that was nice and clear.

And Chris deserved better, looking back and re-watching he did deserve better. He's like Cole. God I love writing Cole.

And I want to thank you all for your patience in waiting for this chapter, there has been a lot of personal issues going on recently, hopefully they have now been resolved.

I predict two more chapters left of the Season 6 arc.

Mother Of Invention

Chapter 19-Storm Warnings

As the sister's discover magic school they also discover Gideon and the Headless Horsemen. Paige uses the opportunity to tell her sisters the truth.

"So let me just understand you?" Piper said in a tone that told Paige she was so in trouble it was just unfair. "You have known for about six months that the man you are seeing was the father of your child, a demon and not just that…the original demon! The demon that even the Source didn't want to cross but it's okay because apparently he doesn't want to kill us?! Oh and you introduced Billie to him! Have I got that right Paige? Have I?"

"And you dragged Cole into it" Phoebe said nodding her head as best she could.

"Really" Paige deadpanned spitting hair out of her mouth as she glared at her sisters. "That is what you choose to focus on? You don't think it might be…oh I don't know…the fact that we are just three heads talking with no bodies?"

Oh God now she was sounding hysterical.

But then again she was headless, her daughter was in a room guarding a load of teenagers who all could have conjured up the Headless Horseman, Leo was guarding Wyatt, heavens only knew what Chris was doing and Cole was currently holding the entire thing together from the attic because he claimed he'd rather spit than work with Gideon who insisted he would rather spit back than work with Cole.

Oh and heavens only knows what Zankou was doing.

They had gone to the zoo!

"I mean I don't even know where to begin!" Piper began but Paige wasn't having this. To be fair she had been warned she supposed. Cole had told her that Piper wouldn't take this well. Phoebe at the very least was not exploding. Suddenly she was very glad that Piper didn't have arms, all the better for her not to blow anything up or to strangle her with.

"How about the door in the fucking house" she shouted back. "How about the fact that Wyatt is drawn to everything magic like a fucking moth to a flame, how about the fact that Gideon who we don't know who is an Elder, who we don't trust because we don't trust Elders is downstairs with my child who is half witch, half demon. Jesus Piper do you not think that maybe that might be a fucking problem when They find out!"

Okay so yeah she was a lot hysterical.

Piper watched her for a second and then.

"We've already had one burst with the Cleaners and the Elders let it happen because they didn't trust us to live our own lives" Paige continued lowering her voice. Phoebe sighed.

"She has a point" she said lowly. "Cole and I were trying…well…were thinking about trying for another baby and the truth of the matter is we don't know what is going to happen. You said yourself Piper they didn't like the idea of us marrying. You had to jump through hoops to do it. I don't blame Paige for trying to work out how she felt about this thing…is he a cute demon?"

"Very" Paige said. At this point she would lean her head back on whatever hard surface she could find but that was proving difficult when one didn't have a body.

"How cute?"

"Seriously Phoebe?"

"Dark and glamorous. Dangerous, arrogant, bad boy personified. I can see why it didn't take me much in the past to jump into bed with him. And let me tell ya something girls he damn well knows what he is doing."

For a second even Piper looked at her with interest. Not to be catty but in that contradictory way of sisters Paige noted that it had been for Piper at least, a very long time since she'd got a decent heap of lovin'.

So to speak.

"Huh" Phoebe said nodding. "Okay."

"Paige—"

"I am not vanquishing the father of my child." She said flatly. "I don't believe that he is a threat to me or to Billie or to you."

Piper looked thoughally unconvinced.

"Piper do you think I would allow him near Billie if I thought he was trying to kill us? Do you think I even would have bothered to tell her if I thought her life was in danger?"

"I don't think you can—"

"Don't say that" Paige said firmly. "I don't want to argue with you about it Piper. I don't parent your child I don't expect you to parent mine. If Zankou steps over the line I will handle it. But as long as Billie wants a relationship with him and he behaves himself I am not going to start another war with half the Underworld"

It was said firmly and she still didn't know if Piper thought it a good idea. She could in her own way understand why. She suspected that the 'Great Evil' that turned Wyatt to the Dark Side was what was praying in her sister's mind but she was sure that it was not Zankou. A because she genuinely would have expected him to try by now and B. because she genuinely did not get that feeling from him. Call in instincts and call it foolish if you want but Paige had lived and died by her instincts when she was a fifteen year old girl pregnant and barely surviving on the streets and she was going to live and die by them now.

Besides. She didn't want to say it Piper because she understood the desire to protect your child. She understood where Piper's instincts were coming from but at the same time she also wanted to point out that Wyatt wasn't the only child that lived in the Halliwell house. Numerous times Billie had put her life at risk and Paige had expected or had been expected to allow her too because she had Charmed blood.

Just like Wyatt.

She would have said but she didn't think she'd risk Piper's temper. Finding out your child was the entity that destroyed all good magic in the future would make you testy.

She supposed.

Very carefully she was not thinking about the fact that Chris had refused to tell her what had happened to Billie in his time.

Billie had been up checking the Book of Shadows when the Horseman escaped. She had opened the door to the Magic School and had winced when she had seen the state of her Mom. Gideon had, had some grand plan to talk to the student who seemed to be taking his homesickness into cutting off peoples heads and Billie wasn't naïve enough to think that would work.

Also…she didn't…she didn't know what it was about Gideon she really didn't but she didn't like him.

It wasn't like Chris, it wasn't like when she was first meeting him. Actually if she was being painful honest with herself Chris had grown on her. He seemed genuinely dedicated to keeping Wyatt safe and she had to respect that if nothing else considering Wyatt did kill his fiancé in the past or the present or the future…or whatever it was.

There was something about Gideon though…Billie didn't know what it was. She thought it was just…insincere. Leo seemed to love him like a father figure and certainly he wouldn't hear a word against him and Billie…Billie didn't know honestly if her instincts were messing with her. She had a new power, a new father and she had a new hair cut when she had decided enough was enough and she had cut her hair to her shoulders causing her mother to choke on her coffee when she saw it.

Now it was curled tightly and she was aware that more than a few boys looked at her in the corridor as she passed to get to class and she felt a little like she was coming into her own.

For the first time since this crazy ride had begun she felt like she was coming into her own. She felt like she was free. Like she was powerful and…Charmed.

She could handle herself around the book, around demons, around her father, she could fight—not like Aunt Phoebe but she could fight and she knew how to defend herself. She knew her potions well and her spells and she could rhyme pretty well.

She just didn't get to do any of the important stuff anymore. There was never a spell in which she wrote that they would take. And here she was sat on the couch in the other room watching the second Leo or her mom or her aunts left the room and the smug smile drop of Gideon's face as if this whole thing involving a headless horseman and a student not much older than her (who clearly needed help and not punishment) was a façade that he was struggling to maintain.

When her Mom did come back she was on two legs and she slung an arm around her shoulders. They were nearly the same height now Billie thought. It was a bit mournful when you thought about it. She had grown up.

She was beginning to think that being a grown up wasn't all that it was cracked up to be.

Stupid books.

"I told your Aunts about your father" she said as Piper got a dustpan and broom and began to sweep up the mess left by the students.

"Oh"

"Yeah"

"I don't want him in this house" Aunt Piper intoned, "I don't want him near Wyatt, I don't want to meet him or see him, I don't want him near the club. I see him and I am prone to vanquishing him so keep him the far away from me and mine if you want him to live"

"He's my Dad" Billie said suddenly unable to stop herself. "I want you to like him"

Aunt Piper scoffed.

"Piper" her Mom said through gritted teeth but Aunt Piper just dumped the mess in the bin and left.

Her Mom rubbed her arm soothingly.

"Don't let it get to you" she said frowning.

"It doesn't" Billie said honestly because it didn't. "I just…I don't know…I know were watching for a threat and all that it's just…it doesn't feel like it's coming from Dad you know?"

"Well if its not coming from your father whose the original demon then that begs the question of who is it coming from?" Phoebe asked with whooshing sound sitting on the chair that took her ages to get back up from mainly because the stuffing had gone out of it during a demon attack eight months ago.

"I don't know" Billie said truthfully. "But I got instincts to you know…good ones…and I know it's not my father who is out for Wyatt"

She nearly opened her mouth to say more but then she shut it. After all…having a bad feeling about an Elder didn't mean that he was evil. Just meant that he was an Elder.

Hell that was par for the course right about now.

Didn't it?

Wasn't it?

He sat in the darkness of his office at Magic School. Most of the teachers thought that he had locked himself away in self-isolation and regret over his student and to be fair that was a small part of it. The loss of an innocent, the loss of a student, a failure in not seeing them, seeing their pain and seeing their suffering…it was just…too much.

And it all came back to this. To the 'threat', to the fact that they had people jumping through time.

And now this.

Wyatt, Gideon had known had been a threat to the Grand Design from the start. He had believed that child to be a threat from the second of it's creation. He refused to be swayed over to the Dark Side that many Elders held firm to that Leo and Piper were a good match, that it was best to keep the Charmed One's happy. Already they had pushed the sisters to the limit they had been told, mother dead, sister dead, boyfriend dead, another sister on the horizon, baby dead.

The demon had been bad enough. And now there was this. The other one, the bastard of the bastard, the product of a heinous union, the daughter of another product of a heinous union.

Billie Matthews.

He prowled around his office in the dark thinking long into the night.

The child was half witch, half demon.

It had never been something that they had considered before. The Other Side did not mate with good witches. Sure they would fuck them (pardon his crass language) but they would not mate with them. Whitelighters were the same. Gideon had never been one of those who thought that because they were immortal they had to be celibate, but love and passion didn't always run with each other.

Until these sisters.

One with her whitelighter, two with demons, vicious demons and the forth with a mortal until that little thing had been nipped in the bud.

Death. The great equaliser.

And that was before you got to Paige Matthews and her entire exsistance. Gideon was of the firm believe that had they known about her they would have set the Cleaners on Patty and Sam as soon as possible. Oh granted it had come in handy he supposed but then again…unions such as Whitelighters and Witches, Demons and Witches, with caps locks…they were not supposed to happen, the Charmed Ones were supposed to give of their lives for the Greater Good, the Grand Design…all of it.

There was a pause as he paced across the floor trying to put into place what had to happen. This was not going to be good. Already his co-conspirators were wobbly. Already the Elders were clinging to either not knowing or not pretending to know (God knows sometimes even for him it was hard to tell) and the consequences would be severe.

But it had to be done. For the Greater Good.

For the Grand Design.

He nodded and resigned himself to the Plan.

Wyatt Halliwell had to die.

And now it seemed so did Billie Matthews.

And it was up to Gideon to see the plan through.

And in this he would not fail.

And outside in the dark mortal city, the storm clouds issued a warning for the war that was on it's way.

And there you are.

Also the thing with Daryl and Sheridan and him walking away? Yeah, not happening.

Next Chapter-With a threat rising against Wyatt and everyone aware that Chris is Piper and Leo's son, Paige is increasingly plagued by dreams that something is going to happen to Billie. Zankou is already there and Mom and Dad must take steps to protect their baby girl from a foe they do not even know is right in the room next door.