Hi Peeps!

Well it's been quite a while since my last story...nobody can keep up that kind of momentum all the time, and anyway I've been busy busy busy with my first semester of grad school, which I am happy to report has been wildly successful! so far, anyway. I wrote two enormous papers, one of which has been submitted for possible publication at a conference on internet culture at NYU in the fall, which would be awesome, but I'm not gonna count my chickens or whatnot. anyway, now that summer is here, I can get back to my "pleasure" writing! so here's the start-- enjoy!

The Witching Hour

A New Phoebe & Paige Story by JewWitch

Summary: Picks up about six months after 2 Witches in Love leaves off. Paige has just begun her work as a fully qualified whitelighter, and Phoebe is getting her feet wet at the paper...as always, the Halliwell clan is trying very hard to strike some sort of balance between their witchy duties, and their personal and professional lives. This is especially true for our youngest couple, who are both eager to establish their careers, and generally get a handle on adult, married life. Sounds simple enough, doesn't it...? As an addendum to my general AU world, I would like to say that I am changing something about Piper's character that has always really bothered me, and that is her internalized self-hatred as a witch. It was always sort of an undercurrent, but when Wyatt came around it really came out-- the way she resisted raising him to be in touch w/ his own basic nature as a magical being, how she shunned magic pre-school because she didn't want him to be surrounded by "all the other freaks"...I just don't feel that Piper is really that kind of person-- that she would really be so much of a slave to the fantasy of "normal." So if you think she's a little different here than on the show in that regard, it's because I give her more credit than Aaron Spelling's little monkeys.

Rating: R (just to be safe)

Chapter One

"Piper! We're home!" Prue's voice sliced through the sticky summer heat of the manor as the French doors banged open. The oldest Halliwell swept in carrying the youngest on her hip, with his face painted like a lion and a red balloon tied to his wrist. "Wyatt had so much fun at Nathan's birthday party!" Prue breezed through the front hall toward the sun room, intending to settle her nephew down in his playpen before mixing up a batch of frozen margaritas to combat the oppressive July humidity. What the hell, she thought as she pushed a damp lock of hair behind her ear. It's Saturday! She didn't notice until she'd straightened up again that her youngest sister was sprawled out on her stomach on the couch, fast asleep at four o'clock in the afternoon. She smirked quietly at the picture Phoebe made, one arm dangling off the edge of the cushion, dark hair splayed haphazardly across her face. Prue reached over automatically and tucked her sister's unruly hair back, stroking her forehead lightly.

"Mmmph," Phoebe mumbled unconsciously, rolling onto her back. "...but that's not even a hippopotamus..."

Prue snorted with suppressed laughter, biting her lip when Phoebe tossed her head, a frown creasing her sleep-lined face. "Sssh, honey...it's okay, don't wake up," Prue murmured.

"Mmmhmm..." Phoebe twitched a little, then began to snore softly. Prue left the room grinning, to find Piper in the kitchen taking cranberry-walnut muffins out of the oven.

"Ugh, are you seriously baking in this heat? Tell me you're not making another batch, or I'm leaving right now to go sit in an air-conditioned movie theater."

"I'm sorry, Prue, I can't help it if my day to bring snack to Wyatt's playgroup happened to fall during a heat spell."

"I suppose it would be entirely pointless to suggest you just go out and buy some muffins from the store like everyone else."

"Hi, I'm Piper. Have we met?"

"Ha ha."

The two sisters shared a smirk, then quick as a flash Prue's hand went into the open sack of flour behind her back, sending a cascade of powdery whiteness over Piper's head. Piper gave a shrill, indignant squeak, standing perfectly still with her eyes glued to her sister's like a lion about to pounce.

"Oh no you didn't."

"Yes I did!" Prue crowed, brazenly unabashed. "Whatcha gonna do about it, huh?" Piper leaped forward and grabbed a handful of flour, bolting after her sister who had already fled the scene of the crime. They tore through the front hall, the dining room, and the conservatory, ending only when Prue wheeled around to ward off an attack and tripped over the couch, landing on Phoebe, who simultaneously shrieked, opened her eyes, and levitated five feet off the couch, sending Prue flying into Piper, who dropped the flour she was holding, causing a large-scale, midair explosion. For a moment, no one said anything; the only sounds were coughing and gasping, and Wyatt's delighted laughter.

"What...the fuck?" Phoebe panted, slowly returning to the ground.

"Sorry, sleeping beauty," Piper sniggered, catching her breath. "Your sister decided to get frisky in the kitchen."

"Oh, so now it's my fault?" Though her words might have sounded angry to an outsider, Prue wore a huge grin as she sat sprawled on the floor rubbing flour from her eyes. "Nice reflexes by the way, Pheebs."

"Screw you," Phoebe grumbled.

"You kiss your wife with that mouth?" Prue teased, her grin evaporating as Phoebe's expression turned the corner form grumpy to pitiful. "Oh, honey, I didn't mean-"

"Forget it," Phoebe shook her head, slipping past her flour-coated sisters and running up the stairs. A moment later they heard her door slam.

"Boy, she's going to be a lot of fun this week," Piper sighed.

"I shouldn't have said that," Prue groaned, accepting Piper's hand and allowing herself to be hoisted back to her feet. "I'll go talk to her."

"No, let me," Piper shook her head. "I know how she's feeling right now...sometimes it's really tough being married to a whitelighter. This is the first time she and Paige have really been apart; she just needs a little time." Prue nodded. "C'mon, my little lion," Piper cooed at her painted baby boy, hoisting him up and kissing him. "Let's go cheer up Aunt Phoebe with that smile of yours!"

"...Come in," Phoebe called tonelessly. Her voice sounded muffled and Piper immediately saw why-- she was lying facedown on the bed, a pillow over her head.

"You're going to asphyxiate," Piper said lightly, sitting on the bed next to her sister's limp body and settling Wyatt beside her, who immediately flung himself down giggling, clearly under the impression that it was all a game being played for his benefit. Phoebe mumbled something against the pillow, but it was too muffled for Piper to hear. "What, sweetie?" She probed gently.

"I said..." Phoebe propped herself up on her elbows, revealing flushed, damp cheeks and red eyes, "something doesn't feel right."

"Of course it doesn't-- you're separated from the one you love for the first time. She's out there somewhere orbing into an unknown and dangerous situation, and you can't do anything to help. I know how it feels, Pheebs, you know I do. But Paige is a big girl and she can take care of herself, and so can you." Piper smoothed her sister's hair back as she spoke, gently wiping a few tears away with her thumb.

"No, Pipe," Phoebe said quietly with a shake of her head. "I mean...something really doesn't feel right. Something big." Piper frowned.

"Something magic?" She asked seriously, as Wyatt grabbed onto several of Phoebe's fingers and pulled them toward his mouth.

"I'm not sure," Phoebe admitted, gazing down at her nephew as he teethed contentedly on her new manicure. "I just...everything feels like the moment before something, like when you see a glass fall and you know it's about to break. I'm living in this state of constant suspense...I've been exhausted all week." Piper thought that Phoebe did look a little drawn, but attributed her sister's uneasiness to far more mundane roots than Phoebe did herself.

"Don't you think it's just possible that you're on edge waiting to see Paige home safe from her first whitelighter assignment?"

Phoebe sighed. Wyatt gave a delighted squeal, wiggling on the bed as he drooled all over Phoebe's fingers. A grudging grin crept onto her face.

"Yeah, you're probably right."

"Of course I'm right. I'm the little old married lady who gives advice to the newlyweds."

"Oh, please," Phoebe laughed. "You've been married two years and you own a nightclub!"

"Yeah, well--" but Piper's rebuttal to her sister's assertion of her hipness was lost beneath the sound of an ear-splitting crash. "Wyatt, danger!" Piper whispered to her son, a shimmering blue forcefield erupting around him. Then the two sisters bolted for the stairs, finding their third sister cornered by the most bizarre demon any of them had ever seen-- and that was saying something. It looked more like a monster from a child's storybook than a demon, with the elongated head and sharply ridged back of a crocodile, the claws of an enormous bird, and the grayish, leathery body of a hippopotamus.

"Prue!" Phoebe shrieked from the stairs, frightened to see her big sister in such a vulnerable position. The demon looked up and let out a deep, reverberating roar, the sound so excruciatingly loud that it felt to Phoebe as if someone were squeezing her brain from inside her head. Then everything went black.

When she next opened her eyes, Phoebe was flat on her back at the foot of the stairs. She had a burning pain in her leg, and no sense whatsoever of any time passing. The sky outside the mullioned windows was dusky, reflecting a murky twilight that told Phoebe she must have been lying there for several hours. After a moment spent staring blankly up at the ceiling, she became aware of her sisters on either side of her, both of them bent low over her throbbing leg.

"...sure we shouldn't call Paige and Leo?" Prue was asking tensely, neither of them noticing that Phoebe's eyes had opened. "What if it's more serious than it looks? What if that thing had venom in its claws?"

"You got scratched too, Prue. Do you feel poisoned?"

"No, but--" As she spoke, Prue probed the gash on Phoebe's thigh, causing her newly awakened sister to gasp in surprise and pain.

"Pheebs, you're awake!" Prue cried, throwing her arms around her sister's neck while Piper hugged her stomach. Phoebe, who wasn't quite sure whether Prue's statement was accurate, settled for the most obvious question.

"What the hell happened?"

"It was really weird," Piper said, frowning. "When that crocopottamus thing started screaming, you sort of spazzed out-- I thought you were having a seizure or something. Then you blacked out and fell down the stairs, and the really weird part is that it seemed like that was what it wanted-- the demon, I mean-- it threw Prue across the room to get to you."

"I thought it was going to swallow you whole," Prue admitted in a small, frightened voice, hugging her baby sister tightly.

"But it just slashed your leg, and when your blood got on its claws, it-- it licked it off."

"That thing tasted my blood?" Phoebe asked, her stomach clenching with revulsion.

"Yeah," Piper nodded. "And then--"

But Phoebe didn't hear what came next, as she scrambled to get away from her sisters, making it only a few feet before she threw up all over the hardwood floor.

"Sorry," she whimpered miserably when she could breathe again, putting a hand to her forehead to steady herself.

"It's okay, baby, shhh, it's not your fault," Piper crooned, gathering Phoebe's trembling body into her arms and rubbing her back. Phoebe started to cry, and Piper looked up worriedly at Prue. "Call them," she said shortly.

"Paige!" Prue yelled into thin air. "Leo! Get your incandescent asses back here right now!" A moment later, two fields of bright white lights erupted in the foyer. They looked windswept and breathless, but physically unharmed from whatever whitelighter business they had been engaged in. When they saw Phoebe and Piper on the floor, both dropped to their knees with hands outstretched and already glowing. Paige healed Phoebe's slashed leg before any words were spoken.

"Baby, you okay?" She asked softly when she was done, her hand threading through Phoebe's hair and rubbing the back of her neck, which always helped to calm the young witch after tense or frightening moments. This time, however, Phoebe burst into tears and threw her arms around Paige's neck, clinging to her tightly. Prue began to explain, as best she could, what had gone down while Paige slowly soothed Phoebe, who laid her head against the crook of Paige's neck, too overwhelmed to feel embarrassed that she was acting so childish.

"So then the demon-- what did you call it, Piper?"

"Crocopottamus," Piper repeated, returning from the upstairs with Wyatt in her arms, "Cause it was kind of, half crocodile and half hippo. Really weird de--"

"Holy shit!" Prue gasped, everyone turning to stare at her. "Pheebs, you had a premonition of that thing!"

"No I didn't," Phoebe frowned, her voice gravelly from crying.

"Yeah you did," Prue nodded vigorously, "in your sleep! You said, that's not even a hippopotamus. And then you got this real intense look on your face. That can't be a coincidence."

"And you just said," Piper slowly added, "You felt like something bad was coming."

"And you said I was just missing Paige and projecting."

"Well it looks like I was wrong, doesn't it?" None of the Halliwell sisters were generally keen to admit they'd been wrong, especially to each other. They all looked around rather grimly.

"Book of Shadows," Prue hummed in a would-be upbeat voice.

"Ugh," Phoebe groaned, pressing her face back against Paige's shoulder. "Can I pass this time, please? I'm still kind of nauseous."

"But I healed you," Paige frowned.

"You can't heal physical reactions to emotional stress, Paige," Prue reminded her. "We still have to deal with that the old-fashioned way."

"I just need to go get some sleep," Phoebe mumbled, rising unsteadily to her feet. "I'm sure I'll feel better in the morning."

"You're really gonna go to sleep at four thirty?" Paige asked worriedly.

"Four thirty?" Phoebe repeated blankly. "It's almost dark!"

"That happened while you were unconscious," Piper explained, which didn't really explain much. "You were only out for a few minutes, Pheebs."

"And we're just now discussing this?" Phoebe exclaimed incredulously. "The sun just set in five goddamn minutes, and you're just now telling me?"

"Easy there, cowgirl," Paige said in a pacifying voice. "We were all more worried about you than the sun, I guess."

"Don't fucking patronize me," Phoebe snapped, turning on her heels and stomping up the stairs. For the second time that evening, Piper and Prue heard their sister's door slam. Paige looked simultaneously stricken, and utterly surprised.

"Honey, she's just been so on edge worrying about you since you left," Piper said, giving her little sister-in-law a reassuring pat on the shoulder. "She didn't mean anything by that, and you know it." Paige nodded, looking up the stairs forlornly.

"Should I...give her some space or something?"

"Are you crazy?" Prue looked at her incredulously. "Go up there and comfort her!" Paige didn't need to be told twice.

"So, you and me on research?" Piper asked. Prue nodded.

"I guess that leaves me to go see what they know," Leo said, chucking his thumb toward the ceiling.

"Anything related to either the demon, or the mysterious onset of twilight," Prue confirmed. With a kiss for his wife, Leo was gone. "C'mon, sis, let's hit the book."

Upstairs, another soft knock prompted Phoebe to mumble a half-hearted come in. Paige opened the door, lingering uncertainly by the lintel.

"Hey," she said tentatively. Phoebe raised her head.

"You don't have to knock, dummy. It's your room too." Her words were not exactly harsh; just cranky and exhausted.

"Okay," Paige nodded, coming closer to the bed. "It just seemed like maybe you wanted to be alone."

"Alone with you," Phoebe corrected. Paige grinned and crawled onto the bed, the two of them instantly entwined.

"Sorry I was mean," Phoebe said quietly, closing her eyes as Paige stroked her hair.

"S'okay, baby...I know you didn't mean it."

"That doesn't make it okay," Phoebe said firmly, opening her eyes. "I don't ever want you to feel, like, afraid to piss me off."

"You want me to piss you off?" Paige frowned.

"No, Paigey," Phoebe shook her head impatiently. "I just don't want you to walk on eggshells, or be afraid to say what's on your mind, just because I'm acting like a brat. I know I can be that way sometimes...I mean, I'm the youngest, you know?" Paige nodded. "Promise you won't let me get away with it."

"Promise," Paige smiled, leaning in to kiss her.

"Now all we have to worry about is the enormous demon and the five-minute sunset."