Patricia Halliwell

Patricia "Patty" Halliwell was a witch of the Warren line of witches. She is the ex-wife of Victor Bennett and the mother of their three children: Prue, Piper and Phoebe Halliwell, who are also known as the Charmed Ones. In the midst of her failing marriage, however, she also had a clandestine, forbidden love affair with her Whitelighter, Sam Wilder, with whom she had a son named Peter Sawyer, who replaced Prue in the legendary Power of Three. Patty was tragically killed on February 28th, 1978, by the Water Demon, whom she tried to vanquish at Camp Skylark. Even in death, however, she continued to watch over her son and daughters, and acted as a guardian family spirit who occasionally visited her daughters and provided them with comfort and good advice when they needed it.

Early Life
Patty was born on April 5, 1950 to Allen Halliwell and Penny Johnson, a mortal and witch respectively who went on to live at Penny's ancestral home, 1329 Prescott Street which became known as "Halliwell Manor." As a descendant of the powerful witch Melinda Warren, Patty was born with the power of Molecular Immobilization also known as the power to "freeze."

Shortly after birth, Penny held a wiccaning for her daughter to protect her from evil and have her blessed by her ancestors. However, during Patty's wiccaning, a demon called the Necromancer attacked, hoping to feed off of the spirits of the Halliwell matriarchs. However, Penny was able to banish the Necromancer to the ghostly plane before he could do any harm, and the ceremony went ahead.

As she grew up, Patty was taught the craft by her mother.

Teenage Years and Adulthood
When Patty was seventeen, her father, Allen, was killed while she was staying at her aunt Janice's home that night.

Just like all other witches before her, she became a formidable foe of demons and warlocks, perhaps motivated by her father's death. She wrote several entries in the Book of Shadows owned by her family, and wrote the entire page on Barbas, the Demon of Fear, though the information was probably second-hand, as there is no way that she encountered him. Presumably during her teenage years or just afterwards, Patty became a smoker and was addicted to cigarettes.

New Family
By early adulthood, Patty had grown into a powerful and intelligent witch, thanks to her mother's assistance. The Council of Elders assigned her a Whitelighter named Samuel Wilder, who she grew very close to. At some point in the 1960s, Patty met a mortal businessman named Victor Bennett, whom she fell in love with, despite her mother's protests.

They soon married, though Penny never allowed Patty to change her last name to Bennett, and Patty didn't tell her new husband that she, or her family, were witches. On October 28 1970, she gave birth to a daughter, who she named "Prudence Halliwell" after the daughter of Melinda Warren, though she was nicknamed "Prue" for short. The three lived happily in the Halliwell Manor and Patty soon became pregnant again.

On June 7, 1973, Piper Halliwell was born. Shortly afterwards, Prue and Piper developed their powers; telekinesis and freezing respectively, and Patty was forced to, or chose to, tell Victor about her family heritage. He had a hard time coping with this revelation, and it put a great strain on their marriage.

While Penny was adamant that the girls should be raised as witches, Victor insisted they be raised as mortals to protect them from the forces of evil. Patty, who also wanted the girls to be witches, though with a normal life too, acted neutral towards both her mother and husband, wanting to "keep the peace." She also did not seem to want her daughters to be raised as dangerously as she was, and was comedically irritated when Penny said she was going to teach the girls a new spell, wanting her to bake cookies like a normal grandmother.

She made a baby book for Piper, which was kept in a box with other baby stuff afterwards, and it is likely that she also had one for Prue. Patty and her mother protected the girls from many demons and warlocks during their early childhood. It was likely that because of a fight with a demon at some point is the reason she believed it was medically impossible for her to conceive another child.

Temporary Break Up
It was around the time that Prue was five and Piper was two that Patty grew closer to Sam, as he became increasingly involved with her life. Victor was frustrated and irritated by him, and claimed that he was "making moves" on her very early on. Soon, Victor left his famil. Her mother moved back into the manor to help with the children and protect them while their mother was away.

For money, Patty got a job as a waitress at Buddy's, a local restaurant, and worked there well into the night. When her shift did finish, she would return home and kiss her daughters good-night, and Prue later described her as "smelling like burgers" whenever she did. It was during one of these shifts that Patty received a premonition, after feeling a knot in her stomach, and saw three women who she took to be warlocks taking Prue and Piper from the Manor. Later on in the day, Patty asked two women, who were at the restaurant, if they were ready to order. In the middle of their conversation, another lady told Patty that she had a phone call. Just as she was about to answer the phone, one of the women shouted out that she knew that she was pregnant.

However, Patty told her that it was medically impossible for her to conceive, and left the women claiming to be her cousins to get to the phone, where Penny told her that three female warlocks had tried to kidnap the girls earlier that day. She then rushed home in the family car, but not before bumping into yet another woman outside Buddy's, who accidentally ran into her and found that she had been eating saltine crackers for stomach troubles (when in fact, it was pregnancy symptoms). The woman told her that she should stop smoking for "her stomach," when really meaning her unborn baby.

At home, Patty had another phone call, but this time it was Victor's voice on the other side, asking her to meet him at his hotel. She quickly got changed, not wanting him to know that she was a waitress, and made her way to the apartment, despite Penny's protests. However, once arriving there, Patty was attacked by a warlock named Nicholas, who demanded she give him immunity to her daughters' powers, saying that they were the Charmed Ones. But Patty, not knowing that she was pregnant, told him that she was not the mother of the Charmed Ones, as she had only two daughters, to which Nicholas revealed that the premonition she received earlier that day was from her unborn child. After he threatened to kill her family and children, Patty blessed his ring to grant him immunity and ran off home.

Penny then told her that the three warlocks she saw in her vision had been arrested after taking the car and little Prue and Piper, so Patty went to jail and bailed them out, wondering how they knew about her pregnancy. The three women then revealed that they were her daughters from the future, Prue, Piper, and her unborn child Phoebe, named after Patty's favourite aunt (her grandmother's cousin), and that they went back in time to stop her making the pact with Nicholas. After telling them that they were too late, they recovered his ring from the apartment and had Penny unbless it. By using the combined magic of little Prue, Piper, and Phoebe from the womb, her daughters were successfully sent back to their own time, before the moment they left, erasing Patty's memory of the events.

Final Two Children
On November 2, 1975, Patty went into labour and, inside theManor, gave birth to her third daughter, named "Phoebe" after her favourite aunt. As she gave birth, she received a premonition of her with her three daughters as adults, hugging on Piper's wedding day. However, Patty and her mother bound all three of the sisters' powers, and removed their memories of them, to protect them from Nicholas. Patty stated that she would rather raise them as mortal girls than mourn them as dead witches.

Sometime before or after Phoebe's birth, Victor returned to the family, a fact which did not bring joy to Penny. Although her husband had returned, Patty had fallen in love with Sam during their separation and had an affair resulting in the conception of a fourth child whom she kept secret from all but Sam and her mother. About two months later, on Christmas Day, Patty, Victor, Piper, Prue and Phoebe were taped enjoying a family Christmas, and the video was kept by Victor for many years afterwards

Divorce and Fourth Child
Early on, in 1977, Victor saved Prue from the Nothing inside the supernatural Ice Cream Truck, after she was accidentally pulled in. As magic had nearly harmed their daughter again, Victor argued with Patty and Penny, demanding they be raised as mortals. Soon, the two were divorced, and Patty officially began a relationship with Sam. As her pregnancy began to show, she told Prue, Piper, and Phoebe that she was "getting a little fat," rather than having a baby, and secretly gave birth to a son on August 2, 1977. Though she and Sam wanted to keep the baby, who was part-whitelighter, Penny advised them against it, since the Elders would have punished all of the Halliwell family for it. Reluctantly agreeing, Sam orbed himself and Patty to a local church, where a nun named Sister Agnes took the baby. Before giving him up, Patty requested that he go to a good home, and that his name begin with a "P," like all others in the family. Their son was adopted by the Sawyer family, and was named Peter.

Death
In 1978, two people had been found drowned on the pier at Camp Skylark, so Patty investigated it. By this time, Sam was away, presumably with another charge, and the two kept in touch with letters. Patty discovered that the Water Demon had taken up residence at the camp's lake, and was killing all that came near it. After telling Sam, she warned him not to go to the lake with her, as she believed that she could handle it and didn't want him to panic. As she arrived on the pier, after saying a final "I love you" to Prue, she decided to use a power cable to separate the demon's particles, as it was made entirely of water, and also believed that she could use her power to freeze it. However, as she prepared to use the cable, Sam arrived against her wishes, and screamed at her to run from the demon. Patty, not realizing the Water Demon was right behind her, ready to strike, froze Sam. In the time it took her, the demon caught her unaware and drowned her from the inside with its body. Her corpse was found by the police not long after. Prue took her mother's death especially hard; for over 20 years, she was unable to say "I love you" to anyone, because it was the last thing her mother said to her. She was unwilling to say it to anyone else, afraid she would end up dying young like her mother. Penny then became the guardian of the sisters, and Victor left the family for good after another attack by a demon and an argument with Penny.

Afterlife
After her death, Patty's spirit was taken by the Angel of Death to the Ghostly Plane and, finally, through a portal to the Ancestral Plane. Her funeral was held at an unknown place during the day, and Penny took the girls down to the beach afterwards to try and cheer them up. Penny would also summon Patty from the afterlife to the attic of the Manor, where she told the girls that the door was blocked off and un-openable.

In 1998, Penny summoned Patty and told her that she didn't think that the sisters, who were in their twenties, were ready for their powers, and wanted to permanently strip their magic. Patty, however, argued, saying that they didn't have the right to relinquish their destiny as the Charmed Ones. In the end, Penny did what she thought was right, and brewed a power stripping potion, but didn't have the time to use it, as she had a heart-attack and died. Patty then introduced her to the afterlife and watched over the rest of her family with her.

When the girls went up against Barbas, the Demon of fear, he played on Prue's fear of drowning, which stemmed from her mother's death. When Prue was drowning, Patty appeared to her and helped take away her fear, enabling them to send him to purgatory. Afterwards, using some form of ghostly magic, added a small note to the bottom of Barbas' page in the Book of Shadows while Prue read it. What she wrote was; thanks for letting them into your heart, which referred to the fact that Prue had never told her sisters that she loved them until that day, as that was the last thing Patty said to her before her death. About a year or so afterwards, the sisters managed to vanquish the Water Demon that had killed Patty using the method she planned to use, an electric cable. However, Sam sacrificed himself in order to bring the demon's downfall, though he was happy, as he was going to be with Patty again. In fact, she arrived as a ghost to him in order to escort him to the afterlife. Unfortunately, Sam did not find peace with her, as he was made a Whitelighter again instead.

Piper's Wedding
In February, 2001, Patty was sent down to the Manor by the Elders for Piper's Handfasting with Leo Wyatt, her Whitelighter, to make up for all that they put the couple through. It could be said that Patty was temporarily resurrected for that day, as she was not a ghost, just "simply Piper's mother." She appeared in Piper's bedroom, where she told Piper why and how she was there, and, when Prue and Phoebe entered the room, told them about the premonition she had the day Phoebe was born. They then proceeded downstairs, where Penny, acting as the High Priestess, began the ceremony. However, a man arrived on a motorbike, calling for Prue, who unwillingly astral projected and ran off with him, ruining the wedding. Piper, devastated, left the Manor and headed for P3, where Patty and Victor followed her. Patty then tried to tell her that she was destined to be with Leo, but she firmly believed that, after Penny's failed four marriages and six engagements and Patty's divorce, that all Halliwells were destined to be alone. After returning to the Manor, Penny reappeared and said that the Elders had sent her to take Patty back, but Phoebe told her that she had five more minutes until midnight. At nearly the last second, Piper also returned, and the wedding went ahead, after which Patty went back to the afterlife.

Meeting Peter
On May 17th, 2001, Patty's eldest daughter, Prue, was murdered by the demon Shax, the personal assassin of the Source of All Evil. When her spirit was sent to the Ancestral Plane, Patty and her mother worked hard to get her through her death and adjusting to the afterlife. A while after, Piper summoned Penny to question her as to why the Source thought that the Charmed Ones could be reconstituted. After refusing to tell her due to her pact of secrecy, Patty appeared and revealed her giving birth to a fourth child, a son. Not long after telling them the story, an inspector named Cortez arrived in the attic and, upon seeing Patty and Penny as ghosts, threatened to have them exposed. Once Phoebe had sent the inspector to Timbuktu, Patty and her mother returned to the Ancestral Plane, leaving the rest up to them. The following night, Piper and Phoebe summoned Patty back to them, where she met the son she never got to know, Peter Sawyer.

Powers and Abilities

 * Basic Powers
 * Spell Casting: The ability to cast spells and perform rituals. Patty had particular skill in this field, being able to invent spells to counter those of her mother's at the mere age of nine, though the rhyming was rather poor.
 * Potion Making: The ability to brew potions.
 * Scrying: The ability to locate a person or object by the use of a scrying crystal, a map, and sometimes other tools.
 * Active Powers
 * Molecular Immobilization: The ability to slow molecules down to the point that they appear to be frozen in time. This is Patty's primary power which she channels through her hands.
 * Other Powers
 * High Resistance: This power causes her to be resistant to powers such as Fire Balls and other lethal powers.

Victor Bennett
Patty met Victor Bennett at an unknown time, presumably in the sixties. The two fell madly in love and married, though Penny forbade Patty to change her last name to "Bennett". They had their first child after their marriage, and they named her "Prue Halliwell", not Bennett, likely because of Penny again. Though the couple were extremely happy together, Victor left her and their two daughters (Prue and Piper) after learning of magic, though he later returned. Despite loving Victor, she later had an affair with her Whitelighter, Samuel Wilder, after much arguing about the sisters' futures with Victor. They soon divorced, though they made up after Patty died and saw him several times as a ghost. However, Victor held a huge grudge towards Sam and Whitelighters in general from the divorce onwards.