Patty Halliwell's History
Patricia "Patty" Halliwell was a witch of the Warren line of witches. She was the mother of Prue, Piper, and Phoebe Halliwell, and Paige Matthews (whom she mothered through a forbidden affair with her Whitelighter, Sam Wilder, and Paige later replaced Prue in the legendary Power of Three after Prue's death). Patty was tragically killed on February 28, 1978, by the Water Demon, whom she tried to vanquish at Camp Skylark. Fortunately, she continued to watch over her daughters from the afterlife, and acted as a guardian family spirit who occasionally visited her daughters and provided them with comfort and good advice when they needed it.
As a descendant of Melinda Warren, Patty inherited the power of molecular immobilization, and was a powerful and exceptionally knowledgeable witch in her own right - she was responsible for writing numerous entries in the Book of Shadows.
Early life:
Patty was born on April 5, 1950, to Allen Halliwell and Penelope Johnson, a mortal and witch respectively. They went on to live at Penny's ancestral home, 1329 Prescott Street, which became known as Halliwell Manor. As a descendant of Melinda Warren, Patty was born with the power of molecular immobilization (also known as the power to "freeze").
Shortly after her 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. 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, who would occasionally use a small spellbook to use magic on Patty whenever she got out of hand. But Patty, who was trained well in spell craft, invented a spell to counter her mother's at the age of nine.
In 1967, Patty's father, Allen, was killed by her mother's best friend Robin on a night when she and warlock boyfriend Nigel planned to attack the manor. However, she was staying at her aunt Janice's home that night.
Presumably during her teenage years or just afterwards, Patty became a smoker and was addicted to cigarettes.
New Family:
By early adulthood, thanks to her mother's guidance and the possible motivation by her father's death, Patty had matured into a powerful, intelligent, and extremely knowledgeable witch. Just like all the other Warren witches before her, she was a formidable foe of demons and warlocks, and wrote several entries in her family's Book of Shadows, such as the one on Barbas, the Demon of Fear, though the information was probably second-hand as it was highly unlikely she had ever encountered him. The Elders assigned her a whitelighter named Sam 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 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, while Penny moved out into another home, and Patty soon became pregnant again.
On August 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 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.
Visit to the Future:
During one afternoon, while Prue and Piper were out of the house, Patty and Victor made love in their bedroom. Shortly afterwards, while still in bed, a man and woman appeared in the room. Immediately believing they were demons, Patty tried to freeze them, but only the man froze. The woman then told her and Victor that she was Piper from the future, and that the man was her husband, Leo. They then revealed that Phoebe and Paige, Patty's unborn daughters, had been killed in a huge battle, and they used a Cupid's ring to travel back in time to save them. Patty, believing the ring to be unreliable, came up with the theory that they could recreate the Charmed Ones and the Power of Three, by combining her magic with future Piper's and her mother's.
With the new Power of Three, they would then cast a spell to take future-Piper and Leo to exactly where they wanted to go. But instead of driving all the way to Penny's home, she asked if the ring could take them to her and left Victor behind. However, future-Piper was not specific enough when she asked to go to "Grams" (the sisters' nickname for her) and the three of them ended up in the future, where Leo and her were grandparents. Afterwards, they arrived successfully at Penny, but she fainted upon seeing Patty, who had died already in her time, a fact which caused Patty great distress and annoyance. The four of them then arrived at the Ultimate Battle, where they used the spell to remove the Hollow from future-Phoebe, Paige, Billie and Christy Jenkins and the other future-Piper.
Patty then met her grandsons Wyatt and Chris, who arrived from yet another time in the future, saying that Wyatt's powers had been stolen at that point in time. Patty then went with Chris and Wyatt to Victor's apartment, so she could see her husband and her grandsons could check on their past selves. She was then astonished when she was told by Victor that they were divorced, and that she apparently left him for Sam, who he revealed to be Paige's father.
Regardless, they caught up and had fun taking care of little Chris and Wyatt. Although she was deeply saddened when he told her that Prue had been killed several years before, she stated her belief that when one door closes, another opens, referencing Paige. When they returned to the Manor, Patty and Penny were taken back to their own times by the cupid Coop, though just before they were taken, so they would have no memories of the events. Therefore, Patty had no knowledge of conceiving Phoebe and Paige and went on to believe that it was impossible for her to have more children.
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 family. 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, 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, returning to the exact moment they left. Though Patty and Penny had to face the Nicholas in their time, they presumably managed to get him to leave peacefully with his ring and none the wiser.
Phoebe's Birth:
On November 2, 1975, Patty went into labor and, inside the Manor, gave birth to her third daughter Phoebe. 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. On Christmas Day in 1976, 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 daughter on August 2, 1977. Though she and Sam wanted to keep the baby, who was half-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 her up, Patty requested that she go to a good home, and that her name begin with a "P," like all others in the family. Their daughter was adopted by the Matthews family, and was named Paige.
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 afterlife. 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 spirit, 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 Paige:
On May 17, 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 hereafter, 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 daughter. 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 afterlife, leaving the rest up to them. The following night, Piper and Phoebe summoned Patty back to them, where she met the daughter she never got to know, Paige Matthews.
Saving Piper:
In 2002, when Piper became pregnant with her first child, she became increasingly worried that she would die and leave her child motherless like her mother before her. When Piper was drowning after being attacked by the demon Necron, Patty appeared to Piper just as she had done to Prue about four years previously. As Piper was under the influence of a Fearless Spell to help her cope with her fears, Patty told her that spells wouldn't help and that only faith would. She also acknowledged that she was afraid of leaving her child, like Patty had to, before Patty saved her from death. Afterwards, as Piper went through her baby book and came across a picture of her being read a book by her mother, Patty magically wrote a caption on the page: Grandma and Mommy.
Chris' Wiccaning:
Two years later, Penny, who had previously been brought to earth by Phoebe and Paige had cast a spell that resolves sibling rivalry on Wyatt and Chris, Piper's sons, though it had actually transferred the rivalry to the sisters instead, turning them into bickering adolescents. Believing that Leo was after Wyatt, after seeing an evil doppelganger of him, Penny did not want to reverse the spell as Piper would be devastated at the news that Leo was after her son. Victor, however, who had arrived for Chris' wiccaning, wanted to break the spell so that they could vanquish the evil-Leo. Patty, who was summoned in order to act as a third party, agreed with Victor, causing Penny to feel unneeded and leave. Patty then, using a reversal spell she invented when she was nine, reversed the spell and got them to go after the demon-Leo. After realizing that Wyatt had conjured the demon as a way of blaming himself for his parents' separation, just as Piper had night terrors when she was young, they managed to erase demon-Leo and return Wyatt to the Manor. After conversing with Victor on what it would have been like if they had been able to raise the girls, Penny returned and, as a High Priestess, performed Chris' wiccaning, after which she and Patty presumably left for the afterlife.
Battle with Neena:
Two years later, Patty, along with her mother and the other deceased Warren witches, left the afterlife to join her daughters in the battle with Neena, the first witch. After the battle, the sisters ask their mother and grandmother about Prue's whereabouts, and Patty tells them that Prue was reincarnated into her next life due to the fact that her destiny was not completed when she died. Her daughters seem to be angry at this, since they wanted to be reunited with their sister after all those years.
Preparing to return to the afterlife, Cole Turner confronts Patty and Penny about lying to the sisters. Cole tells them that he did what they asked by helping Piper to leave Neena's alternate dimension and get back to her family, and wants his reward. Patty tells him that if he wants redemption he will have to do something bigger; she wants him to find Prue, who has gone missing.
A Dire Situation with Prue:
Feeling desperate for answers, Piper, Phoebe and Paige contact Patty and Penny for answers about Prue, whose very presence has been hurting them. While not having the answers, Patty and her mother do inform them that they have not been able to "feel" Prue since she became the guardian of the All, not knowing that she was the All itself.
Months later, Penny and Patty were reunited with Prue in the afterlife after she sacrificed her life in order to stop Heremus and the Old Ones' resurrection.
