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Penelope Johnson Halliwell (also known as Grams and Penny) is a fictional character from the WB television series Charmed. She was the grandmother of the "Charmed Ones" (Prue, Piper, Phoebe, and Paige), and great-grandmother of Wyatt and Chris Halliwell on the series. She is played by actress Jennifer Rhodes.

History

She was born June 23, 1937 in Boston, Massachusetts. Her parents were Gordon Johnson and P. Baxter (the past lives of Dan Gordon and Piper Halliwell). She may have had sisters, who could have included Phoebe, Pearl and Sylvia. Her maiden name is either Johnson or Baxter. She was a witch and a descendant of Melinda Warren. She was born with the power of telekinesis (which she passed on to her granddaughters Prue and Paige, and great-grandsons Wyatt and Chris).

She first married Allen Halliwell, and took that last name. She gave birth to Patricia Halliwell, the future mother of the Charmed Ones.

Penny was once a peace lover until Allen was killed by her former best friend, Robyn, and Robyn's warlock boyfriend, Nigel. As a result, she became a fierce demon/Warlock slayer. She learned to focus her telekinetic power, and created spells and potions on her very own. She was known to be a very skilled and powerful witch, like her ancestor, Melinda Warren. Later in life she started her own coven with non-magical witches and her closest friends as members, including the Charmed Ones' Aunt Gayle (who died in the season 2 episode "How to Make a Quilt Out of Americans" after trying to steal the girls' powers).

As Penny became the matriarch of the Halliwell/Warren family, she fell in love with the Necromancer Demon. But she couldn't be with him because, though he truly did love her, he used her to get to the spirits of the Halliwell/Warren line. She later vanquished him in the 1970s and banished his spirit forever in 2003 (in the season 5 episode "Necromancing the Stone").

Penny married a total of four times (including the first one with Allen), and was engaged for a total of six times, but the relationships didn't work out. When Patty married Victor Bennet, Penny didn't allow her to take his last name, a tradition that will be followed by the Charmed Ones.

Penny witnessed the birth of her grand-daughters Prudence, Piper, and Phoebe Halliwell, later earning the nickname 'Grams'. When Patty was forced to give immunity to a warlock named Nicholas, Grams had no choice but to bind the girls' powers, until they were ready for them.

Grams was forced to keep the secret about the birth of Patty's fourth daughter Paige from everyone, who was fathered by Patty's Whitelighter, Sam Wilder. Penny helped Patty and Sam decide that it was best to give the baby up for adoption as relationships between witches and Whitelighters were forbidden by The Elders, who oversaw all good magic. After Patty's death, Grams became surrogate mother to Patty's first three children, and would continually argue with Victor about how the girls should be raised. Because of those arguments, the girls didn't see their father again for a very long time.

Years later, Grams developed a heart condition. She wanted to keep the girls from receiving their powers permanently, so she created a potion to strip them of their powers. On March 5, 1998 she made the decision to give the sisters the potion, but before she could she had a heart attack and fell down the attic stairs. She became a guardian spirit, keeping watch over her grandchildren.

Grams, as a high priestess, performed the marriage ceremony uniting Leo Wyatt and Piper in spirit form. When their first child turned out to be a boy, Grams was initially upset about it as she believed the family line should only be female, but eventually came around to accept and love her new great-grandson Wyatt.

When Grams learned about Gideon's death at Leo's hands (because Gideon had tried to kill Wyatt), she was unsure if she could trust Leo to be around the girls. She's since learned to trust her family to make the right decisions without her input, but still provides them with assistance when needed.

Episodes

Charmed characters | Fictional witches | Fictional heroines | Fictional psychokineticists | Fictional widows and widowers | Fictional eccentrics | Fictional mothers | Fictional ghosts | Fictional feminists

Penelope Halliwell

 

This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the "Penelope Halliwell".

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