Cassia Reynolds (HERI)

Cassia Reynolds is a former classmate of Prue's who died before starting college. She has been the silent whitelighter for the children of the Charmed Ones since Wyatt was born.

Bio
Cassia was the youngest student in her high school senior class. She graduated from Baker High in 1989 along with Prue Halliwell, Andy Trudeau, and many others. Two weeks after graduation her family moved out of California and Cassia headed to college. Classes had not yet begun when, on August 16, 1989, just one week before her eighteenth birthday, Cassia was killed in a freak accident, another car ramming into hers from the other direction. The other driver survived, but was in a coma for six weeks.

Though young, she became a whitelighter and was assigned to various charges. For several years she worked hard to teach and guide her charges, both witch and future whitelighters both. Then, the elders came to her with an unusual assignment. Her former classmate Prue Halliwell was a witch. Four years previous Prue had been killed by the demon Shax. Cassia knew that name well. She’d lost two charges to Shax. She didn’t understand why they were telling her this, since she knew the rules and one of them clearly stated that you could have no contact with the people from your former life. Besides, they must have had a whitelighter. And they had, two. The first had clipped his wings, not entirely by choice, but there was no question of him becoming a whitelighter, again. And the second had been killed, by an elder of all things.

It was all incomprehensible to Cassia that an elder could do that, but the request they were about to make was even more surprising. Because of the trouble they had with the Charmed Ones (and her reaction to that was even more surprise) they had chosen to break the rule of not contacting those from your former life. They had chosen a different whitelighter to by guide to the Charmed Ones, but felt it necessary to have a separate whitelighter for the children of the three Charmed Ones. And so she was given the job of finding a way into the lives of the Charmed Ones without letting on that she was the whitelighter for Wyatt, Chris, and any future siblings or cousins.

Before she could find a good way to do this a demon attacked her and four others. Instead of killing them out right this demon chose to mix them up. Cassia found herself in the body of another without any of the powers that a whitelighter normally had. The body belonged to a teenage girl named Jennifer Kingsley. Jen, as she went by, was fifteen-years-old, a freshman in high school. Cassia cringed at the thought of going through high school, again, but figured someone would fix things soon.

They didn’t. Within a year magic stopped and that meant two things. Witches had to rely entirely on potions and spells if they fought demons. And the demons, being entirely without powers, chose to avoid attacking. The elders offered to give her back her powers, even though she was in someone else’s body, allowing her to glamour to look like herself, among other things. She considered this, but decided to turn them down. She might have been able to look like herself, but it didn’t change the fact that she was in someone else’s body and to gain her whitelighter powers back, she would make that body vulnerable to darklighter attacks and darklighters still had their powers.

And so she chose a different way of looking out for her charges. She got a job at The Manor when it opened. For a few years she worked as a waitress and a greeter and then she worked her way up to chef. “Jen” was well liked among the staff and did her best to learn everything Piper had to teach. She kept an eye on the various Halliwell children through her relationship with her boss. She knew that magic would return someday and when it did, she was going to need her powers back, but she hoped that someone would find a way to return her to her own body.

Her nonlocal charges were reassigned to the whitelighter who oddly enough got her powers, JD Williams. Unlike her, JD frequently uses his powers to glamour himself to look like himself instead of like Ronald “Ron” Ryans, the man whose body he ended up in. Ron is the one who ended up in Cassia’s body, a fact he was not good at dealing with. Like Ron, the person who ended up in JD’s body, Alexandra “Alex” Porter. Alex dealt better with the situation, choosing to find a job to do and just deal with that. The fact that JD was rather dead and had been for a long time made things a little sticky, but JD helped her out. The fact that Alex was only seven-years-old made things much more sticky. Jen got Cassia’s powers and Alex’s body and she abused both. Cassia’s powers were disabled to protect people and Jen, going through elementary school again as Alex made herself a star pupil.

Jen and Alex dealt with things as they had to, but both where young and resilient. Ron, while not old, was dealing with the difficulty of going from being a thirty-five-year-old man to a seventeen-year-old girl who never aged. And he was slowly going insane. By December 2026, everyone else had learned how to deal with what they had to, but Ron had gotten himself institutionalized. Cassia was forced to quit working at The Manor to deal with Ron who had become suicidal, in her body. JD agreed to keep an eye on her charges. Amongst her charges she had most of the children of the three Charmed Ones and a handful of future whitelighters, three of which worked with her at The Manor.

And then magic returned. Cassia turned all her charges over to JD on a more full time basis while she tried to figure out what to do with Ron. After only a month and a half she found herself in a more difficult situation. The demon who had switched the five of them was vanquished and they were returned to their own bodies. Suddenly Cassia had her body and her powers back, but she was also in a mental home with tons of security cameras. Alex was back in her body which included a husband that Jen had married while in her body, since Jen had concluded that things would never be fixed. When Jen returned to her body she took with her the baby that she was pregnant with as Alex. JD and Cassia worked together as best they could to fix all of that. Thankfully, Jen had actually explained things to her husband before she married him, so it was less difficult then it might have been. Alex had to get used to being a women, something she never dealt with, since she was only a child when this got switched around. JD fixed things so she could get the job that she had when she was using his body. And then there was Ron. Switching back did nothing to help his mental state, but at least it made it more likely that someone could help him. JD helped him get the help he needed, this time without locking him up in a mental institute.

Helping the three of them was difficult, but it still left Cassia in a difficult place. Since she still looked like a teenager and hadn’t been in the mental institute very long, they had no way of knowing her name and required a relative to get her out even if they gave her a clean bill of health. Since her family had no idea she was alive and she wasn’t allowed to tell them, she couldn’t get their help, and JD did a pitiful job at acting. The elders decided that Cassia needed to figure out a way out of this on her own and so she was stuck until the day Chris showed up at the mental institute to give Jarod Powell a cure for the curse that had followed him for years.

Chris’ help was rather reluctant, as he didn’t like lying, but between them they figured out a way to get Cassia out. Chris was even more reluctant to help her when he learned she was his whitelighter, but eventually he was convinced to accept this and helped her get a job at The Manor, again, where she would be able to regain a relationship with her charges, especially the three future whitelighters there who knew nothing about magic.

Cassia’s greatest challenge to date came when she was assigned a new witch charge. This witch had proven too much of a trial for her family’s whitelighter and might well be on her way to becoming a warlock. It’s Cassia’s job to stop that from happening and this charge has no interest in anything Cassia has to say.

Family
Cassia is the third of four and boy do her sisters and brother have that ability to give her an inferiority complex. Oldest sister, Ash, is a successful surgeon and head doctor at a hosptial in Sacromento. Second sister, Bel, is married to the lieutenant governor of the state of California and considered to be an excellent hostess. Baby brother, Danny, is a ruthless businessman who knows how to after what he wants. All in all her sisters and brother have done well for themselves and all Cassia managed to do was die. Of course there is all that stuff after she died, but her family doesn't know about that stuff.

Quotes

 * "I'm ready for my punishment to begin, if you'd hurry up, please." - Whitelighters on Trial
 * "I was told you weren't to have a whitelighter. I was told to back off. I almost lost my wings when I stepped foot into the underworld after a rumor made me think you had survived. I. Am not. Ever. Giving up on you." - Whitelighters on Trial
 * "Stay. Right now it's five well trained fighters to two pacifists. I'm not interested in making those odds worse." - Whitelighters on Trial