James was completely stunned. Breathlessly, he asked, "And the doll?"
Scorpius couldn't meet James' gaze any longer. He dropped his eyes and nodded. "That hadn't even been part of the plan. Grandfather hadn't known of it. I saw it on the bedside table and thought it might be helpful. I thought it'd impress my grandfather. And it did, oh yes. He had grand plans for that doll, although they didn't work out quite like he'd wanted."
"I knew you were a rat!" Albus cried, pushing forward. "I smelled you a mile away!"
James held his brother back, and amazingly, Albus relented. "But why did you tell us about Tabitha?" James asked. "Why did you show us the memories in the Pensieve?"
"Don't answer that, Scorpius!" Tabitha said. "Enough talk. It's time for the real work of this night to begin. All of you, away! Or Weasley dies. If you think I'm bluffing, you'll know better when she lies dead on the floor and I've descended to the Chamber. Now go!"
"Tabitha, you're as deluded as my grandfather!" Scorpius cried angrily. "Let her go! What do you think you're doing?"
"I'm doing the work I was created for!" Tabitha shrieked, jabbing her wand into Rose's temple. "One thousand years' planning has come to this! I am the edge of the blade of revenge! I am the hand of balance! I am the Bloodline of Lord Voldemort!"
"You?" Scorpius scoffed, stepping forward boldly, not even raising his wand. "If you believe that, then you're as deceived as I've been! We both should have known my grandfather wouldn't tell anyone the whole of his plan. Put down your wand and let her go!"
"Nooo!" Tabitha wailed, and she seemed to crumple. Her eyes were wild, darting. "I am the Bloodline! It is my duty to descend to the Chamber of my forefather! I am the host of the Gatekeeper!"
"You aren't," Scorpius declared firmly. "If you were, you would've been able to open the Chamber on your own. But you couldn't, could you? No matter how hard you tried. Because you aren't a Parselmouth! You're nothing more than a convenient distraction! That was why my grandfather wanted me to show them the memories and make them believe the Bloodline was you: to distract them from the real Bloodline!"
"NOOO!" Tabitha shrieked again, closing her eyes and crumpling. Her wand wavered and her grip loosened on Rose. Suddenly, impulsively, she pointed her wand at Scorpius.
"Avada Kedavra!" she screamed, her face twisting in rage. Green light erupted from her wand.
Scorpius lunged, instinctively turning sideways, just as they'd practiced in Defence Club. The jet of green light missed him by inches, striking the wall behind him and exploding in a burst of sparks. Scorpius' maneuver knocked him off balance, however, and he struck his head hard on the edge of the sink as he fell. At that moment, James saw Rose's mouth tighten and she kicked backwards, connecting with Tabitha's shin. The taller girl's wail of anger turned into a cry of pain and she stumbled. Rose ducked from beneath Tabitha's arm and Ted leapt forward. He captured Tabitha as she collapsed, but the fight had completely gone from her. Tabitha dropped her wand and sank to the floor, slipping through Ted's arms.
"Is he all right?" Rose called, jumping to Scorpius' side.
"If he isn't dead," Albus announced, striding into the room and pointing his wand, "I'll kill him."
James gently steered his brother away from the bleeding boy on the floor. "Back off, Al. You can deal with him later. I think he'll be all right."
There was a groan as Ralph sat up, rubbing his head. "What happened?" he moaned. "Am I dead?"
"Tabitha Stunned you," Zane answered, helping Ralph to his feet. "Be glad that's all it was. She stopped at crazy a few blocks back."
"I am the Bloodline," Tabitha sobbed. "I've felt the guiding hand of the Dark Lord! I was promised! My parents would be avenged! No one else meets the requirements! I am the only orphan left within these walls! It must be me!"
Ted glanced sharply down at Tabitha. "What did you say?"
"I am the only orphan left, Ted Lupin!" she cried, raising her eyes angrily to him. "Now that you've gone from these halls, it had to be me! The prophecies say that a child of tragedy would be the host of the Gatekeeper. My parents are gone, dead these many years! And Lucius Malfoy has confirmed it! He told me how the Ministry killed my father, and how my mother died when I was born!"
Ted was shaking his head slowly. "That's not true," he said. He glanced back at James, his face grave. "Then none of you know, do you? I assumed she'd told you, just like she told me."
James shook his head. "Who? Told us what?"
"That day at Hogsmeade," Ted answered. "She needed to talk to me because she'd just found out about her parents. She wanted to talk to someone who'd gone through the same kind of loss. She never knew until the package came. It was too much for her to bear… to find out so much, so fast…"
"Petra?" James said, stepping forward. "You mean the package from her father?"
Ted frowned and shook his head. "James, it wasn't from her father. The Ministry sent it. It was all of her father's belongings. He'd willed them to her when he died in Azkaban years ago. When she turned seventeen, the Ministry released them to her. She never even knew he'd been incarcerated. Amongst the old shirts and shoes, there was a note. It was addressed to the baby daughter he'd never met. He told her he believed that the guards would soon kill him, but that he couldn't do anything to stop it. They thought he was protecting his former Death Eater employers, but he really wasn't. He didn't know anything about them; they'd never told him their names or even showed him their faces. He wanted Petra to know that he would have turned his bosses in if he could've, and that… well, that he loved her, and that he was sorry he'd never be there for her."
"It was Petra?" James whispered, barely allowing himself to consider it. "That can't be!"
Ted nodded seriously. "She doubted it herself. She went to Merlin about it, and showed him the letter. He offered to show her the truth in that Magic Mirror of his, but he warned her that she might not truly wish to know. She looked anyway, and she saw it all, exactly as it'd happened. They threw her father into the Dementor pit. It was… it was awful. She was completely devastated."
Rose glanced from James to Ted, her eyes wide. "But she never told anyone she was an orphan, did she? We all assumed she had a mum and dad like the rest of us!"
"Petra was raised by her grandparents, but she never told us that," Ted replied. "The Gremlins and I, whenever we saw them at the station, we just assumed they were her parents and that they'd had her late in life. She never talked about them, and we always sort of guessed that she didn't have a very happy home life. They'd only ever told her that her mother had died in childbirth. They never spoke of her father at all, and Petra learned not even to ask."