G. Lippert - James Potter and the Curse of the Gatekeeper

"I'd thought you would have figured that bit out by now," Scorpius answered. "She is the only known orphan girl currently at Hogwarts, although she never speaks of it. She has her mother's dark hair and her father's height, but everything else, she gets from the persistent dark influence of the dagger Horcrux, from the last fragmented wisp of the soul of Voldemort. She was standing right next to you this afternoon, hidden behind a bookshelf in the library, listening to you three. It was her presence that set off the Sneakoscope in Ralph's satchel. You know who I mean. Tell me her name because I can't bring myself to say it out loud. My grandfather would kill me, and he'd probably use that stupid dagger to do it."

James looked at Rose and Ralph, measuring their faces, and then he looked at Scorpius.

"The Bloodline of Voldemort is Tabitha Violetus Corsica," he said firmly. "Somehow, I've known it all along."

"Then you know something else as well," Scorpius said, sighing and standing up.

"What?" Ralph said, looking one by one at everyone in the room.

Rose answered calmly, "We know who Bloodline is, so we also know who the host of the Gatekeeper is going to be. Both are Tabitha."

James shook his head slowly. "The only thing we don't know," he said, "is how and when it's going to happen and what we can do to stop her."

18. THE T RIUMVIRATE

Last year, during a rather harrowing adventure in the Forbidden Forest, James had met something called a 'dryad', a living spirit of a tree. The dryad had been quite beautiful, in a sort of sad, hypnotic way, and she had warned James that the blood of his father's greatest enemy beat in a new heart, not one mile hence. The dryad had also said that James should beware: your father's battle is over, she'd told him, yours begins.

James hadn't known what the dryad meant by that, but he'd had a nagging idea of who the Bloodline of Voldemort was. He'd suspected Tabitha Corsica all along, even though others had told him she was simply a smart, rather devious girl with some nasty delusions about recent history. Now that James knew that Tabitha was, in fact, the Bloodline of which the dryad had warned, he felt increasingly helpless. There was nothing he could do to stop Tabitha's plan, mostly because he didn't know what the plan entailed. Scorpius insisted that his grandfather had never told him the specifics of how the Bloodline was to become the Gatekeeper's host apart from it being a test that would prove Tabitha's willingness and commitment to the Gatekeeper's purpose. James would have liked to ask Merlin about it, but his latest interview with the Headmaster had only increased his worries and fears about the great sorcerer. Similarly, James might have written a letter to his dad explaining everything and asking for his help, but his dad already had his hands full with the sale of the Burrow, providing living arrangements for Grandma Weasley, and heading up the new sub-department for quelling the mysterious Dementor uprisings in London. Besides, in his last letter, James' dad had admitted that they believed the whole Gatekeeper affair was a complicated ruse created by enemies of the Ministry to sow fear and instability. How could James ask his dad for help fending off something that his dad believed was imaginary? More and more, James found himself thinking of the dryad's last words: this wasn't Harry Potter's battle; it was James'.

Scorpius had suggested that the best they could do was to simply watch Tabitha as closely as possible, a task that was increasingly difficult as the end of the term neared. James saw her regularly during rehearsals for The Triumvirate since Tabitha was the assistant director and increasingly in charge of the rehearsals while Professor Curry attended to final production planning. Tabitha's malicious critiques of James' performances had not let up. If anything, she was even harder on him, always apologizing for making him repeat his lines in front of the rest of the cast, as if she was trying to assume polite responsibility for his apparently woeful performance. "After all," James had heard Tabitha saying quietly to Professor Curry, "I did consent to his receiving the role along with the rest of the casting committee. Nevertheless, hindsight is always clearest, as they say…"

The main task of observing Tabitha fell to Ralph since he shared the same house as her. Apart from the same general moodiness, however, Ralph couldn't report anything unusual about Tabitha's conduct. To James, she seemed either vaguely impatient or even more ingratiatingly polite than ever.

Classes began to wind down as the final performance loomed. Loads of parents and family were travelling to attend the show, including James' mum and sister. His dad, much to his own disappointment, was needed in London for the first crackdown by the Dementor task force and therefore would not be able to attend the show. Ginny, however, had promised to record James' performance on a borrowed set of Omnioculars so that Harry could watch later. In light of the suspected large audience, Professor Curry's intention of conducting an entirely non-magical, Muggle-style production had been overshadowed by her students' increasing determination to put on a wholly sensational show. James had seen evidence of secret magical enhancement in nearly every aspect of the production, from the treadle-powered wind machine running mysteriously without anyone manning the treadles, to unplugged electrical spotlights that still glowed. In fact, since Hogwarts castle had no source of electrical power, several small Muggle generators had been delivered to the school to provide power for the lights. Even Professor Curry, however, had failed to realize that the generators needed a constant refill of petrol to run. In the interest of expediency, Damien had surreptitiously charmed the generators to emit an industrious chugging sound and, just for the look of it, plugged all the electrical cords into them. Professor Curry had wisely stopped asking after the generators and turned to more pressing matters.

Petra's class schedule seemed to consistently conflict with James' so that he rarely had the opportunity to rehearse with her on-stage. This was unfortunate, Professor Curry admitted, but not a great problem since Tabitha Corsica had arranged for an understudy to fill in for Petra whenever she couldn't attend rehearsals with James. Josephina Bartlett's vertigo had abated to the point where she could read through the lines on Petra's behalf, and having originally been awarded the part of Astra before her unfortunate 'accident', she was the logical choice to serve as Petra's stand-in. She did so with a kind of resigned fervor, caught between her embarrassment at having to serve as understudy and her desire to prove how much better an Astra she would have made. She lurked on the stage, arms folded and barely noticing any of the other actors, until Astra's lines came up. At that point, she would launch into her readings, switching from apathy to full melodrama in the mere blink of an eye, and then switching back to apathy the moment Astra's lines were completed. She barely seemed to notice James on the stage even though many of her lines were meant to be directed toward him. For her own part, Tabitha seemed pleased with Josephina's discomfiture, smiling smugly whenever her lines came up. James was especially annoyed to have to practice the climactic kissing scene with Josephina, especially since he'd never once rehearsed it with Petra herself.

"Don't you dare try to kiss me, you little upstart," Josephina muttered as she leaned in, smiling mistily.