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Chapter Sixty-Nine: A Birthday Celebration

Harry cast his fifteenth charm on the letter. It glowed a little, and then the glow faded, utterly failing to show that it had been smeared with any venom that would transfer to his skin on contact.

"Someone could want to ally with you for your own sake, you know," Draco muttered, edging away. Harry's fourteenth charm had turned his pancakes green. "You don't have to use every spell ever invented on that letter."

"You would have snapped at me if I didn't and then you saw the signature," Harry pointed out. The letter had come with an unfamiliar owl, who still sat at the edge of the table, preening herself and waiting for a response. Harry had cast several spells before he unfolded the parchment. Then he'd caught sight of the signature, which ended in Yaxley, and decided that the letter could stand a few more.

"What does that have to do with anything?"

Harry shook his head—Draco would never acknowledge when he was being unfair—and finally opened the letter. Reading it left him no less mystified than before.

Harry vates:

My name is Lazuli Yaxley. I am the half-sister of Indigena, whom, as you know, fights with Voldemort. We had the same mother, but different fathers. My other sister is Peridot, the mother of Feldspar, whose stupidity in serving the Dark Lord during the First War condemned my sister to serve him in this one.

I have discovered recently that you may be amenable to helping me with a large problem of prejudice and disgust in the wizarding world. My daughter Jacinth, for various and sundry reasons, will never have a free life if some common attitudes do not alter. You are working to alter these attitudes in regards to werewolves and house elves. It occurs me that you could do the same for her. I would like you to meet her, and me, on neutral ground. I am not willing to come to Hogwarts, but the house of one of your allies would be welcome.

We have much to discuss. I can offer you much: intimate knowledge of Indigena, which will be important now that she is the Dark Lord's most dangerous Death Eater; knowledge of the paths between Light and Dark without your having to venture into them; a possible source of allies in other parents who have children like mine; my wand and my will; the support of a small portion of the House of Yaxley, though in this we are individuals and it will not be a formal family alliance. In return, I ask much: for you to fight for Jacinth as you would for any of the other magical creatures under your protection; for you to support those Yaxleys who agree to support you should the Dark Lord fall on us; for you to not report me to the Ministry when you learn the extent of the laws I have broken; for a fair hearing when my sister has been a source of torment to you; for the meeting on neutral ground. My owl will await your reply.

Lazuli Yaxley.

Harry shook his head with a small, quick frown. In a way, he didn't want to refuse. This was the kind of vates work he was supposed to do, wasn't it? He didn't know what connection Lazuli and Jacinth might have with magical creatures; if Jacinth were half-Veela, then they could have gone through the Veela Council to ally with him. And if Jacinth were not half-Veela…

That would explain the line about not reporting her to the Ministry.

"Interesting?" Draco asked, at his right shoulder.

Harry handed him the letter. He expected laughter, and a shake of his head, and a murmur that a Yaxley must be out of her mind to think that Harry would meet with her. Instead, Draco's brow furrowed, and he chewed one corner of his mouth so much that Harry thought he'd forgotten and mistaken it for a pancake.

"Well?" Harry asked at last. "What do you think?"

"You could do worse than to meet with her." Draco handed the letter back and leaned his head the other way, closing his eyes, still making his lip a ragged mess with constant bites. "I'm trying to remember everything my mother told me about the House of Yaxley," he said. "Hush a moment."

Harry raised an eyebrow. "Only a moment?"

"Hush, I said."

Harry turned back to his orange juice. Argutus, who was draped around his shoulders, asked for an explanation of the letter, and Harry gave it to him as best he could. To his surprise, Argutus stretched his neck forward and flicked his tongue around the edge of the parchment, then retracted his head and scented around the edge of Harry's flesh hand, too.

"I thought so," he said, sounding satisfied.

"What did you think?"

"There was the scent of a strange snake, and I could not see one." Argutus wound himself partially on to the table to steal a sausage from Millicent's plate. She rolled her eyes, but permitted it. Most of the Slytherins seemed to think that if they weren't swift enough to prevent Argutus from taking their food away, they didn't deserve to keep it. "But the scent is on the letter. At one point it was in a room with a snake."

Harry inclined his head, almost unwillingly. If Lazuli Yaxley kept a snake, that would make sense. It intrigued him, and he had almost nothing to fear on that quarter.

"Can you tell what kind?"

"Unfamiliar. I look forward to meeting it. It smells like wind."

Harry looked thoughtfully at the letter again. He knew one place that might be a good candidate for his meeting with Lazuli; the difficulty was in getting his potential host to agree to it.

"Draco."

Draco jolted and opened his eyes, glaring at him. "I told you to keep quiet and let me remember everything I've heard about the Yaxley family."

"Oh, I know enough about that," said Harry blandly, and delighted in the way that Draco's glare grew sharper. Really, he ought to think more carefully if he's going to handle politics for me. "Generally undeclared, but tending towards the Darker side of magic. And obsessed with honor. If Lazuli does consent to ally with me the way Indigena serves Voldemort, then perhaps I need not fear her."

"My mother fears her, though," Draco insisted. "Not anyone else in the family, not even Indigena or their sister Peridot, just her."

Harry blinked. That's unexpected. "And did she say why? Or is that bit of important information still hiding in the depths of your memory?"

Draco hit him, but his eyes were serious. "She said that Lazuli Yaxley has an implacable will. Once she decides she wants something, she won't stop working until she gets it. And that could be dangerous, Harry, as you know. She might decide that she wants something other than your friendship. It would be better if you didn't get involved with this at all."

"But she's reached out to me, and rejecting her now could be dangerous," Harry reminded him. "I don't know if she has any pride to insult, but if she does, then this would do it. I'm vates, Draco. I can't refuse to help someone sight unseen, and just because I might be afraid of her. It'll make me look weak."

"And that's what she's counting on," said Draco evenly. "Why do you think she appealed to you in the name of the good you do for magical creatures?"

"Because she wanted my help," said Harry, getting a bit exasperated now. Sometimes, Draco was both eager to remind him of the danger of politics and seemingly convinced that Harry had to abandon his standards in order to deal with that danger. "She knew this was a good means of securing it. I wouldn't have expected her to do anything else."

"And you're really going to meet with her, then?"

Harry looked at the letter, then at the owl sitting at the end of the table. "I'll suggest a meeting place. Then I have to suggest it to the person who owns the meeting place, and it's someone who might not agree, for all I know. And then I have to talk to Snape." Harry grimaced slightly. "Three guesses on who's going to be the hardest to convince."

SSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS

Dear Adalrico:

I am writing to ask if I may visit your home as neutral ground to use in a meeting with Lazuli Yaxley. I trust to your wards and your care; Blackstone is defended enough that I would not feel uneasy meeting with Yaxley there as I would at Lux Aeterna. I doubt that Yaxley would agree to that, at any event, as it is my brother's ground, and not hers.

The reason I ask you in particular, sir, is that Yaxley wishes me to help her daughter in return for her alliance. I know that you value your children highly, and our bond was most truly forged through the birth of your younger daughter. I do not wish to come to your home at the end of February merely to meet with Yaxley, but to celebrate Marian's birthday, to renew my commitment to her and to other children who will, I hope, grow up in a different world.

If you would prefer that I not use your home, I will understand. You have suffered enough because of our alliance. But I thought I would ask, for the reasons I have given above.

Thank you for listening.

Yours,

Harry.

SSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS

Dear Harry:

Meeting with a Yaxley? You have gone quite mad. A meeting with someone else of another Dark family I could understand or accept. I would even be willing to open my home to a Light wizard, if one ever agreed to step through Blackstone's doors. But this?

I had been wondering why you sent a letter to me rather than spoke with me by means of the phoenix song spell. Now I understand. You wish to appeal more formally than the spell allows. The answer to part of your request is no, Harry. My wife and I would both welcome a birthday celebration for Marian, and having you at it. We agree that she needs to live in a different world, and you have not spent as much time with her as we once envisioned you doing. But our home will not permit the foot of a Yaxley to cross its threshold when her sister fights with the man who once ruled my life, and nearly ruined it.

Adalrico Bulstrode.

SSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS

Dear Mr. Bulstrode:

I understand your reluctance, and your reasons are well-expressed. As it happens, Lazuli Yaxley has agreed to an alternate location for the meeting, one I am surprised she accepted. I will come to Marian's birthday celebration, and not meet with Yaxley and her daughter until afterwards.

I hope you and your family are well.

Harry.

SSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS

"Harry."

Elfrida came to meet him, clad in her pale blonde hair as in dignity. Harry caught her hands and kissed them carefully, secretly delighting in the fact that he had a left hand now to match her left one, and that she neither flinched nor complained about it being too cold. She cupped his chin as soon as the formal greeting with done, and lifted his face so that she could look critically at him.

"You are tired," she said.

"I shouldn't have agreed to lead a political alliance if I wanted my beauty sleep," Harry told her, with a slight grin, and stepped away from Blackstone's fireplace so that Snape, Draco, Peter, and Regulus could follow him. Hawthorn was already standing in a corner of the room, he saw, talking quietly with Adalrico. He nodded to her. Neither Millicent nor Marian had appeared yet. A fireplace across the room brightened, and Narcissa stepped out, shaking her skirts to rid them of soot. Harry raised an eyebrow. It was one of the few times he had seen Draco's mother without formal robes. These skirts swirled in deep shades of green that emphasized her pallor and the crown of equally pale hair around her head.

"No one else is expected," said Elfrida, catching his eye.

Harry found himself relaxing. Sometimes, as much as he treasured his newer allies, he wanted to be with his oldest ones. Not even in front of Owen and Syrinx could he let down as many of his masks as he could here, though Owen and Syrinx would be accompanying him to his meeting with Lazuli Yaxley after Marian's festival. He smiled and moved over to Adalrico.

"Where's the birthday girl?" he asked.

"Still asleep, but Millicent is fetching her." Adalrico held out his hand. Harry hesitated a moment, seeing it was the one wounded in the Department of Mysteries, but clasped it when Adalrico wriggled the fingers. The deep, fleshy bruises on them were gradually beginning to fade. "I am glad that you agreed to come, Harry," he added, as they let each other's hands go. "It will be good for my children to know a Lord-level wizard who does not want to conquer the wizarding world or control them. It is a chance I never had."

Harry murmured something polite in return, while fixing his eyes on Adalrico's face. He could see shadows burning there, but Adalrico's eyes remained steady. It seemed he didn't resent Harry for asking to use Blackstone as neutral ground. Perhaps it was for the best. Harry had been stunned when Lazuli agreed to meet him at Cobley-by-the-Sea, but being surrounded by wards he was linked to, as Black heir, would give him a security even Blackstone could not have provided.

"It is no more than Lord-level wizards should have been doing all along," said Harry, meaning it. The more he tried to learn about Dumbledore through questioning Snape and Peter on their school memories, the more intensely puzzled he became. Why would Dumbledore have wanted to control his students the way he had tried to control Lily through the ethic of sacrifice? Why would he want to have mindless followers fighting behind him, instead of freely chosen allies fighting beside him? It made no sense to Harry. Voldemort's madness was actually easier to interpret; he had known nothing else, had probably been born that way. But Dumbledore had known, at one time in his life, justice and a powerful relationship to the rest of the world not based on exploitation. That anyone would choose to fall from that was—

Wasn't comprehensible. And Harry was just going to have to get used to that, and accept that his training and his magic had led him in different directions, he supposed.

"Here she is!" Adalrico exclaimed, turning away from him.

Harry caught a glimpse of Hawthorn's face as he followed suit. She was very still, but there was a wistful happiness in the backs of her hazel eyes. If she could not feel joy with her own daughter dead, at least she might feel its echo in the presence of other people's children, Harry thought.

He reached out, making sure he used his right hand, and clasped her arm. Hawthorn gave him a strained smile.

Then Harry faced the door of the receiving room, where Millicent was walking beside Marian, murmuring advice to her much smaller sister that Harry doubted she was taking. Marian had a child's garment on, a cross between a tiny robe and a long shirt, and her dark hair was done up in ribbons of green and white. Harry raised his eyebrows. The Bulstrodes truly are fond of the old ways. In some of the most ancient rituals, those ribbons would have been used to signal that the child was now leaving the winter of infancy—the winter when they could easily have died, and when the family could have more easily given them up—and entering a spring in which her siblings and parents would surrender their hearts to her. Of course, it could also easily signify Marian's birthday on the cusp of spring.

Marian's head turned as she came into the room, and she scanned their faces carefully. Her eyes fixed on Harry, and stayed there. Harry held his breath. She could probably sense his magic as the strongest in the room. Her reaction would be telling, and might make all the difference as to whether Adalrico's idea of rearing her around a friendly Lord-level wizard would actually work.

Marian broke into a smile. Then she pulled away from Millicent's hand and wobbled unsteadily across the room to him. Harry knelt to receive her, putting himself as much on her level as possible.

There was a stain on Marian's shirt, as if she'd been eating a purple berry. It didn't seem to matter. "Harry," she said, and then clasped his robe and tugged on it insistently. If she noticed the silver hand as different from the flesh hand, it obviously didn't interest her. "More magic."

Harry nodded slightly, hoped that Snape had his shields raised against a headache—he'd complained enough about this day, Merlin knew, and Harry didn't really want to distress him further—and lowered his shields.

Warm dark blue spread out from his palms, as if he'd opened the gate to an ocean there. Harry smelled the scent of sun-warmed grass, and autumn wildflowers. Two purple hands unfolded from the light and began to paint a picture, which grew to resemble Marian's face.

Marian laughed. The sound was free, uncontrolled, not afraid at all. She put out one hand of her own, and seemed utterly enchanted when Harry solidified one of the purple fingers enough so that she could touch it.

Harry felt his eyes sting with tears. He reached out and carefully picked Marian up. She didn't kick, though Elfrida had warned him she might, but went on gazing into the heart of the light, utterly absorbed, poking a finger now and then and giggling when it poked her back.

Harry ducked his head and rubbed his face in silky, dark, warm hair. For a moment, notions of politics tumbled away from him, and so did notions of how wonderful it might be if every child could be unafraid of magic. There was only the fact that he knew he was acting right in response to the rest of the world.

Jing-Xi had told him about that, the responsibility that other Lords and Ladies—mostly of the Light—felt for their people, and how wonderful it was when they knew they had come down from lofty heights they placed themselves on and others cooperated in building, and actually interacted with others.

Harry hadn't known if he would ever feel it, since he seemed mostly to piss other people off through things like insisting on house elf freedom. He hadn't known if he would ever fulfill the promise of the words Narcissa had written as Starborn, encouraging him not to be a Lord, to defend and serve and protect instead of compel.

Now he knew he could, if only for a moment at a time.

SSSSSSSSSSSSSSS

Hawthorn glanced down at her hands. Tears were blinding her, and not because Harry holding Marian like that brought back memories of Pansy at a much younger age, yelling as she raced in circles through the house and made the elves squeal.

For a moment, the life she'd lived lately, the one in which vengeance against Indigena ached and pushed against her, opened up, and sunlight came through the crack in the clouds.

It was more beautiful and more piercing than the moment in which she'd given up bloody vengeance for Claudia. It said that perhaps life was more important than death, and the dead must give place to the living. It said that it was things like this which mattered, more than the time when a heart stopped beating.

I cannot think like this. I cannot. Hawthorn ran a hand over her face in anxiety. Pansy was my daughter. I must take vengeance for her.

She turned away from Harry and Marian, because they were only confusing her, and watched Draco Malfoy watching Harry instead. The expression on his face was easy enough to understand.

SSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS

Draco felt as though he understood, then. He'd been going through Harry's memories in the Pensieve he gave him for Christmas. Some made him laugh. Some enraged him. Some broke his heart. None of them had ever let him understand Harry's lack of ambition, why he wouldn't use his magic to win just some small luxuries for himself, delights no one else would miss and which they'd be glad to give to someone of Lord-level power.

Now he knew. Harry didn't want them because he was more interested in the greater delights. His magic lapped the room like a purring serpent. He was happier in that moment than Draco had ever seen him outside of bed, his will and reality in accord, and it was his magic that had helped him bring it about. He didn't want people to face him with fear, but with wonder instead.

Draco put a hand on his chest, feeling as if he'd swallowed a chicken bone. Harry didn't like fear.

Oh. Oh.

And that would be the reason he'd included the desire to not cause fear in the oaths for the Alliance of Sun and Shadow, and why he didn't want to intimidate people, and why he didn't want to keep house elves as slaves or servants. Why should he? He could have better things.

Draco understood all about wanting better things. He had simply never imagined that respect and wonder could be two of those better things.

He wanted to move forward and put his hands on Harry's shoulders and kiss him breathless, but they were in public and Harry hadn't put Marian down yet. It would have to wait.

For once, Draco didn't mind waiting.

SSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS

"Vates."

Harry inclined his head slowly as he stepped around the door into the blank stone room of Cobley-by-the-Sea where Lazuli Yaxley had agreed to meet him. "Madam Yaxley." Snape followed close on his heels, Draco just behind, with Peter and Regulus peering over their shoulders. Owen and Syrinx stepped through the door and spread out to stand on either side of it, staring at Lazuli all the while.

Lazuli, who had been looking out the window, turned to face them. And Harry met her eyes and understood why Narcissa might fear her.

She was not the strongest wizard in the room; she was considerably weaker than Snape, and perhaps Regulus, and of course Harry himself. Her magic had a Dark edge, but Harry had met and felt more vicious ones. Her cold, polished manner was one common to many purebloods.

It was what the lack of expression on her face meant that could frighten someone else. She appeared to be totally uncaught, unlinked, unbound. No one else, said her face, had ever made such an impression on her that she would hold herself back and do what they said. She had never feared anyone.

Unconquered.

Harry subdued the flash of immediate approval that caused in his heart. He might like her as vates, but he was not here only as that. Lazuli also proposed to join his political alliance.

"Madam," he repeated, when she said nothing, but continued to study him. "You agreed to bring your daughter. Is she here?"

"Jacinth," Lazuli breathed, not taking her eyes off him. Harry had no idea what she felt, what she was thinking. It didn't show in any flicker of expression or any tiny gesture she made, both the places he was used to looking for them.

A small girl came around the side of the one piece of furniture in the room, a large chair that faced the window. Harry studied her. She looked about seven years old, and normal for a witch that age: dark-haired, pale, nervous. She ducked her head away from Harry's gaze before he could see the color of her eyes or make out much of her face. Of course, if what Harry suspected was true and Jacinth was half-human and half violently otherwise, she was probably wearing a glamour in any case.

"This is my daughter Jacinth," Lazuli said, and put one hand on the girl's shoulder. "For her, I offer you alliance and loyalty, in all the terms discussed in the letter. For her, in return, you would be fighting. I wish you to change the world so that she does not have to hide in the shadows any more."

Harry cleared his throat with an effort. "I would like to see her fully, first. Am I right in assuming that Jacinth's father was not human, Madam Yaxley?"

"That is so," said Lazuli. "Finite Incantatem."

Jacinth's outline rippled under her hands. She looked up again, half-cringing. Harry caught his breath, and strove to make sure that nothing showed on his face.

Jacinth's eyes were huge, golden, and caught under eye-ridges that made them stand out from her head like a snake's. Delicate, incongruous lashes fringed them, nevertheless, and Harry could see from her nervous blink that she did have eyelids. A forked tongue flickered past her lips.

Lazuli stepped back, and Jacinth moved forward, arms spread out as if putting on a display. Delicate gray wings, the color of shadows, unfolded from her back; they resembled a dragon's, though they weren't quite the span of her arms, and Harry didn't think she could use them to fly. Her robes split at the back to reveal a gray-black tail that ended in a triangular point, and when she spun, Harry could see that her hair joined with her spine, melting into obsidian–like spikes along her spine that easily sliced holes in the cloth. She had two legs, but they nearly seemed like afterthoughts next to the smooth muscled slide of her back.

Harry heard Snape draw his wand. Before he could say anything, or Snape could intone a curse, Lazuli said, "Jacinth's father is here."

Harry looked up to see the shadows boiling in one corner of the room. Something formed there—a shape, dark and coiled, with no sign of legs, and no sign of a head, either. From its back splayed wings, from its chest projected a tongue. A maw opened and closed at one end, displaying teeth as sharp as Jacinth's spikes.

"Severus," Harry said softly, never taking his eyes away from the shadows. He could feel its—his—magic now, and it was mad, sliding, Dark but too wild for the Dark, shot with gleams of Light. It is no wonder that Lazuli said she could give me knowledge of the paths between Dark and Light. She went there to mate with this—thing. "Do not."

"Do you know what that is?" Snape demanded, his voice choked with nearly as much fear as he had ever shown around the werewolves, if not the same rage and hatred. "They hunted us, Harry. To give them passage back to the world is madness. And they will have it, if there is a child even half of their blood alive." He spun on Lazuli. "Why did you do this? Why?"

"I wanted to," said Lazuli Yaxley.

Harry looked back to her. She had one arm slightly tilted, in such a way that he knew her wand was up her sleeve, and she had her lips parted in way that suggested her next words would be Avada Kedavra. She would not miss, either.

Harry could see emotion in her eyes for the first time. Love, such fierce love, and such implacable will. Harry had no doubt that she saw Jacinth exactly as she was, all the time, and loved her the more for it.

"You cannot negotiate a settlement with them," Snape said, jerking his head at the shadows. The creature had lost most of his form, Harry saw, coming forward to coil around Lazuli's feet and lifting his head to her arms. For a moment, her sleeve sagged, as if a chunk of her flesh had vanished. Harry thought of the creature's teeth, and wondered what price a nameless beast out of the paths would demand for fathering a child. "It is not done. It is impossible."

"The vates does the impossible on a regular basis." Lazuli lowered her arm. "And this is his decision."

Harry turned to face Jacinth. She had stopped spinning and stood with her eyes lowered, her hands locked together. Delicate gray webs fluttered around her fingers, he saw, opening and then closing again like breathing flowers.

"How do you feel?" he asked her, striving to make his voice gentle. "Do you wish to live in the world your mother wants me to build?"

Her eyes came up and met his, astonished. Then her face broke out in the most amazing smile, stretching the shadows of scales beneath her skin. "You can talk to me," she said.

Harry realized, then, that he was speaking Parseltongue; the sight of Jacinth's eyes had probably been enough to make him drop into the language. He opened his mouth to apologize, but Jacinth rushed on eagerly.

"I can speak English, too, but not so well. It makes me sound like a freak. And none of the others can understand me in this language except Father, and he only talks when he feels like it." She moved a step forward, and the intense loneliness in her eyes made Harry's heart hurt. "You can talk," she repeated, as if it were a miracle. "Will you come back and talk to me sometimes?"

"Of course," said Harry quietly. "If you wish it." He didn't glance at Lazuli right now. This was between him and Jacinth. "And that will happen whether we become allies or not. But do you want your mother and I to become allies? It would mean other people knowing about you." In Parseltongue, that came out more like "reading all your scent."

Jacinth swallowed. "I—could you make them stop staring sometimes?"

"That's what I would try to do," said Harry. "Make them stop staring. Make them not care what you sound like when you speak English. But I might not win. It might mean people would know you, but hate you and fear you. And it would take years even if I did win. Do you want this?"

Her tongue flickered out again. Harry wondered if she was tasting his scent, reading his truthfulness there. Then her eyes came back to his face with such force he almost gasped.

"Yes," she said. "Because I want to be able to walk down the street someday and not have people try to kill me, which Mother said would happen. Some stares wouldn't be so bad, compared to that. And I could always insult them back in this language. And Father says when I grow my teeth, I can threaten them, and they'll run." She hesitated. "And that's the world where you live, isn't it?"

Harry nodded.

"Then I want to visit you there. Sometimes," Jacinth added hastily, as if aware she might be asking for too much.

"You have it," said Harry, and turned to face Lazuli. The shadow that had coiled around her was gone. She was watching him with an expression he had never seen before.

"Your daughter wants this," he told her. "And if I could set Dementors free, I may be able to do the same thing for Jacinth's father. I'll fight."

Lazuli sank so gracefully that Harry didn't realize what she was doing until she was already on one knee. Then she shook back her sleeves, and Harry realized she was showing him her arms.

Her half-devoured arms.

"I paid this price for Jacinth's fathering," Lazuli said, into the silence. "Every day I will pay it. And I would pay it in death. I love her, and she is mine. Do you fight for her, there is nothing I will not do to support you. I know the meaning of sacrifice."

Harry could only nod, and then Snape was grabbing his shoulder and spinning him around and trying to tell him something about Jacinth's father.

Harry listened calmly. There were going to be arguments. He could not deny that. He would have to struggle hard for a compromise, if Jacinth's father was an enemy of wizardkind the way that Snape said he was.

He looked back at Jacinth, who was now occupied in petting the coils of a shadowy body that wound around her.

So I'll fight. It's not the first time.