Chapter 36: By Any Other Name

She hadn't realized that she was counting on staying at Zarekael's side (as if he really needed her help or moral support) until Kalimac crossed the room to address Snape.

"While Andrea's having her parting shot at Zarekael," he said quietly, "I wonder if I could talk with, hm, Neshdiana for a minute or two?"

Snape furrowed his brow and looked a little confused—not surprising really, since he was only Meli's minder, and then only as far as Dumbledore was concerned. "I have no objection, provided it doesn't take too long."

Kalimac next looked to Zarekael, who seemed genuinely amused for the first time since entering the Cosy. "I'm content to let the lady speak for herself," he said.

"I'm right here," Meli spoke up testily. "And yes, I have my own damned voice, thank you."

He turned to her and raised his eyebrows. "Well, then?"

"Just keep it snappy," she said through her teeth, aware that behind his bemused blandness, Zarekael was definitely laughing at her.

Kalimac gave her a shrewd half-smile. "I would never dream of taking up too much of your valuable time." He tipped his head in the direction of the door. "Shall we?"

Meli glanced at Snape, who nodded. "We'll wait outside for you."

Interesting that he should think Andrea would say her piece before Kalimac finished with his. With an irritated sigh, she followed Kalimac out of the Cosy and into the main part of the pub.

They settled at a corner table and ordered a round of butterbeer; neither one felt much like drinking anything of a more leaded variety. Apart from ordering her drink, Meli kept her mouth decisively shut. It was Kalimac's show; he could go to the trouble of starting it off, or suffer in awkward silence. Her annoyance with him aside, there were plenty of other things that were starting to catch up to her. Granted, Andrea had somewhat come around, but that had been a grueling interrogation, and the tension over the whole thing had taken a massive toll on her nerves. She was exhausted—she could only imagine how Zarekael felt, and he wasn't out of the woods yet.

"She's not going to stake him just because your back's turned."

Meli raised her eyes to see Kalimac looking as serious as she'd ever seen him. "That's not the point."

"Probably not." He studied his butterbeer bottle. "He's your brother and, I'm starting to think, your best friend. And even if you can't do anything to protect him, you'd rather be with him in the line of fire." He smiled. "It's one of the noblest things about Dragonhelms and Gryffindors, and it's something I wish Serpencoil had more of."

Meli stiffened. "I'm not a Gryffindor anymore."

Kalimac raised his eyebrows but didn't comment, at least not directly. "I feel I owe you an apology for underestimating you, Ai—" He broke off and looked up. "Is it okay to use your second name here?"

Meli hesitated. She wasn't clear on all of the nuances herself. With Zarekael she had always played it safe, never using his second name in public. For herself, though…

Well, and it depended on who was saying the name, too, didn't it? Kalimac might drive her batshit crazy, but he was at least trustworthy. He'd asked, after all; a lot of people might just have assumed they could.

"If you say it quietly," she said after a moment. It wasn't the best-phrased answer, and she saw immediately how he could use it as a springboard for further annoyance, but he surprised her.

"I can do that." He offered a smile, but it was a sober one. "So. Ailsa. I feel I owe you an apology."

His gravity surprised her. "How have you underestimated me, exactly?"

Kalimac pursed his lips thoughtfully. "I have to admit, probably to my shame, that I figured your reason for being so formal was you didn't like me, it's a way of telling me to push off, end of story. Even when you told me about being careful with names, I thought it was just you being—" He frowned. "Is coy the right word?"

Meli raised her eyebrows and couldn't quite hide a surprised smile. "I think that's the first time anyone's ever called me coy."

"I'm pretty sure it won't be the last."

"Not with you around to do it, no."

He sighed. "Anyway, we'll call it coy for now; my point is, I was mistaken. There's more substance to you than that, and I should've known it.

"After all, whether or not you liked me, you at least trusted me enough to give me your second name."

Meli held up a hand. "I think, before you go much further, that I should clear something up first. My… philosophy of names, we'll call it, has evolved quite a bit since my first coming here.

"I woke up in the hospital wing at Hogwarts knowing that I couldn't trust anyone but knowing that everyone would want to know who I was. I wasn't about to give Dumbeldore my true name, so in a pinch, I settled on the first name that came to mind and wasn't a blindingly obvious alias.

"When I started contacting all of you, I acted on my innate paranoia and used a different alias so that if Dumbledore should hear about me, he wouldn't automatically connect me with the patient in the hospital wing.

"I don't know when, or even how, I came to think of the two names as I do now." She sighed, impatient with herself. She'd engaged in impetuous behavior, and now it was coming 'round to bite her; one more lesson of where letting the lion lead would take her. "I only know that I'm more careful of them now than I was at first, and if I'm to be perfectly honest, the chances are that, if I thought then as I do now, you wouldn't have been given my second name, because no one would have been."

"Ever, or just up until I earned it?" To his credit, Kalimac sounded more curious than anything else.

The obvious reply was that the two were one and the same, now push off—but Kalimac had deliberately avoided slamming her so far; she couldn't bring herself to take a cheap shot.

"Do you think it worth earning, Mr. Kalimac?"

He raised his eyebrows. "Do you?"

The question caught her off-guard. "I don't understand what you mean."

"A privilege is only as valuable as it's perceived to be," he said. "As much crap as we've gone through on the subject of names, I think I'll die of ecstatic shock the day you finally call me David—you calling me by my first name is very valuable to me. But what about you? Do you place that kind of value on someone calling your Ailsa, or would it be six one, half-dozen the other between that and Neshdiana?" He shook his head. "I don't know your brother very well yet, but I'm starting to see at least some of where he's coming from on earning your names. If they're just thrown at him, they're of little value. As annoying as it's been, I almost wish I'd had to earn your second name."

Something, some crazy tangle of a hundred different unnamable things, twisted through Meli as she stared at Kalimac and heard him out. He didn't look forlorn or self-pitying, just very serious and a little regretful. Nothing really made sense—not his mood, not his last words, not anything in that twisting tangle that spun and swept out of her mouth without thought or permission in the words: "Then earn my third name, David."

It was impossible to say who felt that impact more keenly. Meli's innards wrenched and screamed as if she'd been shot, and Kalimac's head came up so suddenly that inertia alone should have made it fly off. Both were shocked, and she had no idea what in the hell to do with that. She scrambled through her pockets, already looking for her money.

"Do you want me to?" he asked, seemingly oblivious to anything but that.

"I—" What was she supposed to say to that?! Meli felt as if she'd careened into a snowbank without ever realizing there was ice on the road.

"I—have—to—go!" She finally came up with the coins to cover her tab and threw them next to her untouched butterbeer as she jumped to her feet and fled the pub.

She plowed into daylight and sucked in a lungful of outside air, as if it could chase away whatever in bloody hell had just happened. She paced back and forth a few times, slamming the door on every thought that tried to present itself because as much as she wondered, she already knew that she didn't want an answer. Finally to shut them out completely she forced order to her own chaos by resurrecting poor Tam O'Shanter and his forlorn horse Meg.

It didn't work wonders, but it did mean that when Snape and Zarekael joined her outside, she was almost back to normal.

Zarekael apparated back to the Forest, and Meli and Snape ran their errands… and David Kalimac sat in the Rose and Thistle, staring moodily at two full bottles of butterbeer.

ooo

AUTHOR'S NOTE: Here end the full chapters written as of the final posting in 2008 (the first tiny bit of the next chapter was also written). After this, it's all new stuff, though adhering (I estimate…) about 95% to the original plan for the story as Snarky and I saw it going forward at that point.
AE