our random number dance is 20
20. Exorcism (You Changed Me: for better or worse)
Alice was not a patient patient. She was there to be fixed, not to speculate on various types of Curses and theoretical cures, and certainly not to socialize; she had never been someone who found visits to the Healers relaxing. To Aliceās mind, the need for medical care was an occasional unfortunate necessity of a job like hers ā but it wasnāt something she could imagine anyone enjoying.
It wasnāt the first time she had met him, of course; they had overlapped at school for several years, and in social groups outside of school, and of course they shared a secret membership in the Order of the Phoenix; she had know Dedalus all her life in one way or another (or at least all his life, she being the elder by a handful of years) but it wasnāt until their paths crossed at St. Mungoās, really, that Alice felt like she met him ā the real him.
The different seemed to be that there was no difference. Dedalus at St. Mungoās was the same as Dedalus at parties, was the same as Dedalus at school, was the same as Dedalus at the Ministry, was the same as Dedalus at Order meetings. Alice was a little thrown by that; she knew that she certainly didnāt behave the same way at St. Mungoās as she did anywhere else. Being a victim did not sit well with her, and any form of injury or illness smacked of weakness; smacked of victimhood. There was nothing about St. Mungoās that could ever, ever be enjoyableā¦
Unless one was there with Dedalus, it turned out.
He had a knack of making any situation into a performance, into a show, into an event...even sitting in the waiting room during a backlog, or while the Healers waited for results or research to come through on oneās case. He could take the heavy, tasteless tea and stale biscuits in the corner and turn them into a tea party the likes of which would have made Aliceās mother proud. He could take the tedious tragedy of a dozen injured wix trudging past and turn it into a pageant. He could spin stories like tapestries, and that was even without taking into account his own antics.
He seemed to be there all the time, too, or at least he was there often enough that her visits overlapped with his more often than they didnāt. She started seeking him out whenever she hit the waiting room, started looking forward to the cheap tea and dull biscuits and the entertaining tedium of sitting together in those stiff wooden chairs for hours on end, giggling and sneering together at the parade of misfortune that passed through the hospital doors, exchanging lamentations and laughter and side-long supercillious looks.
It was three weeks before that Alice realized she had started to enjoy her visits to St. Mungoās -- not the process of trying and failing to fix her arm, no; that was hell, would always be hell. But the side effect of socializing with Dedalus outside the office and outside the Order? That she had grown to enjoy more than she had ever though anyone could enjoy anything that happened at St. Mungoās. He made it...almost bearable. Not the injury itself, no; but the treatment?
Alice would admit it to no one, but that part was almost fun.
