Neville let out a yawn and stretched.

"Morning, Harry. Happy birthday."

"Er thanks?" was all Harry could think to say.

"Oh," Neville began, "I was just thinking up a new move I'd like you to try out."

"A new move?" Harry questioned, not sure what he was talking about.

"Yeah, Quidditch. I don't know how I'm going to put this team back together. Angelina tried, you know, but now that I'm captain I was hoping to make some changes in a few things. I wasn't sure if I should make everyone try out again or not. In a lot of ways I really think it would just be a waste of time."

"Neville Longbottom- Quidditch Captain?!" Harry thought in total shock.

To Harry the idea of Neville on a broomstick seemed about as safe as running with scissors in each hand, blindfolded on an icy sidewalk. Perhaps that was a bit drastic, but still, it seemed so unreal. The idea of him as the Gryffindor team's captain was even more outlandish.

Just like they had all morning, the memories surfaced again and he saw visions of Neville winning house points for Gryffindor at the end-of-year ceremony, swerving bludgers and calling out plays to Harry though a Quidditch match in the rain, battling the Hungarian Horntail that Harry remembered all too well from his last year. He was beginning to notice that each time his consciousness was flooded with these memories, the sense he had of his previous life left him a little more.

He struggled to recall what his life at Hogwarts had been like, hoping that another small stream of memories would come to him, just as they had in the dream and a moment ago. A voice suddenly rang out from the narrow hallway to the kitchen.

"Breakfast!" Mrs. Weasley called.

Suddenly people came flocking from corners of the house, all wishing Harry a happy birthday. He stammered thanks in reply and gave a half-smile to try and hide his confusion over the whole scene. He saw two people that he vaguely remembered from a picture Moody showed him last summer, Gideon and Fabian Prewett. That was definitely them, and they were definitely supposed to be dead as well.

He wanted so badly for someone to talk to about what had happened, but what was he supposed to say? How was he to explain that just the night before most of them had been dead? Who on earth would take him seriously? Did he even take himself seriously? Should he try and explain the conversation he had with Tom Riddle the night before?

No, that wouldn't work. Things were better than he could have ever imagined. He saw his mother leaning her head on his father's shoulder talking and he realized, why ask why or how? Why not just accept it and perhaps even enjoy it? Sure, things were peculiar and he felt a bit out of place, but in all honesty the last twenty minutes had been the best of his life. He figured he would adjust to this new reality after a bit of time, and he just needed to act more naturally. He was feeling so fantastic that he felt as though he could conjure up a thousand Patroni. Tiny thoughts that plagued him in the back of his mind concerning the purpose of his visit into an alternate reality remained in the back of his mind.

"This is just not real," kept playing over and over again in his head.

Under the table he pinched his arm hard, so hard that he drew blood up to the surface of his skin to leave a small, welted, purple bruise. The blood was real, and so were the pain and the bruise. This was real. It didn't really matter the circumstance right now, reality was reality. He was resolved. No matter what, he was going to keep this to himself.

Suddenly he saw Ron and his eyes lit up. Seeing his parents and everyone else was a dream turned real, but seeing his best friend still made his new experiences that much better. Ron had always been the person to rescue him from the Dursleys', and though they had their rough spots like any good friends, he knew that Ron was as good a friend as anyone could ever ask for.

"Hey mate!"

"Happy birthday," he said, somewhat mischievously.

Then it suddenly hit him. Hermione! Of course!

"Hey, where's Hermione?" he asked Ron as they were walking into the kitchen to eat.

"Hermione? Granger? I guess that she's probably off somewhere with her parents, wherever it is that they live," he answered, looking at Harry strangely.

"What are you talking abou-" Harry cut himself off in mid-sentence.

It would probably be better to listen for a while rather than say much. As far as he knew, he seemed to be the only one with any idea that things were a touch amiss, and he had already decided to keep his old life to himself.

Unfortunately the Harry these people expected was a Harry much like his father had been at his age, loud, cocky, and much too sure of himself. People kept asking him if he was feeling alright, and he finally just claimed to have a headache just to make people try to stop paying attention to him. He was unsure exactly how he was supposed to behave, and jumping right into it was proving to be a most difficult task.

Mrs. Weasley was just getting breakfast out on the table when she looked around and asked, "Where's Alice?"

Harry had no idea who she was talking about so he just shrugged with everyone else. Ron was talking to him about something, and he was half-trying to listen. He was saying something about Quidditch, and soon Neville joined in their conversation so that Harry could just listen to everyone else.

He had been sitting at the table for only five minutes when a girl came up from behind, bear hugged him, and then kissed him hard on the cheek.

His father was smiling at him and shaking his head. Harry turned around in his chair to see Ginny. He had another wave of memories that came flooding into his mind like a dam. He saw himself playing in a sandbox with her, chasing her around a yard, playing Quidditch with her, dancing with her at the Yule Ball in the year before last.

She looked so different. She had on makeup, she had done her hair. It wasn't the Ginny he knew, but there was no mistaking her cute, childish freckles and her flaming red hair. She carried herself differently too. She seemed more confident, more bold and outspoken.

"Ginny?" he gasped.

"Who's Ginny?" she asked suspiciously.

Mrs. Weasley came in carrying a plate of sausages and sighed when she saw Ginny, or whoever it was that had just kissed Harry.

"It's about time you showed up for breakfast, honey. It's not polite to keep people waiting on their birthdays, even is that person is your boyfriend."

"Who's Ginny?" the girl Alice asked a little more firmly.

"She's er, no one."

Alice told Neville to shove over, which he gladly did and she took a seat next to Harry. She seemed so flirty: he couldn't understand it.

"You're awfully quiet," she mused aloud twirling her fork in one hand and her hair in the other.

"Uh, yeah, I'm just, er, you know, still waking up," Harry said. "And admiring your beauty," he added quickly.

It was so clichéd, so cheap, but she seemed to like it well enough and it satisfied her. He suddenly became aware that he would have to play as confident in his surrounds as her, even though it was like he had fallen through some time warp and everyone was speaking in different languages that they all expected him to understand. The cooing, petting, and praise were what she wanted.

"So, Alice," he began. "I love your name."

"Awwww, you're so sweet to me," she said, giving him the most playful and lusty look he had ever seen anyone give. It made him uncomfortable in a way; it was like having his own sister fancy him.

"Where'd it come from?"

Neville choked from the other side of Alice. She gave him a searching look, looking at him as though she were trying to peer through him. Neville tried to act like he had not heard and stuck up a quick conversation with Bill.

"What's with you?" she whispered.

People began singing "Happy Birthday" to him. He stared at her with a blank look of utter confusion. Her name was Ginny. The name Alice just didn't fit her.

"I thought everyone knew why I was named Alice. After living around mum for sixteen years I would have figured she told you the story at least twenty times- but maybe not. I was named for Neville's mother. They died the night I was born," she answered as though it should be obvious, lowering her voice so as to try to keep Neville from hearing.

The song had ended and people were clapping. She smiled, hugged him tightly and looked around. She seemed to love attention. He smiled too, but there was an odd feeling in the pit of his stomach that was making him feel sick.

After breakfast, his father asked him to play chess with him, and Ginny, no Alice, went with Ron to play a game of Exploding Snap in the corner of the room while he and his father played chess on the coffee table. Sirius whispered hints in his ear and his mother tried to help his father out. Things were definitely eerie, but they were worth it he reasoned. Yesterday he would have given anything to sit here and play a game he was terrible at with his parents and his godfather, and now he was. But what is it that he had given up?

He couldn't help but wonder. Dumbledore had made it very clear in his third year that time and events should never under any circumstances be altered. Yet it had been Dumbledore who had suggested he and Hermione change things to save his godfather in his third year. So what did it all mean? Was it alright to accept his present situation? By Hermione's ability to reverse time Sirius had been spared that night, and even though he was thrust into this unusual scenario with someone he would have rather not trusted, it seemed to have worked out even better than before. Not only was Sirius alive, but his parents were as well, along with a few members of the original Order of the Phoenix. But at what cost had that come?

He glanced across the room at the girl he would always consider to be Ginny. The girl, Alice now, saw him looking and waved seductively at him. He tried to think of her as Ginny again, as Ron's shy little sister, the young girl who had always fancied him silently and probably giggled about him in corridors with flocks of other girls. But she was Ginny no longer. Ginny had disappeared along with the misery of his soon-to-be-forgotten life and in her place stood Alice, the brash, outspoken, vixen who seemed to have difficulty keeping her feelings in check and her hands to herself.

Alice: her name was Alice because Neville's parents had been sacrificed in his own parents' place. His own personal joy had caused someone else his previous life of personal pain. Was it fair? What had he lost?

His wondering was cut very short when his father made a joke and he found himself laughing. Seeing the happiness he felt around him in the room, he began to think that whatever it was he had lost last night, Ginny Weasley, his quiet and humble reputation, and his friendship with Hermione, it couldn't be so very important. He could change his ways, and befriend Hermione easily enough. Life just needed a few small adjustments.