Ava Potter was going to die. She knew that in the way that she knew her son's favorite song was "Pop Goes the Hypogriff" and that her husband slept with only his left sock on. She was going to die, but that would be all. She wasn't going to allow this betrayal to play out the way it had for the little boy in her dreams. Her boy, her Harry, would be different.

That's why, as she kissed her husband for the last time, a kiss of betrayal in a way, she felt no guilt in her heart, only grief. For she already missed James Potter more than life.

"I love you, James," she murmured against his lips and his eyes widened in alarm. "Please, forgive me for this and take care of our son."

"Ava-" he began, startled, but she'd already grabbed his wand from his pocket, and her wand was to his head before he'd finished what he could say.

"Somnum," she put him into an enchanted sleep and then, picking up his wand in her left hand and a one-year-old Harry Potter in her right, she levitated him up to their bedroom closet.

"Dada! Dada!" Harry giggled, watching James float ahead of them. "Dada sleep?"

"Yes Harry," she matched his smile, and the innocent child didn't notice that the expression didn't meet her eyes. "Dada sleep. Just like Harry will be asleep soon."

She wished she'd practiced the levitation spell a bit more because on the way up the stairs he knocked into the wall a few times. She nearly smiled, imagining him complaining about the headache. James Potter could out grumble anyone. She'd miss that.

Ava was thankful when they made it up to the closet. Using her wand, she lowered James's unconscious form down as gently as she could, angling it so he wouldn't be sleeping on the side that hurt his neck. Then, she placed Harry carefully on the floor, who thought it was a fun game to levitate daddy when he was sleeping.

Without allowing herself to think too much about it, she went to the end of their bed to the bottom of her trunk where she'd hid James's Invisibility cloak. She'd gotten it back from Dumbledore last week without telling her husband. She'd not told James a lot these last few weeks. Huge omissions from her activities which made her feel bad, but she knew were necessary.

"I'm so sorry James. I'm so sorry," she murmured, and she covered him with the cloak, making him invisible from sight and magic. "Only love...only love can hurt like this, but I'm so glad you made me fall in love with you James Potter. I wouldn't have it any other way. You made me happier than I ever imagined that I could be. I thought...I thought I'd die young and alone, but my life has been so full. Take care of our family. Take care of Harry."

She took out her wand and, grimacing, she cut her palm and James's, pressing them together while she chanted the spell from the book. She had no blood relatives that she'd trust Harry to, but her wizarding marriage to James and this sacrifice of blood would tie them as much as any people could be tied. Harry would be safe this way. He would be loved this way.

She quickly scooped up her baby, who was slowly beginning to nod off, and made her way to James's side of the room. She set his wand on his wand stand, right where he'd find it, and she stole one final glance back towards where she knew he was laying under the cloak. Then, with a flick of her wand, she magically locked the door and cast a quick "mufflato". There was no guarantee that James would not wake up and she couldn't risk him doing so and making himself a target. Or else, all was lost. Harry would be lost. Besides, he wouldn't be there forever. The magic would be gone when she was.

Then, once it was done, and with tears in her eyes, she turned to her son with a forced smile. The beautiful boy looked up at her with obvious adoration, his mum his favorite person, despite all the times James and Sirius tried to assert otherwise. He was a carbon copy of his father, right down to the crooked smile and dimples, but Harry had her eyes. The little boy immediately reached up his arms to her and Ava obliged, pulling him closer so that his face nuzzled into her neck, and she could feel the comforting feeling of little breathes going in and out.

"Come on Harry," she murmured. "I know it's a holiday, but it's your bedtime. You should sleep through most of this darling."

"Mum, Mum, Mum," pulled back a bit, his eyes heavy and he smiled up at her happily. She returned his enthusiasm with a sad smile of her own.

"I love you so much, darling Harry. I wish you could understand, but everything I'm doing, it is to protect you. You and your father are everything I ever wanted or needed. I know...I know you'll have questions, but I've saved them. I've saved my memories for the two of you. You'll have to love your dad for the both of us now. He may seem like he knows what he's doing but we both know differently, don't we?"

Her boy just stared at her adoringly, trustingly, with her own blue eyes. "Dad."

"Yes," she smiled. "You have to take care of Dad, and Dad will take care of you."

"Mum," he reached out for her as soon as she put him down in the crib.

"Mummy loves you, little wizard," she kissed his darling cheeks, her chest aching at the thought that it would be the last time, and she couldn't resist holding him a bit longer. "Mummy will always love you."

She gave her son another squeeze and kiss, and then she tucked him in with his deer and dog stuffed animals. Then, she picked up her wand, and like his father, she put her baby boy to sleep. Then, carefully, she took her wand and cut the already opened palm a bit deeper, and with a grimace she smeared the blood in a protective circle around Harry's crib. She chanted softly as she did so. Not one essence of darkness would touch her child, not one. His soul would not be a part of her child. She would not let him have it.

Ava didn't have to wait long, which was a good thing since she knew her sleeping spell would only last an hour. She felt that she'd waited long enough for James, but she still prayed that nothing went wrong. If he was still...he would live.

So it was, that within the hour it was done. The cloaked figure breached their protective charms without the least bit of trouble. Proof to her that they'd been betrayed. That they'd trusted the wrong person. The wrong friend. With a shout of "Avada Kadavra," and in a flash of green light, Ava Potter was gone from the world three weeks before her twenty first birthday.

Everything went exactly as she had planned and fifteen minutes later, James Potter woke up to a house silent with death and Voldemort gone.

"Ava?" he looked around frantically, his limbs stiff as he pulled the invisibility cloak off and threw it away. "AVA?! HARRY? HARRY?!"

He pushed at the closet door and was relieved that it opened. He stumbled, legs not wanting to move. He first went to his son's room, scared. However, upon seeing his peacefully sleeping form, James was momentarily comforted. Then he saw the blood. All around his son's crib, was a circle of blood.

"Ava! AVA?!" he scrambled out into the hall, prepared to tear the house and then the town and then the world apart to find her, but he didn't have to go far, because there she was. At the foot of the stairs. She was there, and she was gone. Her body twisted unnaturally, in a position that indicated that she'd fallen while fighting. Ava's beautiful blue eyes stared up at James, glossed over, unseeing.

"Ava...Ava..." he nearly fell down the stairs in his hurry to get to her. He slumped down on the steps and pulled her limp, unbreathing form into his lap. "Ava. Ava, my beautiful Ava..."

He was nearly overwhelmed by guilt. Horror. She was dead. Ava was dead. How? How had this happened? Had Peter fallen? Or...or had they been betrayed? James didn't want to think that. It went against his very being, his sense of honor, to accuse a friend of such savage betrayal. But someone was a traitor. There had been a spy in the Order.

And then it all began to fall together. The botched missions. The ambushes. The murders. All of them, while Peter wasn't there. Sirius had accused Remus. Remus had accused Sirius. James had declared his trust in both of them.

They'd never even once suspected Peter. Not small, bumbling Peter Pettigrew. Not their friend.

Please Merlin, James thought desperately, better he be dead than that. Better he have died than to have been the one to hurt Ava.

But, just as he was thinking that, the small, chubby figure fell over the threshold, his mass of flesh trembling in shock. 

"J-J-James?" Peter squeaked in horror at the sight of his friend who was very much alive. "How? What hap-pened?"

"Peter?" he murmured softly, looking up to see a man who he had called friend. He was sweaty and nervous, but he didn't appear to have been tortured or killed, which only meant one thing, betrayal.

James felt his heart break for a second time that night.

"Incarcerous!" James cried as he imprisoned his friend. He did this while holding onto Ava tightly. Refusing to let her go. He never wanted to let her go. "How could you do this to us, Peter? How could you have done this to me? To my son? To Ava? How could you have done that to AVA?! YOU WERE OUR FRIEND! WHY?!"

"H-h-how? V-v-volde- He Who Must Not Be Named was here. How are you alive?" He wouldn't look up at James. He was now trapped in invisible bindings, in the corner of the room. This traitor, James thought, was too close to Ava's body.

The sound of a motorcycle's engine revved, as well as the plopping of multiple other wizards arriving onto the scene, but of course, Sirius Black arrived first. He ran into the house, short ebony curls flying behind him, gray eyes flashing in fear. So much fear.

"PRONGS?! Oh! Thank Merlin you're alive! You won't believe how scared I was when I saw that Peter wasn't at the house! I thought that-"

"Ava's gone," James said simply, causing Sirius to stop and his face to freeze. That's when he noticed the body James held. He'd been so focused on looking for his brother's face, that he hadn't seen the full picture.

"Ava?" he whispered, as if asking the corpse to confirm her identity. He came forward to the pair and collapsed at the bottom of the stairs beside them. Looking from one face to another, his heart ached and he just didn't understand. He couldn't understand it, but Ava Potter was dead.

"She...she sacrificed herself, for me and Harry," James had just been able to put that together from her actions that evening and in the previous weeks and from Peter's words. "Voldemort's gone, and Peter was the traitor, and my Ava is gone..."

"PETER," Sirius turned the infamous Black glare onto the chubby man, causing more whimpers to come from the pathetic mass of flesh and selfishness.

Before they could do anything else that they might come to regret, more wizards entered the home, Albus Dumbledore, Alastor Moody, Reubus Hagrid, and Emmaline Vance.

"What happened James?" Albus demanded, however upon noticing a cut in the palm of James Potter's hand and a matching one on Ava's, he thought he might know.

"We were betrayed...given up to Voldemort." Eyes instinctively went to Sirius, and wands were raised before James corrected them. "Peter. We changed it all and made Peter our Secret Keeper. He's...he's in the corner whimpering. But Ava...my Ava..." James stroked her hair back from her face.

"James," Albus Dumbledore spoke gently, after the two Aurors to secure Pettigrew, "why don't we move her to the sofa."

"Yes," he agreed blindly. "Th-that would be more comfortable for her."

None of them dared to correct him, that Ava wouldn't be thinking of such things. Still, when James struggled to stand, both Sirius and Hagrid moved to help him.

"I can take 'er James," Hagrid said, sniffling. "I'll be gentle wit' 'er."

James didn't want to let go, but Sirius saw how weak he was.

"Let him take her James," he murmured. "Just to the other room. Just for a moment."

"Pads," James's eyes began to overflow with tears. "I-I c-c-can't."

"Just for a moment James," Sirius urged, but the unspoken, 'and then forever' lay there between them. Unsaid, but felt. "You just have to let go of her for a moment." 

"Thank you, Hagrid," James whispered, reluctantly allowing the gentle half-giant to take Ava's dainty body into the other room. "Thank you."

"James. Can you tell us what happened?" Dumbledore asked again.

"Ava, she was acting strange all day. She kept looking at me like-"

"Like?" Sirius prodded.

"Like it'd be the last time. This evening...she apologized. She told me she was sorry and that she was doing this for us. She told me to take care of Harry, and then I was asleep. I woke up in the closet, covered in the Cloak. I yelled for them. Ava and Harry and I went to Harry's room..." He trailed off. Then, without warning, he turned and sprinted up the stairs. Desperate to get to his son's room.

The group followed, and as one, they all halted as they saw the blood around a wooden cradle and a one-year-old boy sleeping peacefully within it. James walked inside the room cautiously and looked around for clues. Ava wasn't cruel. She wouldn't leave James or Harry without a reason or an explanation. It had to be there. Somewhere.

There. He saw the paper at the end of Harry's bed. James's name written on the outside in Ava's cursive. He picked it up with shaky fingers, Sirius at his side, glancing between James and the sleeping Harry, reassuring himself that at least they were alright. Ava...Ava might be gone but James and Harry were safe.

"I've had dreams," James read aloud, his voice catching. "And my son will not be a sacrifice. My son will not be haunted or isolated. With my last breath, I will protect him from everyone."

They silently stared down at the small boy, still peacefully sleeping and blissfully unaware of all that had happened that night. For all intents and purposes, he was unchanged, without even a scar to show the pain he'd nearly endured. Of course, Ava Potter had planned it that way.

Harry Potter might have been the chosen one. He might have to defeat Voldemort one day. But he would not have to die. Ava had made sure of it.

"But what happened?" Sirius wondered aloud. "I don't...I don't understand."

"But I do," the clear, female voice echoed loudly in the hall behind them. The Order Members turned abruptly, wands raised and found themselves pointing them at...Ava Potter.

"I understand everything," she repeated. "And I think it's time I explain." 

Hello lovely people! Please comment! Vote! Add to Reading Lists!

I first got my idea for this story after I continuously read James Potter FFs that made James a cheating jerk or had him end up with Lily at the end anyway! Well, I wanted something different, and after listening to Paloma Faith's Only Love Can Hurt Like This, I pictured this first chapter right up to James finding Ava on the stairs. If you found yourself confused, I promise, all will be explained later! Happy reading and I hope I can make this James Potter another comfort character. (Also, this isn't to bash authors who write those stories. These are well written stories and maybe they are your cup of tea. They just aren't mine.) 

P.S. In the meantime if you want another James Potter Fanfic without the above traits, and for some reason you haven't found one that makes you happy, check out my favorites in my TOP FF OF ALL FANDOMS or in my HP Fanfictions Worthy of Canon reading lists!