Disclaimer: Don't own it…Wish I did.

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Madonna and Child

It's been ten years but finally I understand.

I had always prided myself on being a quick learner. I could even rival a Ravenclaw on my good days– in most subjects at least. But for a great portion of my life, there was one thing that hung above my head. My mystery.

When I was ten, my mother took my sister and I to London's art museum for an exhibit on Renaissance paintings. Where my mother had gotten it in her head that this would have been of particular interest to either one of us, my sister or me, was beyond my comprehension. I had never shown any inclination towards the subject before.

It was a painful three hours. Each portrait I passed seemed to blur into the next. If I had to make one more lap of the gallery I swore I was going to tear out my hair. Knowing my mother though, she would misinterpret that as a sign of my overwhelming awe at the beauty that surrounded me.

The fit of insanity had been my plan at least until a small painting caught my eye. Why this one, out of the three hundred other pieces of art, attracted me I will never know. The subject was hardly stunning; a mother and child, "The Madonna" the title card said. Being rather deficient in a religious background, the name held no significance to me. It was simply a portrait of a woman and her son. I would have left it at that and continued dragging my feet around the gallery if I hadn't noticed the expression on her face.

Her baby slept peacefully in her arms, wrapped tightly in her blue robes. But despite her apparent concern for her child, she seemed distracted. She looked beyond the frame as though something outside the picture held her attention. A slight crease in her forehead between the eyebrows revealed her anxious mind.

It puzzled me at first; what did she see? What could possibly have torn her mind away from the child before her? There in her arms slept the baby…and yet not all was as peaceful as it might have seemed. The question soon became more than idle wondering for me. I had to know.

What was out there? What did she see?

For twenty minutes I stood there contemplating the answer. I did not discover it then, or for quite a while after. My mother came to collect me before I had learned her secret. She was pleasantly surprised to discover my fascination with the piece of art, thinking her mission to instill in me a love for ancient paintings had succeeded. I let her believe she had.

It was only a little while later that I was accepted to Hogwarts and the painting faded from my mind. Every now and then I would stop to consider it again, but it only proved to be a source of frustration for me. So I put it further from my thoughts and focused all my attention to the new and exciting world of magic.

There was a great assortment of artwork at Hogwarts to distract me from "The Madonna". They were by far more entertaining than any of the paintings in London had ever been. They even talked.

It was not much after I had put the mother and child out of my thoughts completely that I discovered who the subject of my intense curiosity was. Somehow I came to learn that the name "Madonna" held a special significance in Renaissance times as a popular figure of many paintings and sculptures. I am sure I passed by at least thirty other renditions of her and her son before I found the small portrait in the back corner of the gallery.

The story as I heard it involved a woman Mary, as she was more commonly known, who gave birth to a son. She had been told before his birth that he was destined to save the world, but in exchange he would live a short and brutal life. She watched him grow into a man, never regretting giving birth to this child who would leave the world before her.

I thought about it. I was not certain I could have done that, nor that any other person could have either. I was not certain the Mary of "The Madonna" felt she could have lived her life with such a thing hanging over her head.

So a part of the mystery had been solved. I now knew who she was. That was enough to satisfy my curiosity for a while until I stumbled across a similar painting in a hidden corridor of Hogwarts. Why this piece of artwork was confined to such a backwater hallway I would never know.

I asked the woman the question that had been nagging me for what seemed like an eternity. What did she see? What was beyond the frame? She turned slowly to look at me, worry etched on her features just as in the other painting. The child in her arms, though older – a toddler perhaps – still held the name youthful innocence. He positively bubbled over with energy and excitement, none of which was mirrored in the mother's face. In her eyes I saw only sadness and despair.

"What do I see?" she asked me, her words slow and measured. "I see the future."

That was not the answer I had thought I would hear. "What do you mean? Why does it scare you?"

"Because it is the future." Her sad eyes turned from me, looking outwards again beyond the frame. No matter how many times I would ask her the same question she did not answer me again.

I had struck upon something which terrified me to the bone. I could feel the importance of her words permeating my skin; they would stay with me for my entire life, however long it might be. I could not bear to think of "The Madonna" again. I could not even see a mother and child again without hearing her words and feeling cold chills creep up my back.

More time passed and I had almost succeeded in forgotting her. In dreams I saw her anxious face and sad eyes; but they were just that – dreams. I did not remember them well when I woke in the morning. I graduated Hogwarts and did not have to remain in that building which also housed her painting.

Slowly, I regained my senses and was married. With time, the idea of a child did not cause a sudden bout of terror as it had a few years previous with the memory of "The Madonna" hanging over me. So it was that Harry James Potter came to be.

Looking back on it, James and I really should have reconsidered the wisdom of bringing a child into the world with the state it was in. As members of the Order we could not assure our safety, let alone a defenseless infant. Our friends were dying all around us – martyrs to a good cause – but dead all the same. We should have waited…

The only problem was that we were growing tired of waiting; tired of letting the war dictate out lives. We were fed up with looking to tomorrow to start living and wanted to enjoy the time we had. This was supposed to be the prime of our lives and yet we expected each day to be our last. So we threw caution and common sense to the wind and thus our son was born.

Harry was everything I could have ever wanted. He was perfect, though I have begun to suspect that all mothers believe that of their children. Alice could not stop talking about her son Neville when he was born, and in my opinion, he cannot hold a candle to Harry. But I took the polite approach and let her think what she wanted.

News came trickling down to us slowly while we lived in Godric's Hollow. Sirius visited when he got a chance, as did Remus and Peter, though their visits were much less frequent. It was mostly Harry, James, and I. Eventually word reached us of a prophesy which was stirring up activity in the Order. Voldemort could be beaten, it said, but it would be a child who did it. A child who would save us all…My mind went back to the story I had heard of Mary; of her son who would save the world but would die an early death. I did not like the sound of this prophesy. It brought back the chills.

Dumbledore came to see us and his words only strengthened my fear. Born as the seventh month dies…Harry was born at the end of July. Why couldn't we have waited? I asked myself, Why did we rush into this? I caught my thoughts heading down a dark and desperate road. There was Neville too; there was a chance it wasn't Harry. But as soon as I thought it I felt guilty for wishing ill on Alice's son. How could I ever think such a thing?

Dumbledore could not explain to us what the prophecy's words meant in full. He could only give us a idea, and even that was far more than I had wanted to know. Either must die at the hand of the other…I wish I had never known. I wish Harry could be spared this. I wish many things, but none so much as this one.

There is no mystery left to the small picture of the mother and child I saw years ago. There is no mystery left to the sadness in the mother's eyes as she told me what she feared. Now that I know, I wish I had not been given this chance to satiate my curiosity. I could feel that worried wrinkle creasing my forehead as I though of my son.

The last few months were painful to endure. They were filled with too many questions and not near enough answers. The only certainty was uncertainty in our lives. I held my child and stared off into the distance. Had the young Hogwarts girl I had been so long ago approached me and asked what it was I feared, I too would have been unable to share it. There are no words strong enough to make others understand.

And then he came. He came for my child and I saw what lurked beyond the frame of my meaningless life. I saw the life Harry would live filled with pain and sorrow and it was not what I had imagined for him at all. I had been right to think I could not live with the knowledge. I could easily sacrifice my life to protect him to the death, but the thought of all those years he would face alone were more than I could bear. I would shield him from the killing curse, the one act I was able to offer him as a comfort. I could not face the sorrow of Mary, seeing my son lie dead in my arms, but I faced a sadness of my own.

This final glimpse of my infant son cradled in my arms, this image would be last I saw of him. I would not be there to guide him when life – and his destiny – overwhelmed him. I could not rock him in my arms when he cried or smile with him when he was happy. In his darkest moment, who would he turn to?

I held him tighter, hoping to make up for a lifetime of missed chances with that one last embrace. In an instant he was upon us, commanding me to give him up. It was a futile effort; he could not imagine the lengths to which I would go to protect my son. I stared at him, this monster who devoured our futures, daring him to kill me. Nothing would please me more.

And so he did, and so I died. And so my son lived. The path of the Madonna was not mine to follow, but in the end, I understood her far beyond the limitations of simple words.