…. oookay, I kinda got carried away... except for the beginning and the end, I just let everything flow out, I hope its not so much rambling as I fear ^^
I hope you like it, leave me your opinion!
Severus felt the guilt flood his guts, burning like he had swallowed some acid potion and he had not been able to do anything than standing up again and pace around the sitting room until the screaming had stopped – it felt like a unbearable eternity.
What had he done?
This was all his fault, every single second of her pain was his fault, every scar that she would receive by Bellatrix' hand.
There was no one else to blame for this than himself, he could have, no, he should have done more than letting here stay in the cellar unharmed while he pretended to question her the whole day...
Looking back, he had been such a damn fool, and he snorted about how dumb he had been.
Why had he not thought about this when he had had the chance to prevent situations like that?
He was good at playing tactical, he should have expected that somebody would start to be suspicious if he did not provide any informations at all!
It just did not seem likely for a skilled Legilimens and Potions Master like him to not get anything out of somebody during a interrogation and Rolanda was surely considered a soft target by them, easy to break.
Some false informations given to Lord Voldemort while pretending that she had given them to him while being questioned would have ensured her safety without any risks for him – it would not have been his fault that Rolanda was lying.
He could have been able to cover a bit more successful that Rolanda received indirect help from him by being spared a real interrogation.
Severus wished he could punish himself, even though there was no point in hurting himself. The damage was done, no matter how much he wished he could turn back time.
All he could do now was calming himself down and hope.
Hope was everything he had left now.
Maybe there would be a way to repay his debt, to show himself and Rolanda that he could do something to change this situation to the better, even after this heavy blow.
If she is still alive in a few minutes, a small voice whispered in the back of his head, making a horrible shiver run down his spine.
She will be, he answered himself inwardly, more defiant than confident.
He wished for her to stay alive with every fibre of his being because he was sure that he would not be able to take it if she died.
Having experienced a similar kind of guilt before, after Lily had died, he was sure that he would be able to cope with it again, because this time, it would be even worse.
It would be even more his fault.
Rolanda's life had practically been in his hands since the moment in which Voldemort had assigned him the task of questioning her on his own.
He had failed her.
Maybe it had been a false sense of security that had tempted him to do nothing, he had believed that Rolanda was so unimportant that the Dark Lord would not care much about any informations about her.
How foolish, she had joined the Order, a known connection to Harry Potter, Severus should have thought about the possibility that Voldemort believed that Rolanda knew something about the boy that could help them.
Cursing inwardly about himself, he tried to move his focus away from the burning guilt inside of him, towards the things he could do for his former colleague now that the damage was done, but still a horrid picture of a dying Rolanda sneaked into his head.
He could still remember the first day they had met, back when she had started working at Hogwarts – she had been two years behind him at school, therefore he had never noticed her if their ways had crossed in the castle.
Back then, he had not believed that she was the brightest lamp in the store, athletes were, in his opinion, so devoted to their sport because their brain did not prove to be capable of any hard work.
But it had been only a week into the school year until she had proven him wrong, slightly exposing him to the mockery of the entire staff by playing with his self-consciousness. Since then, he had never gotten into a bet about anything scholastic with her again.
And over the time, it had also shown that she was quite as capable of challenging him verbally as Minerva or Dumbledore, that she was not impressed by him and his behaviours at all – and even less afraid to tell him so. He was just happy that she had not called him her "glittery fairy princess of my heart" in the middle of a corridor for everybody to hear. Before inventing this nickname for him she had made it clear to him that she believed that he was actually a soft man on his inside who just wanted to be cuddled.
Somehow, life at Hogwarts had seemed to be a little brighter and easier when she was around, and he had always tried to deny, when teased by Albus, that he actually enjoyed the banter Rolanda involved him and that the weight of the package he carried from the past seemed a bit lighter sometimes.
Even to see her smile or laugh from afar stopped him from mulling in his thoughts and the pain of a never fulfilled, endless love seemed a bit less horrible when her golden eyes looked directly at him. For a long time he had longed for something to ease his suffering about missing Lily, about having to see her son every day, the prove that she had loved somebody else, and Rolanda seemed to be that cure.
The thought of loosing that light feeling of temporarily freedom seemed impossible to him, he just could not imagine a world without her smile, her teasing remarks, their playful fights... It was as if she had given him a side of him back that he had believed to have died with Lily in that fateful night. She had given him something new to hold on to without knowing it. When Lily had died he had forbidden himself any kind of happiness, swearing to devote his life to repayment, and he had somehow forgotten to live a life for himself.
Rolanda making him grin inwardly, looking forward to the next banter or tease, to the next Quidditch game after which he would, if Slytherin lost, get on her nerves about her refereeing skills on purpose, because he enjoyed their little fights and the smiles she gave him.
She had shown him that it was okay to enjoy something, even when one had a huge amount of guilt and sadness inside himself.
And what he liked even more about her was the fact that she suspected that he was more than his unfavourable outside and did not give up to dig for the treasures hidden inside. Rolanda had never stopped believing that there was something better behind his cold facade, not even when he had seriously insulted her when she had gotten too close to cracking open his safety walls too much. Never had she been trying to hide that she saw him as a friend, in front of nobody – for her, he had not been somebody to hide from her other friends.
He had not felt valued in this way since Lily had ended their friendship.
No, he could not loose that again, he just could not. If he helped saving a wizarding world in which she would not be able to wait for him, what sense would that have at all? A selfish thought, but even Severus Snape, who had given up so much of himself in the last seventeen years, allowed himself such things, if only in his head.
Suddenly, Severus was ripped from his thoughts.
Something had changed.
At first, he could not identify it, but then it dawned to him.
Death silence was filling the Manor where minutes before had been loud screams of unbelievable agony.
The fear that he would find Rolanda in the cellar, tortured to insanity or worse, death, was pounding through his veins and he had to bring his shaking body under control before he left the sitting room, not able to stay there for another second.
Even though he wished he could stop time so he would never have to find out the state in which she was, his fear convinced him that it was better to find it out now than to wait.
Bellatrix passed him in the hall, wearing travel robes and grinning at him with a satisfied expression, breathing playfully "She´s all yours again!" into his ear and giggled, then she left and Severus was alone in the Manor. He sped his own steps as he climbed down the stairs to the cellar, breathing heavily as he pointed his wand at the magic locks at the entrance to open them, his wand hand unsteady.
