Author's Note:

Many thanks go to wvvampire and SoUsay234 for being the best betas a girl could ever want. =)

Last Father's Day

Tobias woke to sound of thunder as a storm started up outside. He tried to roll over and go back to bed but he found himself falling onto the floor instead. Like most other nights, he'd fallen asleep in front of the telly after drinking several bottles of beer.

He stood up slowly, bracing himself on the arm of the lumpy couch he'd just fallen from. He sat down again and grabbed the remote control to turn the telly on, but it didn't work. He figured the storm must have caused it. He couldn't really be sure it was a black out. He always kept the lights off anyway.

Taking out his cigarette lighter, he used the flame to read the time on his watch. It was nearing two in the morning. He lit a cigarette slowly as he tried to think of what day it was. Tobias remembered coming home from work earlier that night, work being cleaning up after the rotten brats at the local school. He recalled thinking that it was his last day of the week. Which would have made that Friday, which would make today...

Saturday. The seventeenth.

"Damn it," he muttered. He grabbed the half-empty bottle off the crate he used as a table and took a long drink from it.

Tobias had been trying so hard over the past week to ignore the coming holiday, and now he'd gone and made himself remember anyway: Father's day. The worst day of the year, in his opinion. Followed closely by Christmas (when everyone was too damn cheerful for no good reason) and Halloween (when the brats he cleaned up for by day came to his house and asked for sweets at night).

Downing the last of the beer, he dragged himself to the fridge and got another. The sooner he got drunk the sooner he wouldn't have to remember the family he'd given up - or at least, not feel the guilt that consumed him when he was sober.

If ever asked, Tobias would never admit to having any sort of relatives to speak of. In fact, he had been asked before, by some of the schoolteachers and that nice young girl he paid to buy his groceries. They'd asked him if he'd ever been married and he told them it was a waste of time; he was happy the way he was.

This was all a lie, of course. The last time Tobias had been truly happy was just after he and Eileen got married. That was back when he had a decent, respectable job. Before he'd gotten laid off and started drinking, and before Eileen had gotten pregnant. There was never any happiness on his part after Severus was born.

Tobias often thought, as he did today, that maybe if he'd still had a job and enough money to afford a baby he would've been happy with his son. But he didn't, and he never was.

Eileen had gotten two jobs as soon as she could manage, and taken the baby with her both times. Tobias had liked that, being able to sit at home and feel sorry for himself all he wanted without having to care for the kid. Things were all right then. They were surviving then.

If ever Tobias was found out - if someone really cared enough to look through his house and find the one photograph he had from his years with Eileen, that showed the happy witch with her baby boy, and Tobias standing off to the side looking uncomfortable - he'd tell them that it was her fault things went bad between them. He'd known what she was before they got married. She explained it all to him. She also explained how she was done with magic. It was magic that killed her beloved parents, after all.

So why, then, did he catch her doing magic to clean their house and cook their meals when he came home from the pub each night? She had promised him that they would have a normal life. Why did she have to ruin it all?

The sixty-something year old winced as the memory of the first time he hit her flashed in his mind. It had been an accident; an impulsive, drunken reaction to Eileen defending her actions. He had no excuse for the next time, or any time after that. He had never meant to hurt Severus either. The seven year old had gotten between his fighting parents in order to spare his mother another black eye and wound up getting a broken nose for his efforts.

Though he never apologized, Tobias had felt guilty that night. He was sure Eileen must have noticed. He was sober for an entire week, maybe two. And he left not six months later; his one kind act. The best thing he ever did for his son.

Tobias emptied the bottle and went into the kitchen. There was only one cookbook in the room: a heavy, old and tattered thing. It was something of Eileen's that he'd accidentally packed when he left. He never used it, but kept it anyway. Taking it off the fridge and dusting it off lightly, he opened it and flipped through the pages until he found what he was looking for. The single old photograph, tucked between the recipes for apple and apricot pie.

He studied the photo for a few minutes, looking at his boy. It was one of the few moments he'd ever seen Severus smile. Admittedly, he'd never given him any reason to. It had been twenty-three years since he saw him last, and he figured that had changed by now. It wasn't often that Tobias thought about what his son was up to now, but when he did he imagined that Severus was married, probably with a couple of kids. He was thirty now, it seemed logical. And he'd have Eileen's work ethic. He'd be successful in whatever he was doing ... something witchy, no doubt, because Severus definitely took after his mother in that department.

And he'd be happy. That was the most important thing. Severus would be happy.

Whether it was because he was tired or slightly drunk, or maybe because the guilt got to be a little too much when he thought about Severus, Tobias apologized. It may have been to an old photograph of a little boy that had long ago stopped caring about him and his feelings, but it did his father just as much good to say 'I'm sorry' to it than to his grown son.

Tobias Nolan Snape died three months later. Dana, the girl he paid to get his groceries, found him in his shabby, one-bedroom house. The doctors said he died of natural causes. Dana and a couple of teachers were the only people to attend his funeral, because he'd never told anyone that he still had family.

Severus never knew any of this. Whenever someone asked where his father was, he'd gladly reply that he never knew him.

The End

Author's Note:

I'm a sucker for redeeming known Potter bad guys, I guess Tobias is no exception. At least I stuck with my original plan enough to let him die at the end.

Review, pretty please?

-Lizzy