Chapter Forty-Three

After ringing the buzzer three times and waiting a combined total of ten minutes, Severus decided no one was going to return his request to enter the building. He held his wand tightly in a deathlike grip, wondering why he hadn't thought to just Apparate here in the first place, but then again, he wasn't familiar with the area where his father was supposedly living, and he didn't want to risk exposing himself in a Muggle neighborhood.

He surreptitiously flicked his wand at the door and muttered, "Alohomora."

Grateful for being a wizard, Severus stepped inside and pulled the door closed behind him. Years of spying had taught him when to put up his guard and how to act as if he had eyes in the back of his head. He carefully treaded down the darkened hallway, lit meagerly by a few dim, flickering lamps along the cracked walls decorated with peeling midnight blue paint. Severus could smell the mustiness of the dank place and quickly decided it failed to meet several building codes. Was this all his father could afford?

Checking the numbers on the doors to the individual flats, Severus nearly hexed an elderly woman who opened her door.

For the old lady's part, the poor dear nearly fell over with a heart attack upon seeing the young man with a strange stick out in his hand.

"My word, Mr. Snape," she breathed, "do watch where you're a-going with that thing... er, whatever it is."

Severus stopped. "Ex- excuse me?" he stuttered, surprised she had addressed him so.

The woman examined him more closely and realized her blunder. "Oh, my mistake, young man. It's just that you look extraordinarily like a man who lives on second floor yonder," she said, indicating the stairs behind them.

Severus nodded. "Fancy that," he muttered, then excused himself.

As he made to push his way as politely as possible past the old woman, she gently grabbed his arm, remarking, "You must be his son, then. I've heard mention of a son, 'though never saw him."

Severus nodded again. "Thank you, ma'am," he said, trying not to sound too curt with her.

He approached the stairs and edged up them. At least he had indeed come to the correct place. When he found the door with the right number, Severus didn't bother to knock. Instead, he tried the knob, and the door slowly opened with a long creak. In front of him was a simple room with spartan furnishings. There was no sign that anyone had used the sitting room for quite a while.

As Severus took his first tentative step into the room, his mind went to the worst scenario. What if Voldemort had found out who his father was and abducted him, tortured him, killed him, because of Severus's blatant refusal to join the Death Eaters? Shaking his head, Severus looked for evidence of the use of magic, but found nothing amiss. He didn't dare go for the light switch, but instead whispered, "Homenum revelio."

His spell detected the presence of one nonmagical person in the vicinity. Heaving a sigh of relief, Severus passed through the sitting room and found the door to the bedroom. It was open slightly, so he simply gave it a nudge and looked inside. Sprawled on the bed was the form of a man. He was surrounded by several empty bottles. Shaking his head disgustedly, Severus did turn the light on this time.

"Father," he stated in an authorative voice that would have booked no argument had he been a professor again.

When Tobias didn't reply, Severus approached the man, prodding his foot with his own. Tobias groaned, then whimpered pathetically, recoiling from Severus. Suddenly, his eyes opened, and like a wild man, he sat up in bed, his bloodshot eyes darting around frantically.

"Who's there?" he slurred. "Leave me 'lone!"

"Your son," Severus hissed, "and until you explain to me what you think you're doing, I'm not going anywhere. What are you doing to yourself, Father? I thought you had cleaned up."

"Severus?" Tobias asked, his eyes now focusing, albeit it blurrily, on his son.

Severus flourished his wand at many of the bottles, sending them flying across the room and shattering against the wall. The crashing noise seemed to have shaken some sense into Tobias, for he shakily stood and was pointing his finger accusingly at Severus.

"You kicked me out!" he bellowed. "It's your fault! Do you know wha' it's like to have to see her face scornin' me every time I go to bed at nigh'?"

Severus quickly cast Muffliato and savagely approached his father, roughly grabbing him by the collar and pinning him against the wall. Severus could hear the angry voices of neighbors demanding what was going on, but he ignored them, his eyes boring into his father's.

"You disappoint me, Father," Severus said in a deadly soft voice. "I had thought you would have learned by now how to take responsibility for your actions, for your choices. If anyone killed her, it's you. You drove her to madness, and now you can't live with yourself because of it. Are you so eager to join Mother in death? I can tell you what living a life of misery is like, and I can give you a pretty damn good idea of what death feels like: staggering for your last attempt at a wispy breath as your life bleeds out of you, all your regrets bound in the green eyes staring back at you, not sure if you even know the difference between love and hatred."

As he spoke, Severus's grip on his father slackened, and he released him. Severus choked back a dry sob and sank onto the floor, leaving a speechless Tobias gazing down at him.

"Severus, what-?" Tobias questioned, truly confused. "Have you been drinking, too?" he asked stupidly.

The ridiculous question caused Severus to throw his head back and laugh in bitter irony. "Oh, no, Father, that would be far too simple a solution. You have, as always, taken the easy road." Realizing he was giving away too much information, Severus forced himself to calm down and regained control of his senses. If he had any idea he would have overreacted in such a way upon seeing his father, reminded too closely of his own shortcomings, Severus would have turned a blind eye and not come... or would he?

"You are truly an idiot," Severus said coldly, standing once again. "If you knew of the enemies I've made in my world, you would do well to make amends with me, and I would have tried to protect you. As it is..." he hesitated, then continued, "perhaps the distance between us is for the best. You are no more a father to me than the drunken bastard who beat Mum all those years, than the pathetic man who I took pity upon last Christmas while seeing him shiver on a park bench. If they don't kill you first, you'll die as a result of your alcoholism."

Severus stated a fact in his last sentence. He knew he was being cruel, but kindness didn't seem to work effectively on everyone. Any newfound empathy Severus had developed in this life had been shattered by the realization that some people would never change, no matter how much you wanted them to. To be cruel was to be kind sometimes, and a part of him still hoped Tobias would see the light, as it were, and not die as he drunkenly jumped into the middle of High Street in about two weeks and was hit by a car he should have seen coming. That was one funeral Severus hadn't graced with his presence, and he felt he wouldn't again if it came to that.

"No," Tobias said softly.

Severus merely looked at the other man, mustering an indifferent expression. He couldn't afford to get emotionally involved. He just couldn't.

"No," Tobias repeated more forcefully. "I- I won't die. Don't you think I haven't tried? Severus, didn't I do what you asked all those months ago, and for what? It didn't matter. When I saw you last, it was a last attempt to try and convince myself that maybe we," he gestured forlornly between them, "weren't over."

"And you turned once again to the coward's way out?" Severus asked furiously. "Why, Father? What reason did I give you that made up your mind?"

"You were too kind, too accepting, too willing to allow me into your life again," Tobias stated, staring at the ground ashamedly. In the last few minutes, the effects of the alcohol were wearing off, and Tobias's speech was clearer, although the stale smell of alcohol permeated Severus's nose.

Severus took a step back and sighed. Too kind? Too accepting? Too willing? Him? Those were not the words he was accustomed to hearing being used to describe him.

"What would you rather I do?" Severus asked hopelessly. "Be just as cold and awful as you taught me all the times you exhibited your temper? I can be that way quite easily, let me assure you, but for once..."

I had been deluded into grasping onto hope in giving people second chances as I had been given.

"For once, what?" Tobias queried, unable to help himself.

"Nothing," Severus muttered, pulling a small vial out of his pocket. "Drink this."

"Are you poisoning me?" Tobias asked, his voice too hopeful.

Disturbed, Severus roughly said, "No, it's to help get you sober again, and if you have any sense left in that thick head of yours, you're coming with me."

Incredulous, Tobias gaped at him. "Haven't you been listening to a word I've said?"

"Haven't you listened to a word I've said?" Severus challenged. Whether blessed or condemned for being the better man, Severus yanked the vial from Tobias's fumbling hands and forced the liquid down his throat. "You'll feel slightly dizzy for a couple of minutes, but it will subside. Now, since I'm forced to believe by my own good intentions," he sneered, "that you're worth something more than you've given me reason to think, you will do exactly what I say... for your own good."

Severus grabbed Tobias's arm and Disapparated with him.