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edenfallingI have a small, irrational fondness for Harry/Snape. This is particularly weird since I don't like Snape with pretty much anyone else, and I think student/teacher relationships are icky. (Hermione/Snape is one of the few "standard" pairings that actually squicks me, for example.) Yet my Harry/Snape fondness persists.
I don't, however, write Harry/Snape. This is what happened the only time I tried.
Warning: lots of pseudo-intellectual babble-ese, and a first person plural narrative voice. Read at your own risk.
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Theories of Attraction, or, Why I'm Probably Never Going To Write Harry/Snape
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Observe a boy and a man. Our goal is to bring them together, either in friendship or in love -- it is difficult to say which will be less problematic. At the moment, they detest each other, with varying degrees of justification.
Let us therefore examine our players. The boy is young, sixteen, angry at the world and convinced it hates him. Most sixteen year old boys are, but this one can give chapter and verse as evidence and the evidence is not unconvincing. His life has been shaped by a maddeningly vague prophecy that led a madman to murder his parents while he was a baby. His godfather was accused of betraying them and thrown in jail for the supposed murder of the true traitor. His surrogate godfather, being a werewolf, could not get custody. So the boy was left to his mother's sister.
He has suffered physical and emotional neglect, mild to moderate physical abuse, extreme emotional abuse, and heavy verbal abuse from his aunt, her husband, and her son. Even after his friends discovered this -- having rescued him from a barred and locked room, in which he was kept on a starvation diet -- his guardians still left him with that family.
Meanwhile, the boy was thrust into an unfamiliar world and forced to play the role of celebrity savior. Considering he had always been told he was a worthless freak, this was a bit of a shock. Then every year he and at least one other child fell into mortal danger, and his guardians either supported this or were unable to prevent it. For three years he scraped through by the skin of his teeth, apparently suffering nothing worse than the social embarrassment of losing at Quidditch. Somehow he pushed aside the fact that he was technically a murderer at eleven, though it was clearly self-defense. Somehow, he got around the knowledge of his godfather's inability to gain a fair trial, of the hungry desire people in this world had both to watch him fall and to force him to save them, and of how unimportant his own desires still were, even away from his abusive family.
In the fourth year, reality caught up with him. His companion died, struck down in careless disdain, and the madman who murdered his parents returned to life using the boy's own blood. In his fifth year, not only were his remaining illusions stripped away, but he also lost his godfather, whom he had only barely begun to know. This loss was due to many factors, including the boy's own willfulness and hero complex, but also the godfather's recklessness. The boy, however, chose to place blame on the second player in our little drama: the man.
The man is perhaps as young as thirty-five, or perhaps as old as forty. He is exactly old enough to be the boy's father, as he attended school with the father for seven years. The man, also, is angry at the world, and can quote chapter and verse as evidence. His evidence is perhaps more horrific than the boy's, but not nearly so concentrated, and it does not begin as early.
We know little about his home life, but he was born into an old magical family and taught dark arts from a young age. Whether his home life was pleasant or unpleasant, we do not know. What we do know, however, is that upon his arrival at the magical school that was to be his home for the next seven years, he became the target of a quartet of popular boys, who used their popularity to ensure that few people would aid or sympathize with the man, then a young boy.
This rivalry grew intense enough that one of his tormentors, who later became the boy's godfather, attempted to kill him by tricking the man into finding the werewolf during his transformation. The man was saved at the last minute by the boy's father, but has never forgiven any of the four friends for that crime.
Later, the man turned to darkness and served the madman who killed the boy's parents. We do not know what his motives were, nor why or when exactly he repented of his darkness, but the man turned against the madman, even as one of his former tormentors turned traitor to his friends. And so the boy's parents died, the godfather went to prison, the traitor went into hiding, and the werewolf drifted. And the man returned to the school where he suffered seven years of emotional and physical abuse, where he lived for the next twelve years, until the boy came to be his student.
The man hates the boy for many reasons. First and foremost, the boy resembles his father, whom the man hated, and to whom he owed a wizard's debt for rescuing him from the werewolf. Secondly, the man believes in rules, which the boy breaks with distressing frequency. Thirdly, the boy made a fool of the man during his third year as a student, by helping his godfather escape justice. Fourthly, the boy has seen the man's private memories, of his youth, which he deliberately hid so that the boy would not find them. Fifthly, the man believes the boy wastes his natural intelligence and abilities. Sixthly, the man resents the way all his troubles are ignored in favor of the prophecy about the boy. And lastly, the man is an embittered bastard, who dislikes most people on general principles.
The boy returns this hatred with interest. He hates the man because the man hates him. He hates the man because he feels the man doesn't see him, but only sees memories of his father and an imaginary picture of a spoiled brat. He hates the man because the man abuses his authority, just like his family did. He hates the man because the man interfered with his attempt to get his godfather exonerated for the death of the traitor. And he hates the man because their mutual hatred sabotaged his attempts at blocking the madman from his mind, which contributed to his godfather's death; furthermore, the boy hates that the man still seems to consider him spoiled despite having seen pieces of his unpleasant childhood. The boy also bitterly resents that invasion of his privacy.
So. Those are our players. That is their history. How, then, given their mutual hatred, yet their oddly similar backgrounds, can they be brought together?
One common suggestion is a love potion, which is made somewhat plausible by the fact that the man teaches Potions at the magical school, and one of the boy's classmates is known for creative mishaps. But that smacks of cheating, somehow. We will set this option aside unless we find no better ones.
Another suggestion is to wait until the boy is older, until they must fight the madman together. This seems more plausible, as teenage hatreds sometimes soften with age, but consider the man and the godfather and the boy's father, whose hatred never died. Also, the boy and man have already attempted to work together, to keep the madman from the boy's mind, and that has led only to greater hatred, not to a lessening of tension.
We will therefore set this option aside as well.
A third option says that somehow the two become acquainted in a context where their true identities remain unknown, and the attraction survives the revelation. This seems unnecessarily convoluted, and requires far too much authorial contortion. It is also incredibly silly. Let us agree to discard this option. Forever.
Other options include the man rescuing the boy from his family, who have suddenly grown vastly more abusive; he then realizes the error of his ways, and comes to care for the injured boy. We discard that one as out of character for the boy's family, whose abusive is mostly verbal or by neglect, rather than by direct action.
Sometimes the man is forced to put the boy up for the summer, in order to keep him from the madman. We discard this option as incredibly stupid, considering that the man is currently serving as a double-agent, and his doings are therefore known to the madman; his home is one of the least safe places for the boy.
And finally, on occasion the man is hurt and the boy must tend to him, which somehow allows him to grow sympathetic toward the man's plight, while his care breaks through the man's defensive shell. We discard this option as unforgivably melodramatic.
At this point the author must confess that she has run out of readily available options, and therefore wishes to return to option two, in which the man and boy must work together to fight the madman. In order to be at all effective, this partnership must not be particularly personal for either one, nor should it involve the type of mind-attacks that sabotaged their last attempt to work together. However, considering that the man and boy have vastly different talents and positions in the war against the madman, it begins to seem that their only possible link is that very type of mental magic.
This is troubling. It begins to seem that our task is impossible, as the man has proven to be a master at holding an implacable grudge, and the boy, while perhaps still more flexible, has already held one grudge -- against a fellow student -- for five years.
How, then, are we to ease tensions between the man and the boy, when at the moment, the problem seems unsolvable?
We shall return to this question later, by means of a thought-problem approach: we shall imagine that such a situation exists and watch what happens to our two players, giving them an authorial nudge if such should seem necessary to keep them on our desired path. In this manner, we may yet determine a method for bringing the boy and man together.
---------------------------------------------
No, I'm not really insane. I just have insomnia.
I don't, however, write Harry/Snape. This is what happened the only time I tried.
Warning: lots of pseudo-intellectual babble-ese, and a first person plural narrative voice. Read at your own risk.
---------------------------------------------
Theories of Attraction, or, Why I'm Probably Never Going To Write Harry/Snape
---------------------------------------------
Observe a boy and a man. Our goal is to bring them together, either in friendship or in love -- it is difficult to say which will be less problematic. At the moment, they detest each other, with varying degrees of justification.
Let us therefore examine our players. The boy is young, sixteen, angry at the world and convinced it hates him. Most sixteen year old boys are, but this one can give chapter and verse as evidence and the evidence is not unconvincing. His life has been shaped by a maddeningly vague prophecy that led a madman to murder his parents while he was a baby. His godfather was accused of betraying them and thrown in jail for the supposed murder of the true traitor. His surrogate godfather, being a werewolf, could not get custody. So the boy was left to his mother's sister.
He has suffered physical and emotional neglect, mild to moderate physical abuse, extreme emotional abuse, and heavy verbal abuse from his aunt, her husband, and her son. Even after his friends discovered this -- having rescued him from a barred and locked room, in which he was kept on a starvation diet -- his guardians still left him with that family.
Meanwhile, the boy was thrust into an unfamiliar world and forced to play the role of celebrity savior. Considering he had always been told he was a worthless freak, this was a bit of a shock. Then every year he and at least one other child fell into mortal danger, and his guardians either supported this or were unable to prevent it. For three years he scraped through by the skin of his teeth, apparently suffering nothing worse than the social embarrassment of losing at Quidditch. Somehow he pushed aside the fact that he was technically a murderer at eleven, though it was clearly self-defense. Somehow, he got around the knowledge of his godfather's inability to gain a fair trial, of the hungry desire people in this world had both to watch him fall and to force him to save them, and of how unimportant his own desires still were, even away from his abusive family.
In the fourth year, reality caught up with him. His companion died, struck down in careless disdain, and the madman who murdered his parents returned to life using the boy's own blood. In his fifth year, not only were his remaining illusions stripped away, but he also lost his godfather, whom he had only barely begun to know. This loss was due to many factors, including the boy's own willfulness and hero complex, but also the godfather's recklessness. The boy, however, chose to place blame on the second player in our little drama: the man.
The man is perhaps as young as thirty-five, or perhaps as old as forty. He is exactly old enough to be the boy's father, as he attended school with the father for seven years. The man, also, is angry at the world, and can quote chapter and verse as evidence. His evidence is perhaps more horrific than the boy's, but not nearly so concentrated, and it does not begin as early.
We know little about his home life, but he was born into an old magical family and taught dark arts from a young age. Whether his home life was pleasant or unpleasant, we do not know. What we do know, however, is that upon his arrival at the magical school that was to be his home for the next seven years, he became the target of a quartet of popular boys, who used their popularity to ensure that few people would aid or sympathize with the man, then a young boy.
This rivalry grew intense enough that one of his tormentors, who later became the boy's godfather, attempted to kill him by tricking the man into finding the werewolf during his transformation. The man was saved at the last minute by the boy's father, but has never forgiven any of the four friends for that crime.
Later, the man turned to darkness and served the madman who killed the boy's parents. We do not know what his motives were, nor why or when exactly he repented of his darkness, but the man turned against the madman, even as one of his former tormentors turned traitor to his friends. And so the boy's parents died, the godfather went to prison, the traitor went into hiding, and the werewolf drifted. And the man returned to the school where he suffered seven years of emotional and physical abuse, where he lived for the next twelve years, until the boy came to be his student.
The man hates the boy for many reasons. First and foremost, the boy resembles his father, whom the man hated, and to whom he owed a wizard's debt for rescuing him from the werewolf. Secondly, the man believes in rules, which the boy breaks with distressing frequency. Thirdly, the boy made a fool of the man during his third year as a student, by helping his godfather escape justice. Fourthly, the boy has seen the man's private memories, of his youth, which he deliberately hid so that the boy would not find them. Fifthly, the man believes the boy wastes his natural intelligence and abilities. Sixthly, the man resents the way all his troubles are ignored in favor of the prophecy about the boy. And lastly, the man is an embittered bastard, who dislikes most people on general principles.
The boy returns this hatred with interest. He hates the man because the man hates him. He hates the man because he feels the man doesn't see him, but only sees memories of his father and an imaginary picture of a spoiled brat. He hates the man because the man abuses his authority, just like his family did. He hates the man because the man interfered with his attempt to get his godfather exonerated for the death of the traitor. And he hates the man because their mutual hatred sabotaged his attempts at blocking the madman from his mind, which contributed to his godfather's death; furthermore, the boy hates that the man still seems to consider him spoiled despite having seen pieces of his unpleasant childhood. The boy also bitterly resents that invasion of his privacy.
So. Those are our players. That is their history. How, then, given their mutual hatred, yet their oddly similar backgrounds, can they be brought together?
One common suggestion is a love potion, which is made somewhat plausible by the fact that the man teaches Potions at the magical school, and one of the boy's classmates is known for creative mishaps. But that smacks of cheating, somehow. We will set this option aside unless we find no better ones.
Another suggestion is to wait until the boy is older, until they must fight the madman together. This seems more plausible, as teenage hatreds sometimes soften with age, but consider the man and the godfather and the boy's father, whose hatred never died. Also, the boy and man have already attempted to work together, to keep the madman from the boy's mind, and that has led only to greater hatred, not to a lessening of tension.
We will therefore set this option aside as well.
A third option says that somehow the two become acquainted in a context where their true identities remain unknown, and the attraction survives the revelation. This seems unnecessarily convoluted, and requires far too much authorial contortion. It is also incredibly silly. Let us agree to discard this option. Forever.
Other options include the man rescuing the boy from his family, who have suddenly grown vastly more abusive; he then realizes the error of his ways, and comes to care for the injured boy. We discard that one as out of character for the boy's family, whose abusive is mostly verbal or by neglect, rather than by direct action.
Sometimes the man is forced to put the boy up for the summer, in order to keep him from the madman. We discard this option as incredibly stupid, considering that the man is currently serving as a double-agent, and his doings are therefore known to the madman; his home is one of the least safe places for the boy.
And finally, on occasion the man is hurt and the boy must tend to him, which somehow allows him to grow sympathetic toward the man's plight, while his care breaks through the man's defensive shell. We discard this option as unforgivably melodramatic.
At this point the author must confess that she has run out of readily available options, and therefore wishes to return to option two, in which the man and boy must work together to fight the madman. In order to be at all effective, this partnership must not be particularly personal for either one, nor should it involve the type of mind-attacks that sabotaged their last attempt to work together. However, considering that the man and boy have vastly different talents and positions in the war against the madman, it begins to seem that their only possible link is that very type of mental magic.
This is troubling. It begins to seem that our task is impossible, as the man has proven to be a master at holding an implacable grudge, and the boy, while perhaps still more flexible, has already held one grudge -- against a fellow student -- for five years.
How, then, are we to ease tensions between the man and the boy, when at the moment, the problem seems unsolvable?
We shall return to this question later, by means of a thought-problem approach: we shall imagine that such a situation exists and watch what happens to our two players, giving them an authorial nudge if such should seem necessary to keep them on our desired path. In this manner, we may yet determine a method for bringing the boy and man together.
---------------------------------------------
No, I'm not really insane. I just have insomnia.
Re: A few more thoughts on this...
Date: 2005-10-18 10:12 pm (UTC)I thought I might recommend some Harry/Snape stories that I though had good characterization on the thought you might get ideas or merely enjoy them.
Civil War by Sushi1
This was originally on FF.net, but was pulled due to rating. It has a Snarry relationship, and while I do not believe the characters are valid after the fifth book, it was quite good (and written before it had come out) the first story in this series is _Marching Off to War_ and can be found at Sushi1's website, accessible from her FF.net account.
Apparently by JiM1
This is a new one-shot, and I'll just give you the author's summary: "Who could ever think of Snape as a father?" Awsomely good and very in-character.