It's time for me to admit something. Over the past several years, I have read
enough Harry Potter sites, chat, fic, and related articles to conclude that I am
just not like other women.
I do not find Severus Snape in the least
sexy.
Oh, I can see the appeal of the bad-boy archtype, but for me
that tends to run more in the direction of youthful rebellion -- say, Brad Pitt in
A River Runs Through It or Sean Penn in Racing with the Moon. But
Snape? No. First of all, he is downright mean-spirited and nasty. Arguments have
been made that it's necessary to keep Voldemort from knowing he's joined the good
guys, but I think that incident in the latest book, in which (deliberately vague
to avoid spoilers) he stops doing something he knows is necessary just because his
wittle feewings have been hurt disproves that thoroughly. And then he's unfair and
petty to those over whom he has power, which I find inexcusable. Finally, there's
the greasy hair. And that makes all the rest of it redundant: I have never, will
never, could never find that sexy. Eurrrghh.
And then there's Sirius.
Sirius comes much closer to being attractive: he has a sense of honor, loves his
friends, has principles and lives up to them. He apparently started out extremely
handsome and is now romantically and Byronically wasted. He was apparently a bit
of a jerk as a teenager (along with James) but I'm willing to give him credit for
having outgrown that. And he is also a "bad boy" but in a far more appealing way.
No, there's only one minor problem with Sirius: I've convinced that his time in
Azkaban left him a bit mad. First, there's the entire plot of Prisoner of Azkaban:
I agree he had to break out of prison, but about three minutes' thought suggests
any number of ways he could have handled things better after that. (Sample: go to
Dumbledore first intead of last.) And then he keeps taking risks, and trying to
get Harry to do so, just for the thrill of it when there was no real payoff. Fine,
if you're talking about bungy-jumping for fun, but not terribly sensible when the
stakes are that high. (Of course, if you're a big Sirius fan and primarily
interested in him for reasons other than waging a War against Evil, I suppose a
bit of mad recklessness might not not be altogether a bad thing.)