Happy Birthday Severus

And now for a shamelessly Snapecentric post!

January 9th marks a quietly anticipated day in the course of my winter, whether or not I actually get around to celebrating it by some means. The birthday of my favourite external fictional character is a chance, and excuse, to brighten our gray days, ironically and deliciously in honor of a personality as dour as our weather. It's a reason to celebrate, when my own birthday gets celebrated only once a year and I get invited to precious few others. This year I hoped to have a Slytherin tea party, but of course such events require planning in advance, which I, newly returned from the holidays and concerned with business, did not carry out.

The pairing of the humorous and lovable with the dark and brooding is one reason we fans love Snape, and that includes his birthday. Ideas of trapping the grumpy man in fluffy, happy, or even genuinely loving situations we know he would all but kill himself to get out of, were he a real living person, make us love him all the more. Each fan secretly would lose fingers to be The One who, given a chance in the first place to make Severus's day or lighten his soul, manages to succeed by even a fraction of a dram. Even while knowing it's most likely, as they say, a fool's dream!

Meditations on Snape's birthday also lead me to reflection on how a person starts out in life, compared to what they become after life gets through with them. We ask: What if my situation was different? What if, in addition to my own curiosity about magic and especially a slight fascination with sorcerers and the edgier side of esoterica, I had true magical power of Snape's magnitude and an abusive home life? I already know how it feels to grow up broke and being sort of ignored by a parent, for instance. But what if it had been worse?

What makes Snape's story so meaningful for many of us, I think, is precisely that we can sympathize with him. A total asshole villain, you don't care about. A good-guy hero who had it easy, you don't care about. A bloke who went through perpetual detention at the School of Hard Knocks yet found his way back to the surface, you not only care about but praise and love like there's no tomorrow . . . all while wishing, if he happens to die in the struggle, that he did have a tomorrow. A next birthday. In those of us who cosplay or channel, Snape finds just that: a tomorrow. Today and the next, he lives on, in us willing hosts for his indomitable soul. I can see Snape torn between unfurling his black wings and laughing all the way up to the podium of Most Popular, and biting out sarcastically at all and sundry observers to disguise his self-loathing and doubts that he deserves such copious affection. Severus, you impossible creature, you!

Now, dammit, where's my cake? And my cauldron? (Many things on fan sites are so gushy and cheesy, they make me gag nearly as badly as Severus himself would be kacking on them, but I'll admit, I'd take this cake. Look at it! Perfect.)

I ended up celebrating Snape's birthday anyway, vicariously, by meeting a good friend for a delicious Thai dinner; afterward, we went to my loft and exchanged belated Christmas gifts. I opened a large red-and-white wrapped box and excavated several items. A bottle, of a stylish variety. Then another one, and still more . . . clearly, vessels for potions. Finally, I dug out a beautiful Pyrex version of a brewing tool I'd wanted for years -- a double-boiler for making glycerin tinctures, salves, ointments, and of course the odd batch of truffles! Score! For someone who doesn't need much more stuff, mainly because she buys most of her own presents and too many of them, this gift was as good as any I could hope for.

Now for some fun!