I'm mainly a slash fan, and of Snupin in particular, so contemplating the topic of Snape and His Women is something new for me, but it was interesting looking at Snape from a different point of view...
The most popular het Snape pairing seems to be Snape/Hermione, and I can certainly understand why. Unlike Ron and Harry, she doesn't hate Snape, but respects his abilities and his loyalty to the Order, despite the harsh treatment he's given all of them, and at times, her in particular. This is partly due to her trust in Dumbleore: since Dumbledore has faith in Snape, Hermione also believes in him unswervingly, at least until the apparent murder in HBP. Still, most teenagers would have trouble overlooking the more unpleasant aspects of Snape's behavior and personality, no matter how brave or loyal a man he was, especially when that unpleasantness is directed towards them personally. But even after Snape drives Hermione to tears in GoF with the "I see no difference" remark, she doesn't seem to hate him or hold a grudge. So after the war is over, I could see her accepting his true loyalties more easily than most of the other characters, and since she never hated him, there's no impediment to a possible friendship or romance--assuming that Snape survives, of course.
Hermione is also very intelligent and has a thirst for knowledge, which perhaps gives her something in common with Snape, and also gives her the ability to challenge him and win his respect. I can't really see Snape being attracted to to someone who's pretty but brainless; I think he'd want a partner who could keep up with him and be his equal. I don't think that Hermione is quite there yet, simply because of her youth, but she certainly has the potential to be--I could see them possibly becoming lovers several years after the war is over, when she is a young woman and no longer a child or his student. (That would also take care of my teacher/student imbalance of power squick, which also applies to Snarry in slash fandom.)
Although...I do recall reading a couple of fanfics where Snape regards Hermione with disdain, not just because she's a Gryffindor and Harry's friend, but because her good grades are due to rote memorization and following the instructions of her textbooks without showing any creativity. That does seem to be in character for Snape, considering that he modified and improved on the potion formulas in his textbook when he was Hermione's age. On the other hand, Hermione does show some creativity as the series progresses, such as when she uses the Dark Mark as inspiration for the D.A.'s enchanted coins. I think that type of creativity will probably continue to develop as she gets older, so I could see her working with Snape someday as an adult, and maybe a professional relationship could lead to a more personal one--perhaps romantic, but I could also see them developing a platonic friendship with a lot of good-natured Gryffindor vs. Slytherin bickering.
Their personalities are pretty opposite, and I could see her zealous optimistic idealism grating on Snape, but on the other hand, there's that old saying about how opposites attract. Perhaps her idealism would balance out his cynicism and vice versa. And realistically, the things that Hermione experienced during DH--being tortured, seeing friends and allies killed in battle--are likely to change her, although we don't really see the effects of this in canon. I think that a more troubled, less naive Hermione would be better able to understand and empathize with Snape.
***
One Snape het pairing that I really like a lot is Snape/Luna. (Again, I prefer it when Luna is an adult when they get involved). Luna, for all her dreaminess (or perhaps because of it?), lacks the prejudices of most of the other Hogwarts students, and I think that of all the characters, she'd be the most able to see past Snape's snarky, bitter exterior to the real man within, and the one most able to accept him as he is. As I once told a friend, she lives in her own little world, but she can also be keenly perceptive at the same time. Like Snape, she has suffered the loss of a loved one and she knows what it's like to be an outcast--not quite in the same way, of course, but I think there's enough common ground for understanding. Unlike Snape, Luna hasn't allowed her pain to embitter her, and I can see her being able to help Snape heal with her gentle, eccentric sweetness and kindness. The first time I encountered a Snuna story, I thought that it was a very odd pairing, but one that worked surprisingly well.
This Snuna drabble by![[info]](http://www.insanejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif)
bronze_ribbons, and this ficlet by bluestocking79 are great examples of how well I think the ship works.
***
In my previous essay on Snape and His Men,territesting made an interesting observation about how there are numerous Snape/OFC het pairings, but hardly any Snape/OMC slash pairings. I know there are some, but they're relatively few, at least where Snape/OMC is the main pairing. (I've seen Snape/OMC in conjunction with canon character ships, where the OMC is there to add a little spice or some complication to Snape's relationship with a canon character--for example, Snape and Lupin having a threesome with a hot guy that they pick up, or Snape being involved with another man before he gets together with Lupin or Harry or whomever.)
I thought that was a really interesting observation, and I've been wondering why the disparity? Could it be self-insertion on the writer's part? Perhaps in some cases, but certainly not all OFCs are of the Mary Sue variety. Terri suggests that perhaps a happy life and relationship are a reward for Snape on the author's part, but then why do slash writers not reward Snape with a loving OMC partner? I wonder if it has something to do with a lack of well-developed female characters in canon, particularly ones about the same age as Snape? Narcissa is the only female character I can think of offhand who is a contemporary of Snape, and she's already married to Lucius--which of course need not necessarily be an obstacle in fanfiction, or at least, only a temporary one. Still, if one wants to write Snape in a romance with a woman his own age, the writer's options are limited unless they invent their own characters. There are canon female teachers and Order members whose ages aren't stated, such as Sinistra or Charity or Emmeline Vance, but since we know little about them other than their names, for all practical purposes they might as well be OCs, as Terri says. There seem to be more male characters in the books who are close to Snape's age--Lupin, Sirius, Lucius, and possibly Kingsley (although his exact age isn't stated)--which gives slash writers more potential pairings to choose from.
I'm sure that's not the only answer, so if any of you readers out there have any thoughts about this, I would love to hear them.
***
I was digging through my old recs and essays, and in my Snape and the Muggle World essay, I came across a rec I made for the Wanderlust series bylithiumdelusion and bluestocking79, which is a crossover between the Harry Potter series and the Pet Shop of Horrors manga series. The stories feature Jill, a police detective from the PSOH series, as a potential romantic partner for Snape, and that reminded me of another reason why a writer might want to create an OC love interest: in order to give Snape a partner from outside the British wizarding world, or outside the wizarding world altogether, who doesn't know Snape's history and hasn't been biased by the WW's prejudices and Snape's reputation as a Death Eater. They might eventually learn about the things that Snape has done, both good and bad, but it won't have the same impact on them as someone who's known Snape previously and has lived through those events, such as Harry or Hermione, and they would be able to view Snape more objectively and develop a relationship without any past baggage getting in the way.
Of course Jill isn't actually an OC; she is a canon character, but it's a canon outside of the HP canon, so the same principle applies. This isn't to say that all OFCs are characters from outside the wizarding world, of course, but it provides fanfic writers with an option that isn't available in canon. (Although I'm still not sure why we don't see more of this type of OC in slash, but the topic is Snape and His Women, so I don't want to dwell overmuch on the slash aspect.)
I think Jill is a great match for Snape--as one might expect from a cop, she has a strong sense of justice, and also of compassion. She runs into him by chance in the Muggle world, where he has been hiding, and when he accidentally drops and loses his wand, she is determined to return it to him, no matter how difficult a task that might be. She can also see from his eyes that he's in a great deal of pain, even though she initially doesn't know why. When she finds out how he was branded a traitor and treated like a scapegoat in the wizarding world, that only makes her all the more determined to return the wand to Snape because he considered it "important enough to carry away with him from a world he knows he can’t return to. He deserves it back." With her determination, she's not the type to allow herself to be pushed away by Snape, and she has enough patience and compassion to eventually convince Snape that he can love and be loved in return.
It's a great series, and I only wish it was longer. Snape losing the wand, Jill's finding of it, and her efforts to track down its owner make up the prologue and first three chapters, and then the story skips ahead in time to a series of short but lovely drabbles that show us glimpses of Snape and Jill's romance and eventual married life.
***
Snape's relationships with women need not only be romantic, of course.red_day_dawning already discussed this in her post, but I've always pictured Snape as having a sort of friendship with McGonagall--not the best friends type of relationship that Harry has with Ron and Hermione, but a respect for each other as colleagues and a friendly rivalry with their running bet over which of their Houses will win the Quidditch Cup. Her contempt for Snape in DH made some fans think that she never really liked or trusted Snape, but it could also be explained by a deep anger at feeling betrayed by a friend that she trusted. I like to think that she felt very remorseful when she found out the truth about Snape's loyalties, and in a story where Snape survived Nagini's bite, it would be interesting to see how she would go about trying to mend their friendship. For Snape's part, I think that he would say that the whole point of his act was to have everyone believe that he was a traitor, but at the same time, I think that he would secretly feel hurt and resentful that McGonagall and everyone else believed it so easily.
Narcissa is also someone I can see being a friend to Snape. In canon, I don't believe that they're especially close; in HBP, she refers to Snape as a friend of Lucius rather than "our" friend, so while they're probably friendly towards each other, their connection is primarily through Lucius. However, post-war, I could see them developing a closer friendship, since I think she would be deeply grateful that he'd saved Draco, even if he had turned out to be working on Dumbledore's side. (It would help that she doesn't have any loyalty left to Voldemort by the end of DH.)
There's a great Snupin fic called Unique in All the World by McKay that has a good portrayal of friendship between Snape and Narcissa. Snape is in love with Lupin, and believing that Lupin doesn't return his feelings, enlists Narcissa's help in carrying out a complicated scheme in which he tricks Lupin into marrying him. They're both lonely (in this story, Lucius is dead), both outcast due to their past connections to the Death Eaters, and they don't have anyone else to turn to but each other, so Narcissa provides advice and a sympathetic ear. Narcissa is motivated partly by boredom--Snape's scheme provides a substitute for the juicy gossip she used to get from her former circle of friends--but she seems to sincerely care about him as well. Of course the main focus is on the Snupin romance, but the Snape/Narcissa friendship is a major part of the story, and provokes a conflict in the romance when Snape is seen with Narcissa and Lupin suspects that they're conspiring together against him (which they are, but not in the way that he thinks) and/or having an affair.
Narcissa and Snape get along so well in the story that it made me think that in a different type of story, a widowed Narcissa and Snape could form a friendship that develops into romantic love. Which could have some interesting complications in the form of Draco, who might or might not be willing to accept Snape as a stepfather. Even if he likes Snape as a teacher and family friend, he might still feel resentful or just uncomfortable about having Snape replace his father, and it would be interesting to see how the three of them resolve things.
The most popular het Snape pairing seems to be Snape/Hermione, and I can certainly understand why. Unlike Ron and Harry, she doesn't hate Snape, but respects his abilities and his loyalty to the Order, despite the harsh treatment he's given all of them, and at times, her in particular. This is partly due to her trust in Dumbleore: since Dumbledore has faith in Snape, Hermione also believes in him unswervingly, at least until the apparent murder in HBP. Still, most teenagers would have trouble overlooking the more unpleasant aspects of Snape's behavior and personality, no matter how brave or loyal a man he was, especially when that unpleasantness is directed towards them personally. But even after Snape drives Hermione to tears in GoF with the "I see no difference" remark, she doesn't seem to hate him or hold a grudge. So after the war is over, I could see her accepting his true loyalties more easily than most of the other characters, and since she never hated him, there's no impediment to a possible friendship or romance--assuming that Snape survives, of course.
Hermione is also very intelligent and has a thirst for knowledge, which perhaps gives her something in common with Snape, and also gives her the ability to challenge him and win his respect. I can't really see Snape being attracted to to someone who's pretty but brainless; I think he'd want a partner who could keep up with him and be his equal. I don't think that Hermione is quite there yet, simply because of her youth, but she certainly has the potential to be--I could see them possibly becoming lovers several years after the war is over, when she is a young woman and no longer a child or his student. (That would also take care of my teacher/student imbalance of power squick, which also applies to Snarry in slash fandom.)
Although...I do recall reading a couple of fanfics where Snape regards Hermione with disdain, not just because she's a Gryffindor and Harry's friend, but because her good grades are due to rote memorization and following the instructions of her textbooks without showing any creativity. That does seem to be in character for Snape, considering that he modified and improved on the potion formulas in his textbook when he was Hermione's age. On the other hand, Hermione does show some creativity as the series progresses, such as when she uses the Dark Mark as inspiration for the D.A.'s enchanted coins. I think that type of creativity will probably continue to develop as she gets older, so I could see her working with Snape someday as an adult, and maybe a professional relationship could lead to a more personal one--perhaps romantic, but I could also see them developing a platonic friendship with a lot of good-natured Gryffindor vs. Slytherin bickering.
Their personalities are pretty opposite, and I could see her zealous optimistic idealism grating on Snape, but on the other hand, there's that old saying about how opposites attract. Perhaps her idealism would balance out his cynicism and vice versa. And realistically, the things that Hermione experienced during DH--being tortured, seeing friends and allies killed in battle--are likely to change her, although we don't really see the effects of this in canon. I think that a more troubled, less naive Hermione would be better able to understand and empathize with Snape.
***
One Snape het pairing that I really like a lot is Snape/Luna. (Again, I prefer it when Luna is an adult when they get involved). Luna, for all her dreaminess (or perhaps because of it?), lacks the prejudices of most of the other Hogwarts students, and I think that of all the characters, she'd be the most able to see past Snape's snarky, bitter exterior to the real man within, and the one most able to accept him as he is. As I once told a friend, she lives in her own little world, but she can also be keenly perceptive at the same time. Like Snape, she has suffered the loss of a loved one and she knows what it's like to be an outcast--not quite in the same way, of course, but I think there's enough common ground for understanding. Unlike Snape, Luna hasn't allowed her pain to embitter her, and I can see her being able to help Snape heal with her gentle, eccentric sweetness and kindness. The first time I encountered a Snuna story, I thought that it was a very odd pairing, but one that worked surprisingly well.
This Snuna drabble by
bronze_ribbons, and this ficlet by bluestocking79 are great examples of how well I think the ship works.***
In my previous essay on Snape and His Men,
territesting made an interesting observation about how there are numerous Snape/OFC het pairings, but hardly any Snape/OMC slash pairings. I know there are some, but they're relatively few, at least where Snape/OMC is the main pairing. (I've seen Snape/OMC in conjunction with canon character ships, where the OMC is there to add a little spice or some complication to Snape's relationship with a canon character--for example, Snape and Lupin having a threesome with a hot guy that they pick up, or Snape being involved with another man before he gets together with Lupin or Harry or whomever.)I thought that was a really interesting observation, and I've been wondering why the disparity? Could it be self-insertion on the writer's part? Perhaps in some cases, but certainly not all OFCs are of the Mary Sue variety. Terri suggests that perhaps a happy life and relationship are a reward for Snape on the author's part, but then why do slash writers not reward Snape with a loving OMC partner? I wonder if it has something to do with a lack of well-developed female characters in canon, particularly ones about the same age as Snape? Narcissa is the only female character I can think of offhand who is a contemporary of Snape, and she's already married to Lucius--which of course need not necessarily be an obstacle in fanfiction, or at least, only a temporary one. Still, if one wants to write Snape in a romance with a woman his own age, the writer's options are limited unless they invent their own characters. There are canon female teachers and Order members whose ages aren't stated, such as Sinistra or Charity or Emmeline Vance, but since we know little about them other than their names, for all practical purposes they might as well be OCs, as Terri says. There seem to be more male characters in the books who are close to Snape's age--Lupin, Sirius, Lucius, and possibly Kingsley (although his exact age isn't stated)--which gives slash writers more potential pairings to choose from.
I'm sure that's not the only answer, so if any of you readers out there have any thoughts about this, I would love to hear them.
***
I was digging through my old recs and essays, and in my Snape and the Muggle World essay, I came across a rec I made for the Wanderlust series by
lithiumdelusion and bluestocking79, which is a crossover between the Harry Potter series and the Pet Shop of Horrors manga series. The stories feature Jill, a police detective from the PSOH series, as a potential romantic partner for Snape, and that reminded me of another reason why a writer might want to create an OC love interest: in order to give Snape a partner from outside the British wizarding world, or outside the wizarding world altogether, who doesn't know Snape's history and hasn't been biased by the WW's prejudices and Snape's reputation as a Death Eater. They might eventually learn about the things that Snape has done, both good and bad, but it won't have the same impact on them as someone who's known Snape previously and has lived through those events, such as Harry or Hermione, and they would be able to view Snape more objectively and develop a relationship without any past baggage getting in the way.Of course Jill isn't actually an OC; she is a canon character, but it's a canon outside of the HP canon, so the same principle applies. This isn't to say that all OFCs are characters from outside the wizarding world, of course, but it provides fanfic writers with an option that isn't available in canon. (Although I'm still not sure why we don't see more of this type of OC in slash, but the topic is Snape and His Women, so I don't want to dwell overmuch on the slash aspect.)
I think Jill is a great match for Snape--as one might expect from a cop, she has a strong sense of justice, and also of compassion. She runs into him by chance in the Muggle world, where he has been hiding, and when he accidentally drops and loses his wand, she is determined to return it to him, no matter how difficult a task that might be. She can also see from his eyes that he's in a great deal of pain, even though she initially doesn't know why. When she finds out how he was branded a traitor and treated like a scapegoat in the wizarding world, that only makes her all the more determined to return the wand to Snape because he considered it "important enough to carry away with him from a world he knows he can’t return to. He deserves it back." With her determination, she's not the type to allow herself to be pushed away by Snape, and she has enough patience and compassion to eventually convince Snape that he can love and be loved in return.
It's a great series, and I only wish it was longer. Snape losing the wand, Jill's finding of it, and her efforts to track down its owner make up the prologue and first three chapters, and then the story skips ahead in time to a series of short but lovely drabbles that show us glimpses of Snape and Jill's romance and eventual married life.
***
Snape's relationships with women need not only be romantic, of course.
red_day_dawning already discussed this in her post, but I've always pictured Snape as having a sort of friendship with McGonagall--not the best friends type of relationship that Harry has with Ron and Hermione, but a respect for each other as colleagues and a friendly rivalry with their running bet over which of their Houses will win the Quidditch Cup. Her contempt for Snape in DH made some fans think that she never really liked or trusted Snape, but it could also be explained by a deep anger at feeling betrayed by a friend that she trusted. I like to think that she felt very remorseful when she found out the truth about Snape's loyalties, and in a story where Snape survived Nagini's bite, it would be interesting to see how she would go about trying to mend their friendship. For Snape's part, I think that he would say that the whole point of his act was to have everyone believe that he was a traitor, but at the same time, I think that he would secretly feel hurt and resentful that McGonagall and everyone else believed it so easily.Narcissa is also someone I can see being a friend to Snape. In canon, I don't believe that they're especially close; in HBP, she refers to Snape as a friend of Lucius rather than "our" friend, so while they're probably friendly towards each other, their connection is primarily through Lucius. However, post-war, I could see them developing a closer friendship, since I think she would be deeply grateful that he'd saved Draco, even if he had turned out to be working on Dumbledore's side. (It would help that she doesn't have any loyalty left to Voldemort by the end of DH.)
There's a great Snupin fic called Unique in All the World by McKay that has a good portrayal of friendship between Snape and Narcissa. Snape is in love with Lupin, and believing that Lupin doesn't return his feelings, enlists Narcissa's help in carrying out a complicated scheme in which he tricks Lupin into marrying him. They're both lonely (in this story, Lucius is dead), both outcast due to their past connections to the Death Eaters, and they don't have anyone else to turn to but each other, so Narcissa provides advice and a sympathetic ear. Narcissa is motivated partly by boredom--Snape's scheme provides a substitute for the juicy gossip she used to get from her former circle of friends--but she seems to sincerely care about him as well. Of course the main focus is on the Snupin romance, but the Snape/Narcissa friendship is a major part of the story, and provokes a conflict in the romance when Snape is seen with Narcissa and Lupin suspects that they're conspiring together against him (which they are, but not in the way that he thinks) and/or having an affair.
Narcissa and Snape get along so well in the story that it made me think that in a different type of story, a widowed Narcissa and Snape could form a friendship that develops into romantic love. Which could have some interesting complications in the form of Draco, who might or might not be willing to accept Snape as a stepfather. Even if he likes Snape as a teacher and family friend, he might still feel resentful or just uncomfortable about having Snape replace his father, and it would be interesting to see how the three of them resolve things.