sometimes I'm not a huge fan of canon!Harry. Especially in book 7. Was it just me, or did he seem a little cardboard?
Oh dear, don't get me started on Deathly Hallows. Harry's victory just wasn't the culmination of a seven-book effort to me. It felt almost . . accidental, two parts dumb luck and sacrifice, with a bit of Dumbledorean meddling thrown in. It felt hollow (not hallowed). I admit, part of that for me was the lack of resolution in the Snape/Harry arc, because Snape was the flawed or fallen angel whom Harry needed to come to terms with, and . . poof. That narrative arc went nowhere. Harry was wrong about Snape, and the books make Harry right about almost everything else, so this blind spot is one of the few interesting and non-heroic aspects of his character. I've gone on at great length about Snape's fate in other places, but the lack of an onstage epiphany also cheated Harry. It would have been an emotional payoff to rival his acceptance of death.
Snape was being a bastard, of course, in ending the Occlumency lessons - although, frankly, Snape had reason to be furious, and not just because Harry had violated his privacy. Harry's discovery of Snape's love for Lily might very well have endangered Snape's life, Harry's mind being the open book it was. The plot structure muddles this point, because Snape's spying occurs entirely offstage and the author herself hardly seems to give it a second thought. JKR's not exactly crystal clear on certain subjects, and Harry's mental connection to Voldemort is one of them.
lately I've been having the darndest time getting Snape to actually make a move on Harry. :D It's like, he won't go, or something!!
Your Snape is far more mature than JKR's version, and if that's Rickman's doing, more power to him. :) But a genuinely adult Snape would have a hard time putting the moves on Harry. Some teacher/student scruples, and Lily's memory, and his sense of the absurdity of himself seducing the Boy Who Lived. Then the danger of getting involved with yet one more ultra-powerful wizard to whom he might feel subservient. Partly, even, a fear of desecration. The list goes on. A more Slytherin and less ethical Snape would likely be conflicted and possessive, probably resentful of the power his desires have over him. Then there's the love/lust divide. I have no problem seeing a Snape who succumbs to sexual hunger; but I think he'd do his damnedest to keep from revealing anything resembling love, and the more passionate he feels, the more likely he is to bottle it up until he explodes. So, yeah. I agree, getting Snape to 'fess up isn't easy.
Also, as far as I can tell from canon, Snape never shares his true self with anyone, except when he cracks under pressure. He keeps his deepest feelings a secret, even from Dumbledore. It's a habit, and I doubt he'd break it for Harry.
So it's a thing I struggle with, writing only what I feel is plausible for Snape, on the one hand, and writing something that might be more engaging for the reader, on the other.
So true! But your "opaque" Snape doesn't come across as confusing; rather, as intelligent and evasive. He always knows more than he's telling. I can feel him thinking, weighing, withholding. It's where much of the delicious tension comes from, that sense of reticence and self-control. Of course, I also enjoy snarky, voluble Snapes if the writer has a gift for cutting remarks and snappy dialogue. It could be argued that he's not exactly master of his emotions, and he's driven by anger a lot of the time. One thing all Snapes should be is intense. But that intensity is open to interpretation.
Writing? Yes. But I'm an idiot. I've got three, count 'em, three Snarrys sitting on my hard drive in varying stages of incompletion, two of them already ridiculously long, and I can't seem to herd any of them to the finish line. *sigh* I'm good at words, bad at storytelling.
So I'm working on a fic to try to fix that, ha ha.