Who is your favorite HP character...and why?

[valis2]

The Snape love interest characteristics entry was pretty thought-provoking. I really enjoyed all of the comments.

So I'm going to annoy you all further...

Who is your favorite HP character, and why? I'd love to hear the details, from the small to the large. Why did this character capture your interest? What made you first want to read/see/write/draw/etc. him/her outside of the books? What was the Point of No Return for you (when you realized you were truly hooked)?

I'll go first...

Severus Snape, as if anyone on this flist didn't know.

The first time I noticed him was bookwench2096's fault. I had read a couple of the books and wasn't really into them that much, but then she pointed out Snape's...appeal. I was still unconvinced, but at the time we were exchanging smutty little stories we called "weasels," so I sent her a quick weasel featuring Snape and an OFC. (He was convinced she was hiding something in her robes...heh.) After I wrote it and sent it off, I thought that would be it, but somehow he began to curl around my subconscious, and pretty soon I was very interested in his character.

I reached the Point of No Return only after I began to read fanfic. I read a story on ffnet somewhere, and it wasn't that great, but there was something about him that just pulled me in. The dark eyes, the bitterness, the dry wit...all of the little things that sometimes were barely in canon were brought out in fanon, and I really became completely entranced with him after reading different authors' stylized versions of him.

I wanted to write him myself after reading so many stories; I really thought I might have something to offer, and I wanted to explore blood magic as well, and that ended up being a jumping-off point for me. I reread the books in order to prepare myself, and found that in reading so much fanfic I had somehow developed a rather distorted view of him, and I was very relieved that I reread them, because it helped me develop my own version of Snape. I didn't want him to be a walking, talking fanon cliché.

I think it was switchknife, though, who finally and incontrovertibly sealed my fate. Up until I read knife's work, I had been...well...content with the ffnet stories. Once I found knife's stories, it opened up an entire new world of reading. Through knife and LJ I found many new, absolutely amazing authors who had written Snape-centric stories, and that was it. In their capable hands he became even more mesmerizing. One of the things I love best about him is that he is so well-armored; I adore stories in which he's made vulnerable, where he has to let someone help him, or worse, let someone in. His tightly-wound control is absolutely fascinating to me. I want to see the passion that I know is underneath.

So tell me about your character journey! I'd love to hear about which characters you love, and how it all happened.

Comments

[ladyaelfwynn.livejournal.com]

Here through the Daily Snitch:

I love Remus! Part of the attraction is how much he reminds me of my husband. (There were times I though JKR was channeling my dear boy. ;-) ) He's a sweet, gentle, polite, intelligent, thoughtful, caring, and unprepossessing guy that I had to take a closer look.

I knew right away that he was a powerful wizard. (He does wandless magic on the train when he deals with the dementor) I also figured out fairly early he was a werewolf (I caught the full moon hints.) He caught my heart though when he took special notice of Neville.

My enjoyment of him only grew throughout OotP and HBP. I love that we have seen how he's grown over the years and that even after great wrongs were done to him, he's able to put it behind him and move on.

I read all sorts of fanfic once I'd gotten through the series, puppy-shipping, RL/SS, RL/HP, RL/FW/GW, RL/OFC, RL/HG, RL/GW, RL/everybody and, of course, RL/NT. McKay's "The Taming of Sirius Black" and "Way of the World" were two of the the best depictions of Remus I'd read.

One of the things I like about Remus is how-well defined JKR has made him. In the gobs of fanfic I've read, Remus is always identifiable as Remus. (I've purposefully shied away from the few that seem to have Evil!Remus.) It's hard to have him be so OOC that he's unrecognizeable, the way I've seen with Snape, Harry, Hermione, and Ginny.

I read tonnes of puppy-shipping and eventually decided I didn't much like it. I'm not fond of the dynamic that appears in most puupy-shipping, except McKay's, "The Taming of Sirius Black." That's the first one I saved to my hard-drive, just in case the world ends, so that I always have a copy of that.

I've read some decent Lupin/OFC. (I like romance novels. I don't mind OCs. The only way for Lupin to have appropriate love interests with most of the women in the books is to wait for them to be adults.
These days, I prefer a Lupin who is straight and after Tonks.

[valis2.livejournal.com]

I've been really super interested in Remus lately. I didn't really pay a lot of attention to him for a long time, though I thought he was a neat teacher, and I liked his unflappable nature.

The more I've read, the more I've enjoyed his persona. I really like fanfic writers and how they write him; he seems to be this lovely, strong, smart, sly-humored creation in so many fics.

Y'know, I've tried reading puppy fics before, but I'm just not interested at all. I'm not certain why. I much prefer Snupin.

[ladyaelfwynn.livejournal.com]

I prefer Snupin as well. Lupin is one of the few people unruffled by Snape's behavior.

I tried a couple of summers ago to write a fanfic that started out at the end of GoF, when Sirius was sent "to go lie low at Lupin's". I could never quite get the hang of Sirius. He's an incredibly difficult character to write and I've read too many puppy-ship stories that get the dynamic wrong.