Harry Potter's most magical character is Dumbledore | Books | guardian.co.uk: -Annabel Pitcher
So Severus Snape has been crowned the nation's favourite Potter character and I'm left with an expression that could curdle potions. Are we talking about the same person? The one described as "bat-like" and "oily" and "sallow" and "sneering" – that guy? Really? I can't help wondering if the whole country's been confunded.Give me Dumbledore any day. First off – he could win in the fashion stakes. Whereas Snape spends his time skulking around the dungeons in baggy black robes, Dumbledore presides over the Great Hall, resplendent in robes of midnight blue. Midnight blue! If that's not a colour befitting the nation's best wizard, I don't know what is. And then there's the hair. Snape's is dull and black. Dumbledore's is silvery. Snape's is oily. Dumbledore's is, well, clean. Call me old-fashioned, but hygiene is important – in fiction as well as real life. It seems to me that the nation has chosen a character whom, in reality, they wouldn't want to sit next to on the tube. The sight of Snape would make you wince on the London Underground, whereas Dumbledore could show you a handy map of it just above his left knee.Why else do I love Dumbledore? Well, how can you not love a camp grey wizard who eats sherbet lemons and welcomes students back to school with the words, "There is a time for speech-making. This is not it."? Dumbledore's funny. He's unorthodox. He lets a part-giant with a love of monsters take up residence in the school shed, and a werewolf with a penchant for human blood to teach underage wizards. Nonconformist, liberal and flexible, he's everything that Severus "10 points from Gryffindor" Snape is not.Dumbledore also knows things. Everything, in fact. Twiddling his thumbs in a castle turret, Dumbledore does what every other character in the book fails to do: he works out the secret of the horcruxes. No wonder he's the only person feared by He Who Must Not Be Named. So yeah, Snape double-crossed Voldemort. But who told him to? Who guided him in every single act of cunning? Snape acted bravely – but Dumbledore directed his performance.However, it's not Dumbledore's sense of style or humour, his batty approach to teaching or his intelligence that make him my favourite character. It's his bad points that I like so much. Snape turned out to be capable of love, but Dumbledore turned out to be capable of sin – and that revelation was by far the more moving of the two. The old headmaster is worthy of our admiration as a benevolent champion of muggles, but he becomes worthy of something far deeper when we realise that he champions muggles out of remorse for past wrongdoings. When we're told the full extent of his sins with Grindelwald, Dumbledore steps down from his magical throne, throws off his robes of midnight blue, and joins we muggles as someone flawed, human – and worthy of our love. In short, by the end of the series, Dumbledore becomes real. Snape does too, turning from a sneering sallow-face to a complex man capable of great love and sacrifice. But, for me, showing the reader that a villain has good points is far less interesting (and far less brave a decision by Rowling) than revealing that one of her heroes was capable of making such grave mistakes.
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So Severus Snape has been crowned the nation's favourite Potter character and I'm left with an expression that could curdle potions. Are we talking about the same person? The one described as "bat-like" and "oily" and "sallow" and "sneering" – that guy? Really? I can't help wondering if the whole country's been confunded.Give me Dumbledore any day. First off – he could win in the fashion stakes. Whereas Snape spends his time skulking around the dungeons in baggy black robes, Dumbledore presides over the Great Hall, resplendent in robes of midnight blue. Midnight blue! If that's not a colour befitting the nation's best wizard, I don't know what is. And then there's the hair. Snape's is dull and black. Dumbledore's is silvery. Snape's is oily. Dumbledore's is, well, clean. Call me old-fashioned, but hygiene is important – in fiction as well as real life. It seems to me that the nation has chosen a character whom, in reality, they wouldn't want to sit next to on the tube. The sight of Snape would make you wince on the London Underground, whereas Dumbledore could show you a handy map of it just above his left knee.Why else do I love Dumbledore? Well, how can you not love a camp grey wizard who eats sherbet lemons and welcomes students back to school with the words, "There is a time for speech-making. This is not it."? Dumbledore's funny. He's unorthodox. He lets a part-giant with a love of monsters take up residence in the school shed, and a werewolf with a penchant for human blood to teach underage wizards. Nonconformist, liberal and flexible, he's everything that Severus "10 points from Gryffindor" Snape is not.Dumbledore also knows things. Everything, in fact. Twiddling his thumbs in a castle turret, Dumbledore does what every other character in the book fails to do: he works out the secret of the horcruxes. No wonder he's the only person feared by He Who Must Not Be Named. So yeah, Snape double-crossed Voldemort. But who told him to? Who guided him in every single act of cunning? Snape acted bravely – but Dumbledore directed his performance.However, it's not Dumbledore's sense of style or humour, his batty approach to teaching or his intelligence that make him my favourite character. It's his bad points that I like so much. Snape turned out to be capable of love, but Dumbledore turned out to be capable of sin – and that revelation was by far the more moving of the two. The old headmaster is worthy of our admiration as a benevolent champion of muggles, but he becomes worthy of something far deeper when we realise that he champions muggles out of remorse for past wrongdoings. When we're told the full extent of his sins with Grindelwald, Dumbledore steps down from his magical throne, throws off his robes of midnight blue, and joins we muggles as someone flawed, human – and worthy of our love. In short, by the end of the series, Dumbledore becomes real. Snape does too, turning from a sneering sallow-face to a complex man capable of great love and sacrifice. But, for me, showing the reader that a villain has good points is far less interesting (and far less brave a decision by Rowling) than revealing that one of her heroes was capable of making such grave mistakes.
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