愿天堂也有你的霍格沃茨May There Be a Hogwarts in Heaven

Yesterday, the world lost another beautiful soul.

Alan Rickman (February 21, 1946 – January 14, 2016), who played Professor Snape in the Harry Potter films — Snape, forever — has left us. He died of cancer at the age of 69.

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I heard the sad news around ten last night.

Five years have passed since the last film, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2, came out. I never imagined the next piece of Harry Potter news I'd hear would be Professor Snape's passing.

Pull time back another ten years and I still remember the first time I met that little boy with the scar on his forehead, slipping through Platform Nine and Three-Quarters into the wizarding world, and opening the door to a whole new one.

I loved clever Hermione, honest and dependable Ron, big-hearted Hagrid, kindly Dumbledore, Sirius Black.

Harry Potter, you could say, grew up alongside me — very nearly my single favorite novel, no runner-up.

This magical world that kept me company as I grew up was, in this era, like a dazzling sun: lift your head and you could see its light. But this era, too, will pass in the end.

Will the children of today still take an interest in this wondrous magical world? How long before Harry Potter becomes, like The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, a classic that no one ever picks up of their own accord again?

In the end, this belongs to me — belongs to our generation — as a memory.

For the countless Harry Potter fans, myself included, Alan Rickman's death was a kind of "double death." In Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows we'd already grieved and mourned his death once; and just a few years on, people mourned him for real. Life really is a stage.

J.K. Rowling was the first to voice her grief, describing him as "a great actor and a wonderful man."

She wrote on Twitter: "There are no words to express how shocked and devastated I am to hear of Alan Rickman's death."

She also said, "My thoughts are with Rima" — Alan's wife — "and his whole family. We have all lost a great talent."

At first, watching him — cold, narrow, snide — I was full of loathing.

I thought Snape was rotten, and that he even looked the part of a villain.

In every film, Professor Snape found some new way to torment Harry and his friends, and it stirred up resentment.

The very first time he appeared, he fixed those unblinking eyes on Harry's, staring long and hard,

and in the end all but made the ache in Harry's scar flare up.

The very first lesson, he began needling Harry for no clear reason, his tone full of contempt and mockery, deliberately picking a fight;

Now, looking back, I feel I was rather ignorant, never once wondering why, at your first meeting with Harry,

that undisguised, glaring gaze was your longing — after eleven years — to look again into the eyes of the one you'd love your whole life.

Back then, you carried in you, even in your bones, that awkward nature that would rather die than let anyone understand you,

and in that tangle of feelings, your gaze met Harry's,

and in that instant you had, perhaps, a flicker of curiosity, a flicker of anticipation, a flicker of urgency,

and though you feigned composure and stillness, had even worked out how to make a show of disgust the very next second,

deep down you knew: for those deep-green eyes, you'd have no regrets, not in this whole life.

But his fathomlessness always kept people doubting. If he really was the villain, why did he help Harry, again and again?

For ten years you gave Harry no end of trouble; the moment Harry Potter got into a scrape, you were always the first on the scene, wearing every expression of loathing, gloating over his misfortune,

and I used to wonder too: if you hated Harry so much, why keep such close watch over him, always arriving in time to land the first blow?

Thinking myself clever, I neatly filed you away as — "the kind of man who's good at, and eager to seek out, the chance to kick someone when they're down."

And ten years ago the still-naive me foolishly believed that you, this black-robed, greasy-haired man, glaring so hard, had made poor sweet little Harry's scar hurt, and I couldn't help rolling my eyes at you a few times. Ah — thinking back now, how foolish I was.

It wasn't until the very end that he used a single memory to explain everything. Not until the last moment did I learn that he had loved Lily almost his whole life.

From his gloomy boyhood on, he had loved Harry's mother, Lily, deeply. Though Lily didn't choose him, he still guarded that love with his whole life. Though he hated Harry's father, he protected Harry all along, even at the cost of his own life.

Now, I wish there really were a wondrous potion in this world — one that could, as Severus said, stop death.

Until, on the verge of death, he said his last words to Harry: "Look at me..."

That look was so profound I couldn't bear it.

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In Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2, Professor Snape finally cast his Patronus — a doe, exactly the same as Lily's.

"After all this time?" Dumbledore asked him.

"Always," he said.

"Always." With that one word, Snape

spoke his love and laid bare the most beautiful truth in human nature.

That line, too, became a kind of logo for him.

"Always." A human life is only a few decades,

and perhaps at any moment we'll come face to face with "the end,"

and then, to remember deeply — maybe that, in the end, is the only release.

In the Pensieve, the memories of your whole life drift open like a thin wisp of smoke.

Meeting, knowing, perhaps loving — Lily filled your whole heart.

Your awkward nature wouldn't let you fight for her or explain yourself; all you could do was watch her walk away, time after time.

All you had left was to keep giving, to guard her in secret. For her, you didn't mind being humble.

As long as she lived, you lived.

When you saw her fallen body, you grieved past bearing, too weak to stand.

The one you'd spent your whole life desperately protecting was, in an instant, gone like smoke.

The feelings you never dared, never could bring yourself to show could only burst out as tears. In that moment the pain overturned everything you could endure.

He was the only actor J.K. Rowling personally chose, and the only one who knew the truth of the part he was to play.

Only J.K. Rowling knew that this character, Snape, would undergo a shattering transformation in the end.

So Rowling told Alan alone about his character's final turn,

so that he could throw himself more fully into the role.

In interviews, Alan did his best to avoid talking about Snape, for fear of accidentally giving something away.

He also created many villains who lodged themselves deep in people's hearts.

He was one of Britain's most versatile stage and screen actors.

As a member of society, his character, his integrity, his spirit all earned everyone's respect and praise.

He had a far stronger sense of morality than the vast majority of people,

undogmatic, open-minded, humorous, kind, seeing things through to the end.

Yet his profession locked him into a world about as far from his own goodness as could be.

On one hand he recoiled from this evil so utterly unlike himself,

and on the other, duty as an actor drove him to bring that evil out to the fullest.

His spirits sometimes sank into depression and low ebb; conflicted through and through, yet steadfast, he pressed on down the acting road he cared about most.

Little by little, this may well have been Snape's state of mind too.

Two aging men both weighed down by things unspoken, both never showing what they felt, both awkward and self-contained, both faithful to one love from beginning to end, stubborn and unyielding hearts — though with different hair, different eyes.

In their hearts they held the same lifeblood, buried the same secrets, walked the same course,

and only Alan could push Snape to his peak.

No one could have interpreted him better.

Because Alan himself was another Snape.

I haven't seen much of his other work, but I think that having his Harry Potter is enough for me. This actor of consummate craft shaped our Professor Snape so deeply, so unforgettably, that I can't let go of Snape and Lily's love. In real life Alan loved only one woman his whole life, and their bond stayed strong to the end; though they never married and never lived together, the two of them quietly tended that love all along.

Sometimes I'm struck by how fast the people around me swap boyfriends and girlfriends. They say we, the young, are the generation of fast-food love —

if the love is gone, why bind each other together and waste the time?

Even though Lily chose in the end to marry James, even though Lily was long gone from this world,

she was still the love of Snape's life, one person loved to the end of his days,

and he spent his remaining life watching over the boy who had inherited the green eyes of the person he loved most.

This, perhaps, is exactly —

"When carriages and horses were slow, a lifetime was only enough to love one person."

Alan Rickman once said: "When I'm 80 years old and sitting in my rocking chair, I'll be reading Harry Potter. And my family will say to me, 'After all this time?' And I will say, 'Always.'"

Sadly, it turned out he never made it to the day he'd sit in that rocking chair at 80, reading Harry Potter.

There's a line Professor Dumbledore said: "To the well-organized mind, death is but the next great adventure."

The flicker of an instant, gone like a white colt darting past a gap; trains keep roaring by; a last glimmer of light in a winter's day.

This band of once-callow youngsters who walked these ten years with us has grown up,

and some of the people who grew up with us have already gone.

Ten years of fascination, ten years of pursuit, ten years of love — all of it has become the most beautiful memory in the growing of my life.

Goodbye, Snape. May you meet Lily again in heaven.

He finally stilled his life, with all his pride, in those deep-green eyes.

We need no more repentance or apology; we need only quietly send him one line — safe travels.

Yesterday, the Half-Blood Prince, Severus Snape, left us forever.

But in heaven he still loves Lily,

and may heaven still have your Hogwarts.

I saw a line from a friend: every wizard has his own fitting way of leaving this world.

Rest in Peace. Alan Rickman.

This piece is dedicated to the Harry Potter, and the Professor Snape, who kept me company for ten years.