Snape is Heathcliff.

I was re-organizing my books in order to avoid the real cleaning that needs to be done, and got sucked into a little bit of Wuthering Heights. And I realized that Snape is Heathcliff. Their physical descriptions are similar, they're both motivated by tragic love, and they're both often cruel. And they both fascinate me as characters. And, clearly, this means that James Potter is Edgar Linton. I'm cool with that. I was always kind of apathetic about them both.

I was right about him (Snape), incidentally. After all the people who would approach me just to argue whenever I would wear my "Snape is innocent" shirt, I feel the need to gloat a little bit.