> It has dark hair and dark eyes and a certain shape and sound and looks at me a
> certain way, and the character of Severus Snape is only one of a number of instances
> in my life of this particular template woven so firmly into my psyche that I cannot
> fail to respond to it

The combination of the picture and the words conveys something more than the sum of the two... I can feel the edges of the essence you're talking about.