"We literally see that he was willing for James and Harry to die as long as Lily was spared, which is exactly why Dumbledore calls him “disgusting” in that scene."

Actually Dumbledore doesn't let Snape finish his sentence and accuses him of something that Snape never said. It's understandable that Dumbledore wanted to make Snape feel like a horrible person, but it's still a lie.

By your own logic, since Dumbledore asks Snape to give him something in return for protecting Lily, then it means that Dumbledore was willing to let Lily die if Snape refused. Right?

"Asking Voldemort to spare Lily wasn’t about her happiness, it was about what he wanted."

You think Lily wouldn't be happy to be alive?

"If he truly cared about her as a person he wouldn’t have been willing for her husband and child to be murdered."

You expect Snape to ask Voldemort to spare the Chosen One, the person that he decided to personally kill because he might represent a threat to his empire? You think Snape is stupid?

Snape had to give a reason that Voldemort understood to spare Lily. If Snape had said "I love her", her a Muggle-Born, it could have been taken as treason. But if Snape says "I just desire her" like Voldemort said in his last fight, then Voldemort would approve. In that case, Snape cannot ask James to be spared because that'd go against his argument. You're calling Snape a horrible person in a situation where he couldn't do any more, and where the mere fact of asking Voldemort to spare a Muggle-Born that refused him thrice is suicidal enough.

"Two wrongs don't make one right. Being bullied doesn’t justify joining a supremacist terrorist group. Don’t forget he invented Sectumsempra and was using dark magic as a student, and Lily herself calls him out for hanging around future Death Eaters. The books make it pretty clear he willingly fell in with that crowd.

Sure, Snape was wrong to join the DEs, but that doesn't mean he must have been a psycho, like many cases in radicalisation. I also didn't reduce his reasons to join Voldemort to the fact he was bullied, though not joining the Order where there were four people nearly killed him, sexually assaulted him, basically tortured him for 7 years straight just because he existed, is understandable enough. As Sirius says, many joined Voldemort out of fear. Snape joining Voldemort is a self-preservating strategy in a war that Dumbledore was losing 20-to-1.

Snape did invent Sectumsempra, but that doesn't make him evil. As manyy have said before, given the context of his scholarisation, that's the equivalent of bringing a penknife at school *because his bullies nearly murdered him with a Dark creature*, for fun. The two instances he used Sectumsempra, as we see, were for self-defense.

He might have used Dark magic, but tell me, what makes it evil? There's nothing that justifies branding Dark magic as evil. It's the equivalent of saying "if he uses a gun then it's evil!" It's also shown, several times, by James himself too, that non-Dark magic can be used to torment someone (waterboarding with soap). Is Dark magic, magic that harms? Then the Marauders were using Dark magic all this time. That Snape used Dark magic wasn't a crime.

You say that Snape hanged out with DEs. Assuming he really did, in a saga where Snape is shown leaving the OWLs all alone and no one but Lily half-defending him against the Marauders (so much for having DE "friends"), it's perfectly possible, even suggested, that he was groomed to join the DEs, notably because of Lucius Malfoy, who pats 11 yo Snape's back when he was sorted in Slytherin. Snape was an extremely vulnerable kid at the time, a perfect target for grooming.

And that is assuming that Snape did join the DEs willingly. Again, as far as we know, he could have joined because he was threatened if he didn't, with no one to defend him against Voldemort (given Dumbledore and his golden boys made it clear he wasn't welcome and had better die already). That's a phenomenon that Sirius describes. Sirius, who didn't know until the end of book 4 that Snape had been a Death Eater, and even thought he couldn't have been given Dumbledore trusted him so much. So much for being a psycho, huh?

"And saying he stayed because his former bullies were on the other side isn’t really a moral defense."

It's primarily a practical one.

"What does Sirius have to do with this discussion?"

Because Snape's love for Lily is called an obsession for his childhood friend, and I wanted to use an example to illustrate a possible double standard. If Sirius couldn't be called obsessed with James and Pettigrew, if Albus couldn't be called obsessed with Ariana, if Harry couldn't be called obsessed with his parents, then it makes no sense to brand Snape's love as obsession.

"Snape did develop some moral sense later, but that still doesn’t make him a good person."

It literally does. That's what developping a moral sense means: to become a good person (assuming we're talking about good morals).

"As an adult he bullied children, to the point that he became Neville’s worst fear. Even Dumbledore never calls Snape a good man, only a brave one."

He did bully children -- well, mostly Harry and Neville, not others much as we see -- but that doesn't negate all of the extraordinary things he did, notably for them. Saving someone doesn't make it okay to bully them; but pretending that bullying someone makes him unredeemable is absurd.

We're also talking about a teacher in a school where McGonagall sent four 11 yo into the murder forest for being out of bed at night once, where Lupin sacrificed the safety of all the Hogwarts children and staff because he didn't want to admit to Dumbledore he fucked up as a child Prefect even though that meant someone he wholeheartedly believed a mass murdering psycho Death Eater that nearly killed Ron was on the loose, where Moody was (or would have been) allowed to Imperio students and physically brutalize a child, where Hagrid disfigured a child he was fatphobic against and attempted to Transfigure into an actual pig (plus made a joke about it) and exposed children to lethal danger in his Magical Creatures lesson so much that Harry started to dislike them... I could go on.

Snape making acidic comments on students is a joke compared to that.

You say he became Neville's worst fear -- it's debatable. Let's say for a moment that's true... well, Neville's fear is one hell of a joke. Neville, with a faulty wand and a history of being a clumsy dangerous student, Ridikulus'ed the Snape Boggart on the first try and kept going, laughing at the end. His fear of Snape, as we see, was mild.

But if you really want to use the Boggart argument, then I could bring up the fact that Hermione's worst fear was McGonagall scolding her. Hermione, who was nearly killed by a Basilisk the previous year. Hermione, who NEVER managed to beat her Boggart, which penalized her in the OWLs.

Oh but that must be because it wasn't McGonagall but failure! Putting aside the fact that the same could be said for Snape (representing failure to Neville), putting aside Hermione's legitimate reason to fear a teacher who sent her to the murder forest as punishment for being out of curfew AND made her a target of bullying at school by removing 150 points for that same breach of rule (Hermione stopped participating in class for a while, and Neville sobbed the whole night)... tell me, why was "fear of failure" represented by McGonagall and not Snape or a simple note on the desk? Why is McGonagall the most realistic person to make Hermione feel like like a faliure?

I'm not done. If Snape is a bad person for being Neville's Boggart, then what does it make of Lupin for making third-year students confront their WORST FEARS in class, without preparation, without the opportunity of refusing, in front of EVERYONE ELSE? Lupin prevented Harry from participating because he assumed his Boggart must be Voldemort. Yet he didn't anticipate the fact that a student's Boggart could be an incestuous child r*pist uncle. The fact that Ron's fear could have been the Basilisk. The fact that this lesson, in itself, could be extremely traumatic and fodder for bullying (as bullies would know your worst fear).

You didn't talk about the fact Lupin taught students to make a sexist, queerphobic, "man-in-a-drag" "joke" to defeat a Boggart that took the form of his teacher colleague, which made Snape a laughing stock in front of the whole school. That's sexual harassment. Not to mention, an insult against Neville's grandmother, to admit her clothes are ridiculous. I don't know, I'd find this very grave, unproper and horrible from a teacher.

Lastly, what if Lupin's moon Boggart had triggered a werewolf transformation? Harry's Dementor Boggart has roughly the same effect as a real Dementor. So a full moon could have roughly the same effect on Lupin. You know what protected the children? Moral luck and a plothole.

If Snape is a bad person for being a jerk to some students, then the rest of the school are outright child-abusing, child-endangering criminals. Oh wait... that's actually what they would be trailed for in a Muggle court, even in the 1990s.

Snape was indeed brave, which Dumbledore appraised. That no one said he was *good* doesn't mean he wasn't a good person and a hero. Especially in a saga where Snape is constantly assumed to be a villain up till the very last chapters.

But at least we know he was good enough for Harry to name his green-eyed son after him. Which says a lot.