Your Choice

So since my opponent forfeited, I guess I'll start this argument, and then forfeit Round 5 so that my opponent has a fair shake at this debate. Voters, do not mark Beginner down for his forfeit in this Round. Now then, as I said, I'll start this off properly. The history of Severus Snape For the sake of convenience, I'm going to work this in a chronological order, meaning that we'll start from Snape's early years and work all the way to his death. So we know that Snape lives in Spinner's End, and that his parents - Eileen Prince and Tobias Snape - argue and fight with each other. We also know he gets neglected and wears ill-fitting clothes. Now, straight away, you'd think that this would be cause for sympathy for Severus, right? Not really. While it would be extremely tempting to chastise Tobias as a complete monster responsible for turning Severus into the person he becomes, I'd actually blame the mother on this one. Bear in mind, Eileen Prince was a witch, and was surely capable of defending herself. It is stated quite clearly that Snape's parents are fighting, and it takes two to tango. So where the neglect and dirty appearance is concerned, that has got to be sourced to a maternal source. And let's not forget that Severus ends up picking up terms like "Mudblood" and "Muggle-born", and you can sure as hell bet that there's no way he ended up picking up terms like that from his Muggle father. I'm not saying Tobias is a nice guy, but Eileen was no saint, and it just seems that Snape's road to becoming a Death Eater is clearly a case of him blaming the wrong person. Next we see that Severus picks up a friendship with Lily Evans, informing her that she is in fact a witch and getting to hang around with her a lot. No real problems there, except that Severus essentially contributes to the complete collapse of relations with Lily's sister, Petunia. Look, yes, both her and the other Dursleys are really mean, however you can sympathise with the fact that Snape essentially gets away with making a tree branch fall on her and the fact that Petunia essentially gets ignored once all the focus gets driven onto Lily. Going further on, we then see Snape's desire to become a Slytherin. Okay, I know that this was before that house ended up providing Voldemort with a whole bunch of Death Eaters, and I know there are Slytherins who turned out to be exceptions to the rule of what kind of people get sorted in that house (Slughorn, the mother of Tonks, Regulus Black), but still, that whole "pure blood purity" reputation it had not to mention its apparent role in supplying an un-clarified but supposedly large amount of dark wizards throughout history is still "iffy", y'know? We then see that Snape gets involved with conflicts against James Potter and his friends, as well as straining his existing friendship with Lily. Yes, James and Sirius are kind of a couple of jerks in their school years, but to use the trope, they still amount to being Jerks with Hearts of Gold. They actively oppose that pure blood superiority nonsense, and they're trying to protect someone who lives with a life-ruining condition that makes him turn into a werewolf. On the former, it's made quite clear that Snape quickly becomes buddies with several classmates who'd grow up to become DEs themselves, something which even Lily calls him out for. On the latter, I don't get what business it was of Snape's if Lupin kept disappearing before the full moon, because if Snape was right it wouldn't change the obvious fact that Lupin must have had an arrangement with Dumbledore to allow him to attend the school, and why on earth would Severus need to care if James et al were hanging around with Lupin, since he didn't even like them anyway and thus had no reason to care? It strikes me that Severus was an intrusive little brat with hypocritical notions of rule breaking and with one hell of a mean streak himself. This culminates in the scene where James and Sirius gang up on Snape in fifth year after their OWL exams. I will concede there's no excuse for James to just start on Snape like that, but any sympathy one might have for Snape is kind of negated when 1) he uses dark magic against James in retaliation, and 2) he lashes out at the person who was trying to defend him by calling her a "Mudblood". Understandably, both Lily and James are outraged and Lily cuts off all ties to Severus. And in a severe case of disproportionate retribution, Snape becomes a Death Eater as a result in direct opposition to Lily and James who are fighting for blood equality. We then find out that Snape is the one who hears the prophecy foretelling Voldemort's doom, and that he then goes to Dumbledore in a panic because LV believes it refers to the Potters. There are two things seriously wrong with how Snape behaves here, and the first is venomously criticised by Dumbledore when it's revealed that Snape initially solely asked to spare Lily alone for him (wow, just wow), and it's only by Dumbledore's probing that Severus alters the plea for the entirety of the Potter family to be saved. The other thing wrong with this is that the other potential family that could have been targeted were the Longbottoms. We see no evidence that Snape even cared about the potential of that family getting targeted, simply because he wasn't all lovey-dovey with any of the family members. That is all kinds of messed up. We fast-forward to when Snape is the Potions Master at Hogwarts, and when he starts having Harry Potter as his student. This starts a chain of instances where Snape starts deriding Harry for his apparent "lust for fame" and him being apparently "as arrogant of his father" as well as blaming Harry for things that Draco did, as well as showing clear favouritism in general towards Draco over Harry in terms of punishment process. One big problem with all of these aspects, however, is that Snape gets revealed to be a master Legelimens. This makes the implications of Snape's actions even more darker, as it becomes quite clear that Snape knew damn well that Harry was anything but a "glory-seeker", and that he had a whole lot more in common with his mother Lily than Snape gave him credit for, and that Harry wasn't responsible for things Snape was accusing him of, and that Draco was clearly using racist language against Harry and his friends, and yet Snape still carried on harassing and bullying Harry. That really does not strike me as a sympathetic character. In fact, it strikes me that Snape is near enough to being a sociopath. I can't be the only one who cheered when Harry finally told Snape to shut his mouth in Book 3, as well as the karmic justice that happens at the end when Snape's quest to send an innocent man to the Dementors gets thwarted. We also have the point where Snape shows terrible teaching skills when he tries to teach Harry Occlumency, continually criticising him even though there's no reason why Harry should be able to master it as quickly as Snape demands he do it. He then irresponsibly stops teaching Harry Occlumency, which is a betrayal of his vow to protect Harry at all costs, and because Harry's mind doesn't get further protection, it contributes to Sirius's death. We also have Snape punishing Harry for defending himself even though Draco was clearly looking to seriously hurt Harry in their duel in Book 6. Again, all signs that really do not point towards Snape being remotely sympathetic. Snape may be among the very most interesting characters in the Harry Potter books, but even in light of what we find out about his backstory, it is still nigh on impossible to feel any sympathy for his character.