Sirius Black and Severus Snape: The Narrative Stand-Ins for James and Lily Potter
At this point in the fandom, I think everyone is well-aware of the mirroring between Sirius and Snape - the fact that their lives more or less run parallel with each other with very similar life events (meeting their best friends who form the spiritual and moral centre of their lives in childhood, coming from deeply unhappy homes, making conscious decisions in their school years to get sorted into houses in direct oppositions to their childhood upbringing, making a fatal mistake leading to the deaths of their backgrounds, spending the rest of their lives in grief and atonement, confining themselves willingly to their childhood homes), but I do think the depth of their mirroring goes unnoticed in fandom in general.
Sirius and Snape - beyond their more direct similarities in terms of their character arcs - are also the two halves of James and Lily, and literally fulfil their purpose in the narrative.
James is the father figure, the more immediate source of comfort, the parental figure - up until the first five books - that Harry is most keen to know about. James' legacy is physical and emotional, leaving Harry behind tools to aid his journey such as the Marauders Map and the Invisibility Cloak. James's role in Harry's life is to be a spiritual guardian and role model, manifesting literally in the form of Harry's Patronus.
This is the role Sirius takes in Harry's journey. Sirius is Harry's father figure in lieu of James. Sirius is a guardian, a loving father, a source of comfort. Harry truly starts thinking about his father and hungers to know him in Prisoner of Azkaban, and it is in this book that he learns to cast the Patronus to defeat the despair of the Dementors, who are also most associated with Sirius Black in the series because of his imprisonment. This is also the book named after Sirius.
Lily, while being Harry's mother, is not who Harry thinks of when he needs comfort or guidance. He doesn't think of her at all until he is forced to in the sixth book, the Half Blood Prince, which is named after Snape, who is her stand-in. Crucially, while Sirius stands in for James as a guardian, Snape does not, because Lily's primary purpose in the narrative is not to be a guardian. It is something a lot more mystical, ancient, and in Doylist terms, plot-centric. Lily's purpose, while more abstract, is crucial to Harry's defeat of Voldemort due to her sacrificial love ensuring his survival in the first place.
This is why both Snape and Lily start receiving prominence in the narrative around the same time. In the 5th book, James comes off his pedestal, and significantly, his narrative stand-in, Sirius, dies at the same time. Harry is no longer a child with the death of Sirius, and with the new knowledge of the prophecy, must fully come into his own and take his place as the most important figure in the war. What he needs now is more relevant, more powerful, something to defeat Voldemort.
Lily's role in the books has always been a mystical one. It is her love that defeats Voldemort, a choice made possible by Snape. Her role in the narrative was always mysterious. We didn't know anything about her, really, until the last book, because her purpose is not pertinent at the level of character as much as it is theme and plot, both of which are also exemplified by Snape. Both Snape and Lily are figures shrouded in mystery, seemingly in the background, until it is made clear that it is their choices that are most influential to the entire plot of Harry Potter unfolding. Similarly, it is when Lily's role in Harry's life - which is the defeat of Voldemort once and for all to ensure her son's survival - is fulfilled, that Snape, her narrative stand-in, dies.
It also isn't a coincidence that you can see this symbolised in more subtle ways. Sirius Black is the figure in the story most associated with dementors, which are a symbol of his own grief and agony over James' death, and Harry's Patronus is a stag, and in this book, the patronus is a spiritual guardian to protect against despair and darkness, which is what Sirius is for Harry, a comforting, if imperfect, parental figure with whom he can be a child.
In the later books, the Patronus has another function, to deliver messages and lead a lost person to find their way back. We see this in the Half Blood Prince, with Snape going projection central over Tonks' patronus when they find Harry in the train. And more directly in the Deathly Hallows, when Lily's Patronus leads Harry to the Sword in the lake, which helps him destroy the Horcrux and a part of Voldemort, thereby fulfilling Lily's role in the narrative, of defeating Voldemort and ensuring Harry's survival.
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