wait, there are people out there who like snape better than james??????
remember the time snape's classmates used an unforgivable curse on mary macdonald and when lily confronted snape about it he said it was funny and compared it to marauders' pranks? let's also not forget that he made several dark spells during his time at hogwarts. and he joined voldemort because he wanted to. no one forced him to become a death eater, he did it himself. lily was a muggle born and death eaters wanted to kill her and other muggle borns, but snape was fine with that? he knew what voldemort was doing and what he was capable of but he still joined him. he told voldemort about the prophecy and if voldemort wanted to kill neville snape would be fine with that. if voldemort killed just harry snape would be fine with that. but oh voldemort killed lily, the woman snape was obsessing over and suddenly all is forgotten? and that whole time james potter, a wealthy pureblood, was a part of the order of the phoenix and he actively fought voldemort. remember how voldemort killed james when james didn't have his wand? so james was killed, not defeated. and he died not knowing if his wife or his son are alive and well. he sacrificed himself. and again, if james had died and lily had lived do you think snape would even feel a little tiny bit sorry for lily and her son? no. he would be proud.
and don't use that "james was a bully" line to argue this right now. james maybe was rude toward snape during his time at hogwarts, and yes that was not okay. after hogwarts, james grew out of his bully phase, but snape grew into his. he used his position as a teacher to abuse his students to the point where neville's worst fear wasn't the person who tortured his parents, but snape, his professor. he was rude to harry, told him awful stuff about his father who harry had never met. snape was awful to hermione and insulted her many times. and many many other students were abused by him.
the fact that he had a bad childhood doesn't excuse his actions. sirius had a horrible family and was disowned, harry was abused for years, neville was abused by his grandma and his parents were in a mental hospital, luna watched her mother die, many people had bad childhoods but grew up to be good people.
