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Severus Snape was a great man, he was an exceptional man.

But he was not a good man.

He was a bigot and a bully, he was an entitled prick and blatantly abused his students, and he was unfathomably cruel and bitter and spiteful.

He saw a boy, a small, hopeful boy, new to magic, so excited and nervous that he felt like he had to write everything down so he wouldn’t forget it, and he made him feel stupid, and ignorant, and like he was worth so much less than everyone around him, and thoroughly broke his spirit.

He was so hateful that it was routine and expected of him to leave his new eleven-year-old students in tears, and had become such a habit that nobody saw anything wrong with it.

He terrorised an abused child for three years to the point where when he stood in front of a magical creature that reflects one’s fears, it did not turn into the uncle that dropped him out of windows or pushed him into deep water when he couldn’t swim; it did not become the grandmother that always belittled everything he found joy in until he was a stuttering, anxious mess, who believed he was utterly useless; it did not turn into his parents, as they were being tortured into insanity, nor the people who put them into that state; it became his teacher, a person he should have been able to trust in a place where he should have felt safe.

But he threw himself between a group of students he hated and a werewolf who had nearly killed him, once, without thinking about it, without even raising his wand, as though he hoped that the monster would be so preoccupied with tearing him to pieces that he might be able to buy those three small lives some time to run.

But the look on his face, when Dumbledore backed him into a corner and forced Severus to kill him; he was hurt, and angry at Dumbledore for adding this blood to his hands, but he also hated himself, for both not coming up with another plan and for being pragmatic enough to still go through with it even when he didn’t want to.

But the way he was ready to throw his life away without a second thought to protect the woman he loved, even when she had utterly rejected him years ago, because it was his fault that she was in more danger now and if slitting his throat would have guaranteed her safety he would have done it in a heartbeat.

But the way that he clawed his way through an existence where he found no joy, no happiness; no peace nor acceptance nor healing, for sixteen goddamn years because Dumbledore said that the Dark Lord was not gone. Because when You-Know-Who rose again they would need a spy. Because it all culminated on the floor of a filthy shack, in pain, bleeding out. Because the last thing he saw was the face of his greatest tormenter, holding the eyes of the only woman he ever loved. Because sixteen years ago Severus Snape failed, and so he lived one of the most unhappy, lonely, bitterest lives one could ever lead. Because he owed a debt, and he would pay it back with his blood and his life, in threefold if need be.

Severus Snape was a great man, an exceptional man. But he was not a good one.

And, for all his spell creation and cunning plots and potions genius, what he never figured out was that greatness is no balm for the wounds he inflicted with a lack of kindness.