16 Times The Heroes In 'Harry Potter' Were Just As Bad As The Villains

Snape is established as a good guy when it turns out that he was Dumbledore's double agent all along. That doesn't mean everything he did was an act, as his bullying of Neville was for his own fun.

Neville spends the first five years at Hogwarts dreading being around Snape, as the latter bullies him relentlessly by mocking him in class and hurling personal insults at him. This results in Snape being the form Neville's boggart takes, proving he so severely traumatized the boy that Snape is his biggest fear. 

Snape's bullying of Neville aside, this move is completely inexcusable, as he intended to harm an innocent animal. In Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, when the students are supposed to be making a shrinking potion, Snape knows that a wrong concoction will turn into poison and tells Neville that he'll make his toad drink the potion to see if he made it right, knowing that Neville is useless at concocting potions and is guaranteed to make poison instead of the shrinking potion.

It's Hermione's heroic act of giving Neville instructions under her breath that allows him to create the right potion, which saves the life of the toad by turning it into a tadpole instead of poisoning it. To this, Snape takes points from Gryffindor since he wanted to see the toad be poisoned.

James Potter is lauded in the entire series for being a good guy who was killed in his youth. However, Harry finds out that James was a bully, and that he and Sirius had hexed people just for the heck of it. It is said that he "outgrew" this, but considering James was only 21 when he perished, and was on the run for a year or two, he was basically a bully for just about his whole life.

What's worse is that James picked on Snape to the point where Snape developed severe trust issues and became bitter beyond redemption. In Snape's memories, Harry sees James bullying him due to Sirius being bored, and James proceeds to pelt Snape with spells to make Sirius laugh. He also takes Snape's clothes off with magic to further humiliate him while belittling him in front of Lily since he knows Snape is his romantic rival. This bullying wasn't just for Snape, as it's revealed that James picked on just about anyone because he was too arrogant with his natural talent.

Hermione isn't wrong when she brands the servitude of house-elves as slave labor, seeing as nobody other than her considers the ethics of making these creatures do their bidding or thinks that outright hitting or cursing at them makes a difference. Sirius certainly doesn't consider Kreacher to be worthy of care, as he severely mistreats the house-elf by hurling things at him and screaming at Kreacher as his exclusive mode of communication. 

The other characters even laugh whenever Sirius mistreats Kreacher, considering it a source of amusement, with the justification that Kreacher is "ugly." Kreacher openly weeps in front of Sirius, only for the latter to throw him out or toss around Kreacher's cherished possessions. It gets worse when one realizes that Kreacher was treated better by the insane Bellatrix than by Harry's beloved uncle Sirius.

It's pure luck that saves Harry in the end, as Dumbledore's plan was to prepare him for the moment he can walk up to Voldemort and face his demise. Voldemort chooses to take Harry's blood to make his new body, which grants Harry protection from Voldemort since they both share the blood that was magically protected by Harry's mother. Dumbledore never anticipated this - instead, he feels glad that Harry can now have a chance of survival.

His original plan was to simply make Harry aware of the Horcruxes to destroy them, while using Snape to keep Harry safe until all the Horcruxes were gone. At that point, Harry (being the last Horcrux himself) would skip along to Voldemort to get himself killed. This is essentially the biggest betrayal in the series since all of Dumbledore's relationship with Harry is just a sham that conveniently gets side-stepped due to Voldemort taking Harry's blood.

It becomes a running gag to see Myrtle lose her head in anger whenever anyone makes a comment on her deceased nature. However, it's not really a laughing matter since she was slain by the basilisk at a time when she had been crying due to being ostracized. Harry and his friends never ponder this, as they consider Myrtle a nuisance and think her sadness over her demise isn't important.

In Half-Blood Prince, Ron intentionally mocks her when he suggests Myrtle's newest friend (later revealed to be Malfoy) lives in a toilet S-bend like her, then laughs when she leaves in tears. Harry doesn't react - other than feeling glad Ron is in a better mood after making fun of Myrtle.