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He didn't care that Harry and James were going to be killed - his only worry was for Lily.

I think it's clear from the book that we have to look at the story as, in part, a Christian allegory. And thus we must see Snape in a different light.

Snape had been twisted by evil his whole life -- he was very much a child, an infant even, in the selfish way he interacted with other people.

He had only this one pure thing, his love for Lily, which he treasured to the very end. He knew love; he knew remorse; he had "good" in him, even if he fell far short of actually being good.

But that describes all of us ... and Christ died for us while we were yet bad.

Harry understood that, which is why his kid's middle name was "Severus."

The things DD asked Snape to do were truly difficult in the way that they asked him to do evil acts, risk life and limb and more, and to be subject to the hatred of all who were good and nice. To betray and appear to betray all around him. One scene I thought particularly pivotal was right after that when Harry told Neville about the snake. There was that agonizing moment when he realized all that he was asking Neville to do and how his manipulation of a willing accomplice was just what Dumbledore had been doing to him, Harry, all along. That moment where he saw the depth of it and knew just how wrong it was but that he had to do it. That scene I found very stirring and it only further built up the one later where Neville actually did against certain death, what he was asked to do. The way Harry was there at the last moment to save him from the result took me back to COS where Harry plunged blindly ahead through Dumbledore’s manipulation and there, at the moment where all was lost DD stepped in (Via the phoenix) to rescue his ‘servant’ from certain death. I think Harry learned a lesson there, with Neville, about what it means to be trusted and the responsibility that comes with it that I am not sure DD every really understood.

I understand. I was really irritated when she killed him off because I felt that he had recognized and made up for the sins in his past. But after thinking about it - his death was necessary (for lack of a better word). He was a bitter man and would have continued to live an unhappy life.