I'm officially backing out of the consciousness and perception of free will thing before I feel compelled to search for journal articles. (I am such a geek.)

Certainly Harry was trying to do the right thing. I just don't get the people that say that therefore Severus has no right to be ticked.

I think it was the thing in book one where Dumbledore said that James and Severus interacted like Draco and Harry that did it. Harry must be like James, so Snape equals Malfoy, thus Snape was an arrogant rich pureblood. QED. Now there are more holes in that argument than in a chain-link fence, but I'm pretty sure that's where it came from.