@idril-fay replied to your post: “I think I found a fragment which may be seen as Remus’ opinion on his...”:
I am a Lupin fan as well as a Snape fan, and I think this meta is fair. But I also think that the way Lupin famed it was not so intentional on his part but came from a place of guilt and avoidance of that. A subconscious voicing of separating himself from the conflict between him and Snape, while also maybe choosing to avoid going into some details on the matter with Harry. Cause he dose try to avoid his issues. I mean, what he says to Sirius about never standing up to them about Snape clearly shows that he acknowledges his own wrongdoings on the issue, and feels remorse about it, but of course he can’t bring himself to ever do anything about it, like apologize to Snape. And let’s be honest, such an apology wouldn’t go over well with Snape anyway, so Lupin avoids it.
I do actually agree with this assessment of it being not exactly intentional. More than once Remus seems torn between what his own deeds mean to himself and to the others. In POA he admits that the night wanderings during the full moon nights at least once ended up with some “near misses”, but at the same time it means a lot to him that he had his friends together with him (POA, chapter 18). When Harry confronts him and Sirius about SWM, he does admit his compliance, but later he will say thing that I personally read as an attempt to shift at least part of the blame on Severus himself for being an oddball with a strong interest in the Dark Arts (OotP, chapter 29). In DH, he decides that leaving Tonks, pregnant at the time, would be the best thing to do under the circumstances and something that James would have wanted him to do (DH, chapter 11).
In general it creates the picture of a man who is not a bad person, but does some bad things sometimes and... I’m not exactly sure how to phrase it. He realises some things he does are bad, is deeply uncomfortable with this knowledge, and sometimes tries to look for some justification for his deeds to make himself feel better I suppose, because he’s not proud of some of them. Which is very human and rates higher in my book than absolute conviction “I can do no wrong no matter what I do”.
On the whole, there is a constant duality in Remus’ character. He’s a werewolf, but hides the truth about his werewolf self for the obvious reasons (I don’t blame him for that). He’s also a flawed human being, who does his best to hide his darker self from the view. And that’s what in my opinion makes his character the most interesting.
