"There is a curious phenomenon with muggles", Dumbledore said one day, unprompted, in that playful, academic, distant tone of his, and Snape did not respond. "My friends at magical law enforcement and at the Muggle liaison department told me about it. A Muggle with no link to the wizarding world whatsoever convinces himself, and others, that he has some supernatural ability or some link to supernatural beings. Of course their so-called powers aren't even remotely impressive by our standards, but even so, they often are able to gather followers and sometimes, even lead them to do unspeakable things, or even to their death".

Snape seems more and more distant.

Dumbledore continued: "Do you really not see what this has to do with your situation?"

"Excuse me, Albus, but are you accusing the Dark Lord of somehow faking his skill or are you accusing me of being anything like the idiotic Muggles?"
Dumbledore realized this was going to take some time. "Voldemort's powers are real. everything always pointed to an exceptional wizard from the very beginning. But everything also always pointed at a controlling, sadistic, manipulative human. You can't separate magic from the wizard, Severus".

Severus scoffed at him. "He didn't imperius any of us."

"Again, you are missing the point. These people, cult leaders, did not, could not, imperious anyone. In a completely non-magical fashion, they eroded their followers' ability to think for themselves. They prey on them at times of crisis and confusion, and offer certainty and belonging and community. This phenomenon is almost unheard of in the magical world, and even now, I'm afraid our community is reluctant to see it for what it is, but it is only helping reinforce the myth of Voldemort." Severus winced at the name. Dumbledore, unfazed, continued. "He was an exceptional wizard, but he controlled his death eaters in ways that were completely human." He paused. "And the Muggles were not idiotic. These unfortunate souls are simply victims."

Whatever Dumbledore said, Snape couldn't conceive of himself as a victim.

Lily and James were dead, so many others were in St. Mungo's forever, the Longbottoms – a walking shadow of their former selves. He certainly couldn't conceive of, say, the LeStranges, as victims, or of Mulciber, who took perverse pleasure in Muggle children, then obliviated them, while no one among the death eaters, including Snape himself, did anything to stop this.
"I suggest you brew yourself some calming draught and learn a little about Muggle psychology", Dumbledore said. "It might seem like a waste of time, but we remain woefully uneducated on the non-magical part of our psyches, and it is, after all, the most powerful."

Some more of Albus's drivel. If he kept him out of Azkaban just to subject them to this nonsense until the Dark Lord was vanquished, he didn't know if this was indeed preferable. But the more thought about it, the more sense it made.

No wizard ever attempted to control a large number of Muggles, for fear of alerting magical law enforcement without incurring any discernible benefit, and if they wanted to control wizards – there were magical ways to do it. But to accomplish what the Dark Lord accomplished was unprecedented in magical history. And after all, resisting the Imperius curse was not so hard…

He remembered what the Dark Lord used to say to him. "Our kind will sooner protect the muggles than protect you against the violence he subjected you and your poor mother to. The Muggle borns will choose their family over you every time. It is not your fault, and there is nothing wrong with you. In fact, I am sure she will come to regret it. She simply fails to see what you see, to know what you know". Bitterly, Severus agreed with him. Lily chose a man who was no kinder or more magically gifted than he was, because of his higher status, and because he knew better than to call her a mudblood. But of course, James never had to endure to kind of treatment that Severus did.

The Dark Lord offered forgiveness, respect, recognition, community, even something resembling love and friendship - though always with strings attached. To Barty Crouch he offered a father figure, always attentive, always full of praise.
Bellatrix seemed to have everything, from status to riches to prodigious skill, but she longed for a life of passion, to be loved by an equal, by a superior wizard, even, to perfect and sharpen her skills. Essentially forced to marry a man she grew up with as a brother, she was trapped having everything she was always taught to want, but she never had what she needed, until she accepted the Dark Mark. As for the others, who knew. Crabbe and Goyle Sr. were simply too imbecilic not to follow Malfoy, it seemed, and Mulciber and Mancair simply enjoyed the free reign of cruelty. Regulus Black, surely eager to prove to his parents that he wasn't his brother, followed his aunt, no questions asked.

To each of them, the Dark Lord promised what they wanted the most, as if they had been standing in front of the Mirror of Erised. To each, only when they were alone. As he "confided in Severus" about his Muggle father, he confided in Crouch about his sense of abandonment, and in Bellatrix about his longing to further the dark arts in a world that will not allow it, and so on and so forth, never exactly lying, but never truthful, never vulnerable, and always making sure each death eater believed he was his favorite, or second in command, or the most faithful.

And one of Snape's favorite feelings was the feeling that he was valued and seen.