Shorting as a retail investor is mostly a suckers bet that will bankrupt you. I feel nothing for institutional investors as the entire system is heavily tilted in their favor.

One can only hope that the counter-party was Melvin Capital.

There were at least two counterparties (one selling the shares, one eventually buying them), one of which was exceedingly unlikely to be Melvin.

Melvin and 2 other institutional investors held almost all of the shorted contracts. They were extremely over-promised and got caught out doing it. That's why the squeeze worked in the first place. They could have exited early, taken the initial loss and walked away. The WSB crowd would have picked up a small profit and it would have been done. Instead, the smaller institutional shorts tried to hold and got crushed.

Well yes, but only one counter-party had to be the "big loser" in order for OP to be a big winner, and there is a decent chance in that trade the loser was Melvin.