Does Snape owe Harry his life after PoA? (Re: [HPforGrownups] Re: Who's at fault for Snape v. Harry?)

[Mary]

No: HPFGUIDX 68003

On Mon, Jul 07, 2003, Mary wrote:
> There seems to be a concept of honour, possibly involving some kind of
> magical tie, involved here that is foreign to most of our Muggle moral
> intuitions. So within the moral context of the stories, I find it
> plausible that the same kind of bond that was forged between Snape and
> James Potter when James saved Snape's life, and between Harry and
> Pettigrew when Harry saved Pettigrew's life, may now have created a
> Harry-Snape bond of life-debt.

I've just thought of a possible counter-argument: a (magical?) life-debt
is only created when someone saves your life, in particular -- that is
they deliberately do something with the intention of saving you from
harm (rather than saving you from harm as a side-effect of achieving
another action).

James's actions on the night of the Prank saved Snape, in particular. He
deliberately set out to save Snape's life. Harry's actions saved
Pettigrew in particular.

Saving Snape, and maybe even saving Sirius, was less clearly what Harry
was setting out to do that night when he cast the Patronus -- it could
be read as saving Hermione, saving himself, saving everyone, or some
kind of fighting instinct.

It's probably not the case that the survivors of Voldemort's first reign
of terror *all* owe Harry a life-debt because he saved them from the
hypothectical deaths that many would have met otherwise. Even the people
next on Voldemort's "to kill" list after the Potters probably don't owe
Harry a life-debt. Otherwise the wizarding world would be riddled with
life-debts, and there's no evidence that this is the case.

You could make a similar argument for why Snape doesn't owe Harry a
life-debt -- Harry's actions were not motivated by saving Snape, they
saved Snape as a side-effect, and hence Snape does not owe Harry a
life-debt.

-Mary