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

[Mary]

No: HPFGUIDX 68005

On Mon, Jul 07, 2003, mkaliz wrote:
> Snape's life was in danger precisely because of the actions of
> Harry/Hermione/Ron/Sirius/Remus in the Shack. The fact that they then
> "saved" him may well mitigate the circumstances of their acts (i.e.
> hexing a professor, withholding critical information that was relevant
> to an ongoing criminal investigation) but I find it a complete stretch
> to say that Snape should feel *indebted* to any of them for 1)
> knocking him unconscious, and then 2)oh-by-the-way making sure that
> they didn't add manslaugther to their list of bad decisions that night. 

It seems to me that Snape doesn't feel that he *should* be indebted to
James for saving him from Sirius's prank in school either, but there is
some evidence (Dumbledore's word, at the moment) that nevertheless he is
indebted -- reluctantly indebted, very angry about being indebted, but
indebted nonetheless. A life-debt to James is not something Snape wants,
and not something he thinks James's actions *deserved* (and with the OOP
revelations, posters here may agree with Snape), but it seems like it
exists anyway.

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.

The situation with the James-Snape debt is instructive: in JKR's world
the last minute action of someone who was closely involved in creating
the dangerous situation in the first place is still sufficient to create
the life-debt bond.

-Mary