Life debts (Was: Pettigrew's life debt)

[justcarol67]

No: HPFGUIDX 125690


Finwitch wrote:
<snip>
> I wonder-- how many life-debts have the Healers gained? Is it enough 
> to pay the hospital fee? You know - Healers who heal their patients 
> from otherwise terminal diseases/poisonings/whatever-- they must
have gained loads of life-debts... 
> 
> Finwitch

Carol responds:
Without considering how life debts are paid back (and the whole Snape
question in that regard since it's already been thoroughly discussed),
I think that a life debt may not result from the routine, day-to-day
business of healers and so forth. More likely it involves saving
someone when you're not obligated to do so by anything other than
morality or ethics (it's a healer's *job* to save people) and when the
person who does the saving expects no reward for it--no money, no
Order of Merlin, maybe not even gratitude.  Harry was concerned for
Lupin and Black, not for Peter or himself. James was concerned (I
think) for the consequences to Remus and Sirius if the so-called Prank
succeeded, not for Severus or himself. (Or so it appears from the
limited information available.) So I suggest that selflessness or
altruism is a factor in incurring a life debt.

Possibly there's also an element of risk. Certainly that was the case
for James saving Severus from the werewolf; he placed himself in
danger to save an enemy. It's not quite as clear in the case of Harry
saving Peter Pettigrew. 

Certainly both altruism and risk apply in Harry's saving Ginny. So if
life debts operate as they seem to me to do, she certainly owes him
one. But I'm less sure about Mr. Weasley. Harry wasn't in physical
danger. Would the risk of being thought mad count?

Thoughts, anyone?

Carol, who thinks that Snape's loyalty to Dumbledore goes beyond the
life debt but is too tired to speculate on it now