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Okay, there need to be counter arguments to any excellent idea, so I'll do my best to come up with one.
1) Since Snape avenging Lily is taken as "personal" and Hagrid and the twins torturing Dudley is called "non-personal" in your post, there needs to be an explainable distinction between who counts as being within the circle of "personal" friends and who doesn't.
Personally I get the feeling that the trio and his parents would count as Harry's "personal" friends, along with Sirius and maybe Dumbledore. That's judged solely from the perspective of who gets to avenge whom without being punished for it by the narrative, which invites the criticism of picking the categories to make the data fit the theory, but I think if you looked at the examples in canon from a strictly data-driven perspective like this, you would still successfully uncover the same disturbing pattern of "allowed revenge = more detached friends / disallowed revenge = more personal friends."
The only problem there would be James supposedly dying for Lily and Harry, and Lily dying for Harry being heroic (TM). But you know what? Since this is about cruelty, those aren't cases supporting an argument against your claim at all. Frighteningly, it's actually James' *lack* of a wand (something that would have allowed him to make an attack against Voldemort in defense of his personal loved ones) that makes his act of just up and dying then and there *heroic* in this universe. He didn't avenge his family for being targeted and persecuted by Voldemort. Nor did Lily avenge her now-dead husband when Voldemort came up to her and Harry. Nor did she lift a finger to inflict so much as a pinprick of pain on Vodlemort's person. The enemy is coming to attack her personal loved one, and instead of trying to actively fight him and stop it she just ups and dies. Ergo she is a hero and her loved one is magically protected for the foreseeable future.
2) It seems to me there are some cases going directly against your argument, and looking at them it seems like there's a consistent ingredient there:
-Hermione hurting Marietta
(She had directly betrayed not only Harry but also Hermione, who had suffered as badly from the DA getting canceled, so you can't really say this revenge was 100% altruistic. Plus, you'd think Harry is as personally close to Hermione as Remus was to James, and we *do* see Harry and Ron doing nothing to physically hurt Hermione's torturers during their struggle to escape Malfoy Manor.)
-Hermione setting centaurs on Umbridge
(Again, if it's for Harry's sake -- the detentions etc. -- it's for a pretty close personal friend, and she's doing this to escape Umbridge's clutch herself as much as she is to free Harry and Ron.)
-Hermione caging Rita Skeeter
(Again with the personal friend thing, plus in GoF Skeeter has been writing vicious gossip about Harry *and* Hermione.)
-Molly killing Bellatrix
(Yes, she had tortured Neville's parents and killed Harry's godfather, but nonetheless Molly is starting this duel in direct retaliation to Bella having made an attempt on Ginny's life. If that's not personal vengeance I don't know what is.)
-In Snape's memory, Petunia hurt Lily's feelings by hating her and calling her a freak. In later years, Lily reportedly torments Petunia (all in good fun, I'm sure) by turning tea cups into mice and making them chase after the middle-class-life-obsessed Petunia.
-In HBP, Hermione physically attacks Ron by setting transfigured birds on him, in jealousy over Ron kissing Lavender. This is supposed to be permissible and cute. I fail to understand why.
So female action-takers seem to be exempt from your patterning structure -- at least when their victims of personal vengeance are other females, or their own love interests. Something tells me, though, that Lily is probably still disallowed from attacking Voldemort in revenge of getting her husband killed, or in retaliation to him coming to hurt Harry... Don't ask me why, but a female attacking a male (unless it's *in spite of* her inner love for him) just *feels* disallowed in the Potterverse. I'd be very happy if somebody could disprove me on this point.
1) Since Snape avenging Lily is taken as "personal" and Hagrid and the twins torturing Dudley is called "non-personal" in your post, there needs to be an explainable distinction between who counts as being within the circle of "personal" friends and who doesn't.
Personally I get the feeling that the trio and his parents would count as Harry's "personal" friends, along with Sirius and maybe Dumbledore. That's judged solely from the perspective of who gets to avenge whom without being punished for it by the narrative, which invites the criticism of picking the categories to make the data fit the theory, but I think if you looked at the examples in canon from a strictly data-driven perspective like this, you would still successfully uncover the same disturbing pattern of "allowed revenge = more detached friends / disallowed revenge = more personal friends."
The only problem there would be James supposedly dying for Lily and Harry, and Lily dying for Harry being heroic (TM). But you know what? Since this is about cruelty, those aren't cases supporting an argument against your claim at all. Frighteningly, it's actually James' *lack* of a wand (something that would have allowed him to make an attack against Voldemort in defense of his personal loved ones) that makes his act of just up and dying then and there *heroic* in this universe. He didn't avenge his family for being targeted and persecuted by Voldemort. Nor did Lily avenge her now-dead husband when Voldemort came up to her and Harry. Nor did she lift a finger to inflict so much as a pinprick of pain on Vodlemort's person. The enemy is coming to attack her personal loved one, and instead of trying to actively fight him and stop it she just ups and dies. Ergo she is a hero and her loved one is magically protected for the foreseeable future.
2) It seems to me there are some cases going directly against your argument, and looking at them it seems like there's a consistent ingredient there:
-Hermione hurting Marietta
(She had directly betrayed not only Harry but also Hermione, who had suffered as badly from the DA getting canceled, so you can't really say this revenge was 100% altruistic. Plus, you'd think Harry is as personally close to Hermione as Remus was to James, and we *do* see Harry and Ron doing nothing to physically hurt Hermione's torturers during their struggle to escape Malfoy Manor.)
-Hermione setting centaurs on Umbridge
(Again, if it's for Harry's sake -- the detentions etc. -- it's for a pretty close personal friend, and she's doing this to escape Umbridge's clutch herself as much as she is to free Harry and Ron.)
-Hermione caging Rita Skeeter
(Again with the personal friend thing, plus in GoF Skeeter has been writing vicious gossip about Harry *and* Hermione.)
-Molly killing Bellatrix
(Yes, she had tortured Neville's parents and killed Harry's godfather, but nonetheless Molly is starting this duel in direct retaliation to Bella having made an attempt on Ginny's life. If that's not personal vengeance I don't know what is.)
-In Snape's memory, Petunia hurt Lily's feelings by hating her and calling her a freak. In later years, Lily reportedly torments Petunia (all in good fun, I'm sure) by turning tea cups into mice and making them chase after the middle-class-life-obsessed Petunia.
-In HBP, Hermione physically attacks Ron by setting transfigured birds on him, in jealousy over Ron kissing Lavender. This is supposed to be permissible and cute. I fail to understand why.
So female action-takers seem to be exempt from your patterning structure -- at least when their victims of personal vengeance are other females, or their own love interests. Something tells me, though, that Lily is probably still disallowed from attacking Voldemort in revenge of getting her husband killed, or in retaliation to him coming to hurt Harry... Don't ask me why, but a female attacking a male (unless it's *in spite of* her inner love for him) just *feels* disallowed in the Potterverse. I'd be very happy if somebody could disprove me on this point.