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Several different lines of argument are used to explain why Severus is behaving in ways that Harry takes as hostile. One is that Severus had to act this way to maintain his cover as Death Eater: That when Voldemort returned Severus could point to his treatment of Harry as evidence that he remained a true DE and was never influenced by Dumbledore's agenda (and this would be supported by the testament of sons of DEs in his class if needed). A different argument is that Severus has strict and demanding standards (both academic and behavioral) as a teacher and Harry repeatedly fails those, thus bringing upon himself sarcasm, wrath, loss of points and detentions, as the case may be. And of course the argument more common among non-fans of Severus, that from the moment Severus saw the physical resemblance between Harry and his father Severus started taking on Harry his unreconciled enmity towards James (whether consciously or unconsciously).
This relationship becomes mutually hostile and results in Harry and his friends mistrusting Severus time and again - when they thought he was cursing Harry's broom and trying to steal the Philosophers' Stone, in the Shrieking Shack in POA, when they went to the Ministry in OOTP despite having already delivered him what should have been a sufficient warning to the Order and when Harry suspects Severus is a party to Draco's plot in HBP (well, he was in a way, but not how Harry expected). Severus' outburst in the Shrieking Shack ("... I have just saved your neck; you should be thanking me on bended knee!...") shows that Severus was offended by this state of affairs, he really expected to be trusted by Harry.
If Severus' behavior was strategic, intending to act the DE part - why would he expect Harry to trust him? Or is it that since their relationship already had a hostile start (whether because of Harry's conduct as a student or because of Severus' unsettled account with James) Severus decided to use it as part of his justification to Voldemort and the DEs (as we see him do with Bellatrix in HBP)? Did Severus expect Harry, perhaps with the aid of more trusted authority figures such as Minerva or Albus, to see the protection beyond the wrath and snark?
How does Albus fit in? In the early books he contributes to the distrust between the two - in PS he says Severus saved Harry so he could hate James' memory in peace, in POA he blames Severus for the need to make a daring rescue of Sirius. But later Albus reassures Harry that Severus was never suspected with any Dark activity since the first war (GOF), tells him how Severus warned the Order and searched for Harry and his friends in the forest, refrains from mentioning Severus' part in the matter of the prophecy until Harry learns of it himself (OOTP vs HBP) and tells Harry again and again that he trusts Professor Snape (HBP). Yet in OOTP he also says he expected Severus to have gotten over the past enough to teach Harry Occlumency successfully. So did Albus initially think he was supporting Severus' cover story but changed gears when he saw things were going badly? Or was he deliberately preventing the reconciliation of undesired hostility because it served his own plots?
This relationship becomes mutually hostile and results in Harry and his friends mistrusting Severus time and again - when they thought he was cursing Harry's broom and trying to steal the Philosophers' Stone, in the Shrieking Shack in POA, when they went to the Ministry in OOTP despite having already delivered him what should have been a sufficient warning to the Order and when Harry suspects Severus is a party to Draco's plot in HBP (well, he was in a way, but not how Harry expected). Severus' outburst in the Shrieking Shack ("... I have just saved your neck; you should be thanking me on bended knee!...") shows that Severus was offended by this state of affairs, he really expected to be trusted by Harry.
If Severus' behavior was strategic, intending to act the DE part - why would he expect Harry to trust him? Or is it that since their relationship already had a hostile start (whether because of Harry's conduct as a student or because of Severus' unsettled account with James) Severus decided to use it as part of his justification to Voldemort and the DEs (as we see him do with Bellatrix in HBP)? Did Severus expect Harry, perhaps with the aid of more trusted authority figures such as Minerva or Albus, to see the protection beyond the wrath and snark?
How does Albus fit in? In the early books he contributes to the distrust between the two - in PS he says Severus saved Harry so he could hate James' memory in peace, in POA he blames Severus for the need to make a daring rescue of Sirius. But later Albus reassures Harry that Severus was never suspected with any Dark activity since the first war (GOF), tells him how Severus warned the Order and searched for Harry and his friends in the forest, refrains from mentioning Severus' part in the matter of the prophecy until Harry learns of it himself (OOTP vs HBP) and tells Harry again and again that he trusts Professor Snape (HBP). Yet in OOTP he also says he expected Severus to have gotten over the past enough to teach Harry Occlumency successfully. So did Albus initially think he was supporting Severus' cover story but changed gears when he saw things were going badly? Or was he deliberately preventing the reconciliation of undesired hostility because it served his own plots?
However, it is not JUST Snape that Harry does not trust and Albus adds to this. In the first book, the kids DO try warning Minerva that someone was going after the Stone that night.
I don't rightly remember whether this was Harry's idea to go to Minerva or not, but I cannot actually recall him ever going to her after she dismissed their warning. IF I remember correctly, they 'thought' about her in bk5 before going off to the ministry, but she was already at St. Mungo's.
Either way, come bk2 when Harry had info regarding the entrance to the Chamber of Secrets, he and Ron enlist Lockhart's help - not the other teachers. Even after witnessing that the other teachers held little regard for Lockhart.
Ever since 'saving the day' in bk1, Harry has consistently kept it all among his contemporaries. And I believe it has a lot to do with Albus' rewarding the trio at the end of bk1.
YES - Harry did keep the Stone from Voldy. However, Albus' trap in the mirror would have kept Voldy there indefinitely - and as per Albus' warning to Harry - men have gone mad staring into that mirror. In other words, the stone would actually have been safer if Harry had not gone asfter it at all.
Yet instead of being punished (for almost allowing Voldy to get his hands on the Stone) Harry was rewarded with the House Cup. And the ONLY reason Voldy did NOT get the Stone was because Quirrel could not touch Harry because of Lily's 'Love' protection. Something previously unknown.
So, Harry is left with the impression that he saved the Stone (rather than endangered it) and believes from then on that he knows more than any other adult save Albus.
And I think that this is the beginning of Albus' teaching Harry that 'only he' can fix the situation with Voldy - all leading up to the fact that Harry must let Voldy kill him. All part of making Harry belkieve that it really DOES come down to just him. That he must not rely on adults.
For IF Harry ever felt he could rely on adults, then he would be looking to THEM to end the war. The way wars are usually fought.
I'll come back later, after I've thought more specifically about Snape in all this. -- Hwyla
it's true that i was bewildered by dumbledore awarding gryffindor with house points so that they won the house cup and thought: "for what?"
i always thought that fact was established when dumbledore told harry how his father had saved severus' life without mentioning to him in the first place that the marauders had endangered it. as far as i remember it came up because snape told the truth to harry.
maybe dumbledore was concerned about voldemort's ability to enter harry's mind and fostered the dislike to protect snape?
But then, right through book 6, I really though Albus Dumbledore was emphasizing the need for Harry and Severus to work together to defeat Voldemort. I thought love between "enemies" would have something to do with the solution to the Voldemort problem Now, I just don't know what to think.
but i think that dumbledore was like a general. he was ready to give his life and expected his soldiers to do the same. and when it came to soldiers, snape was certainly his best soldier. and generals never hesitate to make sacrifices.
as long as he thought he could save snape he did, but i think in book seven - after losing so much to voldemort he was also desperate.
strangely what saddened me most was that in the epilogue - when all the sacrifices that snape had made were known - dumbledore didn't even mention him when he and harry were at king's cross.
Was Severus deliberately hostile to Harry because of a plan of his own (such as maintaining his DE image)? If so can he really complain that Albus plays into that hostility? And how did Severus hope to have Harry trust him when needed (such as in the Shrieking Shack)?
As it is, he sends Severus into battle blindfolded. If he is a general, he is like those who ordered useless and suicidal actions simply to promote their own glory. I really loathe him.
My two cents!
But was forcing Severus to tear his soul and framing him with the Elder Wand really a good strategy? Albus' claimed reasons to have wanted Severus to be the one who killed him don't hold water. He could have avoided the damage to Draco's soul as well as an overly painful death by carrying some quick acting undetectable poison on his person. This would have also solved the question of the mastery of the Elder Wand. The purpose of the chosen manner of his death was that Severus be seen as the one who did it. Which was going to lead to his death if Voldemort were to seek the Elder Wand.
Harry has paid quite a high price throughout his life for Albus's notion of love.
And then he promises not to keep information from Harry any more... and spends all of Book Five doing exactly that, and Harry is so excited at even the minimal information he does receive that he doesn't ever seem to notice how much is being withheld... I was one of the few rooting for the Angry!Capslock!Harry of Book Five, because it seemed to me that he certainly had plenty to yell about. I just kept wishing he'd figure out exactly where to direct that anger.
Severus: What's My Motivation?
The Doyleist explanation is that every school story has to have a resident Mean Teacher, and Severus fills that role. However, if we're going to treat these characters as real people...
1) I don't see why maintaining his cover as a DE would require Severus to treat Harry badly. I mean, the guy's a Slytherin! They're supposed to be sneaky, right? What could be sneakier than buttering Harry up, making friends with him--and then handing him over to Voldemort! That would be much more evil than being consistently nasty to the boy, thus putting him on his guard. As the old song says, "Your enemy can't do you no harm/'Cause you know where he's coming from." (The Undisputed Truth, "Smiling Faces" That could be Dumbledore's theme song.) http://www.lyricsdownload.com/undispute
2) I think Severus is a strict and demanding teacher, although not unreasonable, particularly since he's teaching a complicated and potentially dangerous subject. (People who think Snape is mean should have had my kindergarten and fifth grade teachers. They make Snape look like--well, maybe not Gandhi, but certainly Alan Alda.) Harry is not attentive or well-behaved; in fact, he's a dumb jock. They were bound to come into conflict sooner or later.
As an aside, I'd love to see Harry's records from his previous school. Did he get in trouble there, too? And how did the other Hogwarts teachers see him? The only reference we have is when Dumbledore tells Snape they liked him, but that's not testimony directly from the teachers themselves, and DD was trying to jerk Severus around in that scene, anyway.
I do think Severus was taking out some of his ire towards James on Harry, whether he intended to or not. I also think there's a strong element of self-hatred there, since it would have been impossible, at least at first, for Snape to look at Harry and not think about his own role in the deaths of Harry's parents, particularly the Sainted Lily. Guilt often makes people act nasty toward those they have wronged.
3) I do think Severus is one of those people who has trouble judging how he comes across to other people. In his mind, he's being strict but fair; in the minds of Harry and certain others, he's being an unreasonable prick.
4) In the POA scene, there's another angle to be considered: As far as Snape knows, Sirius is a ruthless traitor who killed the Potters. He doesn't know Harry has just been told Black is innocent (of that particular crime, anyway) and instantly changed to a Sirius supporter (in a completely unrealistic instant conversion, IMO). Severus must be thinking something like, "I just rescued these dumb kids from a ruthless mass murderer--who killed Potter's parents, no less!--and a werewolf who's about to transform. Yet they're still being obnoxious and disrespectful to me! Why are they not thanking me?! Why are they not down on the floor kissing my feet in gratitude?! Can they really be so stupid they don't realize the danger they're in? I know they're Gryffindors, but still!"
Re: Severus: What's My Motivation?
Does Severus have 'buttering up' someone he doesn't genuinely admire or at least like in his acting repertoire at all? Also, since he was not planning on betraying Harry to Voldemort at any moment (until he learned that was Albus' plan all along) wasn't it risky to be known as Harry's supportive adult figure? Wasn't there the risk that one day Voldemort would wonder why his agent never made use of his relationship with Harry to lead him into some trap? After Harry's repeated escapes - in GOF and in OOTP this was no longer a concern because Voldemort decided to kill Albus first, but from the vantage point of PS wasn't this an unacceptable risk?
Re: 2: Sorry about your teachers, particularly kindergarten. My brother had a 1st grade teacher that had her class quaking in silence. It wasn't a good year for him. Fortunately we moved at the end of that year or he would have had her for 2 more years.
Re: Severus: What's My Motivation?
As for fanfic-type scenarios in which Severus is publicly harsh with the boy but secretly his mentor: 1) Dumbledore likely would have done (did do) all he could to nip such a relationship in the bud, and 2) given the series of misinterpretations, bad reactions, and so on that colored literally their every interaction from the get-go, there isn't really a moment where such a relationship could get started well, even if Severus had planned on it. I also wouldn't be surprised if Dumbles had been priming Severus to see the boy negatively before he even arrived, as a counter to any such plan, but that's supposition.
Re: Severus: What's My Motivation?
true, but i think harry was influenced by remus lupin's behaviour towards sirius - whom he trusted. by that time harry disliked snape so much that he didn't want him to be right - very much like snape who hated sirius so much he didn't want him to be innocent.
unreasonable, but maybe a typical teenage behaviour.
Dumbledore's Smiling Face, Part 1
There are a few things it's necessary to remember when evaluating the words and behavior of NPs:
1) They are pathological liars. They lie for good reasons and bad reasons, and no reason at all. They lie because they feel like it. They lie for entertainment, just to jerk other people around.
I'm sure you've heard the saying, "You can tell he's lying because his lips are moving." That's pathological lying. If you assume everything Dumbledore says is a lie, it makes interpreting his behavior a lot easier. It also makes the books much more intelligible.
2) Psychopaths lack the ability to feel love, empathy, compassion, forgiveness, or any other nurturing emotion. When they talk about those emotions, they're lying to manipulate the listener. Because they lack empathy, they believe their point of view is the only one in the world. Therefore, everybody else is just like them. So when they hear other people talking about love, compassion, or the like, they think we're lying, too! This point cannot be overemphasized.
This belief leads them to live by the Other Golden Rule: "Do unto others before they can do it unto you." Since they figure we're all just waiting to screw them over, they have to screw us over first.
3) They are the most manipulative people on earth. No matter how intelligent, well-trained, or experienced someone is, it is impossible for a normal person to out-manipulate a psychopath. The best thing you can do for your own safety is just stay away from them.
Dumbledore's Smiling Face, Part 2
Specifically regarding Severus, if you look at the chronology you've laid out, you've answered your own question. Dumbledore lied to Harry about Snape and encouraged them to hate each other for the first three years because he didn't want them to establish a friendly relationship. After third year he figured their relationship had been poisoned enough not to be a threat to him, so he could afford to back off a little.
However, he still needed them to be able to work together, so in fourth year he began to try to get Harry to mellow his attitude towards Snape a little. (He didn't have to manipulate Severus in this way because he knew he already had him bamboozled and under control.) That's where that "I trust Prof. Snape" blather comes from, as well as his other attempts to reassure Harry that Severus is trustworthy. Because he's a psychopath, he doesn't see how ridiculous that is. He just doesn't get that you can't spend three years poisoning Person A's mind against Person B, and then just snap your fingers and wipe away those years of hostility and suspicion that you've encouraged, and even set up!
That's what happened with the Occlumency lessons. Because Scumbledore saw Severus and Harry as objects he was manipulating (psychopathy), extensions of his own mind (narcissism), and not independent people with thoughts and feelings of their own, it made perfect sense to him to say, "Okay, I'm going to take these two people who hate and mistrust each other and force them to work together in the most intimate way possible [i.e., inside each other's minds], and it's all going to work out just fine because I say so!"
Then, when it didn't work out, Dumbledore blamed Snape without appearing to (because he really should have gotten over whatever-it-was years ago) and delivered one of his pseudo-profound and sensitive remarks about "some wounds are too deep for healing." That's true, but the wounds in question weren't the ones inside Severus he was referring to. They were the wounds between Harry and Severus he had created with his lies and manipulations.
Re: Dumbledore's Smiling Face, Part 2
The boy and the young man do get off on the wrong foot, and their personalities (which are almost bound to clash) and their past experiences do feed into this. However, Dumbledore manipulates both of them, throughout, for his own ends. I think you are dead right in saying that he - Dumbledore - did not want any young adult male to bond with Harry. Lupin, being a distant sort, was no great danger to him, but Severus and Sirius were. It suited him very well to confine poor Sirius to a home filled with toxic memories, where he drifted into alcoholism. And it suited him to encourage the natural antipathy between Harry and Severus. So he did it.
As for the clashing personalities, people have pointed out that Harry, given his circumstances with the Dursleys, would be naturally rebellious and distrustful of authority figures, and would see hard work and discipline as punishments. Well, Dumbledore engineered Harry's circumstances. We know from SS/PS that he was aware of them and could have mitigated them at any time. For ten years, he chose not to do so.
So yes. Dumbledore benefited from the hostility and suspicion between Harry and Severus, if only because it made it easier for him to manipulate both of them. Severus does bear some responsibility for the impasse, if only because he's an adult. But Dubmledore bears far more. He is evil, IMHO.
"Poor Severus" my foot!
Re: Dumbledore's Smiling Face, Part 2
I couldn't forgive Dumbledore after finding out that he deliberately placed Harry with the Dursleys, and giving no real reason for it when talking to Harry (that tearful "explanation" that he "loved" Harry is NOT a reason!) in the last parts of Book Four.
No given reason plus a load of emotional bollocks plus the way he's behaved toward both Snape and Harry: I put that book down convinced that Dumbledore had quite deliberately left Harry to the Dursleys' care because it set Harry up to trust only Dumbledore and to tie him very closely to the Wizarding World, thus making it easy to make him both Dumbledore's catspaw and unlikely to resist his "expected" position as Hero, even at the cost of self-sacrifice.
Think about it. If you spent eleven years without any form of love or recognition, and then someone took you to an amazing new place where everybody thought you were great, wouldn't you feel indebted to that person? Wouldn't you do anything to stay in that new place?
He even set Arabella Figg to watch Harry, doubtless reporting on him regularly; that way he could make sure the boy wouldn't form any lasting attachments to the Muggle world or find any parental role model/affection giver until Dumbledore decided to enter the picture and set himself up in that role.
Of course he may not be entirely wrong. Snape's punishments aren't the human rights violations you might suppose from his harshest critics, but it's easy to read him as unfair to Harry when we don't know if he's equally hard on everyone else. For instance, if any student who was reading in class would get humiliated like Harry in GoF, well and good. But if Snape shows that he enjoys catching out Potter in particular and then smacks him down harder than he would some random Gryffindor, that's not cool. Not even if Harry is one of his most disruptive students.
As to expecting Harry to trust him, I agree with
Finally, I'd assume Dumbledore would be delighted that Snape disliked Harry. If he doesn't bond with Lily's son, he won't make too much of a fuss when it's time to have the boy killed.
We are never shown anyone else getting caught doing the things Harry gets punished for. We don't know if Severus would have punished another Gryffindor or another Slytherin the same way. We do see in COS Slytherins getting away with tossing ingredients (and Harry thinks how unfair this is) - but in the same lesson Harry gets away with tossing a firecracker into a cauldron and actually causing an explosion and splashing students! Harry got away despite believing Severus knew it was him. Also, at least once we see Slytherins reserving misbehavior to when they are clearly out of his line of sight. So either the Slytherins expected to be punished if caught or they didn't want to embarrass Severus in a situation where letting them off would be too obviously unfair.
Heh. What does it say about me that I am a fan of Severus, and this is still (mostly) my theory?
From everything we've seen of Severus, he's emotionally 17-20 years old. He has spit-flinging tantrums at 13-year-olds, he stops midflight to rebut an accusation that he's a coward, he torments Sirius and breaks Lupin's secrecy in petty revenge. I love the man, but I acknowledge his flaws. (They make him far more interesting than straightforward-thinking, generic-emotional-angst teenage Harry! They're why I love him, not something I try to overlook or reason away.)
If he hasn't let up his hatred of Sirius and Lupin, I doubt he managed to forgive James, who (was part of) set him up and then wangled a debt from it (by Severus's view). That Harry -- clueless about anything magical and completely unaware of his parents' importance to Severus, in antithetical ways -- looks like James would doubtless spur his antipathy, and since Harry (due to pure coincidence, at least in part, since Severus's glance seems to activate his scar at their first meeting) dislikes him it's easy for him to continue in the same Potter-hating rut.
And he only exposed Remus after Remus nearly ate students because Remus couldn't be bothered to take his potion before sitting to watch the map (when he was expecting trouble around sunset). He could have exposed Remus much earlier (the same way he did in the end), but instead he just gave the kids information that could help them save themselves. The childish one among these two is Remus, who refuses to take his potion in front of Severus just to keep Severus on edge (which gets worse knowing their history).
continuing...
This is the other, say, third of my personal headcanon, providing that one substitutes "pertaining to Lily" for "academic and behavioural". Lily was the only (or one of very few, anyway) person who saw past Severus's exterior and upbringing, and he was deeply attached to her; he seems to have stopped developing, emotionally, at her death, and all the schoolday grudges he carried when he was with her are still active in him now, whereas Lupin seems to have grown up and moved past them. (Sirus, due to Azkaban, has also been mentally frozen at a younger age than his chronological one -- something JKR seems to like doing/dealing with...)
Harry is the only thing left of Lily... and Harry comes across as a complete copy of James: not only in physical appearance, but he's also shallow/never looks past people's surfaces, unstudious, judgmental, and with a seemingly inborn dislike of Severus (since Severus cannot know that their eyes met just as Harry's scar started to hurt).
Dumbledore probably hasn't been giving Severus details of how Harry's grown up (since "Hey, Severus; the kid's managed to blow up his visiting abusive aunt today; the other one's carrying on same as usual" doesn't make you look like somebody who can offer redemption), so he has no conception of Harry's potential similarities; he has only that initial impression, and the way Harry behaves toward him -- which is influenced by both Harry's scar-pain and by Dumbledore setting Snape up to look like an ungrateful git ("your father saved his life").
And once Severus decides that he's disliked, he's not going to exert himself to become popular; not only would that be, in his view, acting like the Enemy (he repeatedly accuses Harry of seeking fame, and James et al were certainly not averse to showing off to large crowds -- "who wants to see me take off Snape's pants?"); it would also be setting himself up for rejection, and Severus HATES losing his dignity ("I AM NOT A COWARD!", the fury he unleashes when Sirius eludes him). He's not going to hand himself over to Potter Jr. when all the evidence suggests that rejection is what he's going to get. (A rejection he did NOT get from Lily until he'd done something to deserve it -- hence Harry has failed the litmus test in Snape's eyes.)
reassessing
Possibly that you haven't reassessed all the old information in light of the new?
The reason we originally thought Snape hated Harry for being like James is that Dumbledore said so at the end of PS. But we now know that his comments then were both untrue (The motive was Lily, not James, and Snape was so far from considering himself indebted that it didn't even come up in his post-prophecy return to Dumbledore) and made in almost complete ignorance of the circumstances (the Cloak, the Map, the Animagi transformations and motive, even perhaps the bullying ... or one would like to be able to think that last was ignorance and not callousness). And Dumbledore's not a reliable speaker at any time.
What evidence is there in the *narration* or in Snape's own actions that the loathing was about James? It's a feasible explanation, but it's not that well-supported. Snape doesn't even mention James until PoA, and then only because he's trying to make Harry keep out of danger.
Harry reminds him of his mistakes/guilt, not because he has James's face, but because he has Lily's (contemptuous) eyes. And that's enough to make him constantly angry and miserable around Harry.
"spit-flinging tantrums at 13-year-olds"
If you mean in the hospital wing after the Shack, he was probably still suffering the after-effects of a moderate concussion. (Moderate = between mild and severe.) One common side-effect is emotional lability. And he was also greatly distressed at the escape of someone he thought had murdered Lily and was still trying to murder Harry.
"he stops midflight to rebut an accusation that he's a coward"
No, he doesn't. In the movie, yes, but not in the book. He stopped running when Harry shot off his first Stupefy, and turned to duel Harry to allow Draco to escape. He doesn't *stop* when Harry calls him a coward; he shoots a minor hex that sends Harry tumbling backwards, gets attacked by Buckbeak and starts running again.
"he torments Sirius"
No, he replies in kind when Sirius torments *him*. The few times we see them together, it is Sirius who both initiates and escalates hostilities.
"breaks Lupin's secrecy in petty revenge."
So Lupin implies. But nobody ever appreciates a whistleblower, especially the exposed wrongdoers (and that's what Lupin is).
That night, Snape heard Lupin confess to wilful endangerment of the entire school community and neighbourhood, both as a teen and (by withholding vital security information) during the *entirety* of his employment as a teacher. He has seen Lupin's disregard for the safety of others repeatedly demonstrated, first by his failure to collect his Wolfsbane, then by his failure to separate himself from the children despite being reminded of the danger, then by his negligence/carelessness wrt injured-Snape. And he has seen Dumbledore protect the criminal werewolf from justice. To keep the students safe from Lupin, who has shown himself to be a danger to all, what alternative to exposure is there?
"doubt he managed to forgive"
Snape and Harry are the *only* characters in canon that ever return good for evil to past enemies. Snape warns Dumbledore in OotP that Umbridge is after Sirius and tries to save Lupin's life in DH, although they have remained entirely careless of his life and limb as adults.
Yes, Lupin too; he left a "lifeless"-looking Snape unconscious in the Shack for the better part of an hour without even checking he was alive until they left it, and then gave only the most cursory check (pulse only) and no treatment. Without checking for neck or spinal injury, he then lifted him with a head-lolling Mobilicorpus and let someone who'd once tried to kill him (and still didn't regret it) transport him unsupported and unstabilised down a narrow passage, bumping his head repeatedly against the ceiling.
"wangled a debt from it (by Severus's view)"
No. It's Dumbledore who suggests it is a debt. Snape sees the incident as a trap set by James. He says so to both Lily and Harry, and even when Voldemort targets the Potters on his information, it's *Lily* Snape's concerned about; there's no indication either that he's concerned about his supposed debt to James or that Dumbledore expects him to be.
duj
Re: reassessing
Possibly that you haven't reassessed all the old information in light of the new?
Quite possible, actually -- I've spent the last year residing in a different state from my copies of the books! (Incredibly frustrating.) I'm definitely looking forward to a leisurely re-read as soon as we're all together in the same city again, and things may well fall into different patterns for me then... I think I may have to take notes wherever Snape is mentioned. :D