He constantly uses Fiendfyre and once burned an inkwell to death. Also, he kills people for fun.
We just saw that he has a use for the Death Eaters. This seems foreseeable, though his disappearance was apparently less so. And we know that he didn’t particularly want to rule Britain; also, that he made plans for a failure that should have been impossible, connected to his disappearance (the escape clause in his curse). Narcissa’s death ensured that Lucius and Draco would remain Dumbledore’s enemies indefinitely. I’m not the only one to point this out.
The evidence given for Dumbledore or Bones would make this a plausible deception on V’s part. Now, this involves a claim I should probably re-examine: that Lucius would ‘play the game’ at a low level in regards to his wife’s death. I could see someone disputing this. But we have to take into account general emotional distress, and a distrust of Dumbledore that predated V’s appearance. I admit that the bias V described in Chapter 108 probably does not apply (at least not to the character Lucius within the story) and that lowers the probability of my theory somewhat.
ETA: the Doylist reason given to suspect Dumbledore (that it would force Harry to fight him) is now looking more dubious.
He constantly uses Fiendfyre and once burned an inkwell to death. Also, he kills people for fun.
We just saw that he has a use for the Death Eaters. This seems foreseeable, though his disappearance was apparently less so. And we know that he didn’t particularly want to rule Britain; also, that he made plans for a failure that should have been impossible, connected to his disappearance (the escape clause in his curse). Narcissa’s death ensured that Lucius and Draco would remain Dumbledore’s enemies indefinitely. I’m not the only one to point this out.
The evidence given for Dumbledore or Bones would make this a plausible deception on V’s part. Now, this involves a claim I should probably re-examine: that Lucius would ‘play the game’ at a low level in regards to his wife’s death. I could see someone disputing this. But we have to take into account general emotional distress, and a distrust of Dumbledore that predated V’s appearance. I admit that the bias V described in Chapter 108 probably does not apply (at least not to the character Lucius within the story) and that lowers the probability of my theory somewhat.
ETA: the Doylist reason given to suspect Dumbledore (that it would force Harry to fight him) is now looking more dubious.