Seems to me Quirrell gets all the same benefits without the vial. As soon as he stages a Bellatrix-sighting or whatever, Moody will arrange for her body to be carefully examined, and the deception will be uncovered. Cue Dumbledore sounding the alarms, etc.
Even assuming it’s possible to tell the difference between a few years old rotting corpse and a few years old rotting death doll (magic might help there), Dementors don’t care about the dead, and a powerful enough wizard can easily sneak into Azkaban to replace a corpse. Finding a fake corpse in Bellatrix’s cell would be a mystery, another conspiracy theory, not a sure signature of Voldemort. It might not convince anyone. Why settle for half-solutions?
Yes, I’m assuming that someone actively looking for signs of deception would eventually determine that “Bellatrix” was a deathdoll, especially if the wizard who created the doll intended them to. That seems pretty likely.
As for being convincing… well, unknown agents breaking Bellatrix out of jail with the vial isn’t a sure sign of Voldemort, either, but it didn’t have to be: Dumbledore inferred, entirely sensibly, that the expected disutility of Voldemort’s return given the probability of it conditioned on someone breaking Bellatrix out of Azkaban was high enough to be worth sounding the alarm.
Perhaps you’re right that Quirrell wasn’t confident that Dumbledore (or Moody) would perform the same calculation without the vial. But it seems unlikely to me.
Seems to me Quirrell gets all the same benefits without the vial. As soon as he stages a Bellatrix-sighting or whatever, Moody will arrange for her body to be carefully examined, and the deception will be uncovered. Cue Dumbledore sounding the alarms, etc.
Even assuming it’s possible to tell the difference between a few years old rotting corpse and a few years old rotting death doll (magic might help there), Dementors don’t care about the dead, and a powerful enough wizard can easily sneak into Azkaban to replace a corpse. Finding a fake corpse in Bellatrix’s cell would be a mystery, another conspiracy theory, not a sure signature of Voldemort. It might not convince anyone. Why settle for half-solutions?
Yes, I’m assuming that someone actively looking for signs of deception would eventually determine that “Bellatrix” was a deathdoll, especially if the wizard who created the doll intended them to. That seems pretty likely.
As for being convincing… well, unknown agents breaking Bellatrix out of jail with the vial isn’t a sure sign of Voldemort, either, but it didn’t have to be: Dumbledore inferred, entirely sensibly, that the expected disutility of Voldemort’s return given the probability of it conditioned on someone breaking Bellatrix out of Azkaban was high enough to be worth sounding the alarm.
Perhaps you’re right that Quirrell wasn’t confident that Dumbledore (or Moody) would perform the same calculation without the vial. But it seems unlikely to me.