Thank you for sharing, dreamflower. I think what the LotR writer is doing makes for a stark contrast with what I often see done with Lucius. I'd like to see something similar happen in HP.

There's one place were my conclusions really differ with yours, however. I'm not sure that Lucius knew he was wrong. As I told kerravonsen, a Lucius who knew his chosen ideology was wrong but did terrible things to advance it anyway is more terrible to me than a true believer.

True believers are more frightening to me for the reasons you listed: before they can begin to change, they must accept that their beliefs are flawed. And that's not an easy thing for a person to accept.

But opportunistic evil-doers disgust me more because that shows a blatant disregard for right unless it benefits self.