Expectations are often raised and intentionally unfulfilled by J.K. Rowling. She often leads us to believe a character is the villain of a story, or a culprit of a crime, when they are not to blame. In Sorcerer's Stone, Rowling's characterization of Snape as a large, overgrown bat who hates Harry leads the reader - viewing things mostly from Harry's point of view - to jump to conclusions. Even Hermione is fooled, and we are too, when she conjures the bluebell flames on the robes of Snape when she suspects Snape is jinxing the broom. She stops the jinx, but not because she targeted Snape, who was doing the counter-jinx, but because in her haste she knocked over Quirrell.
Rowling again knocks our expectations on their head in Chamber of Secrets. From the attack onward, when "enemies of the heir beware" is written on the wall, we are looking for the heir just as the trio are. Malfoy's behavior and general obnoxiousness, praising the attacks, loudly proclaiming that there might not be any more muggleborns at Hogwarts paints him as a likely Heir of Slytherin, or at least somehow involved. Hermione finds this so likely that she eggs on Harry and Ron to break a ton of school rules by brewing the Polyjuice Potion to find out. After Malfoy is eliminated, Hagrid is the next one suspected. His penchant for thinking monsters are better than they truly are forces Ron and Harry to confront him.
The purpose of these misleading clues causes complex characterization. Rowling plays with the idea of good and bad - is there anyone truly evil? Riddle, if only going off of a passing glance at the trophy case, seems like an upstanding, high-achieving student - but in reality is the young Voldemort. When it comes to characterization is not black and white - only grey.
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