Lord Voldemort: Biography, Origins and Secrets

Voldemort is the most dangerous dark wizard of his age, and most people can barely say his name. But before he was Voldemort he was Tom Riddle, an orphan who decided he would never die. What makes him frightening is not his power. It is how little human is left in him.

Who he is

He was born in 1926, the son of Merope Gaunt, a witch descended from Slytherin, and of Tom Riddle, a Muggle who abandoned her (Half-Blood Prince, ch. 10). He grew up in an orphanage. At Hogwarts he was a brilliant student, a prefect and a teachers' favorite, and a Slytherin. Years later he renamed himself Lord Voldemort, gathered followers, the Death Eaters, and started the first wizarding war.

He is a half-blood who brags about pure blood and despises Muggle-borns.

Key moments

• Chamber of Secrets, ch. 17: Harry faces the memory of Tom Riddle in the Chamber and watches the name rearrange itself into "I am Lord Voldemort."
• Half-Blood Prince, ch. 13: Dumbledore shows Harry what Tom was like as a boy at the orphanage, already cruel and already defiant.
• Half-Blood Prince, ch. 23: Dumbledore explains what a Horcrux is and that Voldemort planned to split his soul into seven parts.
• Goblet of Fire, ch. 32: he is reborn in the graveyard with Harry's blood, his father's bone and Wormtail's flesh.
• Deathly Hallows, ch. 36: his killing curse rebounds off his own spell. He dies for the last time.

Relationships

He has no friends. He has followers and tools. Bellatrix adores him, Lucius Malfoy fears him, Snape deceives him. Nagini is the nearest thing he has to company. With Dumbledore there is a fearful respect, and with Harry an obsession neither of them chose.

What almost nobody notices

In Half-Blood Prince (ch. 23), Dumbledore explains that Voldemort meant to split his soul into seven parts, one of them staying in his own body, which makes six Horcruxes. But he made a seventh by accident, the night he killed the Potters. That fragment lodged in Harry, and Voldemort did not find out until the end.

And in Deathly Hallows (ch. 32), Voldemort kills Snape convinced it will make him master of the Elder Wand. The wand was never Snape's. His obsession with the most powerful wand leads him to kill his own spy over a miscalculation.

To understand where he came from, start with Tom Riddle's Diary: Voldemort's First Horcrux Explained. And if you are a Slytherin, the house quiz will tell you that belonging to that house does not make you like him.