Lord Voldemort – The Harry Potter Lexicon

Lord Voldemort, born Tom Marvolo Riddle, was the son of Merope Gaunt (a descendent of Salazar Slytherin) and Tom Riddle, a handsome, wealthy Muggle from Little Hangleton whom Merope ensnared with a love potion. When her husband found out she was a witch, he abandoned her while she was pregnant (HBP10). Tom’s mother died shortly after giving birth to him one December 31, living just long enough to name him Tom Riddle, after his father and Marvolo, after his grandfather.

Tom Marvolo Riddle, the half-blood orphan, was to transform himself into Lord Voldemort and take control of the Wizarding world by manipulating the festering relationship between pureblood and Muggle-born wizards. Eventually, he would lose all – not because he lacked power, but because of his ruthless methods, his inability to love or trust anyone but himself, and his belief in his own infallibility. As he told Quirrell, he believed that “there is no good and evil, there is only power, and those too weak to seek it.” (PS17).

Early years
The dark wizard known as “Lord Voldemort” was born in 1928 in an orphanage in London. His mother, a witch, and, according to Voldemort, a descendent of Salazar Slytherin, had fallen in love with Tom Riddle, a Muggle. Tom Riddle lived in a fine-looking manor that stood on a hill overlooking the village of Little Hangleton. The manor house was one of the largest and grandest buildings for miles around. When Voldemort’s mother told her husband that she was a witch, he abandoned her, returning to his parents’ home. As Lord Voldemort told the story, his father “didn’t like magic.” Voldemort’s mother died just after giving birth to him, living just long enough to name him Tom Riddle, after his father and Marvolo, after his grandfather. He was raised in a Muggle orphanage.

For the first eleven years of his life, Tom was raised in a clean but grim Muggle orphanage in London. As he got older, he began to steal things and appeared to cause “nasty” things to happen to the other children and to pets around the orphanage (HBP13).

At Hogwarts: 1938 – 1945
Once at Hogwarts, Tom was sorted into Slytherin House and swiftly became known as an unusually brilliant student. A handsome boy, he was much admired by everyone, with the exception of the Transfiguration professor, Albus Dumbledore. During the holidays, Tom had to return to the Muggle orphanage he despised.

"I am Lord Voldemort" Movie still from Warnoer Brothers' Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets."Secretly, Tom was obsessed with his Slytherin heritage and with finding the ways he might cheat death. He found the entrance to the Chamber of Secrets in his sixth year and released Slytherin’s basilisk within it, killing a student named Myrtle. Slytherin had built the chamber deep in Hogwarts castle and kept it hidden from the other founders. He sealed it so that only his own true heir would be able to unseal the chamber and unleash the horror within to purge the school of “all who were unworthy to study magic.” During this time Tom had begun using a new name among his most intimate friends at Hogwarts. Contemptuous of the name of his “foul, common Muggle” father, he made an anagram of Tom Marvolo Riddle. The rearranged letters spelled “I AM LORD VOLDEMORT.” It was a name he hoped “wizards everywhere would one day fear to speak,” when he became the “greatest sorcerer in the world.”

On June 13, 1943, Tom staged the capture of another student, Rubeus Hagrid, and tricked Headmaster Armando Dippet into believing Hagrid and his giant spider Aragog were responsible for the attacks. Tom received an engravedtrophy for special services to the school, but he realized that Albus Dumbledore was keeping an “annoyingly close watch” on him and it was not safe to open the Chamber of Secrets again while he was still at school. Tom preserved himself in the pages of a diary with the hope that he would one day be able to lead another in his footsteps and “finish Salazar Slytherin’s noble work.”

Drawing of Tom Riddle.Events at Little Hangleton: 1944-1945
Riddle didn’t learn the complete story of his birth until he tracked down and visited his uncle Morfin Gaunt the summer after Myrtle died. In revenge for his father’s abandonment and Muggle blood, he went to the Riddle mansion in Little Hangleton and murdered his father and grandparents (GF1). The Riddle’s gardener, Frank Bryce, later told police that on the day of the Riddle’s deaths he had seen a stranger; a teenage boy, dark-haired and pale, near the manor. The next morning a maid found Tom Riddle Sr. and his elderly parents dead in their drawing room, “still in their dinner things.” The Riddles were as cold as ice and each had a look of terror upon his or her face but had no sign of physical injury. The Riddles were buried in the Little Hangleton churchyard.

This last year at Hogwarts, Tom was Prefect, Head Boy, and received a Medal for Magical Merit. Albus Dumbledore later said of him, “Brilliant. Of course, he was probably the most brilliant student Hogwarts has ever seen.” Secretly however, Tom was researching Horcruxes and had come to the conclusion that if one Horcrux was good, seven would be better (HBP23). He made his first two Horcruxes with the murders of Myrtle and his father. He was only seventeen.

About this time, Albus Dumbledore defeated the dark wizard Gellert Grindelwald in a spectacular duel and became the only wizard that Riddle ever feared.