from Tom Riddle to Voldemort

Tom Riddle

House of Gaunt

Tom Riddle was descended from one of the four founders of Hogwarts, Salazar Slytherin. While Slytherin was very proud and despised muggles and muggle-born, considering them unworthy to enter Hogwarts, the other co-founders disagreed, leading Slytherin to leave Hogwarts, but not before creating the Chamber of Secrets wherein lived a "monster," a basilisk, from a chicken's egg hatched under a reptile. The basilisk awaited the time when Slytherin's descendant would come to Hogwarts and open the chamber, releasing him to avenge the founder who felt scorned by his peers.

Slytherin's descendants dwindled down to the House of Gaunt, a highly eccentric bunch of rag-tags living on the fringes of society. Let us meet them in J.K. Rowling's own words:

Then there was a rustle and a crack, and a man in rags dropped from the nearest tree, landing on his feet right in front of Ogden, who leapt backwards so fast he stood on the tails of his frock coat and stumbled.

"You're not welcome."

The man standing before them had thick hair so matted with dirt it could have been any color. Several of his teeth were missing. His eyes were small and dark and stared in opposite directions. He might have looked comical, but he did not; the effect was frightening...

"Morfin!" said a loud voice.

An elderly man had come hurrying out of the cottage, banging the door behind him so that the dead snake swung pathetically. This man was shorter than the first, and oddly proportioned; his shoulders were very broad and his arms overlong, which, with his bright brown eyes, short scrubby hair, and wrinkled face, gave him the look of a powerful, aged monkey.

These people, though wizards, were hostile to the Ministry of Magic, which Ogden was representing. Morfin spoke Parseltongue. A third member of this family was
a girl whose ragged gray dress was the exact color of the dirty stone wall behind her. She was standing beside a steaming pot on a grimy black stove, and was fiddling around with the shelf of squalid-looking pots and pans above it. Her hair was lank and full and she had a plain, pale, and rather heavy face. Her eyes, like her brother's, stared in opposite directions. She looked a little cleaner than the two men, but Harry thought he had never seen a more defeated-looking person.
The daughter, Merope, using a love potion on the Muggle, Tom Riddle, Sr., managed to escape her sordid surroundings by marrying him. However, when he found out she was a Witch who had used a love potion on him, abandoned her, pregnant and destitute. She died, leaving Tom, Jr. an orphan.

The Orphanage

The Muggle orphanage where Tom Riddle, Jr. was raised, was a rather grim, depressing place. However, the lady who ran it was kind and took care of the orphans as well as she could. Despite her kindness, Tom grew up a consommate loner, trusting noone. He learned, early in life, that he could use magic to exert power over others. When Professor Dumbledore came to invite him to study at Hogwarts, he initially thought he was about to be railroaded to an asylum.
"Who are you?"

"I have told you. My name is Professor Dumbledore and I work at a school called Hogwarts. I have come to offer you a place at my school — your new school, if you would like to come."

"You can't kid me! The asylum, that's where you're from, isn't it? 'Professor,' yes, of course — well, I'm not going, see? That old cat's the one who should be in the asylum. I never did anything to little Amy Benson or Dennis Bishop, and you can ask them, they'll tell you!" ...

"I know you're not mad. Hogwarts is not a school for mad people. It is a school of magic."

There was silence. Riddle had frozen, his face expressionless, but his eyes were flickering back and forth between each of Dumbledore's, as thought trying to catch one of them lying.

"Magic?" he repeated in a whisper.

"That's right," said Dumbledore.

"It's ... it's magic, what I can do?"

"What is it that you can do?"

"All sorts," breathed Riddle. A flush of excitement was rising up his neck into his hollow cheeks; he looked fevered. "I can make things move without touching them. I can make animals do what I want them to do, without training them. I can make bad things happen to people who annoy me. I can make them hurt if I want to?"

His legs were trembling. He stumbled forward and sat down on the bed again, staring at his hands, his head bowed as though in prayer.

"I knew I was different," he whispered to his own quivering fingers. "I knew I was special. Always, I knew there was something."

"Well, you were quite right," said Dumbledore, who was no longer smiling, but watching Riddle intently. "You are a wizard."

Riddle lifted his head. His face was transfigured: There was a wild happiness upon it, yet for some reason it did not make him better looking; on the contrary, his finely carved features seemed somehow rougher, his expression almost bestial.

"Are you a wizard too?"

"Yes, I am."

"Prove it," said Riddle at once, in the same commanding tone he had used when he had said, "Tell the truth."

Dumbledore raised his eyebrows. "If, as I take it, you are accepting your place at Hogwarts — "

"Of course I am!"

"Then you will address me as 'Professor' or 'sir.'"

Riddle's expression hardened for the most fleeting moment before he said, in an unrecognizably polite voice, "I'm sorry, sir. I mean — please, Professor, could you show me — ?"

Hogwarts

At Hogwarts, Tom managed to project a squeaky-clean image for most of the faculty (excluding Dumbledore) while collecting the group which would one day become his Death Eaters. He accomplished a great deal during his time at school in his road to power. For starters, he researched his ancestry and discovered that his father was a Muggle and his mother descended from Salazar Slytherin, himself. Most importantly, he learned about Horcruxes, object in which one could embed a part of one's soul so, even in the event of physical death, he would still have a foothold on immortality. Horcruxes can only be created by an act of murder (which rips up the soul). Tom created a Horcrux during his time at Hogwarts by visiting his father's home and murdering his father and Muggle grandparents with the unforgiveable avada cadavra curse and framing his uncle (on his mother's side of the family) for the murder. This is probably how he created his first Horcrux. He created six, altogether, in order to divide his soul into the magic number of seven.

Morfin left a memory fragment of his meeting with Riddle, describing the encounter, all until Voldemort obliterated his memory:

The Gaunts' house was now more indescribably filthy than anywhere Harry had ever seen. The ceiling was thick with cobwebs, the floor coated in grime; moldy and rotting food lay upon the table amidst a mass of crusted pots. The only light came from a single guttering candle placed at the feet of a man with hair and beard so overgrown Harry could see neither eyes nor mouth. He was slumped in an armchair by the fire, and Harry wondered for a moment whether he was dead. But there came a loud knock on the door and the man jerked awake, raising a wand in his right hand and a short knife in his left.

The door creaked open. There on the threshold, holding an old fashioned lamp, stood a boy Harry recognized at once: tall, pale, dark-haired, and handsome — the teenage Voldemort.

Voldemort's eyes moved slowly around the hovel and then found the man in the armchair. For a few seconds they looked at each other, then the man staggered upright, the many empty bottles at his feet clattering and tinkling across the floor.

"YOU!" he bellowed. "YOU!!"

And he hurtled drunkenly at Riddle, wand and knife held aloft.

"Stop."

Riddle spoke in Parseltongue. The man skidded into the table, sending moldy pots crashing to the floor. He stared at Riddle. There was a long silence while they contemplated each other. The man broke it.

"You speak it?"

"Yes, I speak it," said Riddle. He moved forward into the room allowing the door to swing shut behind him. Harry could not help but feel a resentful admiration for Voldemort's complete lack of fear. His face merely expressed disgust and, perhaps, disappointment.

"Where is Marvolo?" he asked.

"Dead," said the other. "Died years ago, didn't he?"

Riddle frowned.

"Who are you, then?"

"I'm Morfin, ain't I?"

"Marvolo's son?"

"'Course I am, then ..."

Morfin pushed the hair out of his dirty face, the better to see Riddle, and Harry saw that he wore Marvolo's black-stoned ring on his right hand.

"I thought you was that Muggle," whispered Morfin. "You look mightly like that Muggle."

"What Muggle?" said Riddle sharply.

"That Muggle what my sister took a fancy to, that Muggle what lives in the big house over the way," said Morfin, and he spat unexpectedly upon the floor between them. "You look right like him. Riddle. But he's older now, in 'e? He's older 'n you, now I think on it..."

Morfin looked slightly dazed and swayed a little, still clutching the edge of the table for support. "He come back, see," he added stupidly.

Voldemort was gazing at Morfin as though appraising his possibilities. Now he moved a little closer and said, "Riddle came back?"

"Ar, he left her, and serve her right, marrying filth!" said Morfin, spitting on the floor again. "Robbed us, mind, before she ran off! Where's the locket, eh, where's Slytherin's locket?"

Voldemort did not answer. Morfin was working himself into aa rage again; he brandished his knife and shouted, "Dishonored us, she did, that little slut! And who're you, coming here and asking questions about all that? It's over, innit.... It's over...."

He looked away, staggering slightly, and Voldemort moved forward. As he did so, an unnatural darkness fell, extinguishing Voldemort's lamp and morfin's candle, extinguishing everything....

He also managed to open the Chamber of Secrets, created by his ancestor, Salizar Slytherin. Once proving his power by this feat, possible only to the true Heir of Slytherin, he framed Hagrid when things got too hot for him.

"It was my word against Hagrid's, Harry. Well, you can imagine how it looked to old Armando Dippet. On the one hand, Tom Riddle, poor but brilliant, parentless but so brave, school prefect, model student...on the other hand, big, blundering Hagrid, in trouble every other week, trying to raise werewolf cubs under the bed, sneaking off to the Forbidden Forest to wrestle trolls...but I admit, even I was surprised how well the plan worked. I thought someone must realize that Hagrid couldn't possibly be the Heir of Slytherin. It had taken me five whole years to find out everything I could about the Chamber of Secrets and discover the secret entrance...as though Hagrid had the brains, or the power!"
He confessed to Harry that he began using the name "Voldemort" to his "most intimate friends" while still at Hogwarts.
"You think I was going to use my filthy Muggle father's name forever? I, in whose veins runs the blood of Salazar Slytherin himself, though my mother's side? I, keep the name of a foul, common Muggle, who abandoned me even before I was born, just because he found out his wife was a witch? No, Harry — I fashioned myself a new name, a name I knew wizards everywhere would one day fear to speak, when I had become the greatest sorcerer in the world!"
He preserved his magic, by which he opened the Chamber, in a diary which became one of his Horcruxes. No reason to let all that work go to waste.

Lord Voldemort

Tom graduated from Hogwarts, Top Boy, his image intact. His next step was to try to get a job teaching Defense Against the Dark Arts. However, Dumbledore, who was now Headmaster, the only one who saw through him, refused give him the position.

Nevertheless, Voldemort proceded with his plans for immortality and world power. With his Death Eaters, he ruthlessly took power using terror, murder and torture. His name, as he had once predicted, became the most feared name in the world. Hearing part of a prophecy which convinced him that Harry Potter was the only person on earth who could destroy him, he murdered Harry's parents and then tried to kill Harry but the magic rebounded on him and killed what was still mortal in him. The power that did him in was an ancient form of magic whereby his mother, who loved him, gave her life to save his. This power of love proved more powerful than the "unstoppable" avada kedavra curse.

"See what I have become? Mere shadow and vampor...I have form only when I can share another's body...but there have always been those willing to past weeks...you saw faithful Quirrell drinking it for me in the forest...and once I have the Elixir of Life, I will be able to create a body of my own...."
Unable to obtain the sorcerer's stone, the following year, he used his diary to try to come back to full life.

It wasn't until, in the prophetic words of Trelawney,

"THE DARK LORD LIES ALONE AND FRIENDLESS, ABANDONED BY HIS FOLLOWERS. HIS SERVANT HAS BEEN CHAINED THESE TWELVE YEARS. TONIGHT, BEFORE MIDNIGHT...THE SERVANT WILL BREASK FREE AND SET OUT TO REJOIN HIS MASTER. THE DARK LORD WILL RISE AGAIN WITH HIS SERVANT'S AIR, GREATER AND MORE TERRIBLE THAN EVER HE WAS.TONIGHT...BEFORE MIDNIGHT...THE SERVANT...WILL SET OUT...TO REJOIN...HIS MASTER...."
The servant was Barty Crouch, Jr. With the help of Crouch and Wormtail, who joined him after his cover (as a rat) had been blown, Voldemort was finally able to perform the ritual that, using Harry's blood, gave him a new body.

Now, with the Death Eaters reformed, with the Dementors now loyal to Voldemort and with Dumbledore dead, we await the final chapter in this bizarre saga.

Slytherin
Tributes