Harry Potter: How Did Voldemort Become The Dark Lord? Explained
Voldemort is the biggest antagonist in the Harry Potter franchise. When he graduated from Hogwarts, he started to amass power and followers to become the ruthless Dark Lord.
![Voldemort in Harry Potter and The Deathly Hallows Part 2 (PC: YouTube, Warner Bros. Pictures) Exploring How Voldemort Became The Dark Lord](https://www.pinkvilla.com/images/2024-08/2052827718_untitled-design-2024-08-19t055512-393.jpg)
The series of Harry Potter was quite famous, wherein readers loved Harry, Ron, and Hermione as they discover something new. The main antagonist, Lord Voldemort, wanted to get rid of Harry as he was the child of the prophecy about his defeat. These series of novels trace the origin of Voldemort and show his rise to power as a dark lord. He was powerful yet made himself difficult to destroy. On one attempt, Voldemort tried to kill Harry when he was just an infant. Harry's mother managed to keep him from doing so, which destroyed Voldemort's physical form. He went into hiding to regain his strength. The place that Voldemort holds in the series is crucial; however, his past may lead him down a path of evil.
Tom Riddles to Lord Voldemort
It is of a tragic origin; with Merope forcing Voldemort's father into a romantic relationship in the first place, well before his birth, using her love potion. All this combines under a common sort of origin among villains.
She married Tom Riddle Sr. just because he was under Merope Gaunt's spell. Merope became pregnant with a child who later turned into Lord Voldemort. However, afterwards, Tom abandoned her and gave birth to Tom in Wool's Orphanage. The mother died within an hour leaving Tom to be raised by muggles. Tom was left with only his father's and maternal grandfather's name and the hope to grow into a handsome man. He grew up feeling abandoned and unloved.
Orphaned and raised by Muggles, Tom Riddle did not even know who his mother really was or where she came from. They could not describe him, so they counted him in a different category as strange and unsettling. With the rising conviction of superiority, his obsession with having power over others grew too. With the rising conviction of uniqueness, Tom shunned peer approval and even harassed them to prove his superiority. His elitist behavior fed his growing obsession with power and his uniqueness.
This feeling of his superiority was reinforced when Albus Dumbledore came to visit Hogwarts, promising young Tom that he can make friends with other young wizards. Dumbledore acknowledged Tom's strength and watched over him in hope that acceptance would meet and repair him. But the hatred in Tom was already cemented; he would hold on to the wounds all his life. The fact that he found out he was abandoned by his Muggle father only exacerbated Tom's feelings of hatred towards all Muggles.
Voldemort was a Slytherin
He was sorted into Slytherin House and was popular among classmates and instructors alike. Then, he became obsessed with finding out about his parents, and that led him to find out he was a descendant of Salazar Slytherin and thus hated his parents for cutting him off from his ancestry.
Tom then announces his true ancestry and calls himself Lord Voldemort. He wants to rid Slytherin's school of the Muggle-born children. After opening the Chamber of Secrets and using the Basilisk, he blames the failure on Rubeus Hagrid. To make sure his mark is there, he gains a much greater number of followers and makes Horcruxes in order to make it a little bit more difficult for the rest of the wizards and witches to kill him.
Tom learns of his grandfather's death and of the relationship of his parents from his uncle, and in a rage he kills his father and grandparents out of hatred, creating with their deaths his second Horcrux. In this way, he freed himself from any bond to goodness and joined with darkness. The result was a pure evil.
How Tom became the Dark Lord
He wanted to become a Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher with the purpose of recruiting young wizards. His application was rejected, and he already had chosen a scheme-a plan of making some weird artifact a Horcrux. In ten years, his application was refused again, and he faced Dumbledore, who already managed to uncover his secret plan. He began paying great attention to preparation for the First Wizarding War.
He gathered followers who became known as Death Eaters, some of whom joined voluntarily and others who were subjugated. Because of his violent deeds, he spread fear and dread of even the pronunciation of his name, whereby he was now referred to as "You-Know-Who," "He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named," and "Dark Lord." For this reason, everybody became afraid of his presence and was even more afraid of what he did to the world.
One of the most intriguing franchise elements in Harry Potter must have been the rise to power of Tom Riddle. The fans were allowed to delve deep into this world. As a teenage Voldemort, he created a false identity to rid the world of those who hurt him, but the prophecy of Harry's birth would stall him.
ALSO READ: Harry Potter: Where Was Voldemort During The First Wizarding War? Explored
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