before you know the other character, meet my favorite villain of all...............
Lord Voldemort (born
Tom Marvolo Riddle) is a fictional character in
J. K. Rowling's
Harry Potter series. Voldemort first appeared in
Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone,
which was released in 1997. Voldemort appeared either in person or in
flashbacks in each book and film adaptation in the series, except the
third,
Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, where he is mentioned.
In the series, Voldemort is the
archenemy of
Harry Potter, who according to a
prophecy has "the power to vanquish the
Dark Lord". Almost no witch or wizard dares to speak his name, instead referring to him by
epithets such as "You-Know-Who", "He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named" or "the Dark Lord". Voldemort's obsession with
blood purity signifies his aim to rid the
wizarding world of
Muggle (non-magical) heritage and to conquer both worlds, Muggle and wizarding, to achieve
pure-blood dominance. Through his mother's family, he is the last descendant of wizard
Salazar Slytherin,
one of the four founders of
Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. He is the leader of the
Death Eaters,
a group of evil wizards and witches dedicated to ridding the Wizarding
World of Muggles and establishing Voldemort as its supreme ruler.
According to an interview with Rowling, "Voldemort" is pronounced with a silent 't' at the end,
as in the French word
"mort", meaning "death".
This was the pronunciation used by
Jim Dale in the first four U.S.
audiobooks; however, after the release of the film version of
Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone,
in which the characters who dared refer to him by name pronounced it
with the "t", Dale altered his pronunciation to that in the films.
In a 2001 interview, Rowling said Voldemort was invented as a nemesis
for Harry Potter (the main protagonist of the series), and she
intentionally did not flesh out Voldemort's
backstory
at first. "The basic idea [was that Harry] didn't know he was a wizard
[...] And so then I kind of worked backwards from that position to find
out how that could be, that he wouldn't know what he was. [...] When he
was one year old, the most
evil
wizard for hundreds and hundreds of years attempted to kill him. He
killed Harry's parents, and then he tried to kill Harry — he tried to
curse him. [...] Harry has to find out, before we find out. And – so –
but for some mysterious reason the curse didn't work on Harry. So he's
left with this
lightning bolt shaped scar on his forehead and the curse rebounded upon the evil wizard, who has been in hiding ever since."
In the second book, Rowling establishes that Voldemort hates
non-pure-blood wizards, despite being a half-blood himself. In a 2000
interview with the
BBC,
Rowling described Voldemort as a self-hating bully: "Well I think it is
often the case that the biggest bullies take what they know to be their
own defects, as they see it, and they put them right on someone else
and then they try and destroy the other and that's what Voldemort does."
In the same year, Rowling became more precise about Voldemort. She
began to link him to real-life tyrants, describing him as "a raging
psychopath, devoid of the normal human responses to other people's suffering".
In 2004, though, Rowling said that she did not base Voldemort on any real person.
In 2006, Rowling told an interviewer that Voldemort at his core has a
human fear: the fear of death. She said: "Voldemort's fear is death,
ignominious death. I mean, he regards death itself as ignominious. He
thinks that it's a shameful human weakness, as you know. His worst fear
is death."
Throughout the series, Rowling establishes that Voldemort is so
feared in the wizarding world that it is considered dangerous even to
speak his name. Most characters in the novels refer to him as
"You-Know-Who" or "He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named" rather than say his name
aloud. In
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, a
Taboo
is placed upon the name, such that Voldemort or his followers may trace
anyone who utters it. By this means, his followers eventually find and
capture Harry and his friends
Ron Weasley and
Hermione Granger. In the second book, Rowling reveals that
I am Lord Voldemort is an anagram of the character's birth name, Tom Marvolo Riddle. According to the author, Voldemort's name is an invented word.
Some literary analysts have considered possible meanings in the name:
Philip Nel states that
Voldemort is derived from the French for "flight of death,"
and in a 2002 paper, Nilsen and Nilsen suggest that readers get a
"creepy feeling" from the name Voldemort, because of the French word
"mort" ("death") within it and that word's association with cognate
English words derived from the Latin
mors.
As Sirius' relationship with his relatives deteriorated, he gained lifelong friendship in James Potter, Remus Lupin, and Peter Pettigrew. The four friends, also known as the Marauders, joined the Order of the Phoenix to fight against Lord Voldemort and his Death Eaters during the First Wizarding War. Sirius also became the godfather of Harry Potter, the only son of James and Lily Potter.
When Pettigrew betrayed the Potters to Voldemort, Sirius sought to
exact revenge on Pettigrew. However, Pettigrew was able to frame Sirius
for his betrayal of the Potters, the murder of twelve Muggles, and the stag
