The Worst Things Voldemort Ever Did In Harry Potter, Ranked

When it comes to villains in the Harry Potter franchise, few loom as large as the Dark Lord Voldemort, played on screen by Ralph Fiennes. Anyone who's even remotely familiar with this magical literary and cinematic series is familiar with Voldemort, a soulless and deeply evil wizard who also happens to be one of the wizarding world's most powerful duelers and spell-casters. So what are the worst things he ever did?

Well, first things first: let's provide some basic context about Voldemort's whole "deal," so to speak. Born Tom Marvolo Riddle to a non-magical Muggle father — the wealthy Tom Riddle Sr. — and a witch mother named Merope Gaunt, Tom's childhood was essentially doomed from the start. After Merope used a love potion to entrance Tom Riddle Sr., both because of her obsession with him and because of her desire to escape her abusive father Marvolo, Merope married the elder Tom Riddle and got pregnant; when she stopped giving her husband the love potion, he left her. Merope then died during childbirth after barely making it to the doorstep of an orphanage, leaving her baby, Tom Marvolo Riddle, in its care.

Born to a father who potentially didn't even know he existed and a mother whose love for her son couldn't save her life, Tom allowed his soul to be corrupted in more ways than one before using his given name to create his new one: "Tom Marvolo Riddle" is an anagram for "I am Lord Voldemort." (If we also look at French etymology, "Voldemort" basically breaks down to "vol," meaning flight, "de," meaning of, and "mort," meaning death — so, "flight of death.") Now that we've got the guy's basic resumé out of the way, what are the worst things Voldemort ever does in Harry Potter? Here's a non-exhaustive list.

Throughout the Harry Potter books and movies, Voldemort spends his time terrorizing literal child Harry Potter (Daniel Radcliffe in the films) — and even though Harry briefly interacts with Voldemort while he's attached to the back of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry professor Quirinus Quirrell (Ian Hart) in the first novel movie, "Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone," Harry gets a better glimpse of him in the second book and movie. In "Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets," Harry and his best friends Ron Weasley and Hermione Granger (Rupert Grint and Emma Watson, respectively) set out to solve a pretty pressing mystery at Hogwarts: what creature is making its way through the school and Petrifying students, cats, and even ghosts, leaving them speechless and paralyzed until a cure can be produced?

Fans of the franchise know it's Voldemort's doing, but it's actually pretty complicated. See, Tom Marvolo Riddle, as an heir of Hogwarts founder Salazar Slytherin, has the power to open the Chamber ... and he does so twice. During Tom's first opening of the Chamber during his time studying at Hogwarts as a teenager, a student, Myrtle Warren, dies; she ultimately lives on at the school as bathroom ghost Moaning Myrtle (Scottish actress Shirley Henderson). In "Chamber of the Secrets," which takes place decades later during Harry's second year at Hogwarts, the memory of Tom Riddle (played by Christian Coulson in the movie), which lives on through his diary, possesses Ron's sister Ginny (Bonnie Wright) and uses her to open the Chamber, nearly killing her too. It's only thanks to Harry that, in various forms, Tom Riddle doesn't kill two young Hogwarts students.

Starting with "Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire," the fourth book in the series, we start paying occasional visits to Little Hangleton, the town where Merope once used a potion to entrance the wealthy, handsom Tom Riddle Jr. When we first visit Little Hangleton during the literary prologue of "Goblet of Fire" — which we see in the movie through one of Harry's disturbing and prophetic dreams — we see Voldemort, attempting to return to his body, invading the old abandoned Riddle house with his loyal lieutenant Peter Pettigrew (Timothy Spall). (Pettigrew is also, as it happens, the man who betrayed Harry's parents to Voldemort and got them killed. More on that shortly.) While Pettigrew and Voldemort converse about their secret, evil plans, they're discovered by the property's Muggle caretaker Frank Bryce (Eric Sykes), who was accused of killing Tom Riddle Sr., his father, and his mother in that very house. (Pettigrew then kills Frank.)

It's not until "Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince" that we learn the truth about how three members of the Riddle family died mysteriously in their house. After learning the truth about his parentage, a young Tom Marvolo Riddle went to Little Hangleton, murdered his father and grandparents — angry and resentful that they weren't aware of his existence and likely would have shunned him if they did know about him — and then visited the shack that belonged to the Gaunts. Meeting only his uncle Morfin, a teenage Tom murders said uncle, steals a family ring that once belonged to Salazar Slytherin, and turns it into one of his Horcruxes ... a magical artifact that can only be made by an act as vile as murder and which stores part of one's soul in said artifact. 

Severus Snape is an incredibly complicated figure within the world of "Harry Potter," but by the time the series wraps up in the final book "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows" (which got a two-part film adaptation), we finally learn the truth. Despite seeming like an outright villain for most of the story, it turns out that Snape is no coward or evildoer; he was actually once in love with Harry's mother Lily Potter and has committed his own life to protecting her son Harry. Under the cover of Hogwarts headmaster Albus Dumbledore (Richard Harris and Michael Gambon), Snape pretends to still work for Voldemort while quietly acting as a double agent, helping Dumbledore to help Harry. (Snape does also kill Dumbledore in "Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince," but he does so because they have a deal, so it's not really murder, is it?)

Incredibly, Voldemort doesn't discover this on his own ... but he kills Snape for a totally different reason. Partway through "Deathly Hallows" — which we see in the scene that closes out "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows — Part 1" — Voldemort breaks into Dumbledore's tomb to steal the Elder Wand, a superpowered magical artifact that's said to be part of the mythical Deathly Hallows. Because you have to win the Elder Wand to truly earn its allegiance to you, though, Voldemort incorrectly assumes that Snape is the master of the Elder Wand and kills him in an attempt to fully claim the wand's power. It's actually Harry who's the master of the wand, though — he disarmed his schoolboy nemesis Draco Malfoy (Tom Felton), who disarmed Dumbledore before his death, temporarily making Malfoy the master of the Elder Wand before Harry took control. 

Voldemort murders Snape in the midst of an enormous action setpiece known as the Battle of Hogwarts, and though he does this during a pause he offers to the armies of Hogwarts — giving Harry enough time to collect memories from a dying Snape and learn the full truth about Snape, his love for Lily, and his secrets with Dumbledore — the issue here is that he attacked Hogwarts as a whole at all. Yes, that's where Harry happens to be at this point in the story, and yes, Harry, Ron, and Hermione have been systematically destroying all of Voldemort's Horcruxes to ensure that he's a mortal man by the time Harry faces Voldemort one last time. 

Still, let's look at this objectively. Voldemort is extremely evil and no stranger to murder, but to attack the school that helped him become an extraordinary wizard — a school, in fact, where he hid multiple Horcruxes throughout his life and cursed a job (Defense Against the Dark Arts professor) after Dumbledore rejected him — is particularly bad. Besides that, Voldemort is looking for one (1) kid in that school, and in the wizarding world, Harry's a man at 17. All we're saying is that Voldemort probably could have avoided killing a handful of young, child Hogwarts students if he hadn't waged war on the school itself.

At the end of the day, the worst thing Voldemort ever did was the inciting incident that kicks off the entire story of Harry Potter, also known as the "Chosen One" or the "Boy Who Lived." As we learn at the very beginning of the first book and film, "Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone," Harry, as an infant, is living a happy life in Godric's Hollow with his father James Potter and mother Lily Potter when, one night, their safe haven of a home is invaded by Voldemort himself. (Even though their house was magically protected, their Secret-Keeper, Peter Pettigrew, told Voldemort where the house was, allowing the Dark Lord to freely enter the premises.) James, who doesn't have his wand on hand, is killed quickly, and Lily's last act is to beg Voldemort to spare Harry's life before he kills her too.

Because of a half-heard prophecy — reported to Voldemort by a young Snape, instilling in him a lifelong sense of guilt and shame — Voldemort believes he must kill Harry, so the particularly heartbreaking detail is that neither James nor Lily technically had to die. Still, it's obvious that these parents would defend their child with their lives, and ultimately, Lily's sacrifice instills a magic into Harry's very blood that confers magical protection on him for the rest of his life.

As all fans know, Harry doesn't die as a baby; instead, Voldemort's Killing Curse rebounds due to Lily's sacrifice and nearly kills Voldemort himself, sending the Dark Lord into hiding for the next decade. Still, there's no question that Voldemort's worst act is attempted child murder. 

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