From the very first book in the Harry Potter series, He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named has haunted the footsteps of Harry and his friends. We first met Voldemort as a head attached to the back of Professor Quirrell's skull, but by the fourth book (or movie, if you haven't read the books), we got to see the Dark Lord's full and true body. (Though he was missing a nose.)

Reading about Voldemort in the books always thrilled me. He was this big unknown, a menace who had horribly scarred Harry's life when he cast the worst curse on both of his parents. And the description of his return to flesh was horribly creepy. That's why the fourth book will always be my favorite. That's when the threat that was Voldemort became real.

Movie Voldemort has a tendency to make me laugh. No disrespect to the actors who have played him, but seeing the Noseless Wonder actually portrayed on a screen was side-splittingly hilarious. I didn't expect him to speak in such a nasally voice. My imagination had built Voldemort to such great heights that no movie version could compare, no matter how frightening. (Same thing happened to me with Pennywise the Dancing Clown, but that's another story.) There are many facts about You-Know-Who that make him seem mighty and impressive, but if you're interested in the nonsensical, then this is the list for you. Read on if you want to learn some of the things about the Dark Lord that make little to no sense.

25 Pinky Swears

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Voldemort should know what kinds of followers he attracts to his cause. His servants are either sniveling cowards or they're power-thirsty sneaks (or they're crazy-violent people, like Bellatrix Lestrange). No sane person would place their trust in these kinds of people. They'd sooner run away from danger or stab you in the back than perform faithfully under pressure.

Voldemort should have known this.

So why didn't he make each of his followers form an Unbreakable Vow with him? The Unbreakable Vow is a spell that makes whoever agrees to it promise on their lives to follow through on what they say they're going to do. This kind of spell seems like it's right up Voldemort's alley. So why doesn't he use it more often?

24 Triwizard Trouble

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In The Goblet of Fire, Voldemort's master plan is tricking the Triwizard Cup in order to arrange for Harry to be a champion of the Triwizard Tournament, so that he could later win the Tournament and touch the winner's cup, which is a portkey that transports Harry to Voldemort, so that Voldemort can get some of Harry's blood in order to gain a fresh body. Sounds so simple, doesn't it?

I understand Voldemort's reasons for wanting Harry's blood specifically.

But surely there could have been an easier way to get it. Barty Crouch Jr. was undercover at Hogwarts, posing as Mad-Eye Moody, a loyal servant to Lord Voldemort. He was there for a whole school year. Couldn't he have gotten some of Harry's blood without having to orchestrate the entire Triwizard foul-up?

23 Baby's Day Out

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After thoroughly wrecking himself in his attempt to annihilate Harry off the face of the Earth, Voldemort was left as nothing more than a spirit. Literally, he was like this ghostly form with no body, roaming the world for a solid form of his own. However, by the time The Goblet of Fire rolled around, Voldemort had found himself a creepy baby body to inhabit. Where did it come from? In the books, Voldemort is described as drinking a potion that helps sustain him in his baby form, but where did he get this initial baby body? Did the potion create his body? Or did he suddenly decide to inhabit a living baby's body? (Now that is legitimately creepy.) It's difficult to draw conjectures about a world where magic exists.

22 Stones And Glass Houses

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I feel that even more than his dark magic, it is Voldemort's messed-up ideals that are truly horrifying. He keeps preaching about the merits of pure-bloods, and most, if not all, of his most passionate followers agree with him. His hatred of Muggle-borns is renowned.

But Voldemort's own father was a Muggle.

He has a total double standard. If anybody with mixed blood is considered lower than a pure-blood, then Voldemort, a half-blood, is just as low. This could be explained by Voldemort's psychosis (he doesn't consider himself to be what he is, he thinks he's above it all, etc.), but that doesn't mean that it makes any sense whatsoever. If people hadn't been terrified for their lives while next to him, it would have been hilarious if someone had mentioned his inane unfairness.

21 Familial Foes

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Eternal enemies, Harry Potter and Lord Voldemort, are actually distantly related. Ignotus Peverell, the youngest of the three brothers from the Deathly Hallows story, is an ancestor of the Potter family. The Gaunt family, Voldemort's family on his mother's side, is descended from Cadmus Peverell, the middle Peverell brother.

So there was more than just a prophecy between Voldemort and Harry.

They're cousins! Well, very distant cousins. As is clear with Harry's status as a half-blood, the Potters eventually married outside of their family, but the Gaunts went in a completely different direction. Obsessed with the purity of their blood, they kept it in the family for generations. It's a wonder their house didn't degenerate into a mess. Oh, wait, it totally did.

20 It's All About That French Nomenclature

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The world of Harry Potter is located solidly in the lands of England. We know this not only because the story occasionally takes us to London, but because the style and manner of speaking is comfortably British. As such, it stands to reason that Voldemort, or, as he was then known, Tom Riddle, resided there as well.

However, good old Tom decided to choose a name for himself that is French in its background.

Yup, Rowling told us all about how we were mispronouncing Voldemort's name. The "t" is silent, as is usual in the French language. That's all well and good, but what is Voldemort doing choosing a French name for his Dark Lord moniker? I sense there's a story behind this.

19 Role Models Of Love

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One of the reasons given for why Voldemort turned out the way he did is that he was born into a family life where there was no true love. Merope Gaunt, a shy witch, fell in love with a rich, snobbish Muggle named Tom Riddle. She gave him a love potion that made him fall in love with her, and that's how Voldemort was conceived. Merope removed Tom Riddle from the love spell when she was pregnant, hoping that he had grown to actually love her. Tom Riddle was none too pleased with her, so her abandoned her and her child. Merope gave up Voldemort, called Tom Riddle Jr., to an orphanage after Tom Riddle Sr. left her, and she perished shortly after. With such a loveless environment, Tom Riddle Jr. grew to be Voldemort. I just want to say Harry grew up with the Dursleys, and he didn't turn into a Dark Lord.

18 End-Of-The-Year Celebrations

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Each book in the Harry Potter series works itself out so that by the end of the school year, Voldemort's evil plans (if he happened to make an evil plan) come to fruition and Harry has to defeat him. Now, just close your eyes for a moment (figuratively speaking) and picture a Voldemort plot where he enacts his villainy during the summer. See?

How does he get defeated if Harry Potter isn't around to stop him?

He could have gotten the Sorcerer's (Philosopher's) Stone without Harry meddling around. Possession by diary could also have gone through without a hitch if Harry Potter hadn't been around to get in the way. Of course, a school year is a really nice length of time for a young adult novel.

17 Elder Fights

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It's hard to tell what age Voldemort is during the final battle at Hogwarts. His shiny bald dome and noselessness make it less than easy to discern how many birthdays he's seen go by. Never fear, I'm here to tell you that Voldemort was seventy or seventy-one years old by the time he bit the dust. I know a few people in their seventies, and I wouldn't peg them for being able to participate in combat, not even the magic kind where you just stand still and shoot bursts of light from a wand. So I think Lord Voldemort here has earned himself a bit of applause for being so spry. Well, he would have earned it, if Dumbledore hadn't beaten him in the who-is-old-yet-still-mega-powerful category within the Harry Potter world.

16 Being On Your Best Behavior

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We're constantly told that when Voldemort was attending Hogwarts, he was a model student. Teachers loved him, and he was popular with his fellow classmates. The only one who suspected him of internal villainy was Albus Dumbledore. In the movies, we get to see flashbacks of Tom Riddle, perfect student, but is it just me, or does he always seem kind of shady?

I'm not just saying that because I know he'll eventually become Voldemort.

Look at those flashback scenes again. He seems sinister! He gives people these sly looks from the corner of his eyes, and a smirk just seems to naturally unfurl on his face. Are you telling me not a single other person took one look at Tom Riddle's face and didn't think he was going to be a dark wizard?

15 Alliances With A Dark Lord

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Voldemort always held himself above his trailing sycophants, but he must have had a soft spot in his heart for Bellatrix Lestrange. Bellatrix was always one of Voldemort's more devoted followers, and I guess he appreciated it. In the play that tells of the events after the Dark Lord's fall, we find out that the two of them had a child named Delphini. I understand how Bellatrix could agree to such a union. Throughout the original story, she clearly adored the very ground her Dark Lord stepped on. But how could Voldemort have agreed to that? He was always focused on his quest for power to the exclusion of all else. I wouldn't think that he would have time for a relationship.

14 One Wand To Rule Them All

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The Wizarding World has a lot of rules, and it's occasionally hard for us Muggles to keep all of them in mind. One of the more important set of rules concerned the ownership of the Elder Wand. This wand was supposed to be unbeatable. Ownership passed from person to person based on who defeated the previous owner.

When a wandmaker named Gregorovitch owned the Elder Wand, it was stolen by a wizard named Grindelwald.

He was then defeated in combat by Dumbledore, so Dumbledore owned the wand. However, many claim that stealing a wand does not count as defeating the witch or wizard who owned it. So even though Grindelwald stole it, the Elder Wand still belonged to Gregorovitch. And Gregorovitch was ended by Voldemort. So...should mastery of the Elder Wand have passed to Voldemort?

13 The Big Bang

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Voldemort is kind of like passing wind. He can be silent, but deadly. Voldemort is one of the few wizards who can Apparate noiselessly. In the books, whenever someone is said to Apparate, their sudden appearance is accompanied by a pop or a loud crack. I always assumed the noise was due to the sudden displacement of air when a large mass just bursts on the scene (or conversely, disappears from the scene). You know, science-y stuff. But I guess it all boils down to magic, because how else are powerful wizards like Voldemort and Dumbledore able to do it without so much as a squeak. It makes no sense, but, again, we're dealing with a world that revolves around magic. These things must happen all the time.

12 Those Who Can, Do; Those Who Can't...

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Voldemort's early ambitions all came down to influencing minds. He wanted to be the great influencer of his times, and what better place to influence minds than at a school. Voldemort desperately wanted a spot on Hogwarts staff.

He had his eye on the Defense Against the Dark Arts post.

However, thanks to Dumbledore's advice to Headmaster Dippet, and Voldemort's young age when he approached the Headmaster about the job, he was denied. It makes you wonder though. If Voldemort had gotten that job, would he have been satisfied with influencing the young minds who passed through his classroom and left the rest of the world alone? Would teaching have been enough for him? How would teaching factor into his plan in being Dark Lord?

11 The Teaching Jinx

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After having his wish to be a teacher denied, Voldemort went on to become a Dark Lord. However, the posting for Defense Against the Dark Arts did not fare as well. After Voldemort's rejection, any teacher who attempted to become a professor for that class would not last long. According to Dumbledore, that was why Harry had a string of successive teachers for Defense Against the Dark Arts while he was attending Hogwarts. It's never answered whether it was a simple case of prolonged bad luck plaguing the post or whether Voldemort laid an actual jinx on the position. If it was Voldemort, holy moly, he definitely deserves to be called the most powerful Dark Wizard that ever was. He affected that teaching spot for years. 

10 For Whom The Bell Tolls

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According to Dumbledore, Voldemort's greatest personal weakness is that he fears the end. Everyone fears the end to some extent, but Voldemort has the arrogance to believe that he can overpower it and prevent himself from ever passing. Thus, he created all those Horcruxes.

But honestly, if Voldemort was so afraid of perishing, he should have picked a better career than Dark Lord.

Trying to become the ruler of all wizard-kind is probably the most dangerous job you could ever pick. People will try to stop you or they will try to subvert your rule. If Voldemort's greatest fear is the end, then maybe he should have poured all his efforts into putting himself into a magical bubble of safety.

9 It Was An Accident

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In order to make a Horcrux, you have to commit the most heinous act of all: you have to end the life of another person. Such an act splits your soul into more than one piece. The wizard trying to make a Horcrux would then take the broken piece of their soul and put it into an object. It sounds like a lot of arduous work, but Voldemort managed to do it seven times. On the night that Voldemort tried to get rid of Harry, his curse accidentally backfired and he somehow turned Harry into another Horcrux. The mystery of this situation is how Voldemort did not know that he had a bit of his soul inside of Harry. Dumbledore figured it out. Voldemort was the one who actually split his soul into Harry. How could he not feel that?

8 We Need A Dark Lord Exorcism

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Need more evidence that Voldemort should have known Harry was another Horcrux? How about that time in The Order of the Phoenix when Voldemort managed to turn his body into ghostly dust and possess Harry Potter.

This was after he got a physical body, so he wasn't a mere spirit.

And yet, somehow, he managed to get into Harry Potter and speak from his mouth. What are the rules for Voldemort's powers?! How are you supposed to fight someone like that? If Voldemort had possessed Harry during the final battle, I imagine he probably could have won. Of course, by that time, he had already eradicated the part of his soul that was in Harry. Foolish Voldemort.

7 Snakey Wakey

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After his disembodiment, Voldemort didn't just spend his time floating around as a ghost. He would occasionally inhabit the bodies of snakes in order to survive. Since he was a Parseltongue (he could speak to snakes), I guess he had an affinity for snakes, which made them easier to possess. (Plus he was in Slytherin, and everyone knows the mascot for Slytherin is a snake.)

That's a huge disparity between lifestyles, though.

Voldemort went from being the ultimate Dark Lord to slithering around on his stomach as a snake. He must really love snakes. He even adopts a pet snake (called Nagini) and turns her into one of his Horcruxes. Voldemort is a snake aficionado if there ever was one.

6 Pickpocket Extraordinaire

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When Dumbledore went to the orphanage where Tom Riddle was staying at, he found many clues that led him to believe that there was something menacing in the young boy who was about to attend Hogwarts. He had a collection of things he had stolen from other kids, and the other orphans seemed to fear him. Riddle's penchant for nicking things from other people extended into his adult life.

He stole priceless artifacts to turn them into Horcruxes.

If Voldemort's kleptomania was so prevalent, shouldn't that have tipped other people off to his bad ways? Unless, that is, Voldemort became an absolute genius at hiding the fact that he was a thief. I highly doubt that's the case though.