Antagonist
Tom Riddle
The boy who becomes Lord Voldemort. A Hogwarts student, a murderer, and the antagonist whose name the wizarding world is afraid to say.
The series’ villain has a school record. He was brilliant, poor, charming when it served him, and already dangerous as a student in Slytherin house. ‘Lord Voldemort’ is a name he built to escape ‘Tom.’ The first book can be read without the diary. The second book makes the boy unavoidable.
Canon fact, kept short: he is the one who attacked the Potters, and he did not stay gone. How he tethered himself to objects is a late mechanism. The stacks page on horcruxes is labeled for that reason.
Later in the story
The orphanage, the diary, the followers, and the hunt for anchors are the long plot. This page’s early half is only the name and the schoolboy.