50 Fun Facts About Harry Potter Villains

Which curse rebounded on Voldemort when he tried to murder the infant Harry Potter?

Avada Kedavra bounced back because Lily Potter had just died shielding her son: the baby kept only a scar, while Voldemort was torn from his own body.

In which book is the 'I am Lord Voldemort' anagram first revealed?

Chamber of Secrets ends with the diary's teenage Riddle rearranging the letters of his full name; translators had to rename him so the trick still worked in other languages.

Which is the only novel in which Voldemort appears neither in person nor in flashback?

Prisoner of Azkaban keeps him offstage: Harry only hears his voice in a memory the Dementors stir up, and the escaped "servant" hunting Harry turns out to be innocent.

The wand Voldemort bought from Ollivander as a boy is made from which wood?

Yew, whose sap is poisonous, was Rowling's deliberate contrast to Harry's holly, a wood said to repel evil; the two wands also hold feathers from the same phoenix.

Who was Voldemort's mother?

Merope Gaunt reached a London orphanage destitute, having sold a priceless family heirloom for ten Galleons, and lived just long enough to name her son.

Voldemort is descended, through his mother, from which Hogwarts founder?

Salazar Slytherin passed down Parseltongue, and Voldemort's mother's family married cousin to cousin for generations to keep the bloodline pure, ending in poverty and squalor.

The name Voldemort comes from French words meaning what?

Flight of death, or flight from it, is how vol de mort is usually read, though vol can also mean theft; Rowling says she invented the name and that its final t is silent.

On which night was Voldemort born?

New Year's Eve, 1926: his mother reached a London orphanage that night and lived just long enough to name him after his father and his grandfather.

Which Death Eater impersonates Mad-Eye Moody for a whole school year?

Barty Crouch Jr keeps the real Moody locked in a trunk and drinks Polyjuice Potion all year, steering Harry through the Triwizard Tournament to deliver him to Voldemort.

Who played the Death Eater posing as Moody in the Goblet of Fire film?

David Tennant plays the impostor unmasked; in the book a Dementor that Cornelius Fudge brings along sucks out his soul before he can repeat his confession.

Which actor first played the fully restored Voldemort in the Harry Potter films?

Ralph Fiennes nearly passed, admitting to "misplaced snobbery" about a series he had never watched, until his sister Martha told him he had to do it.

Who voiced the Voldemort on the back of Quirrell's head in the first Harry Potter film?

Ian Hart was already playing Quirrell, the stammering teacher whose turban hides the Dark Lord, so the film's meekest professor and its villain speak through one actor.

The Dark Mark is a skull with what emerging from its mouth?

A snake slides from the skull's mouth like a tongue; the Mark is branded on each follower's left arm and burns when Voldemort calls, and they cast it into the sky over a killing.

Who kills Bellatrix at the Battle of Hogwarts?

Molly Weasley steps in after a Killing Curse just misses her daughter; Rowling said she always meant it to be her, setting a mother's love against Bellatrix's obsession with Voldemort.

Bellatrix is named after a star in which constellation?

Orion's bright star Bellatrix, sometimes called the Amazon Star, carries a Latin name meaning female warrior; like many of the Blacks she is named after something in the night sky.

Which of Bellatrix's sisters was disowned for marrying a Muggle-born?

Andromeda married Ted Tonks and was blasted off the Black family tapestry, leaving a burn hole where her name had been; their daughter is the Auror Nymphadora Tonks.

Bellatrix was jailed for torturing two Aurors into insanity with which curse?

The Cruciatus Curse left the couple in St Mungo's Hospital for good, unable even to recognise the son who still visits them.

Who played Bellatrix Lestrange in the Harry Potter films?

Helena Bonham Carter stepped in when Helen McCrory, first cast in the part, became pregnant; McCrory returned in the next film as Bellatrix's sister Narcissa.

Which Horcrux does Bellatrix unknowingly guard in her Gringotts vault?

Hufflepuff's cup sits in the Lestrange vault until Harry, Ron and Hermione break in, Hermione wearing Bellatrix's face thanks to one stray hair and a dose of Polyjuice Potion.

In the play Cursed Child, what is the name of Bellatrix and Voldemort's daughter?

Delphi poses as Cedric Diggory's cousin and talks Albus Potter and Scorpius Malfoy into stealing a Time-Turner, hoping to bring her father back to power.

Which cousin does Bellatrix kill in the Department of Mysteries?

Sirius Black falls through the veiled archway in the Death Chamber, so there is no body to bury; his will leaves Harry everything, including the family house.

What was Umbridge's job title under Minister Cornelius Fudge?

Senior Undersecretary to the Minister was her rank, and she used it to draft anti-werewolf laws that left Remus Lupin all but unemployable.

What sentence does Umbridge make Harry carve into his own hand in detention?

"I must not tell lies" stays scarred on his hand for years: the quill is her own invention, and Rowling notes that only she and Voldemort ever left a permanent mark on Harry.

What title does the Ministry give Umbridge to let her evaluate and sack Hogwarts teachers?

High Inquisitor was a post invented for her by Educational Decree, and each new decree widened it until she could ban student clubs, Quidditch teams and even teachers' small talk.

Who played Dolores Umbridge in the Harry Potter films?

Imelda Staunton wears the bows and frills Rowling borrowed from a teacher she disliked on sight, though the author insists that woman was nothing like Umbridge at heart.

Stephen King called Umbridge the greatest fictional villain since which character?

Hannibal Lecter was King's yardstick for her: one needn't be a child, he wrote, to remember the Really Scary Teacher, while Voldemort is too far out in the supernatural to qualify.

From whom does Umbridge receive Slytherin's locket as a bribe?

Mundungus Fletcher had stolen it, and she took it as her price for letting him off; she then passed it off as a Selwyn family heirloom to prop up her invented pure-blood ancestry.

What fate does Umbridge meet after Voldemort's defeat?

Sent to Azkaban: tried for her part in Voldemort's regime, she is convicted over the torture and deaths of Muggle-borns she had herself condemned to that prison.

Which task does Voldemort set the sixteen-year-old Draco Malfoy in Half-Blood Prince?

Killing Albus Dumbledore falls to him after his father's disgrace, a job no adult had managed; at the last moment he lowers his wand and Snape does it instead.

Draco became Slytherin Seeker after Lucius donated which broomsticks to the team?

Nimbus 2001s for the whole team bought his place, and when Hermione says the Gryffindors got in on talent, not bribery, he answers by calling her a Mudblood.

Into what animal does the fake Moody transform Draco?

A ferret, slammed up and down on the floor for trying to curse Harry behind his back; Ron dubs him "the amazing bouncing ferret".

What does Draco repair in the Room of Requirement to let Death Eaters into Hogwarts?

A Vanishing Cabinet has a twin in the shop Borgin and Burkes: step into one and you emerge from the other, so the castle's protective enchantments are simply bypassed.

Who was cast in 2025 as Draco Malfoy in HBO's Harry Potter television series?

Lox Pratt inherits the part just as Tom Felton, the films' Draco, takes it up again himself, playing the grown-up character in Cursed Child on Broadway from November 2025.

In whose cauldron does Lucius plant Tom Riddle's diary?

Ginny Weasley's cauldron of schoolbooks gets the diary because he hopes to disgrace her father; he has no idea it holds a piece of Voldemort's soul, and is punished for losing it.

Lucius accidentally frees Dobby by throwing away what?

A sock, hiding the ruined diary Harry returns: Lucius flings it aside, Dobby catches it, and a master's gift of clothing frees a house-elf, who collects socks ever after.

Malfoy Manor is in which English county?

Wiltshire has been Malfoy land for ten centuries: Rowling wrote that a wizard ancestor came over with William the Conqueror and was given an estate there for shady services.

Under what name did Peter Pettigrew hide as the Weasleys' pet rat?

Scabbers spent twelve years as a family pet, first Percy's and then Ron's, hiding a man who had blown up a street, cut off his own finger and left a friend to take the blame.

What does Voldemort give Pettigrew to replace the limb he severed for the rebirth potion?

A silver hand of great strength is the gift, and it has a catch: years later he hesitates for a moment over the life he owes Harry, and the hand turns and strangles him.

What is the name of Snape's childhood home, where Bellatrix and Narcissa visit him?

Spinner's End, a brick terrace in a run-down industrial town, is where Narcissa traps him into an Unbreakable Vow to protect Draco and finish the boy's task if he fails.

What form does Snape's Patronus take?

A doe, the same as Lily Potter's: it is the lasting sign of his love for her, and the shape that leads Harry to Gryffindor's sword in a frozen forest pool.

Which actor was offered Severus Snape before Alan Rickman but turned the role down?

Tim Roth passed on Snape to play the ape general Thade in Planet of the Apes, leaving the part to Alan Rickman, who was Rowling's own choice for it.

Who bit the young Remus Lupin?

Fenrir Greyback attacked the small boy as he slept, in revenge: the boy's father, a Ministry official, had called werewolves soulless and evil in front of him.

Which Death Eater kills Remus Lupin at the Battle of Hogwarts?

Antonin Dolohov, among the first Death Eaters, had been jailed for murdering the Prewett brothers in the first war; in this battle the tiny Professor Flitwick finally brings him down.

What subject does Alecto Carrow teach at Hogwarts under Snape's headship?

Muggle Studies became compulsory under her, with lessons that Muggles are like animals, while her brother Amycus turned Defence Against the Dark Arts into plain Dark Arts.

How does Vincent Crabbe die in the Room of Requirement?

By his own Fiendfyre: he conjures cursed flames he cannot control, and the blaze also destroys Ravenclaw's diadem, one of his master's Horcruxes.

Former Death Eater Igor Karkaroff is the headmaster of which school?

Durmstrang's headmaster had bought his freedom by naming fellow Death Eaters, so when Voldemort returns he runs for his life, and is later found dead in a shack beneath the Dark Mark.

Whose murder did the teenage Riddle use to turn his diary into a Horcrux?

Myrtle Warren, killed by the basilisk in a school bathroom, still haunts it as the ghost Moaning Myrtle; Riddle used her death to seal a piece of his soul inside his diary.

Which Hogwarts teacher did the young Tom Riddle coax into explaining Horcruxes?

Horace Slughorn was so ashamed of that talk that he doctored his own memory of it, and Harry needs a dose of lucky potion to coax the true version out of him.

Which creature from the Harry Potter books is shown in The Crimes of Grindelwald as a cursed woman?

Nagini appears there as a 1920s circus performer under a blood curse, a Maledictus who can still change back but is doomed to stay an animal for good.

Who kills Voldemort's pet snake, his final Horcrux, during the Battle of Hogwarts?

Neville Longbottom defies Voldemort to his face, pulls the Sword of Gryffindor from the Sorting Hat and beheads the snake, destroying the last Horcrux and leaving its maker mortal.