What did Voldemort look like before he killed the Potters?

What did Voldemort look like before he killed the Potters? - Woman in White Making Table Arrangement Looking Like Science Laboratory

If Voldemort was 'reborn' in that massive cauldron at the end of Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire and came out with red eyes looking like a snake and stuff, what would he have looked like beforehand??

I mean, in the Chamber of Secrets he was a normal looking person and what not, so would he have kept looking like a normal human up until the time that he killed Lily and James or would he have changed his appearance before that as well?



Best Answer

His change in appearance came before he killed the Potters.

Between his years at Hogwarts (the young version of Tom Riddle / Voldemort whom we see in Chamber of Secrets) and his destruction at Godric's Hollow, his immersion in the Darkest of the Dark Arts changed his appearance and made him look pale and snake-like. There didn't seem to be any noticeable difference between how he looked before killing the Potters and after his resurrection.

The Godric's Hollow scenes happened too quickly for me to get good screenshots, but you can see in this video how Voldemort looked like the noseless monster we know when he killed Harry's parents:

In the books, we get to see him in an intermediate stage during the years of his rise to power:

Voldemort had entered the room. His features were not those Harry had seen emerge from the great stone cauldron almost two years before; they were not as snake-like, the eyes were not yet scarlet, the face not yet masklike, and yet he was no longer handsome Tom Riddle. It was as though his features had been burned and blurred; they were waxy and oddly distorted, and the whites of his eyes now had a permanently bloody look, though the pupils were not yet the slits that Harry knew they would become.

-- HP and the Half-Blood Prince, Chapter 20: Lord Voldemort's Request

For more details (relevant to both films and books) on how and when his change in appearance came about, see this question on another SE.




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What did Voldemort look like before his body was destroyed?

He had a nose, the red eyes, pale skin and the human features but the rebirth body took his snake like appearance to the extreme.

Did Voldemort look normal when he killed the Potters?

His change in appearance came before he killed the Potters. Between his years at Hogwarts (the young version of Tom Riddle / Voldemort whom we see in Chamber of Secrets) and his destruction at Godric's Hollow, his immersion in the Darkest of the Dark Arts changed his appearance and made him look pale and snake-like.

What did Voldemort look like during the first war?

It was chalk white with glaring red eyes and slits for nostrils, like a snake.



How The Horcruxes Affected Tom Riddle's Physical Appearance




Sources: Stack Exchange - This article follows the attribution requirements of Stack Exchange and is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.

Images: Ron Lach, Lukas, Andrea Piacquadio, Nurlan Tortbayev