After Lord Voldemort's first fall from domination, the Death Eaters dispersed and attempted to return to normal life. Many claimed they had been under the Imperius Curse, while others stayed true to their master and continued his work, most notably the Lestrange family, who were eventually taken into custody, convicted at a trial, and imprisoned in Azkaban. Most of them however, managed ultimately to remain free and to re-integrate into society.
Voldemort lost his physical form and magical powers, but he remained alive in ghostly form. The Horcruxes he had created kept his spirit bound to the physical world. He retreated to the forests of Albania, where he had previously found his fifth Horcrux, the lost diadem of Ravenclaw, and waited for his faithful Death Eaters to find him, but many of them now believed him dead, and those still faithful to him were either dead or in Azkaban. He gained physical form by inhabiting snakes, though he disliked doing so because the bodies of such animals were ill-equipped to perform magic, and because his possession significantly reduced their lifespans; none of his hosts survived for too long. Additionally, any help that he could have potentially rendered himself required the use of a wand, and animals, obviously, could not be used for this purpose.


In 1991, Voldemort formed a plan to regain his physical body. Hogwarts Professor Quirinus Quirrell had made a voyage to Albania, where his foolish and gullible mind was vulnerable to Voldemort. He latched onto Quirrell's body and came back to Hogwarts with him. Voldemort ordered Quirrell to drink the blood of unicorns in the Forbidden Forest so he could gain strength from the unicorn's healing abilities.
Somehow, Voldemort learned of the Philosopher's Stone, and how it could somehow return him to his to physical form. He ordered Quirrell to steal Nicolas Flamel's greatest alchemical compound, the Philosopher's Stone, from a vault in Gringotts Wizarding Bank so he could make the Elixir of Life. Voldemort discovered the Stone had been removed earlier that same day, and through Quirrell's connections at Hogwarts, learned it was hidden at the school.
The same year that Voldemort set to the task of stealing the Philosopher's Stone, Harry Potter began his first year at Hogwarts. There were many barriers protecting the Stone. Quirrell had to trick Rubeus Hagrid, who was then the Hogwarts Gamekeeper, into telling him how to get past the three-headed dog Fluffy. To do this, he enticed Hagrid into a card game with the wager of a dragon egg.
Severus Snape, who had switched sides near the end of the First Wizarding War and become professor of Potions, was suspicious of Quirrell and hounded him relentlessly. When Quirrell released a troll in the Hogwarts dungeons as a distraction, Snape blocked him off. Voldemort was not to be stopped, however, and ordered Quirrell to send a fake letter to Dumbledore, asking him to go to the Ministry of Magic.
Voldemort moved forward with his goal, moving through the security barriers to the Mirror of Erised. Quirrell saw himself presenting the stone to his master, but could not figure out how to get it. It was only when Harry Potter arrived, believing he was protecting the Stone from Severus Snape, that Voldemort saw a way to get it. Dumbledore would later say, "Only those who wanted to find the stone, but not use it, could get it from the mirror." Voldemort figured this out, and Quirrell attacked Harry. When he touched Harry, however, his hands blistered and burned. Harry placed his hands on Quirrell's face, severely injuring him. However, before Quirrell could harm Harry, Dumbledore appeared, and Lord Voldemort's soul fled, killing Quirrell in the process.



Voldemort returned to the Albanian forest, weaker than ever. He had to wait yet again for someone to help him. Sometime before 1992, Lucius Malfoy came into possession of Tom Riddle's Diary. This was the same diary created as a Horcrux by Tom Marvolo Riddle as a boy in the 1940s. Malfoy planted the diary on eleven-year-old Ginny Weasley, who brought it to Hogwarts. She began writing in it, and found that a sixteen-year-old Tom Riddle was answering. She found comfort in the diary, not knowing she was being manipulated. Tom would always have sympathy. The diary slowly drained the life and energy from Ginny, transferring it to itself. Under the diary's control, Ginny re-opened the Chamber of Secrets and released the basilisk, which petrified several students. While possessed, she also killed Hagrid's roosters and wrote threatening messages on the school corridors in rooster blood. Ginny became upset and confused, knowing that the diary was doing something to her, and tried to flush it down the toilet in Moaning Myrtle's bathroom. Harry Potter and Ron Weasley accidentally stumbled upon it, and Harry began communicating with the diary.
When Ginny saw that Harry had the diary, she stole it back for she did not want Harry to find out all the things she had written in the diary, or what she had done while under its influence. When this piece of Voldemort's soul was ready to take his physical form from Ginny's life, the diary lured her into the Chamber of Secrets, while ignoring her pleas and cries for mercy. Harry found Ginny in time and destroyed the basilisk with Godric Gryffindor's Sword. Fawkes also arrived, summoned by Harry's profound devotion and loyalty to Dumbledore.
This encounter and Horcrux is what revealed Voldemort's past as "Tom Marvolo Riddle" to Harry. At first, Harry thought he was an ally, and asked him to help. Then, when revealing his future identity to Harry, Riddle implied that he wanted to kill Harry in revenge for destroying him over even continuing Salazar Slytherin's wish of purging the school of Muggle-borns. Harry used the basilisk's fang to stab the diary, thinking it would destroy its dark power. Not only was the diary destroyed, but Harry also unknowingly destroyed one of Voldemort's Horcruxes. As Dumbledore surmised, the contemporary Voldemort, who was still in Albania, was unaware of these happenings.