Harry Potter: 10 Dumbest Things Voldemort Did

3. Choosing Ginny

As revealed pretty early on, Voldemort has a thing about using someone else to do his bidding. He loves an Imperius Curse, he's big on giving his followers big responsibilities and he possesses both Quirrell (partly) and Harry at one point. Most of the time, he's pretty clever with who he uses, but in The Chamber Of Secrets, he chooses possibly the most preposterous candidate to be his minion: Ginny Weasley.

After Lucius Malfoy plants Tom Riddle's Diary on her - handing over a Horcrux, which in itself is beyond stupid - and forces her to open the Chamber and release the Basilisk on the students. As testament to how bad she is at it, not one person dies because of her actions.

The entire plan is flawed too, because Voldemort uses Ginny to try and return in his teenage, not-as-powerful form, rather than as the Dark Lord, which would have undermined him horribly. Needs must, I suppose, but leaving his fate in the hands of a petulant girl who is able to literally throw the diary away rather than using her to pass the diary on to someone vastly more useful is just asking for trouble.