| “ | Dementors are among the foulest creatures that walk this earth. They infest the darkest, filthiest places, they glory in decay and despair, they drain peace, hope, and happiness out of the air around them... Get too near a Dementor and every good feeling, every happy memory will be sucked out of you. If it can, the Dementor will feed on you long enough to reduce you to something like itself... soulless and evil. You will be left with nothing but the worst experiences of your life. | „ |
| ~ Remus Lupin to Harry Potter about the Dementors. |
The Dementors are major antagonists in the Harry Potter franchise. They are dark wraith-like creatures used by the Ministry of Magic to guard the Wizard prison known as Azkaban, but they eventually turn against the Ministry and join the Death Eaters.
Behavior[]
As the controversial dark creatures that had been employed by corrupt members of Ministry of Magic as wardens of Azkaban, assassination tool (Dolores Umbridge deployed two of them to dispose of Harry once in The Order of Phoenix), and ultimately beasts of war in the same vein with animals used by Muggles/Mundane humans during conflicts, their sapience is heavily debated. They are intelligent enough to be greedy and make a deal with anyone who could provide them victims in return of becoming their workforce and soldiers in addition of following at least simple instructions. For example, Cornelius Fudge once employed two of Dementors as bodyguards in 1995, and for them to escort prisoners in and out of the Muggle-Born Registration Commission courtroom in 1997. Verbal communication seemed to be in the realm of possibility among these foul creatures judging from their ability to communicate what they had heard Sirius Black saying in his sleep to the Ministry.
Regardless of aforementioned benefits as seemingly tamed thralls, Albus Dumbledore, as well as those who understand better how dangerous they could be, rightfully pointed out Dementors as vicious creatures and that they won't ever differentiate between those they chase after and those that stand in their way. He also informed the students to give Dementors no reason to harm them, saying that forgiveness is not in a Dementor's nature. Indeed, these entities reputed to be so evil that they lacked souls of their own.
Appearance[]
Dementors appear as tall (around four meters), ominous humanoid figures wrapped in long cloaks and robes that appear to be made of black fabric, and glide inches above the ground. A Dementor's face has empty eye sockets, covered with scabbed skin. The skin has a slimy texture, as if something had decayed in water. There is a gaping large hole where the mouth should be, which is used for sucking the soul out of the victim.
Almost anyone who has seen what is under a Dementor's hood is in no fit condition to tell what they saw. Harry Potter is an exception since the Dementor that nearly kissed him lowered its hood before being driven off by the Patronus cast by Harry's future self.
Powers and Abilities[]
Dementors can drain the happiness and any other positive emotion out of any area. In doing so, they can trap their victims within their own miserable thoughts. Their presence makes any area cold (covered by cold mist in the books while downright covered in icy layers with plants almost instantly withers away via. lack of warmth in films). When they with to utterly destroy their victim, they perform the Dementor's Kiss; a single Dementor removes its hood, forcibly clamp its jaw around the victim's mouth, and consume his or her soul. The victim is subsequently left in a vegetative state, and are unable to move on to the afterlife or become a ghost without their soul. The fate of the sucked souls in question was left in the viewers and readers' interpretation, though it's plausible that when a Dementor dies, every single one of souls it has consumed eventually freed and pass on, subsequently allowing said souls' vegetative husks to properly die at last.
If a victim does not have sufficient unhappy memories to be forced to relive and has lived a happy, overly privileged life of bullying and cruelty, such as in the case of Dudley Dursley, then the Dementor's presence will force the victim to look at their inner self and see their true, despicable character. This can lead the victim to feel remorse for their actions and influence them to change their ways for the better if they survive the encounter.
The manner they move around is radically different between versions. Whereas the book established these entities hovering around, films portrayed them flying with little to no support in the same vein with Lord Voldemort and his fellow Death Eaters' black smoke Apparition spell minus black smoke effect.
Being a corporeal entities, Dementors can perform physical labors such as bringing food for prisoners in Azkaban and burying their dead bodies. A single Dementor can easily overpower a full-grown man despite rarely engaging in physical confrontations. Dementors are also invisible to muggle eyes.
Countermeasures and Weaknesses[]
- Patronus Charm: The most effective way to repel Dementors away is the Patronus Charm, a spell to conjure a guardian that embodies one's positive memories and fueled by the caster's happy thoughts, both of which happened to be these dark creatures' major weaknesses. Despite its nature, Patronus is technically not alive and inflicts adverse effect on these entities at its corporeal form while distracting them at worst in incorporeal state.
- Lack of Happy Thoughts: While they can't be destroyed, Dementors propagate like fungi and can die on their own. The process of them dying can be hastened by depriving them of victims, something Kingsley Shacklebolt intended by making extensive changes on Azkaban, including replacing the prison's guards with trustworthy Aurors as part of reformation of the Ministry of Magic.
- Mental Manipulation: Dementors cannot detect, let alone inflict serious damage on individuals who properly turned their ability to perceive their surroundings via others' emotion and physical and/or mental health against them. Sirius Black's obsession to prove his innocence in conjunction with his Animagus form's simpler mindset masked his presence from pursuing Dementors. When Harry was overcome with joy by the fact he can return to the land of the living following his heroic sacrifice in a bid to protect his allies and importantly, disposing Voldemort's fragmented soul inside him, his happiness proved too much for Dementors and they couldn't approach him. Anyone with wicked intention such as those who wished to weaponize Dementors however, can bend these creatures into their personal guards and soldiers.
Biography[]
Background[]
The first record of the existence of Dementors is an old legend which states that the dark wizard Raczidian had a large Dementor colony under his control. When the witch Ellaria refused to marry him, he attempted to wipe out her village with his Dementors. The villagers were unsuccessful in fighting them off with their Patronuses until the young wizard Illyius cast his own Patronus, which was powerful enough to chase the Dementors off.
As mentioned in Pottermore, Dementor infestation was among the horrors discovered during the British Ministry of Magic's expedition to Azkaban, an island in the North Sea where the dark wizard and serial killer Ekrizdis lived, although they were said to be the "least frightening" thing on the island. Fearing the reprisal of these dark entities should anyone try to evict them, the Ministry decided to let the sizeable colony remain, unmolested and unchecked. Unfortunately, the corruption within the British Minister of Magic saw the ruthless Damocles Rowle repurpose Azkaban into a prison island and even worse, assigning Dementors as guards for the same facility. As effective as it seemed, many of the prison's inmates had their sanity scarred by the Dementors' presence. Even after Rowle was forced to step down, no improvement over Azkaban was made, let alone the act to remove the entities despite the apparent threat they pose. Nevertheless, Rowle's action inspired he Dementors' more sinister use upon Death Eaters' takeover on Ministry of Magic where in their case, as weapons of war and assassination tool.
Prisoner of Azkaban[]
The Dementors are main plot elements of the third film and the book it's based on. They are sent by the Ministry of Magic to Hogwarts to guard against Sirius Black. On the Hogwarts Express, Harry encounters a Dementor that affected him so badly he fainted in seconds and partially relived the night his parents were killed by Voldemort. Many more appear during the first Quidditch match of the year, having gone hungry from lack of human prey due to Dumbledore's refusal to let them enter the grounds and unable to resist the high positive emotions of the whole school at the match. Their presence cause Harry to fall off his broom and the Gryffindor team to lose the match. This leads harry to undergo Patronus training under Lupin's tutelage with a boggart that transformed into a Dementor in front of Harry as they were his worst fear. Harry's repeated exposures to Dementor presence led to him reliving more and more parts of the night his parents were killed and took a toll on his emotional health. He had more bouts of depression and turmoil from these encounters as he coincidentally learned more information about how the aforementioned night happened over the year. Dementors were also mentioned having searched Hogsmeade village for Sirius, subsequently scaring villagers away and hurting businesses like the Three Broomsticks.
At the end of the year, Harry and Sirius are encountered by every Dementor in the school, who were given permission to perform the Dementor's Kiss on Sirius. When Harry tried to stop them, one even attempted to perform the Kiss on him. Although powerless at first, a stag Patronus (later revealed to be cast by Harry's future self) saved them and repelled the Dementors away. After Sirius Black escaped and Fudge learned of the Dementors' attempt to Kiss Harry, the Dementors were removed from Hogwarts.
Goblet of Fire[]
The Dementors are seen in a flashback in the fourth book, taking away Barty Crouch Jr., Bellatrix, Rodolphus and Rabastan Lestrange after their convictions for life in Azkaban. They are also mentioned as "natural allies" to Voldemort and his followers, who planned to recruit them for the Second Wizarding War.
Another one was summoned by Fudge for his security after Crouch Jr. was exposed as Mad-Eye Moody's imposter. The Dementor immediately Kissed Crouch Jr. as he was a prisoner who escaped Azkaban, but this prevented him from giving testimony to Fudge about Voldemort's return to power. Fudge and Dumbledore disagreed over the latter's recommendation to remove the Dementors from Azkaban to deprive Voldemort of their use. Fudge feared what they would do without Azkaban to keep them restrained while Dumbledore rightly knew that Voldemort could offer them a far wider scope for their powers and pleasure than the Ministry ever could, and that they would flock to Voldemort the instant he asked them to.
Order of the Phoenix[]
The Dementors return in the fifth film and the book it's based on, having sent secretly and illegally by Dolores Umbridge to silence Harry's claims of Voldemort returning. Harry blasts them off with the Patronus Charm, saving himself and his cousin Dudley from the Kiss. Once the Ministry was forced to accept the truth of Voldemort's return, the Dementors began to revolt against the Ministry under Voldemort's orders.
Half-Blood Prince[]
In the sixth film and book it's based on, the Dementors are seen on the Daily Prophet's recent big news. They have officially turned against their Ministry employers and are mentioned to have been multiplying in large enough numbers to generate a thick mist by mid-1996 and causing wide-spread depression amongst muggles. At various times throughout the year, Dementor attacks were reported in the Daily Prophet.
Deathly Hallows[]
In the seventh film and book it's based on, Dementors were in free roam, with most, if not all, having sided with Voldemort and the Death Eaters. When the Ministry fell to Voldemort, they were re-employed as guards of Azkaban, but given far more victims to feed on than ever, including muggle-borns of any age who were rounded up by Snatchers and sentenced to either imprisonment or the Kiss by Umbridge.
They appear shortly when they chase the protagonists as they escape from Umbridge in the Ministry of Magic. At least ten of them were summoned in Hogsmeade when Harry, Ron, and Hermione sneak into the village in search of a way into Hogwarts to find the diadem horcrux. Harry cast a Patronus Charm to repel them, having presumed the Dementors could sense the trio's fear of them even under the invisibility cloak. (Indeed, Dumbledore said at the beginning of the trio's third year that Dementors could not be fooled this way.)
Later, in the Battle of Hogwarts, an army of Dementors on Voldemort's side invaded Hogwarts and nearly got to the trio who were too depressed by the developments of the Battle, such as the death of Fred Weasley, although they are blasted away by the Patronus Charm by fellow members of Dumbledore's Army.
19 Years later[]
When Auror Kingsley Shacklebolt became Minister of Magic, Azkaban stopped using Dementors any longer. It is not stated what happened to them at large, but at least two were recruited by Victor Gridley for his use. Since they are functionally immortal, it is presumed that they can still be found in dark and filthy places in the world, but in lower concentrations compared to Azkaban.
In other media[]
Harry Potter theme park[]
The Dementors also make an appearance in the Harry Potter and the Forbidden Journey ride at the Harry Potter theme park in Universal Studios in Orlando, Florida. In this ride, the Dementors are trying to suck out the soul of the visitors until they get chased away by Harry Potter himself.
Gallery[]
Trivia[]
- The Dementors are a completely original race created by J.K. Rowling, with no reference in classical mythology. Rowling has said that Dementors represent depression, which she suffered bouts of during her lifetime and before the success of the Harry Potter series. However, some fans argued that they are more likely to represent death owing to their resemblance to classical depictions of the Grim Reaper.
- Dementors were originally described as "amortal" entities similar to Poltergeists, having no origin (thus never being truly alive nor dead), this was retconned to some extent with the story of Ekrizdis, who either directly created the creatures or caused them to manifest via his experiments (which involved sadistic torture and murder of many Muggles).
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 Villains
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