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Are Dementors magical creatures with inherent magical powers?

Or do their powers of despair, depression, cold, and hopelessness come from their eternally soulless existence?

Do we ever see Dementors perform any kind of magic¹ in Harry Potter? Do Dementors have magic?

¹Other than the Dementor's Kiss, which I don't know whether or not is magic or pure, unadulterated evil.

3 Answers 3

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I'm not sure if these qualifies as magical abilities, or if there is a non-magical explanation for these traits, but they all seem magical:

  • The are invisible to Muggles
  • They fly (without wings)
  • They affect emotions of those around them.
  • They physically affect the environment around them simply by their presence/proximity
    • Freeze objects (movies)
    • Create fog (result of breeding in the books)
  • They cannot be killed/destroyed per a J.K.R. interview available at http://www.mugglenet.com/jkr/interviews/dh-webchat.shtml

Cornersoul: So what happens to all the dementors where will they go will they be destroyed if so, how J.K. Rowling: You cannot destroy Dementors, though you can limit their numbers if you eradicate the conditions in which they multiply, ie, despair and degradation.

I think that some of those traits could be attributed to their soulless nature, but not all. The invisibility to Muggles, and flight seem to be independent/unrelated to their evil nature.

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I would say that they do in fact have magic. The first time we were introduced to them was on the train in Prisoner of Azkaban, the door was closed and the dementor simply waved its hand and the door handle moved.

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    Hi, welcome to SciFi.SE! You could improve this answer by editing in a few relevant quotes from the book. You can find some tips at How to Answer
    – fez
    Commented Jun 25 at 16:54
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How we define Magic. If we mean spells like wizards do then not. It seems that only wizard and witches and other beings like elves or goblins can make spells or something like spells. Other magical beings like dragons and unicorns are not intelligent and have magical powers like flying, throwing fire and all of the things that a magical animal can do.

But Dementors are in a third category, they aren´t beings that are born but some kind of spirit like poltergeist and boggarts.

So in a sense they are magic. All of their characteristics are intrinsecal to them and are not a power of a spell like a magical animal but they are not really alive.

Think of Dementors like a autonomous spell, they do not produce spells but are a spell .

We know that a Wizard breed Dementors in Azkaban, they breed with depresion and other spirits like poltergeist are the results of spells so this define their characteristics, a pure magical being like a ghost but not being neither alive or death.

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