65
votes
Why would Dementors torture a Death Eater if they are loyal to Voldemort?
The Dementors joined the Dark Lord after.
When a Dementor sucked the soul out of Barty Crouch Jr., that was before the Dementors joined the Dark Lord. They only joined him after his return. When he ...
- 105k
53
votes
Accepted
Do dementors fly in the books?
Dementors are described in the books several times as gliding. For example, from the attack on Dudley and Harry in The Order of the Phoenix:
A towering hooded figure was gliding smoothly
towards ...
- 5,195
48
votes
Do dementors fly in the books?
As usual, it's hard to prove a negative. However, the time I remember seeing dementors flying in the films was during the Quidditch match in Prisoner of Azkaban. If I look up the passage in the book, ...
- 21k
37
votes
Can a Dementor kiss a muggle (or squib)?
Yes, they can.
In Book 5, stray Dementors
attempted to kiss not only Harry, but Dudley Dursley as well.
From Chapter 1, Dudley Demented
He had run barely a dozen steps when he reached them: Dudley ...
- 12.9k
29
votes
Accepted
How intelligent / smart are Dementors?
Dementors are probably of human intelligence
People generally treat Dementors as if they were capable of formulating complex thoughts. For example, when the Dementors search the Hogwarts express, ...
- 114k
24
votes
Accepted
Why did the two dementors have a much greater effect on Dudley than what Prisoner of Azkaban would have us expect?
The dementors on the train were searching, not attacking. This could produce a difference in their effect on people.
Furthermore, Dudley has been carefully coddled by his parents in a manner that ...
- 4,186
23
votes
Accepted
Why does Hermione pass out first?
Well, the first thing to notice is that, at this point, Harry has a lot more experience with battling Dementors than Hermione, because of his practice sessions with Lupin. True, he'd been taking on a ...
- 29.2k
20
votes
Accepted
Why are the Dementors loyal to anyone other than themselves?
They may have benefited from their victims being together.
Both the Ministry of Magic and the Dark Lord stationed the Dementors at Azkaban, where the prisoners were all held captive and grouped ...
- 105k
19
votes
Accepted
What effect would a Dementor have on Lord Voldemort?
Voldemort believed that the Dementors were natural allies of the Death Eaters; I would suggest this demonstrates one of Voldemort's inherent weaknesses: The overestimation of his power (against people,...
- 164k
19
votes
Accepted
If dementors eat happy memories, why are people sent to Azkaban before trial?
The Ministry of Magic is essentially a thugocracy where all the thugs wear nice robes and fancy suits. Ministry personnel have rather broad powers to snatch and to search and to imprison and even to ...
- 7,369
18
votes
Were there any dementors in Nurmengard?
No.
There were no Dementors in Nurmengard.
It should be noted that the Dementors only resided in Azkaban because it was a natural breeding ground, even before the site became used as a prison.
...
- 61.6k
18
votes
How do dark wizards control Dementors?
Dumbledore in GoF knew that Voldemort would recruit the Dementors (a plan which Voldemort already shared with Harry: “The dementors will join us…they are our natural allies”):
‘The rest of us sleep ...
- 21.3k
17
votes
Accepted
Why did the dementor attack Harry in the train?
The scene plays out differently in the book and the film
Book
The dementor doesn't attack him personally. It stands near him and Harry is simply affected more than his peers.
Standing in the ...
- 667k
14
votes
Accepted
Why are dementors natural allies of Voldemort?
They both spread death, darkness, destruction, dread, and despair. The Death Eaters allow the Dementors to take people's souls - the Ministry doesn't. They're both... evil ;)
The Dementors feed off ...
- 38.1k
13
votes
Inspiration for the Dementors
Out-of-universe, Dementors were an avatar for Depression:
Winfrey: So you became depressed after your mother died?
Rowling: Yes, but I think it was a kind of delayed – I think I had
...
- 25.5k
13
votes
Accepted
What caused the execution by dementor at the end of Goblet of Fire?
Dementors are blind, they can sense people but they cannot differentiate one person from another.
But Crouch took another deep breath and continued in the same flat voice.
“The dementors are blind. ...
- 17k
13
votes
Accepted
How does Azkaban's management work?
The Dementors manage Azkaban
We know that after Azkaban was established, the atmosphere therein was so terrible that even brief visits were next to unbearable:
They turned a blind eye to the inhumane ...
- 114k
13
votes
Do dementors fly in the books?
There is no quote directly stating it one way or another but there is some evidence both for and against.
For
Dementors "live" on the island of Azkaban. Although the island is nearish to the coast, ...
- 3,971
12
votes
What form would a Boggart take when being observed by a Dementor?
A Boggart likely wouldn't react to a Dementor
Dementors can't see
The trigger for a Boggart's transformation isn't explicitly stated, but it appears to be based on sight. Boggarts have an unknown ...
- 42.3k
11
votes
Accepted
Did Ekrizdis create the Dementors?
No, they existed elsewhere at about the same time
Book of Spells is a two hundred year old book which describes an "ancient story" about Dementors.
The strange power of the Patronus, and ...
- 87.3k
10
votes
Accepted
How cold does it get around Dementors?
It's All About The Victim's Perception
First of all, in the movie what you can see is that the surface freezes, you cannot discern that the whole lake has frozen. This is consistent with how things ...
- 1,049
9
votes
Accepted
Can a dementor kiss a ghost (or affect it in any way)?
There's no canon answer on these that I've found, but a ghost is defined in canon as an "imprint of a departed soul" according to Snape, not a complete soul. Now, this isn't hugely clear, but it does ...
- 5,592
9
votes
Accepted
Why did the Dementors fight for the Dark Lord in the Battle of Hogwarts?
The Dementors had long since abandoned the Ministry.
The Dementors had already been (openly) loyal to Voldemort for two years by the time the Battle of Hogwarts took place. They joined Voldemort ...
- 61.6k
9
votes
Why didn’t Dementors fight with Voldemort in the last battle of Hogwarts?
Dementors did join the battle at Hogwarts.
The Dementors did take part in the fight at Hogwarts. They swarm in a big wave towards Hogwarts when the fight was going on. They didn’t just guard Hogwarts ...
- 105k
8
votes
Accepted
Shouldn't Avada Kedavra be just like the Dementor's Kiss?
Dementors use Dementor’s Kiss to suck out the soul. A human can survive without a soul in something like a vegetative state.
“They call it the Dementor’s Kiss,” said Lupin, with a slightly twisted ...
- 17k
8
votes
What caused the execution by dementor at the end of Goblet of Fire?
I believe the primus motor of the execution was Fudge, and his desire to get rid of Crouch as soon as possible prompted the dementor to act. It is possible he had even explicitly ordered the dementor ...
- 2,273
8
votes
What creature is a Dementor?
Dementors are non-beings, like poltergeists and Boggarts.
In JKR’s writing on Pottermore on the Boggart, it’s mentioned that Dementors are (like Boggarts) classified as non-beings - creatures that ...
- 105k
8
votes
Accepted
How did the Dementors guard Azkaban?
By continuously instilling despair
First, Dementors do not guard Azkaban in the hopes of eating the souls of escapees. Such escapes simply do not happen frequently enough for it to be a worthwhile ...
- 114k
8
votes
How intelligent / smart are Dementors?
Within the HP world, at least according to Fantastic Beasts, we actually have a pretty solid way of classifying creatures according to their intelligence:
Grogan Stump, the newly appointed ...
- 667k
8
votes
Do dementors fly in the books?
Others have given many quotes from the novels which describe the Dementors gliding (and we get a sense that this is just above the ground).
I have been studying Prisoner of Azkaban and in Chapter 12 '...
- 12.9k
Only top scored, non community-wiki answers of a minimum length are eligible