| dementor | |
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 a dementor | |
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height |
10 ft. |
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weight |
unknown |
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weapons |
mouth |
A Dementor is a Dark creature, considered one of the foulest to inhabit the world. Dementors feed off human happiness, and thus cause depression and despair to anyone near them. They can also consume a person's soul, leaving their victims in a permanent vegetative state, and thus are often referred to as "soul-sucking fiends" and are known to leave a person as an "empty-shell." The Ministry of Magic employed dementors as the guards of Azkaban prison, until mid-1996, when Lord Voldemort was sighted in the Ministry, and their defection to his side was realised. The dementors supposedly led the Death Eaters and Voldemort into the Ministry of Magic. After the end of the Second Wizarding War in 1998, the Ministry was reformed, and Minister for Magic Kingsley Shacklebolt ensured that they were not used by the government again.There are certain defenses one can use against Dementors, specifically the Patronus Charm. Dementors hold no true loyalty, except to whomever can provide them with the most people to feed off. They cannot be destroyed, though their numbers can be limited if the conditions in which they multiply are reduced, implying that they do die off eventually.Dementors have a humanoid shape, approximately three metres, or 10 feet high, and are covered in dark hooded cloaks of long, ripped black cloth. Its body is grayed and decayed looking, and its breath sounds rattling, like it's trying to suck more than air out of a room. Its hands are "glistening, grayish, slimy-looking, and scabbed". They seem to exude cold.A dementor's face has nothing but a large hole where the mouth should be, which is used for sucking the soul out of the victim in a process called the Dementor's Kiss, leaving victims in a state generally considered worse than death. The dementor pulls back its hood and clamps its jaws on the mouth of the victim and sucks out his soul, leaving him an empty shell, alive but completely, irretrievably "gone." Unlike other creatures, who move through some means of physical support, dementors are able to fly freely.Dementors seem to suck all the light and happiness from the air as they draw long, rattling breaths, and cause darkness to close in everywhere and the victim to feel incredibly cold. They can glide toward a victim without sound, and they are sentient enough to taste and sense fear, being drawn to it and the promise of positive memories that it can feed off of. They are also intelligent enough to be greedy: they obeyed the Ministry of Magic for years because, in guarding Azkaban, they were provided with sustenance of any remaining hope or happiness in the prisoners. They can understand and follow at least simple instructions, which allowed a dementor to act as a bodyguard to Minister for Magic Cornelius Fudge in 1995, and for them to escort prisoners in and out of the Muggle-Born Registration Commission courtroom in 1997.They were able to communicate what they had heard Sirius Black saying in his sleep to the Ministry in 1993, implying that they can relay thoughts of their own to wizards through some unknown form of communication, though the extent to which dementors and wizards can communicate is unclear. It is possible that dementors react to emotion and/or thought, rather than to spoken words, though it's also possible they can hear and understand speech.Being blind, dementors sense and feed on the positive emotions of human beings in order to survive, forcing their victims to relive their worst memories over and over again. The very presence of a dementor can make the victim's surrounding atmosphere grow cold and dark, and as the number of dementors increase, so do the effects. Those that are kept in the company of a dementor for too long tend to become depressed, and are often driven insane, which was the main source of Azkaban's well-deserved horrible reputation when they still guarded its prisoners.Dementors rely fully on their ability to sense emotion and physical and/or mental health to track the movements of the prisoners in their care, and are generally unable to distinguish one person from another if both are in similar physical or mental condition. They were unable to identify Mrs. Crouch being snuck into Azkaban disguised as Bartemius Crouch Jr. using Polyjuice Potion, or Barty Crouch Jr. being snuck out disguised as his mother, since both were ill, as divulged by Bartemius Crouch Jr. under the influence of Veritaserum in 1995. They can also not distinguish between humans and animals very easily; Sirius Black, an Animagus, was able to escape from Azkaban in his dog form.Although Muggles cannot see dementors, they are affected in a way similar to wizards and witches, becoming depressed when near them. While at least one Squib, Arabella Figg, has claimed to see a dementor, the truth is that Squibs cannot see them, but have enough magical knowledge to identify their effects.After Bartemius Crouch Jr.'s mother died in Azkaban, dementors buried her body, which shows that dementors are also capable of physical labour, such as grave-digging.In addition to feeding on positive emotions, dementors can perform their last and most dangerous ability: the Dementor's Kiss, in which a dementor latches its mouth onto a victim's and sucks out the person's soul. The victim is left as an empty shell, incapable of thought and with no possibility of recovery. It is believed that existing after a Dementor's Kiss is worse than death: as a person's soul is their true self, to be "kissed" by a dementor is to cease to exist, and yet also remain. The Ministry of Magic occasionally allowed this as a punishment, before Kingsley Shacklebolt became Minister for Magic.Muggles who have had their souls sucked out in a dementor's attack are often mistakenly thought to be suffering from the medical condition known as Persistent Vegetative State by Muggle doctors, since after the 'kiss', the victim would no longer experience any brain activity despite no damage to the brain having occurred. It is unknown what effect a Dementor's Kiss would have on a person who had split his or her soul through use of a Horcrux.The only recorded Kiss occurred in 1995; Barty Crouch Jr., who had been working in secret for Voldemort, and was restrained at Hogwarts awaiting trial. His soul was sucked out by the dementor accompanying Cornelius Fudge as a bodyguard. The terrible consequence of this act was that it rendered Crouch unable to testify about his master's return, allowing Voldemort almost a full year to gather strength while the Ministry continued in its denial.No one has ever demonstrated the ability to kill a dementor, implying that they can not be killed through physical means, but can only be driven away or temporarily kept at bay. One of the few ways to shield oneself from dementors is by using of the difficult Patronus Charm to fend them off .The charm summons a Patronus, the magical manifestation of good will and happiness, providing varied levels of protection against the dementors' influence, based on the caster's strength as a wizard. Only when summoned by an experienced caster will the Patronus take the form of an animal significant in some way to the individual. While the lower level Patronus was more amorphous and ephemeral, corporeal Patronuses chase down dementors and force them to flee the vicinity. An incorporeal Patronus only slows a dementor down, as if the creature is walking through quicksand, and tends not to last long.Since dementors can not properly sense the less complex thoughts and emotions of a person when he or she takes on an Animagus form, doing so allowed some, such as Sirius Black, to temporarily avoid feeling the effects of the dementors' presence.Though clearly not a common method of repelling dementors, the enigmatic form people take after being brought back by the Resurrection Stone appears to function much like a Patronus, as the "resurrected" forms of Sirius Black, Remus Lupin and James and Lily Potter were able to shield Harry Potter from the dementors Voldemort had stationed in the Forbidden Forest in 1998.There may be another, more common way of repelling a dementor, aside from the Patronus Charm, as Harry Potter disagreed with Professor Snape on the best method for confronting one when it was the subject of a report in his sixth year. This implies that there are indeed other methods, which seems even more likely given that most Dark Wizards are apparently unable (or unwilling) to produce a Patronus.Chocolate is an effective first-aid to mild cases of contact, given to a victim to help.The dementors served the Ministry of Magic as the guards of Azkaban, as it allowed them to feed on the emotions of the prisoners. However, by July 1996, most of the dementors of Azkaban staged a mass revolt against their employers to join Lord Voldemort, who offered them more victims. This aided the 1996 and 1997 escapes of Death Eaters from Azkaban.By mid-1996, the dementors, who had joined Voldemort, were multiplying, thus causing an "unseasonal" July mist. Cornelius Fudge also admitted they were factors in the British Prime Minister's recent decline in terms of public approval, as they were making people less happy in general.When Kingsley Shacklebolt became Minister for Magic after the end of the Second Wizarding War in 1998, dementors were no longer used by the Ministry of Magic, presumably because they were deemed untrustworthy and exposing people to their effects is considered inhuman