Dementor

A **dementor** is a canonical Dark creature which feeds on human happiness, creating feelings of depression and despair in anyone near them. They can also consume a persons soul through the so-called Dementor's kiss, leaving behind a body in a permanent vegetative state. They were employed by the Ministry of Magic to guard the prison at Azkaban until they joined Voldemort during the Second Wizarding War, after which the practice was discontinued. The main defence against dementors is the Patronus charm, especially in its corporeal form, but being in their animal form will also reduce the effect of proximity on animagi. Chocolate is an effective antidote to lingering aftereffects of a dementor attack.

## Canonical information

Main article: **Dementor** at *The Harry Potter Wiki*
Dementors are tall, some reaching 12 feet (3.7 meters), and humanoid; they wear hooded cloaks over decaying-looking bodies with grey, slimy and scabbed skin. The face, normally hidden by the deep hood, is revealed when they give the Dementor's kiss; it has empty eye sockets covered with scabbed skin and a gaping whole instead of a mouth, through which the victim's soul is sucked up. Although the lack of eyes means that they are blind, they have a keen sense of the emotions of people around them, with a range at least as far as the distance from the entrance of Hogwarts Castle to the shore of the Great Lake. (How they manage to navigate non-living obstacles is unclear.)

Dementors are classified as non-beings, also known as *non-human spirituous apparitions*, meaning that they are not (and have never been) truly alive and thus cannot be killed, only driven off. This is also referred to as *amortality*.

### Differences in the films

The depiction of dementors in the films differs from the description in the books in several ways:

* They are skeletal creatures wearing hoodless robes, rather than slimy decaying corpses in hooded ones.
* They can fly freely rather than merely gliding over the ground.
* They cover their surroundings in ice and cause plants to wither, rather than merely being surrounded by cold mist.

## Non-canonical information

### *Ignore the Dementor*

*Main article: Dementor in Ignore the Dementor*
In this creature!fic, dementors are described as human-like magical beings rather than monsters, although they have trouble communicating properly with other species due to their inability to speak any human language while their own language is impossible for others to understand (except by house-elves). They can, however, learn to read and write, and they can thus enter magically binding contracts. They are said to spawn in mists, but also have the ability to turn people into dementors by a careful application of the Dementor's kiss where they pull the soul out of the body but do not consume it; this is very difficult and thus rarely done, but they are careful to make sure that any contract they agree to only covers spawned dementors, so that if they need to they can turn someone who is free to act. By 1995, their contract with the Ministry of Magic has been fulfilled for about ten years, but the Ministry has ignored their requests for either a contract renewal or other guards to take over their duties so that they can leave. Thus, when they are ordered to give the Kiss to Harry Potter, whom they know since their stint of guarding Hogwarts two years previously to carry a parasitic soul fragment, they decide to only fulfill the order to the letter and turn him into a dementor able to inhabit his old body.

## References

1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 *Ignore the Dementor*, Chapter 5
2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 *Ignore the Dementor*, Chapter 8
3. ↑ *Ignore the Dementor*, Chapter 11
4. ↑ *Ignore the Dementor*, Chapter 1