Of all the magical creatures and strange beings in the Harry Potter universe, none are as downright evil as the dementors.
Used to guard the wizard prison of Azkaban, which houses some of the most nefarious and powerful spellcasters in the world, they are unfeeling, cold, and calculated.
They're also pretty gross, with a special move known as the dementor's kiss, within which they will place their mouth caverns on a person and essentially suck out their soul.
It's really grim stuff, so it's perhaps unsurprising that they were created by one of the most evil wizards in history, Ekrizdis, hundreds of years before Voldemort was even born.
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After they threw in their lot with the Dark Lord during the events of the Harry Potter books, they were ultimately defeated along with their master, but it seems not everyone in the community knows exactly what happened to them afterwards.
Not A Good Time To Be A Dementor
Over on Reddit, one Harry Potter fan asked exactly what had happened to the miserable creatures after the death of Voldemort. As the top comment underneath explains, it wasn't a particularly good time to be a dementor.
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"Under Minister Shacklebolt, they were dismissed from Azkaban and it was guarded and patrolled by Aurors," it reads. "I think they would have been herded into caves and grottos and left to starve without any pain or misery to feed on. So somewhere in the British isles is a secret cave, dark and dank swarming with starved and dying dementors…creepy."
Small bit of conjecture at the end aside, the poster is correct that they were dismissed from their position guarding the prison after the events of The Deathly Hallows.
Outside of that, their overall fate actually remains unknown, and whether they were contained in some way or simply turned out to live out their days is unclear.
The issue with that arises when you realise that dementors can breed (in a weird non-biological way), and don't need to be manually created by a powerful wizard now that they already exist.
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That could then lead to their numbers spiralling out of control quite quickly if the wizarding community isn't careful, possibly leading to more attacks on muggles (a la Dudley Dursley).
The new HBO series has the opportunity to answer some of the remaining mysteries from the books and films, even if they no longer have the direct involvement of the author.
Topics: Harry Potter, TV And Film, Warner Bros