Ok, in HBP we discover that the eerie mist around England comes from the fact that the Dementors are breeding, and we also discover that they did indeed go to work for Voldemort. In PoA, we discover that the spell "Expecto patronum" fends off the dementors.

If Harry does indeed kill Voldemort, how will he (if he survies), his friends, and the rest off the wizarding community kill the dementors? Or can they even be killed?

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The dementors like the dark, breed in the mist, and bring on a chilling sensation when present, so I think you'll need at least a flashlight and a blowdryer, though maybe you need more like a food dehydrator.

Do dementors have souls? Maybe we could convince them that the whole idea of breeding in the mist is so last millenium, and they should modernize by having more human relationships--then as soon as they kissed...well, we could use what's left of them as props in future Stephen King movie adaptations.

I guess on a more practical note, it may be possible to just starve them by preventing them from being near people, since they need people in order to feed.

I think the only way to kill dementors is to let them starve.

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I've put alot of time into thinking about dementors, the ominous information that they do breed and a chilly mist stretches across parts of the countryside from it adds another angle to my questioning. But, I still think dementors do not exist in the destiny of life and death. It seems dementors are a composite of negative emotion: sadness, despair, and being hopeless; which decay our souls. Otherwise depression or sloth. As dementors are Dark creatures, they are vulnerable to sources that give off warmth and light. If a dementor is directly exposed and cannot escape, it may be reduced to something more simplistic like a cloud of smoke and maybe dust. However, dementors have shown they can blanket small areas with cold and darkness, snuffing out feeble light sources like lamps and candle flames. A corporeal patronus is the only thing we know of so far that can chase away dementors because they cannot feel despair, yet also emanate incredible silvery-white light. Maybe a dementor could be weakened by several charging patronuses.

Yeah, I like that idea as well. I don't know if the importance of Patronuses were discussed in the pamphlet Harry received in HBP, but it should become common knowledge; everyone should be taught how to successfully create a corporeal Patronus. I'm not sure what else would work.

THis is an interesting thought. How do you kill/destroy a Dementor? There is a fan fiction theory that Dementors can be killed by love and light...Maybe is enough people surround one and use the Patronus charm it will be destoyed. I like albus-wans idea though, just make them kiss then use them in Stephen King movies, too bad Muggles can't see dementors!

I personally think that dementors can be starved. In POA, Lupin told Harry that the dementors came to the Quiddicth match because they were hungry, so that implies that they can die from starvation.

And just because I'm too curious for my own good: What happens if a dementor can't escape from a patronus? If they were unable to escape, would a patronus be able to destroy them?

Yes, dementors FEED on the good feelings and happy memories. Feed being the word Lupin uses, this implies that dementors need others happy memories as sustanance; they need it to live. Without it I'm sure they would die.

As for whether or not a dementor would die if trapped in a tight space by a patronous. I don't think it would. The patronous doesn't actually harm the dementor, it sort of just produces fake good feelings and the dementor, unable to get around it, chooses to leave. So I think it might be more then a bit of an annoyance for a dementor if he was trapped by one, but I don't think he would die from it,

I don't see how dementors ccould feed on both hope and despair...they are opposites.

And I don't think I had it wrong, I'm pretty sure Lupin says something like "Dementors are amoungst the foulest creatures to walk this earth. They feed on every good feeling, and every happy memory until a person is left with nothing but there worst fears."

lol aaaaaaaand I've seen PoA one too many times

How I understood it is that dementors couldn't care less whether or not they make you sad or not. The bottom line is that they are hungry and your happy memories is what they are hungry for. They eat your happy memories and you being left with only sad memories (that they don't want to eat) is simply a side effect, not their main goal.

I thought that they fed of hopelessness and despair emotions. That's why they cause you to "relive" your worst moment in life: to feed of the negative emotions.

Accio~ I'll have to go back and re-read but im pretty sure that the dementors don't make you feel bad. Well, they do, but it is indirectly. Every person has good and bad memories. The Demontors take your good memories so they make you feel bad because they leave you with only bad memories, but they aren't like giving you bad thoughts.Just leaving you with nothing but bad thoughts.

I hope that made a little bit of sense at least >.<

I'd like to clarify what Professor Lupin told Harry Potter about them:

Well the way Rowling decribed dementors in the relationship with Harry, I took from it that dementors are the manifestation of depression. Because of this, I don't think there is any real way to kill them.

I completely agree with you.
The problem IMO is how can the MoM or the Order of the Phoenix defeat creatures that are multiplying, spreading, attacking people, and can retreat into darkness?

I'm thinking the patronous is a way to get rid of the dementors in a way that just gets them away from you. There must be some sort of spell of something that can either cause physical pain to or kill a dementor. When Harry is atked in PoA by dementors, DD sends them straight off. If he would have made a giant patronous to get rid of them I'm sure ppl would have been talking about it for days, but we don't hear anything, so I don't think he did this. But the dementors must have listened to him when he told them to leave. And why? I think because they know DD can physically harm them or kill them. Also, the MoM was more or less forcing the Dementors to work at azkaban which means they must have some sort of control over the dementors more then a simple patronous.

I think it's possible that the dementors wanted/enjoyed the job at Azkaban. They love watching people suffer and watching people die in their jail cells and crying and screaming must've been been amusing to them, but Voldy offered them power. The MoM offered them a just and they have to listen to them at all times. So, it's not difficult to see why they would choose Voldy.

Can a Dementor be killed? Hmm... I tend to think that if they are creatures that can breed, why should we think that they can't die as well? I doubt if they are eternal creatures, exactly, though I would suggest that they may be eternally persistent. Meaning that it may not be possible to completely eliminate them from the world. Maybe... I reserve the right to retract that statement if it begins to look like Rowling is going to prove me wrong in Book Seven.

I actually like the idea that a coporeal Patronus might be able to kill a Dementor, though if this were so, I would seriously doubt it would be by their mere presence. As I understand it, a Patronus acts more as a shield protecting those things in the person that the Dementor would feed on. This being the case, if a Patronus were capable of actually killing a Dementor, then I would think it would require a more offensive action on the part of the Patronus. But I do think it might be possible...

I would agree that starvation may be a possible means of killing a Dementor too, but then, how would you go about starving a Dementor? About the only way I could think of would be to corner it with a Patronus and then sit there and keep the Patronus going while you wait for a Dementor to starve... At the very least, I hardly think this is practical, so I think intentionally starving a Dementor could be a very difficult thing to accomplish.

Light and Love... I can see these as forces that could kill a Dementor. But how to utilize them exactly?

Finally, I would agree with the statement that the reason the Dementors worked for the Ministry in Azkaban was because it was a system, specifically designed to give them what they wanted: to feed off people. Particularly if there is a way for wizards to fight Dementors or even kill them, then it would only be in the Dementors' best interests to work for the Ministry, thus protecting themselves while still getting what they wanted. Of course they'd go to Voldemort the moment they could because he would be able to give them the freedom to feed off whomever, wherever they like, while also keeping them under his own protection.

So... yes, I would say that there probably is some way to actually kill Dementors. And that there are probably even ways a lot more practical and straight-foward than starvation.

I believe that there are at least two ways to kill a Dementor.

First, you could cut the dementors off from all humans. With humans as their main food source, they would soon starve to death.

Second you could send as many different patronuses at a dementor at once.

Now there is no gaurantee on if these will work or not , but it is worth a shot at least.

If nothing else you could use the patronuses to herd the dementors back to Azkaban. Restore control over them and go back to the way life was before Voldemort's second uprising.

I don't know whats to say you can't use Avada Kedavra on them. Anyway, i could guess, that in a moment of extreme happiness, like the defeat of Voldemort, there won't be enough sorrow for them to live on, so they will die. Just a theory.

NickHilton sorry but dementors live on happiness not sorrow. they suck the happiness right out of a person. which is why Ron said in PoA,"I felt weird though....like I'd never be cheerful again."

True true, my mistake. Perhap the other way round then? No, i think they will die anyway when the happy emotion is too much for them to make the person feel sorrow, more like that.
Thanks Snapeshot,
Nick

I think this is great thread, My wife's student asked this exact question of whether the Avada Kedavra curse could kill a dementor. What do you guys think?

I'm not sure starving a dementor is even possible. I mean, a protronus is a positive force, right? The dementor feeds on it rather than the witch or wizard. So how could a protronus starve a dementor if it's doing just that ... feeding off it? Also, how would it be possible to actually shut them away without human contact? How can we keep them away without having ot go near them?

Just another thought, isn't it difficult to produce a protronus, particularly a corpreal protronus? And even then it takes a lot of strength to do so and keep it going. Your mind has to be concentrating on nothing else. I reckon it would be pretty difficult to keep a protronus on a dementor for long enough, even if you were doing it in a routine thingy with more than one person taking it in turns I mean ... it'd get pretty messy don't you think?

Well, yeah ... haha!

what do you guys think?

This thread has certainly been dead for a long time. I was pretty amazed that someone had delved this far back to find a thread that hasn't been posted in for almost 2 years!!

Anyway, can dementors be killed?? I hope so! Maybe they could be deep frozen then smashed into smitherines...or perhaps a blast with a flame thrower would do the trick...hmm, I'm forgetting they are all muggle methods. I need to think of something magical....I'll have to come back to you on this one!

Yeah I know! I'm not entirely sure how I found it. I was looking for something completely different and I came across this thread. I thought it looked kinda interesting, so I thought I'd post my thoughts on it and see if I could bring it back to life! Haha!

Anyways, how do you guys think you can kill a dementor? Do you think they can even die? They must, otherwise there'd be a lot more than there really are. Maybe they die themselves of 'natural causes', so we can't kill them, they die themselves. Hmmm...

Lol! Anyway, tell me your thoughts...

Maybe a good ol' fashion dousing in acid would do the trick. I mean if they can reproduce the would have to be able to die right? or else it would be cold everywere all the time.

Excellent point, cloe101, about the fact that they can reproduce means they must be able to die... at first I didn't think a dementor could die, because they sort of seemed the epitome of death (the sad, naive idea of death, I mean, not the peaceful 'next great adventure' idea of death). Also, death seems to be what actually sets them off, because that's what causes the most sadness in people, and the most hopelessness...

Anyway, now I think that they maybe can be killed by their opposite, something really good or happy...like birth, new innocence, with nothing for them to feed off of (and that would be the opposite of the whole 'death's all that and a bag of chips for dementors'). Or, I guess they could be destroyed by something selfless (since they're the opposite of that too, feeding off of others, with no mercy or compassion), like for instance Dobby's death, or something of that nature. It still doesn't explain how exactly a specific dementor would be determined to die though... (Maybe it's the closest, relatively?)

Just a theory, though, and I'm sort of picking at straws ...I don't think they die of natural causes, it just seems so...anti-climax, I guess (if you know what I mean?).

I said earlier that if they can reproduce than they must be able to die and as lovinglupin put it that maybe a happy event can kill them but it inspired another idea.
Maybe the Dementors are like salmon after they spawn they die or maybe they are like the black widow spider the female kills her mate after they mate so maybe in a way birth does kill them.
Or they could be like some animals and they kill their own young. A dementor is after all a living thing so it would have to expire at some point in time or old voldy himself would have tried to find their secrete to immortality. There has to be a way for them to die and if a wizard or muggle is not able to kill them off maybe they kill themselves off. Like giants or something.

As much as we like to see the dementors being decimated by corporeal patronuses, that's the stuff of fanfictions. In her web chat after the release of Deathly Hallows, JKR had this to say in response to one of the queries



So it seems that in canon they cannot be destroyed, but people have being doing that in fanfictions where Harry conjures a giant stag patronus that smashes them to smithereens and I kinda like that.

So... does that mean that we can't kill them, but stop them from multiplying? That would actually make sense, considering that we never hear about them breeding until they begin to follow Voldy, who lets them have a free reign. They were watched so very closely by the Ministry before that, and they would have made sure their numbers remain 'safe'.

Hmmm......

And if this theory is correct, and their numbers by the end of the seventh book cannot be changed, does that mean that the mist and stuff will stay as well? Or is the mist only created because they are breeding, not because there are more of them?

But cloe101's idea is a really good one and so if everything I've just said is in fact wrong, I reckon there's a point worth "considering". LoL!