Dementor's Nature (Re: Dementors and the MoM)

[Jen Reese]

No: HPFGUIDX 124707


> Kizor: 
> Having thought intensely about the subject, I feel that I can sum 
> up the most important reason behind the Ministry of Magic's 
> employment of the Dementors in one sentence:

> It's a considerable improvement over having Dementors outside the
> Ministry's control, isn't it?

 
> Alla: 
> I am wondering now though whether Cornelius desire to keep 
> Dementors close will not come back to hunt him directly?
> Do you think it is possible that Kissing of Barty foreshadowed the 
> kissing of dear Cornelius? Or maybe Dolores Umbridge?

Jen: I'm torn about the future use of Dementors for plot purposes. 
On one hand, JKR makes it clear we are going to see Dementors 
outside Ministry control in the next book. What exactly that means, 
whether Voldemort is capable of controlling them any better than 
Fudge remains to be seen. Or perhaps Voldemort doesn't try to 
control them at all, merely tells the Dementors the parameters of 
who they can and cannot Kiss, then lets them loose. 

But on the other hand, we will get somewhat desensitized to their 
grotesqueness and fearsome power if the Dementors are seen Kissing 
too many people or are at the forefront of the War. POA was perfect--
we got a taste of their power, but not too much.

Then there's the piece about the morality of the Kiss. Lupin asks 
Harry to consider whether anyone deserves to have their soul sucked 
out, and Herry responds some people do deserve it. Obviously Lupin 
doesn't feel the same way. 

JKR could be making a moral point there, or merely revealing more 
about Dementors. But I felt like she was saying that a soul is more 
important than a physical life, at least in Potterverse. That people 
will die in the coming war, as they did in the previous war, but the 
sucking of one's soul is 'much worse than that' as Lupin says in The 
Patronus chapter of POA.

I can't imagine their future role, although it does seem at least 
part of Voldemort's power is the fact he has no soul. As Lupin tells 
Harry, in POA: "If it can, the dementor will feed on you long enough 
to reduce you to something like itself....souless and evil." (US, 
The Patronus chapter, p. 187).

So what happens when a Dementor Kisses someone like Tom Riddle, who 
has no "peace, hope and hapiness" to be sucked out? Does he gain in 
power rather than being reduced to the worst experiences of his 
life? Canon indicates that you can block a Dementor's power drain in 
certain ways, like Sirius did, but it might also be indicating that 
an evil person can actually *feed* off the Dementor rather than vice 
versa. 

Jen