Harry Potter: What Dementors Really Look Like Under Their Cloaks

Dementors are some of the most horrifying wizarding creatures in the entire "Harry Potter" universe. Meant by series author Joanne Kathleen Rowling to represent depression, the cloaked figures fly through the air and feed off the emotions of witches and wizards, even evoking some of the worst memories and trauma of some people's lives. (Our protagonist, Harry Potter — played onscreen by Daniel Radcliffe — witnessed the murder of his parents as a baby and flashes back to that moment whenever he's surrounded by dementors.) So what's under their sinister cloaks?

Nothing good, is the answer. In the third book, "Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban" (via Wizarding World), it's revealed that dementors have no eyes and a frightening mouth. "Where there should have been eyes, there was only thin, grey, scabbed skin, stretched blankly over empty sockets," the description reads. But there was a mouth ... a gaping, shapeless hole, sucking the air with the sound of a death-rattle." In the same book, when Harry and his friends first see the dementors, they also get a glimpse of their disgusting appendages: "There was a hand protruding from the cloak and it was glistening, greyish, slimy-looking and scabbed, like something dead that had decayed in water." There's no question that dementors are truly terrifying to look at ... but what makes them seriously scary?

Beyond being able to feed off of emotions and evoke terrible memories, dementors have a power that makes them into one of the scariest magical creatures in the entire "Harry Potter" universe. Namely, they can steal your soul.

As Remus Lupin (portrayed in the movies by David Thewlis) explains to Harry in "Prisoner of Azkaban," dementors can "kiss" victims, thereby removing their very soul from their mouth. When Harry asks if that kills the victim, Lupin reveals that it doesn't, but it's actually worse. 

"'You can exist without your soul, you know, as long as your brain and heart are still working," Lupin tells Harry (in a quote also featured in the same Wizarding World article on dementors). "But you'll have no sense of self any more, no memory, no ... anything. There's no chance at all of recovery. You'll just – exist. As an empty shell. And your soul is gone for ever ... lost.'

Under what circumstances would dementors feel compelled to "kiss" someone? It's not seen that frequently within the "Harry Potter" books, but when it is, it's used as government-sanctioned punishment (the dementors are ostensibly "employed" by the Ministry of Magic and guard the wizard prison Azkaban, but end up turning on the Ministry when dark forces come calling later in the series). When Sirius Black (Gary Oldman), a falsely imprisoned wizard, emerges during "Prisoner of Azkaban," the Ministry plans to have the dementors steal his soul (but the plan is thwarted by Harry). In "Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire," a dementor kisses Barty Crouch Jr. (David Tennant), a confirmed evil Death Eater, before the Ministry can hear his confessions.

When you hear all of the most upsetting details about dementors, it inspires an obvious question: how can a witch or wizard escape an interaction with one of these monsters with their soul and sanity intact? The answer is a Patronus Charm, where a person summons the happiest memory they can think of and put it at the forefront of their mind. Then, with the incantation "Expecto Patronum," a witch or wizard's wand will produce their own personal Patronus, or a spectral version of an animal or creature that serves as their protector. Harry's Patronus, quite famously, is a stag — meant to represent his late father James Potter, an Animagus who could transform into one and went by the nickname "Prongs."

As readers and audiences see in "Prisoner of Azkaban," learning how to produce a Patronus is extremely difficult and the magic is quite advanced. Even Harry's brilliant best friend Hermione Granger (Emma Watson) often has trouble with the spell, while Harry is basically always able to produce a corporeal and fully-fledged Patronus whenever he's confronted by a Dementor, even saving his cousin Dudley Dursley (Harry Melling) from one lurking in a Muggle neighborhood in "Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix." In any case, dementors are uniquely dangerous and frightening ... and you definitely don't want to see what's under their creepy cloaks, if you can avoid it.