Hey everyone,
Welcome to another instalment of Harry Potter Theory.
Today, we’ll be discussing the question of whether or not the soul of one of the most
Dark Wizards to ever live—Lord Voldemort—would have survived if a Dementor had performed
the infamous Dementor’s Kiss on him.
What is the Dementor’s Kiss?
Dementors are certainly a special form of nightmare fuel.
Which means that if you’ve read about them or seen them in the Harry Potter films, you’ve
likely found it quite difficult to forget them or what they look like.
But just in case, for those of you who may be new to the wizarding world of Harry Potter,
Dementors are the ghoulish looking magical beings that float around like a bunch of Grim
Reapers in search of their very own Ebenezer Scrooge to torment.
And in all honesty, they look EXACTLY like the typical Grim Reaper of old—with the
exception of the scythe, of course.
There’s also A LOT of them, whereas in common lore, there’s usually just one lone Grim
Reaper, presumably because this figure is typically a representation of Death.
In any case, the Dementors in Harry Potter are terrifying ghouls who enjoy gorging themselves
on none other than human souls.
This delightful act is known within the wizarding world as the Dementor’s Kiss—aka the sucking
of a person’s soul out of their body.
When the Dementor's Kiss is performed, the Dementor pulls back its hood, clamps its jaw
around the victim's mouth, and consumes their soul.
Yikes!
As Dementors were used to help safeguard the wizarding prison of Azkaban, it’s no surprise
that the Dementor’s Kiss was sometimes performed upon criminals as a sentence decreed by the
Ministry of Magic.
It’s rumoured that the act of the Kiss was possibly reserved for the specific crime of
escaping from Azkaban, since several very serious criminals—like Bellatrix Lestrange—were
never sentenced to the Dementor’s Kiss.
This seems a bit odd, since the Dementor’s Kiss was viewed by many witches and wizards
to actually be “a fate worse than death”.
Presumably this is because the Dementor’s Kiss would leave the victim an empty husk
of a human, alive but…not really.
Just a body without the ability to think or feel and the mind in a persistent vegetative
state—the witch or wizard irretrievably gone.
For this reason, it was widely suspected that anyone who had the Kiss performed on them
was unable to return as a ghost, since their soul had been consumed by the Dementor.
It is said that no one truly knows what happens to the soul when it’s ingested by a Dementor.
Throughout the Harry Potter series, we see Dementors perform—or almost perform—the
Kiss on a number of occasions, from their attempt to consume the three souls of Harry
Potter, Hermione Granger and Sirius Black near the Black Lake in The Prisoner of Azkaban
to their performance of the Kiss on Barty Crouch Junior in The Goblet of Fire.
There’s even that time that Harry saves his ungrateful cousin Dudley Dursley from
two Dementors in Little Whinging, far away from the grounds of both Hogwarts castle and
Azkaban.
Which brings us to today’s question: if a Dementor had performed the Kiss on Lord
Voldemort, what would’ve happened?
Would his soul have been able to survive the Kiss?
Why or why not?
To properly answer this question, I think we must address it in steps, carefully considering
the different stages of Voldemort’s life.
To start with, if the Dementor’s Kiss had been performed on a young Tom Riddle, before
he became Voldemort, I am quite confident that he would not have survived.
Instead, Tom would’ve become a vegetable and the Dark Lord would’ve never come to
be…I believe this to be true regardless of whether Tom was a little boy or the ruthless
and cunning young man he became near the end of his education at Hogwarts.
I think it’s also fairly safe to say that if a Dementor had sucked Voldemort’s soul
out of his body BEFORE the Dark Lord had created his Horcruxes—even if he was already rising
in power as he was in the 1970s—I don’t think Voldemort’s soul would have been able
to withstand the effects of the Dementor’s Kiss.
That is, I suppose, unless he had already begun making Horcruxes and hiding his soul
across the country—but more on that in just a minute.
In any case, this all leads us to the REAL question.
After splitting his soul so many times, what would the Dementors even have to suck out
of Voldemort’s body?
And would this act of the Dementor’s Kiss be enough to kill the mind and soul of Voldemort—despite
the majority of his soul being fragmented and stored in Horcruxes throughout the country?
To answer this question, I think we must first consider a well-known fan theory out there
regarding Dementors and Harry Potter.
According to the theory, Dementors were more attracted to Harry throughout the series than
they were to other witches and wizards.
This is said to be due in large part to the fact that Harry had more than just his soul
in his body—he also had part of Voldemort’s soul in there.
This, of course, was the result of Harry being one of Voldemort’s unsuspecting Horcruxes.
And so, with this theory in mind, it stands to reason that Voldemort would’ve been LESS
appealing to Dementors than any other witch or wizard, since he had—what?
Only 1/8th of a soul in his body?
Would Dementors have even been INTERESTED in performing the Dementor’s Kiss on the
Dark Lord’s almost soulless form?
Or would it have been a waste of their time and efforts?
I mean, surely if he was the only person about, they’d take him for what he had…
And, so if they had performed the Kiss on him at this point in his life, what would’ve
happened?
Since Voldemort was somewhat of a shell of a wizard already, devoid of much soul—a
fragment of a fragment, if you will—would his soul have been able to survive in a way
that others could not?
This is a particularly interesting question since, during his second rise to power in
the 1990s, his body was newly created out of blood and other gross things, made specifically
to host the bit of his soul that had remained after his Avada Kedavra curse bounced back
at him in his attempt to murder an infant Harry Potter.
Would it matter that Voldemort’s body—the thing hosting the remnants of his soul—was
not his original form?
For example, it may have been possible for the body, which was created specifically to
house and protect this piece of his soul, to have been able to resist the Dementor’s
Kiss and “fight back”—almost like another Horcrux.
I’m imagining a Dementor either going in for the Kiss, only to sense that this vessel
was not susceptible and backing off.
Or the Dementor clamping down on Voldemort’s face, only to have the Dark Lord’s body
close off to protect the bit of his soul that was in there, fight back, and irrevocably
damage the Dementor in the process.
From another perspective, if a Dementor was indeed able to perform the Kiss on Voldemort,
I suppose you could argue that the Dementors were such powerful beings that the act of
the Kiss could have triggered the other pieces of the Dark Lord’s soul to come flying to
the location of the Dementor and Voldemort.
The magic wielded by the Dementors seems to be shrouded—pun intended!—in so much mystery
due to their deadly nature and lack of interest in, shall we say, “chit chat”.
And so, it’s not outside of the realm of possibility that in sucking out Voldemort’s
soul, they could have pulled the Horcruxes from the far reaches of the country with their
special brand of magical abilities.
And yet, even with these two former theories, I find myself most drawn to one that seems—to
me—to be the simplest.
I think that if a Dementor had performed the Dementor’s Kiss on Voldemort as he was during
his second rise to power in the ‘90s, the Dementor would’ve sucked out the piece of
his soul that was in there and his body would’ve gone into a vegetative state—yet, since
Voldemort had split his soul so many times to account for something EXACTLY like this
happening, other bits of his soul would have continued to live on in his multiple Horcruxes.
One of his soul fragments could then have been presumably reinstated into this body.
So, in all likelihood, the Dark Lord would’ve instructed his band of most trusted Death
Eaters on what to do in the event of something like this: take his body—or create a new
one if need be—to the nearest Horcrux and reunite that part of his soul with a host.
MEANING, that even though the piece of his soul that was in his body wouldn’t have
been able to survive the Dementor’s Kiss, Voldemort could have endured and survived.
It’s scrappy, but it works!
And, with that, we’ve come to the end of another video!
What did you think?
Do you think Voldemort could have survived the Dementor’s Kiss?
Please share your thoughts in the comments below!
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the channel!
Until next time…remember
"It does not do to dwell on dreams and forget to live."