Summary: If you want to get an idea of how Dementors breed, you first have to consider a few things. What are dementors exactly? Are there male and female Dementors? What are the chances that a Dementor can self-fertilize? I adress some of these questions in my essay.

Let me start with a general description of Dementors. In the books, Dementors are described as dark creatures who feed off human happiness. They carry with them a cold and dark atmosphere. They guard the prisoners of Azkaban for the Ministry of Magic. To get an idea of how Dementors are created - and how they may in fact breed - it is important to look at their body and physical features to see if they compare to those of a human body.

On Harry Potter Wikia they are described to have a humanoid shape, about 3 meters or 10 feet high. They are covered with dark hooded cloaks of ripped black cloth. A Dementor's body is grey and its breath sounds rattling, as if it's trying to ‘suck more than air’ out of a room. Its hands are "glistening, greyish, slimy-looking, and scabbed". They seem to exude cold.

A Dementor's face consists of empty eye sockets, covered with scabby skin. There is also a gaping large hole where the mouth should be, which is used for the process called the Dementor's Kiss, leaving victims in a state generally considered worse than death. The Dementor pulls back its hood and sucks out his or her soul, leaving the person an empty shell, alive but completely, irretrievably "gone." Unlike other creatures, who move through some means of physical support, Dementors are able to fly freely. Dementors are also known to be blind, as they do not have any eyes. However, they have the ability to sense whether a presence is near them or not. This is because they sense the victim's emotions.

Male and Female Dementors.

Most humans are familiar with how babies are made. Generally speaking mammals all do it the same way. You take a male and a female…. But is it possible that Dementors do it the same way? Are there male and female Dementors? Are they even mammals? Well, we can't be sure of any of the answers to these questions.

A general response would be saying no. If you think about references to Dementors in the series, there are no signs that some Dementors have different physical features than others, including difference of gender. You can’t see which are male and which are the female like with humans.

But - thought experiment - let’s pretend that there are male and female Dementors, how would they create new life? When Muggles have intercourse it’s mostly for love. They have sex and eventually reach a point of extreme happiness. Out of that a baby grows. Sometimes they call babies bundles of love.

But can Dementors love?

They are cold and dark creatures, so I don’t think it would be possible for them to create something so pure like new life. It would more likely create the opposite, something very dark. Like a nightmare. If Dementors could have some sort of intercourse, I don’t think it would be physical, but rather something...mental. It is known that Dementors have had some sort of communication with the Minister of Magic. (They can talk.) I think they can communicate with each other using their mind. Not that they are the most intelligent creatures of the Wizarding World, but you have to have some sort of intelligence to speak with witches and wizards.

I think that Dementors can form new Dementors using their minds. I have two theories about this:

1. They feed off the happy memories of humans. It could be that they are so involved in taking and stealing them, that when Dementors are together they convert these happy memories into new Dementors.

2. They create new life with evil. Two dementors delve so deep into dark and cold that they reach a certain level or moral evil. Their essences combined, the dark and cold would create a new ‘nightmare’ so to speak. It would be small, weak and easily damaged by a patronus charm. But it grows as it feeds off happy memories. So it’s funny how a ‘baby’ dementor is created by the dark and cold but grows by feeding on love and happy memories.

Growing theory

I believe that Dementors only survive because they feed on happy thoughts and memories. I believe they would not survive without that nourishment. They would probably get smaller and eventually dissolve in the air.

Could Azkaban be a Dementor Beehive?

Another theory could be that there is one female, a queen Dementor, like a queen bee. But where would this dementor hive be?

The only place we know dementors live is Azkaban. A question that you have to consider this: is Azkaban the only place where dementors live in Britain? In book 5, it was a mystery to everyone, except Umbridge ofc ourse, why the Dementors had attacked Harry in Little Whinging. You can understand that it is not common for Dementors to just fly around the city. They were controlled by the ministry, until they began to support Voldemort in book 6.

Are there even Dementors in other parts of the world? And if so, are they controlled by the Ministry of Magic from that specific country? Do they all live in one place? Many, many question surrounding this theory. Let’s try to answer them shall we?

I believe there are Dementors all over the world. Just because we only read from Harry’s perspective and don’t see much of the rest of the Wizarding world, that doesn’t prove they don’t exist anywhere else. Dementors guard Azkaban because the prisoners live there. They live in an environment of evil and darkness. If there are enough places in other countries where there is enough evil, I think they can survive. It could certainly be true that the Dementors serve the governments of other countries.

That’s the reason the Dementors guarded Azkaban for the Ministry, because of the memories they could feed on. If there were Dementors living alone or in small groups they would gravitate towards the cities and villages. They would probably torment a city of Muggles or wizards. They have to feed off something to survive. The wizards would be able to defend themselves with the Patronus charm, but Muggles would be helpless. The Ministry of Magic wouldn’t want Muggles to become suspicious. The Wizarding community - at one point - must have had to find a place for the Dementors to exist and not cause them any trouble. What better place than a prison? You have all the Dementors in one place and you know they can’t cause any trouble. And you don’t have to even hire aurors to guard the prison.

Let’s get back to the theory of Azkaban as a Dementor hive. If you think about the fact that the Dementors are controlled by the Ministry, maybe they can control how many Dementors there are. If the Ministry of Magic had one female Dementor - perhaps hidden in the Department of Mysteries - then they could control how many Dementors are made to guard the prison. It could be that the female Dementors were eliminated by the Ministry to help control the population. Is there a secret Dementor conspiracy going on behind Ministry doors?

Self-fertilization

The last theory is one where there are no male or female of Dementors, just Dementors. But still the question remains, how do they reproduce? Well think about it, there are animals who can self-fertilize. Some animals produce clones. What if the Dementors can clone themselves?

How would they do this you ask? I think it could just be like making Horcruxes. But instead of splitting your soul, you take a peace of your essence, the dark and cold and create a clone. That could explain why all dementors have the same features.

I hope this essay has got you thinking about Dementors in a new way.

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