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harry potter - Can a dementor decide which people around it will be affected by its magic?


Quoting from here and here:


From a Leaky Cauldron chat:



Samantha: Was snape the only death eater who could produce a full patronus


J.K. Rowling: Yes, because a Patronus is used against things that the Death Eaters generally generate, or fight alongside. They would not need Patronuses.




I always had the impression that just the presence of a dementor should have an effect on any human around, DE or otherwise. However, this quote makes it sound like DE's are exempt from the effect of the dementors. However, from Sirius's description in book 3, we know every prisoner in Azkaban was affected by dementors, which can further be corroborated by the fact of how much Barty Crouch, Jr. was scared of being thrown into Azkaban. Moreover, if the dementors didn't affect the DE's at all, throwing them in Azkaban wouldn't be much of a punishment either.


So,


Can dementors decide who to affect or not?



Answer



Probably not.


I'm going to say they probably can't decide who to affect, based on their effect on Hogwarts in HP and the Prisoner of Azkaban.


If they could be so selective, they would surely have been ordered, either by Dumbledore or the Ministry, not to harm the kids in the school. Yet there they were, coming into the grounds and even the Hogwarts Express, and the students had to be warned to be careful of them. They certainly had an effect on Harry more than once, when they should have been hunting only for Sirius Black.



As for why the Death Eaters don't need Patronuses, maybe it's because Dementors can't have so much of an effect on evil people. Their main effect is by sucking away people's happy feelings and leaving them with bad ones. But if someone's happiest memory is of torturing Muggles, say, and all their emotions are bad ones, maybe the Dementors wouldn't have much to take away from them. That's why the Lestranges, for instance, survived Azkaban without being driven any more insane than they already were.

You say "if the dementors didn't affect the DE's at all, throwing them in Azkaban wouldn't be much of a punishment either", but prison is still a punishment. Being thrown in prison in the real (Muggle) world is a pretty strong punishment, even without evil magical prison guards that suck every happy emotion out of your body. It would be as bad as that for the Death Eaters in Azkaban, even if the Dementors had no effect on them whatsoever.



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