The Horcrux That Almost Ended Voldemort Years Before Deathly Hallows

With the new Harry Potter series on the way, fans are already back in the weeds of wizarding logic. The latest deep-cut head-scratcher: could a Dementor have yanked Voldemort out of Harry way back in Prisoner of Azkaban? It is a wild what-if, but it actually brushes up against stuff the books set up.

The Reddit rabbit hole, explained

One fan wondered what would have happened if a Dementor had actually gone through with the Kiss on Harry by the lake in Prisoner of Azkaban. The angle here is that the sliver of Voldemort living in Harry was the weaker presence. So, in theory, if a Dementor goes soul-fishing, does it snag the flimsy fragment first?

What if a Dementor had Kissed Harry in Prisoner of Azkaban? Would it yank out Voldemort's soul piece?

Here is where the lore gets crunchy, and fans started laying down ground rules. A Horcrux is an object housing a soul fragment. Dementors are not smashers; they do not break objects, destroy enchantments, or shatter Horcruxes. Their whole deal is separating a living person from their soul. That matters.

So would the Kiss have worked?

Short version: maybe it pulls something, but not in a tidy, problem-solving way.

If a Dementor Kissed Harry, it would be trying to remove a soul from a living being. Since Harry is a living person who happens to be carrying an extra passenger, the Dementor could, in theory, grab both at once. Because Voldemort's fragment inside Harry is the weaker one, it might be the first thing to loosen and get pulled free. But that would not destroy the Horcrux magic. You would just have a disembodied, angry soul shard floating around instead of inside Harry. Net gain for Team Hogwarts? Debatable.

There is another wrinkle fans flagged: Dementors are drawn to complete, living souls. Voldemort's soul has been split, corrupted, and generally made... gross. If the Kiss has any instinct or preference, it may prioritize Harry's whole human soul and leave the mangled fragment behind. In that scenario, the Kiss would do the worst possible thing: hollow out Harry and still not solve the Voldemort problem.

How close did we come to this nightmare?

Pretty close. Prisoner of Azkaban gives us multiple Dementor encounters, including the lake scene where Harry nearly gets Kissed before the Patronus blast saves him. If the timing had gone differently, we could be talking about a very different fourth book.

Why the new series should go darker with Horcruxes

All this Horcrux talk highlights something the films mostly danced around: how Voldemort actually made them. The books never fully spell out the precise step-by-step ritual beyond murder plus some extremely dark magic, but they do give us the people and artifacts involved, and those stories are brutal and revealing.

If the HBO reboot is serious about digging deeper, this is prime material. Show Tom Riddle charming and scheming his way into sacred objects, and then crossing lines he cannot come back from. Show the murders that turned trinkets into anchors. Two big ones fans would love to see:

• Hufflepuff's Cup: Tom Riddle murders Hepzibah Smith and steals her treasures.
• Ravenclaw's Diadem: Riddle manipulates the Grey Lady to find and claim it, then hides it abroad before bringing it back to Hogwarts.

Watching that evolution from polished prodigy to something cold and inhuman would give the series teeth the movies rarely bared. It is not just shock value; it makes sense of why his soul gets weaker, dirtier, and less... appetizing to anything that feeds on souls.

Harry Potter at a glance (for the new folks)

Because we are about to be swimming in this world again, here is the quick refresher: J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter spans 7 books and 8 mainline films (not counting the 3 Fantastic Beasts prequels). Warner Bros. Pictures produced the movies with a core cast that includes Daniel Radcliffe, Rupert Grint, Emma Watson, Michael Gambon, Alan Rickman, and Ralph Fiennes. Across all 11 films, the box office haul sits around $9.5 billion. Casual little franchise.

Where I land on the Dementor theory

I love the audacity of the idea, but it feels like a monkey-paw wish. Best case, the Kiss peels the fragment loose without destroying it, which solves nothing and creates a new problem. Worst case, it does what it is designed to do and takes Harry's whole soul, leaving Voldemort's shard behind. Either way, it is nightmare fuel, not a shortcut.

What do you think: would a Kiss have saved Harry or doomed him faster? Drop your take below. And if you want to revisit the films, they are streaming in the US on Max.