Death Eaters

"The Dark Lord will rise again, Crouch! Throw us into Azkaban; we will wait! He will rise again and will come for us, he will reward us beyond any of his other supporters! We alone were faithful! We alone tried to find him!"

- Bellatrix Lestrange on trial for her Death Eater activities. "Welcome my friends. Thirteen years it's been and yet here you stand before me as though it were only yesterday. I confess myself...disappointed. Not one of you tried to find me Crabbe. Macnair. Goyle. Not even you. Lucius"

- Lord Voldemort to his Death Eater followers.

The Death Eaters, also sometimes known as "Knights of Walpurgis", are an evil organization of renegade magicians-turned dark wizards who are the followers of Lord Voldemort and the secondary main antagonists/true primary antagonists of the Harry Potter book series and its following film series. The group primarily consisted of wizards and witches who were radical pure blood supremacists and who practised the Dark Arts with reckless abandon and without regard to or fear of wizarding law. Lord Voldemort used this select group of wizards and witches during both the first and second Wizarding Wars, employing them as his elite force. They often wore black hoods and masks with snake-like eye slits to cover their faces.

The Death Eaters are often cloaked, and wear dark, oddly shaped masks with snake-like eye slits, to cover their faces and to resemble evil. They also tend to wear tall, pointed hats approximately half the length of the wearer's height like the Ku Klux Klan. Death Eaters are not to be confused with Dementors, the guards of the Prison of Azkaban, which are similar in shape. Death Eaters are often spies; they keep their loyalty to Voldemort secret as they are involved with the Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. All Death Eaters have a snake-like symbol on their arm, called the Dark Mark, to show their identity. Only the members of the inner circle of the Death Eaters had Dark Marks burned into their left forearms. When Voldemort touched one of them via the ProteanCharm, each of the Death Eaters felt it, signalling for them to apparate to their leader's side.

Some examples of Death Eaters are Lucius Malfoy and Severus Snape. Snape, who serves as a professor of potions and chemical spells at Hogwarts, servers the Dark Lord but is also a true friend of Albus Dumbledore, the head of the school. Lucius is the father of Draco Malfoy, a young enemy of Harry Potter and student of the Slytherin House. Draco is also a Death Eater himself; both he and his father plan the death of Dumbledore as well as Harry Potter.

When Voldemort was finally killed by Harry, the Dark Marks on the Death Eaters' arms turned into powerless scars and the ones that survived the Battle of Hogwarts were immediatley arrested.