Harry Potter: 10 Scariest Creatures In Hogwarts

A school is a secondary home, a place where kids pick up half the life lessons they need in order to become adults. So, it’s only understandable that schools are kept as safe as possible for children. Hence, putting ghosts, man-eating beasts, and literal demons along with other harmful monstrosities in them should be out of the question. But, The Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry is not an ordinary institution.

They have trains, they have fortifications, and they have Defense Against the Dark Arts teachers who harm students from time to time. Apart from the regular contraband Dark Lord during Harry’s stay at Hogwarts, there were also plenty of horrifying creatures prowling Hogwarts grounds that really fit better in a horror movie. These 10 creatures make the Death Eaters look like a boy band with how menacing they are in the films.

10 Helena Ravenclaw

Peeves and most other ghosts roaming around Hogwarts are usually safe and relatively sociable compared to most ghosts in other films. Seeing as the films turned the Bloody Baron into a joke, the scariest ghost title now belongs to Helena Ravenclaw or the grey lady.

She’s the daughter of Rowena Ravenclaw herself and is definitely a lot more antisocial than the other ghosts. She loves to keep to herself mostly and is prone to jump-scare outbursts that surprisingly didn’t give Harry a heart attack when it happened in the movie.

9 Hagrid’s Freaky Plant

Hagrid’s prone to sneaking in some illegally-acquired magical beasts in Hogwarts grounds and has somehow managed to sneak in a three-headed dog, a giant spider—who got kicked out into the Forbidden Forest—a dragon, and that one weird plant that he hurryingly hid in the third movie after some “normal” guests barged in.

In any case, that creature is still unnamed and appears to be out of place. It clearly belongs made with H.R. Giger in mind and might have belonged in the Alien movie instead. The unidentified creature closely resembles an overgrown Mandrake plant, but those tentacles are a worrying sight indeed.

8 A “Werewolf”

Even werewolves aren’t off-limits though seeing what Hagrid keeps bringing into Hogwarts, this is a rather small headache for Albus Dumbledore. After all, he’s the one who welcomed the werewolf, a.k.a. Professor Remus Lupin, whose name obviously doesn’t imply that he’s some sort of rabid canine.

Too bad it was only a matter of time before Lupin ended up nearly eating one—or three—of his students. That makes Lupin a double whammy; since he’s a teacher and a werewolf, both are feared by students except this kind of teacher can kill anyone too noisy in his class. It makes professor Snape look more preferable.

7 Grindylows

Outside the grounds of Hogwarts, there’s a nearby lake, though, based on what we’ve seen of it in Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, it’s best not to go near the thing. There are literal water demons in the lake called Grindylows who love to drown anyone that doesn’t have gills.

That automatically makes the lake a no-swim zone and probably even bad for fishing or boat trips because of these little buggers. Sometimes, they even get impatient and resort to strangling their victims underwater with their tentacles because drowning takes too long.

6 Thestrals

Thestrals are not exactly harmful nor deadly, since they’re docile creatures. Even the majestic hippogriff is exponentially more dangerous than them. Still, their appearance lends much to their spooky facade. They look like hellspawn in a Tim Burton movie due to the black bat-like wings and the emaciated frame.

Moreover, they can only be seen by people who have witnessed death. They’re not exactly creatures one would want to see after witnessing someone die, as they’d most likely add to the trauma. That pretty much explains why anyone except Luna Lovegood would avoid them.

5 A Basilisk

By far the deadliest creature ever in Hogwarts would be the Basilisk. It’s essentially just a giant snake with the added lethality of petrifying anything that makes eye contact with it. Even creepier is the fact that it’s been inside Hogwarts for around a millennium because Salazar Slytherin thought it was a good idea to channel his inner Hagrid.

The basilisk can pretty much kill any wizard or witch since they would need to use their eyes for spells. Were it not for Fawkes’ intervention and help, Harry would likely be a statue churning in some giant snake’s stomach acid. The basilisk remains the best proof that Hogwarts should be sued.

4 Dementors

Speaking of Hogwarts being sue-able, Prisoner of Azkaban just had to top the second films’ basilisk with one of the most horrific mainstays of the Harry Potter mythos: the Dementors. They’re practically ghosts that suck out the souls of anyone they can, and the only thing stopping them is the promise of more food in the form of people.

That’s why a cooperative alliance with them is threatening at best, seeing as they easily switched sides and joined Voldemort’s army. Dementors, for that matter, are some of the scariest creatures not just in Hogwarts, but in all of the Wizarding World. Even their appearance alone is enough to scare anyone who doesn’t know a Patronus charm, meaning all adults in the muggle world.

3 Devil’s Snare

One can often wonder just what the Hogwarts professors were thinking, putting something as lethal as a Devil’s Snare inside school grounds. This was Professor Sprout’s responsibility, as she’s an herbologist and had to set up a line of defense for the Philosopher/Sorcerer’s Stone.

Too bad that didn’t do much against Professor Quirrell, as he seems to have just slithered past it with the help of Voldemort. So the Devil’s Snare ended up nearly killing Ron, Harry, and Hermione. All three of them would’ve been fertilizer as early as the first book if not for a ridiculously clunky spell that’s really just a “safe word” for the plant that likes to choke people.

2 Whomping Willow

Yet another plant on the Hogwarts grounds that can easily turn humans into mincemeat would be the legendary Whomping Willow. It came close to killing Harry Potter than Voldemort ever did during the Chamber of Secrets movie and even in Prisoner of Azkaban.

Seriously, this cranky oversized bonsai could have easily ended the chosen one with a mere slap. Who thought it was a good idea to let a killer tree grow larger than a house? Apparently, it was planted there to cover up a secret passage to Hogsmeade, but, really, any other tree or even just covering up the shortcut would have been enough.

1 Boggart

The boggart might be a rampant threat compared to most of the magical beasts in the Wizarding World, but at least the one in Hogwarts is well-kept by Professor Lupin. It takes in the form of whatever its beholder fears the most, making it a shapeshifter and sometimes even mimicking the Dementor’s effects.

However, it’s only really frightening if its beholder is alone. Otherwise, a boggart will try to scare both multiple people by becoming an amalgam of what everyone fears. By then, it’s more funny than scary but still, any muggle that has a phobia for long-haired Japanese horror movie ghouls would have a bad time against boggarts.

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