The Death Eaters (originally the Knights of Walpurgis) was the name given to followers of Lord Voldemort. The group primarily consisted of wizards and witches who were radical pure blood supremacists, who practised the Dark Arts with reckless abandon without regard 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. 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, each of the Death Eaters felt it, signalling for them to Apparate to their leader's side.
By 1970, the Knights of Walpurgis (later renamed the "Death Eaters") were an organisation formed from people Tom Marvolo Riddle, who became Lord Voldemort, knew from his time at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry as well as their relations. Nearly all of those recruited were from Slytherin House as students (however, there may have been recruits from Gryffindor, Hufflepuff, and Ravenclaw within the ranks as well). Actively recruiting an army of Dark Wizards and creatures, with the belief that his hidden Horcruxes granted him immortality, Voldemort and his followers planned to overthrow the Ministry of Magic and rule their way.[2]
Death Eater activity during the First Wizarding War consisted of attacks on wizards and witches, and large numbers of Muggles. These were initiated by the Death Eaters often, but not always, on the orders of Voldemort. When the Ministry did not suffer an ostensible collapse in the eleven years of Voldemort's reign, the Death Eaters began to attack prominent wizarding families. As a result, fear gripped the wider wizard community, but the Death Eaters remained opposed by the Order of the Phoenix, founded by Albus Dumbledore.
At the height of the war, Severus Snape reported to Lord Voldemort the part of the prophecy he had heard while listening in on a conversation between Dumbledore and Sybill Trelawney which predicted that either Harry Potter, the son of Order members James and Lily Potter, or Neville Longbottom, son of Order members Alice and Frank Longbottom, would be the one to destroy Voldemort. Voldemort attacked the Potters personally, seeing them as a greater danger to him. He chose Harry over Neville because Harry was a half-blood, like himself. Despite being under the protection of the Fidelius Charm, Voldemort was able to get into their home because James entrusted his old friend Peter Pettigrew as Secret-Keeper, and Pettigrew subsequently betrayed the secret to Voldemort.
Snape failed to overhear the entire prophecy, including the announcement that Voldemort himself would mark his own equal. Although Voldemort killed James and, despite Snape's pleas that she be spared, Lily, the Killing Curse rebounded off Harry and hit Voldemort, destroying his living body. However, due to his extensive performance of Dark magic, Voldemort's soul survived and escaped.
With their leader's disappearance, the Death Eaters largely fell into chaos. Many were rounded up and imprisoned without trial, as part of the hard line taken by Ministry official Barty Crouch Sr. Sirius Black, whom Pettigrew framed for his crimes, was among those imprisoned in Azkaban without a trial. Soon afterward, Bellatrix, Rodolphus, and Rabastan Lestrange, and Barty Crouch Jr., tortured the Longbottoms into insanity while trying to procure information about Voldemort's whereabouts. They were captured and sentenced to Azkaban, but Bellatrix proudly proclaimed that the Dark Lord would rise again.
Some Death Eaters managed to elude justice by claiming the Imperius Curse had been used on them, such as Lucius Malfoy, or by turning in other Death Eaters, as Igor Karkaroff did. Most followers hid their allegiance to Voldemort and therefore did not try to find him, although a handful of Death Eaters, such as the Lestranges and Barty Crouch Jr., remained fiercely loyal to their fallen master and sought him out. They were supposedly rewarded by Voldemort for their loyalty. Some, such as Evan Rosier, chose to resist arrest and fought to the death.
Outbreaks of Death Eater activity did occur, although rarely and sporadically, during the thirteen years of Voldemort's absence. Perhaps the most notable event was the riots at the four hundred and twenty-second Quidditch World Cup in 1994, during which a group of Death Eaters attacked the camp of wizards and witches as well as a nearby Muggle family. The Death Eaters seemed to consider torturing and humiliating Muggles a form of entertainment.
On 24 June 1995, Lord Voldemort finally returned to a physical body through a Dark potion created by Peter Pettigrew (the potion required a bone from Voldemort's father, flesh from the servant and blood from the enemy - that being Harry). The body was human-shaped, though hairless and with many unusual features such as serpentine nostril slits and feline-esque eyes.
Moments after Lord Voldemort had finally regained his body, he summoned his followers to him by touching Peter Pettigrew's Dark Mark. Some proved too afraid to return to him, such as defector Igor Karkaroff, while others who were dead or imprisoned remained absent. Severus Snape did not return on the claim that he had to appear more loyal to Dumbledore and the Order of the Phoenix; Snape returned two hours later. Despite several absences, there were several who returned the call, including Lucius Malfoy, Nott, Crabbe, and Goyle, who had sons at Hogwarts School.
Harry Potter was present for Voldemort's return to power, and even duelled him, resulting in a spectacular display of Priori Incantatem, revealing that the cores of Voldemort's and Harry's wands were related. Harry managed to escape and tell Headmaster Albus Dumbledore of Voldemort's return.
Minister for Magic, Cornelius Fudge, and most of the Ministry of Magic originally refused to believe that Lord Voldemort had returned. Though Harry Potter and Albus Dumbledore served as dissenting voices, the majority of the public chose to believe in the Ministry, as well as its wider propaganda and smear campaign against Potter and Dumbledore, printed in news outlets such as the Daily Prophet. Finally in 1996, the Minister for Magic sees Voldemort when he is attacking Harry in the Ministry of Magic.
Armed with the advantage of the Ministry's denial, the Death Eaters kept a low profile in order to maintain their standing in the wizarding world. Due in part to the Ministry's refusal to remove the Dementors from Azkaban, a proposition Dumbledore supported immediately following Voldemort's return, the Death Eaters informally recruited the Dementors to the cause. Similar progress was made with giants. The quiet revolt of the Dementors fostered a mass breakout of imprisoned Death Eaters from Azkaban in early 1996.
In early summer of 1996, Voldemort sent a group of twelve Death Eaters, led by Lucius Malfoy, into the Department of Mysteries in order to steal the prophecy concerning himself and Harry Potter. Having originally attacked Harry Potter based upon a partial recounting of it, Voldemort now desired to hear the full version in order to understand entirely the nature of the connection between himself and Potter. Harry was lured there, along with five other members of Dumbledore's Army, when Voldemort used their connection to give Harry a false vision of his godfather being tortured.
However, Harry and his friends managed to elude the Death Eaters. The prophecy was accidentally destroyed by Neville Longbottom during the battle. A battle ensued between the Death Eaters and several members of the Order of the Phoenix. Eleven of the twelve Death Eaters were captured and Sirius Black was killed; Voldemort and Bellatrix Lestrange fled, but not before Ministry officials witnessed the return of the Dark Lord
During the Second Wizarding War, Voldemort plotted to be rid of Albus Dumbledore. At the close of the Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry year in June 1997, Albus Dumbledore and Harry Potter obtained a locket that they believed to be one of the Horcruxes of Voldemort from a cave filled with Inferi. They apparated to Hogsmeade and through the assistance of Madam Rosmerta, they saw a Dark Mark hanging in the sky above Hogwarts Castle. Dumbledore and Potter borrowed broomsticks and flew to Hogwarts' highest tower in the castle, the Astronomy Tower.
Death Eaters rejoicing at the death of Albus Dumbledore.
Added by You-Know-Who
Dumbledore encountered Draco Malfoy and froze Harry who was hidden under the Invisibility Cloak. Draco revealed how he successfully used a Vanishing Cabinet to help the Death Eaters to enter at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry and according to him, one of Dumbledore's allies is dead (it was revealed later that Bill Weasley is the one Draco is alluding to, but Bill was not really dead, just mauled by the werewolf Fenrir Greyback). Dumbledore then informed Draco that he already knew about the assassination plot, the cursed necklace and the poison intended to kill him. He also delayed Draco in his plans to murder him, until Severus Snape and four other Death Eaters arrived at the scene. Severus Snape successfully cast the Killing Curse on Dumbledore in front of the four Death Eaters, Fenrir Greyback, Draco, and Harry who was still unnoticed and hidden. After Dumbledore's death, the jubilant Death Eaters retreated on Snape's orders. Harry Potter, free from Dumbledore's Full Body-Bind Curse, quickly chased after the Death Eaters and cast several unsuccessful spells at Snape when they reached the grounds. A fellow Dark Wizard and Follower of the Dark Lord named Thorfinn Rowle set fire to Rubeus Hagrid's hut, and the Death Eaters Disapparated when they reached the gate.
Among the Death Eaters present were siblings Alecto and Amycus Carrow, Yaxley, Thorfinn Rowle, Gibbon, Fenrir Greyback, and Bellatrix Lestrange. Draco Malfoy became a Death Eater and was branded with the Dark Mark in 1996. Bill Weasley was attacked by Fenrir Greyback and received scars on his face, but lived, without being a werewolf, because Greyback was not fully transformed at the time of the attack, Bill sustained minimal lycanthropic symptoms. On the Death Eaters' side, the only death was that of Gibbon, killed by a stray Killing Curse
Now that Dumbledore was finally out of the way, the Death Eaters became even bolder in their campaign of terror against the wizarding world. Voldemort, with his Death Eaters, planned several courses of action following the successful assassination. One was the overthrowing of the Ministry of Magic. Another was capturing Harry Potter and killing him. While Voldemort went on his own personal quests and stayed out of sight of the wizarding community's eye, he worked through others, including Yaxley at the Ministry, and Severus Snape and the Carrows at Hogwarts.
The meeting place for the Death Eaters was the Malfoy Manor. At this place, the Death Eaters would make reports and the Dark Lord would give them orders. On one occasion, Voldemort took reports on goings on at the Ministry of Magic by Yaxley, though was more impressed with reports by Snape regarding the Order of the Phoenix's plans to move Harry Potter. Voldemort also ridiculed Bellatrix Lestrange and the Malfoys for the marriage of Remus Lupin, a known werewolf, to Nymphadora Tonks, a relative of theirs. At this meeting, Charity Burbage, a professor of Muggle Studies at Hogwarts, was murdered by Voldemort and then fed to Nagini. Voldemort also took Lucius Malfoy's wand to fight against Harry Potter, believing his own to be inferior to Harry's.
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