Nightmare Fuel / Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix

Even in Muggle territory, you are never safe from the wrath of the Dementors.

WARNING: Spoilers are unmarked.

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• Montague's experience after Fred and George stuffed him into a Vanishing Cabinet. He spent weeks in a pitch-black limbo, hearing snatches of conversation from either end, taunting him. Eventually, he managed to apparate himself out, an experience which almost caused his death.
  • Made worse by the fact that it turns out that the aforementioned Vanishing Cabinet is the same one used the following year by Malfoy to create a passageway into Hogwarts for some of Voldemort's top Death Eaters.
  • Not to mention how casual everyone is about it. Sure, Montague must be a grade-A douche to join the Inquisitorial Squad, but trapping him in limbo for weeks just for trying to dock you some house points? That's kind of messed up.
  • And where he wound up after apparating? A toilet. Not just a bathroom, not just a bathroom stall, crammed inside of the toilet itself. Claustrophobic doesn't begin to describe it.

• Dolores Jane Umbridge. If there's anything scarier than Nightmare Fuel, she would be it. "The Dementors are only afraid of one thing: Her." Here's a couple of things she's responsible for:
  • Harry being forced to carve his own hand open with Umbridge's blood quill. This is straight-up child abuse and physical torture on a fifteen-year-old teenager who already has enough problems without her rubbing salt in the wound. In the film, at least, we have this line that summarizes just how monstrous and horrible Umbridge really is.
    Umbridge: That's right. Because you know, deep down, that you deserve to be punished. Don't you, Mr. Potter?
    • Additionally in the film, she subjected first-year students to this torture.
  • The scene where Umbridge attempts to use the Cruciatus Curse on Harry. This is the Wizarding version of Cold-Blooded Torture at its worst, only previously described as having been used by Death Eaters and Barty Crouch Sr.'s team of interrogators, and she's about to use it on a fifteen-year-old boy. The Cruciatus Curse is capable of causing insanity and considered so horrible that its use is punishable by a life sentence in Azkaban. And when Hermione tries to make her stop since it's illegal, Dolores has this to say:
    Umbridge: What Cornelius doesn't know won't hurt him.
  • In the way the scene is described, she's excited, almost aroused at the prospect of using it, and keeps pointing her wand at different parts of Harry's body "trying to decide where it would hurt the most." One can only imagine some of the body parts she cycled through... especially if you're male.
  • And all this takes place after it's fully revealed why Neville Longbottom's parents are absent: Bellatrix Lestrange tortured them into irrevocable insanity and memory loss. She may have used that same curse to do it, and in selfsame scene is also where Umbridge admits she sicced Dementors on Harry in the hopes of permanently annihilating his soul before they even met. She may have been willing to cross that particular line again. Hermione saved Harry's sense of self.
    • The top of it? It was she who sent Dementors after Harry. Worse still, this was only possible because of the Ministry hiring and weaponizing Dementors in the first place. Umbridge's actions reflect badly on her, but they're a more damning indictment of the entire wizarding government at the time.
  • Stephen King, famed writer of such horror stories as The Shining and creator of such memorable and terrifying villains as Annie Wilkes, called Umbridge "the greatest make-believe villain to come along since Hannibal Lecter."
  • And then there's what Hermione does to her. Harry thought she was leading her to Grawp, but instead she was willingly leading her to the centaurs, hoping they'd deal with her. By the time Dumbledore rescues her, she has no visible wounds but is temporarily catatonic and terrified of hoofbeats from whatever she endured. It's even worse if you're familiar with Classical Mythology. While the Potterverse's wise centaurs are a far cry from their savage mythical inspirations, the image of centaurs dragging a woman into the wilderness still evokes (intentionally or not) the legends of what such creatures infamously did to human women they captured in raids.
    • There's also the fact that Harry noted that the path Hermione chose leads directly to Aragog's nest. Good thing that the centaurs find them first.
• The Marauders bullying Snape is pretty unsettling. He's frozen in place, choked with soap, and hung upside down in front of the entire school. Although we don't know if it actually happened, James threatens to remove his underwear and expose him. It's heavily implied that this sort of thing was a regular occurrence for him, and that he's so unpopular that nobody, other than Lily, comes to defend him, with many cheering James' bullying on. Snape, in turn, defends himself with a spell that is seemingly a prototype for the very dangerous Sectumsempra. The fact that the scene ends with Snape lashing out at the one person who came to his defense and she in response then uses the same insult of "Snivellus" against him only adds to the sense of how this was his "worst memory".
• The Department of Mysteries has a few moments:
  • The vat full of brains, and the Time Room. Made even worse by the fact that the heroes saw it in the middle of the night, when it was unoccupied.
  • The room with the dais. An enormous rectangular room with a sunken pit twenty feet below in the center, with stone steps leading down to it and an old, crumbling archway in the middle. The fact that the veil of this dais is fluttering with no one being there to move it is frightening enough; when you learn that it is actually the gateway to death and that the veil's fluttering is caused by souls of the dead who are waiting on the other side.
  • Especially creepy considering it's an amphitheater. Which was probably used for public executions in the distant past!
  • The bell jar containing a bird's egg in an endless cycle of hatching into a chick, growing into an adult bird, then regressing back into a chick and then an egg.
  • The Death Eater who falls headfirst into the bell jar, and his head—just his head—is regressed to a baby. What the heck is this? And the fact that he moves like a zombie afterwards combined with this half-regression makes it unnerving.
  • The Love Room. Out of all the many horrors, the contents of this room is the one that they feel they need to keep behind a permanently locked door.
  • Hell, the Department of Mysteries itself. A top-secret government agency that only those with the highest security clearance are allowed in, inside which all of the creepiest and most dangerous magic is studied. Where have we seen this before?
• When the Death Eaters emerge from the darkness in the Hall of Prophecy. You know it's coming, but something about seeing/reading about six teens in a darkened room surrounded by eerily glowing white crystal balls (which they must NOT touch, unless they wish to go insane), and then seeing the glistening masks of the Death Eaters emerging on all sides... sends shivers.
  • Bellatrix Lestrange, in particular, is creepy. She shows up with a mad cackle and an almost jovial air to her maddened self. Then Harry says Voldemort's name and her mood abruptly shifts, her eyes bugging out, and she bellows, "You filthy half-blood!" And the book in particular has the additional factor that we've already seen the aftereffects of what she did to Neville's parents.
  • A few seconds later, as they run to escape, Dolohov apparates next to Harry and his smoky face hovers right next to Harry's own face as Harry tries to escape, keeping pace with him...
• The Battle of the Department of Mysteries speaks volumes, considering how it involves a group of four 15-year-olds and two 14-year-olds fighting for their lives against the Death Eaters, and the various injuries they get are horrific by itself, but the most horror has to be what Hermione experiences. She is struck by a mysterious purple spell conjured by Dolohov, which causes her to faint and immediately crumple, showing all signs of someone being killed. Harry is actually very, very scared in his narration that she is really going to die, although it fortunately does not happen. After the battle, it is noted that Hermione has to experience a lengthy recuperation process that involves drinking a lot of potions for several weeks. Oh, didn't we mention that Dolohov is muted at that time due to Hermione silencing him? Nonverbal spells are not as powerful as verbal, which brings up a Fridge Horror of what would happen if he was not muted at that time. It is quite possible that a verbal version of this spell is what Dolohov uses to kill Lupin in Deathly Hallows. Rowling never elaborates the nature of this spell, unlike other high-end curses like the Unforgivable Curses or Sectumsempra or even Fiendfyre. What we know is that it can be negated but not deflected completely and that it inflicts some sort of internal damage as from the outside the people hit by this spell is peaceful-looking. It sounds an awful lot like a Theme Park Version of the Killing Curse, which is not much better.
  • Even worse, Harry himself is also struck by this unknown spell, though in his case, it's weakened by his Shield Charm. Harry describes the experience as "a streak across his face with a blunt knife". And even in his case, it is enough to knock Harry off his feet. Dolohov also tries to attack Sirius with this spell, but he is taken out by Harry before he can do so.
• The brains in the Department of Mysteries do... something to Ron, at first he's so disoriented that he doesn't seem to mind, but even in that state he quickly notes that it is not pleasant. Whatever it is that happened to him, he needed potions to forget it all, and he still carries physical (and probably psychological) scars. He and Hermione are the only ones after the battle who needed a prolonged stay in the infirmary.
• Boggarts, generally all bark and no bite except for Parvati's mutant jack-in-the-box (a significantly less terrifying mummy in the book), are given a Wham Moment when Mrs. Weasley, trying to get rid of one, is forced to see the dead bodies of her family (and Harry, in a darkly heartwarming moment).
  • Even worse is how the Boggart cycles through various dead relatives when Molly is attempting to use Riddikulus on it. That's right; she's so traumatized by seeing her family dead that she can't even beat the Boggart, and it keeps traumatizing her even more. Harry also gets a Jump Scare when he sees the dead "Ron," before remembering that it's a Boggart, and is then unnerved at the sight of his own dead body.
• The possession scene at the end of the film. Daniel Radcliffe completely sells the idea that poor Harry is being ruthlessly mind raped by Voldemort. Not to mention Harry's snake-like writhing just screams out that something thoroughly inhuman is trying to possess his mind and body.
  Harry/Voldemort: You've lost, old man.
  • There's something about Harry's blank-eyed stare as he lies still and slightly twitching that's horribly unnerving too.
• One of Harry's hallucinations during the possession is of him looking into the Mirror of Erised and seeing Voldemort's face in his reflection.
  "Look at me."
• The fact that at the penultimate step on his book-long Trauma Conga Line, when Dumbledore is trying to reassure him about losing Sirius, Harry screams "THEN I—DON'T—WANT—TO—BE—HUMAN!" The implication that he's been briefly turned into a Death Seeker, especially considering all the trauma in the first three books that he was able to cope with much more easily, is nightmarish beyond belief. Made even worse by a prior chapter where it's noted that Umbridge is slowly depriving Harry of "all the things that make his life at Hogwarts worth living."
• Hagrid attacking the Aurors after they gang up on Fang and McGonagall. Sure it's Beware the Nice Ones, but this scene also shows just how dangerous someone who is 11'6" and weighs probably around 1000 pounds can be when you piss them off. Add in that because of his giant blood, he is immune to the Stunning Spell.
• The photograph of the original Order of the Phoenix. As Harry lampshades, so many in that photo are doomed and are unaware of their fates.
  • And just think about how some of those old Order members died. Some were murdered along with their entire families, some (like Ron's uncles) were outnumbered, and others were blown to bits.
• Harry's dream where he sees Arthur being attacked by Nagini, with the description of his ribs shattering beneath the attack. If Harry hadn't been quick, it may have been hours before Arthur was found. This scene is especially disturbing because the narration makes it sound like Harry himself is the snake with an uncontrollable urge to bite the man. It's also disorienting because it comes right after Harry was having an already-odd dream about Cho, and it's not immediately clear what's going on. Harry is left so shocked by what he saw in the nightmare that he vomits.
• Legilimency. The idea of someone intruding in your mind is pretty creepy and in the case of Harry all too likely to happen.
• In the video game adaptation, for the levels set in Sirius' house, if you pass by the curtain-hidden portrait of Sirius' mother, she will suddenly shriek at the top of her painted lungs "FREAKS!", "TRAI-TOOORS!", and the like. The first time (or few times) you pass by her, you will jump.
  • And when you hear her suddenly screaming at the top of her lungs the presence of half-breeds, Mudbloods, blood traitors, freaks and so on after someone makes too much noise in the books (tripping on something, running down the stairs, ring the doorbell), it's quite scary 'cause you don't expect that.
• The scene near the beginning, where Dementors suddenly appear and choke Harry can be unnerving to some. Even Harry was shocked that these creatures actually can attack you someplace that isn't the Magical World.
  • The aftermath of the Dementor attack in the book leaves Dudley so traumatized that he can't even stand up on his own. While Dudley has always been a jerk, no one deserves to deal with a Dementor. After everyone is (mostly) okay, Harry finally wonders what exactly Dudley could've felt that was that terrible. What's worse is when Word of God reveals what the Dementors forced Dudley to see: himself as the bully he was until that point.
• When Harry and the Weasleys are visiting Mr. Weasley at St. Mungo's Hospital, they come across the long-term ward for patients suffering from permanent spell damage. One of the patients is a woman whose entire head is covered in fur; she can only communicate by barking. It's implied that her condition is either the result of a failed attempt to become an Animagus or a botched batch of Polyjuice Potion. Neville's parents also live there, still alive but tortured into insanity by Death Eaters, suffering from brain damage so severe that they can't recognize their own son.
• A defiance by the director/studio actually turns into another case of this: The scream Daniel Radcliffe lets out during Sirius' death scene is muted in the film. It looks like an extremely convincing job of miming but research on the making of the scene reveals that Dan did do a real scream in the take, but the filmmakers deemed it too agonizing and made the decision to cut the audio. This was a PG-13 movie in a series that had already dipped into some disturbing material (the entire ending of The Goblet of Fire, anyone?). What must that scream have sounded like? Brrrr. Doubles as Tear Jerker as it's been stated that Daniel's scream was so gut-wrenching it made Emma Watson (Hermione), Bonnie Wright (Ginny) and Helena Bonham Carter (Bellatrix) cry. That said, it speaks volumes about Daniel’s skill as an actor that he could make other actors cry.

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