10 Deadliest Harry Potter Characters, Ranked

The "Harry Potter" books and movies showcase witches and wizards with an all-encompassing range of talent, from first-years who can't get basic levitation spells to work to masterful wand-wielders at the center of geopolitical plots to stop or start wars and conspiracies for widespread violence across the magic and Muggle worlds. Some of those kids get really good at casting an Expelliarmus spell.

But what about the deadliest practitioners of magic in the franchise? While some fans would call creator J.K. Rowling herself the greatest villain of the "Potter" universe for her views on the transgender community — which the movie cast have spoken out against — this list will only feature onscreen and on-page characters. But this list isn't all villains — ability and body count factor into the idea of "deadly," pitting heroes and malefactors alike against each other to see who reigns supreme in delivering death, destruction, and influence across the Wizarding World.

Here are the 10 deadliest "Harry Potter" characters, ranked.

As one of the supreme Lord Voldemort's (Ralph Fiennes) most ardent followers and the father responsible for poisoning his child Draco's (Tom Felton) mind, Lucius Malfoy (Jason Isaacs) fits in as one of the "Harry Potter" franchise's most relentlessly calculating villains. He's a wealthy, proud pure-blood wizard and one of the highest-ranking Death Eaters who spends his time in the series engaging in countless acts of cruelty, corruption, and terrorism.

It's a little hard to know where to start with what he gets up to. Between planting Tom Riddle's diary, abusing Dobby the house elf, avoiding Azkaban after bribing the Ministry of Magic, constantly attacking muggles and non-pure-bloods, and, let's not forget, being a reliable aid in the attempts to kill Harry (Daniel Radcliffe), his friends, and take over the world with dark magic, it's fair to say Lucius has fully committed himself to wickedness.

As for the literal definition of "deadly," Lucius is never depicted as the first-hand killer of any single person (though he was going to kill Harry at the end of "Chamber of Secrets," at least in the movie). But his actions always support a movement of genocide for the purposes of sustaining an evil agenda,  furthering what Voldemort and the Death Eaters are seeking to achieve. Isaacs may not have found the films very fun to make, but his cold demeanor, with a cunning, sly malice, made him one of the franchise's most effective on-screen villains.

Barty Crouch Jr. (David Tennant) killed his own father, so he earns his spot here pretty handily. He also does a lot to help his master, Lord Voldemort — he's a fanatical Death Eater whose sole function in life seems to be advancing the cause of the dark arts. Along with killing Barty Crouch Senior, he spends an entire entry disguised as Alastor "Mad-Eye" Moody (Brendan Gleeson) for the duration of a school year to manipulate Harry into winning the Triwizard Tournament to resurrect Voldemort, while the real Moody is kept as an isolated prisoner.

There's plenty more he's responsible for, including the torture of Frank (James Payton) and Alice Longbottom (Lisa Wood), a permanent source of trauma imprinted on Neville (Matthew Lewis). He freely uses Unforgivable Curses on students while posing as Moody within Hogwarts, and he also ruins the Quidditch World Cup by casting the Dark Mark. The Wizarding World can't enjoy anything with these guys around!

Tennant memorably portrays Crouch in the film adaptation of "Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire" — you know, the one with the long haircuts. Tennant gives Crouch an extra level of skeeze in his mannerisms and body language; he's on screen briefly, but he has a seamy, sweaty quality that makes him appear as a true psychotic madman. And that weird tongue-flicking thing he does? I'm thinking about putting this guy higher just for that.

Yes, this is the real Alastor "Mad-Eye" Moody — not Crouch Jr.! While Mad-Eye seemed plenty psychopathic when his image was inhabited by, well, a psychopath, the real Mad-Eye is still plenty deadly, though more so for good than for evil. With his extreme methods, physical scars, magical eye, and one intimidating peg leg, he looks like the guy who will forego proper procedure to take you down if he gets a distaste for you, almost like the Dirty Harry of the "Harry Potter" world.

Mad-Eye was a high-ranking Auror during the First Wizarding War, and though he preferred capture over killing, he was far from one to hesitate if the situation called for him to completely dispatch his enemies. He used lethal force when necessary, slaying Death Eaters such as Evan Rosier. He was also responsible for filling out around half the cells of Azkaban prison, capturing hordes of dark wizards to spend their days languishing in the institution's dark, grungy walls.

Alastor also appears on our list of the 15 strongest "Harry Potter" characters, and his appearance in each group underscores the gravity and resolute nature of his character. If there's anyone who immediately appears ready to step up as a counter to the intimidating dark wizards populating the ranks of the Death Eaters, it's Mad-Eye. I mean, they literally call him Mad-Eye.

Severus Snape (Alan Rickman) is arguably the most contested "villain" in the entire franchise, spending seven books loathed by Harry and readers alike before the finale retroactively reframes him as a tragic double agent. I mean, he had a terrible childhood, and he's put in some unenviable situations as an adult, which have led him to rack up a body count.

As a young Death Eater, Snape overhears half of Sybill Trelawney's (Emma Thompson) prophecy and dutifully reports it to Voldemort, the single act that sets the entire plot in motion, leading Voldemort to the Potters' doorstep. He spends the rest of his life claiming he didn't know the cost until it was too late, which is a fairly tenuous excuse when working as an agent of dark magic and involving the life of a woman you claimed to love.

Then there's Dumbledore (Richard Harris and Michael Gambon). Snape kills him in cold blood atop the Astronomy Tower in "Half-Blood Prince," and the audience is led to believe it's cold-blooded murder. It's only in "Deathly Hallows" that it's revealed the whole thing is a mercy pact, arranged in advance to spare Draco's soul and keep Snape's cover intact. Nevertheless, it paints a cold portrait of the man, amplified in the films by Rickman's tightly wound and venomous performance. Snape's deadliness is only offset by the piercing tragedy of his circumstances.

Some werewolves in the "Harry Potter" universe, as seen in the arc of Remus Lupin (David Thewlis), are sympathetic figures dealing with a condition they never asked for and can't control. Fenrir Greyback (Dave Legeno) is the antithesis of this conception, a werewolf who's leaned into the whole werewolf thing, cultivating a feral, savage reputation during and between full moons, with rotted, grimy nails and teeth, and openly bragging about his preference for attacking children.

So the guy's not great. He's pretty much as close to a serial predator as this franchise gets, operating fairly openly among the Death Eaters to accomplish his personal goals of inhumanity. His most personally devastating act happens years before Harry's birth: at the request of Lucius Malfoy, Greyback bites young Lupin as an act of petty revenge against Lupin's father, condemning the child to a lifetime of stigma and suffering that we still see him struggling to manage in "Prisoner of Azkaban." (Which is also part of what makes that book and film adaptation so good, and why it still lands so high on our "Harry Potter" film ranking. )

He resurfaces throughout the later books and films to maul Bill Weasley (Domhnall Gleeson) during the Battle of the Astronomy Tower and to fight at the Battle of Hogwarts, where he's finally subdued. Unlike most of Voldemort's inner circle, Greyback is pretty fine with flaunting the fact that his cruelty doesn't serve any greater ideological purpose. He's in it for the bloodlust, which bumps him up a few notches in the ranking.

Credence Barebone (Ezra Miller) literally detonates near people, so he pretty handily earns the "deadly" qualification by way of his unique curse. Raised by an abusive adoptive mother who tries to beat the magic out of him, Credence spends his childhood suppressing his powers so thoroughly that they eventually break loose as an Obscurus, a parasitic, uncontrollable force that turns him into a shrieking black mass capable of leveling city blocks whenever he loses his grip.

New York, of course, finds this out the hard way in the first "Fantastic Beasts," when Credence's outbursts tear through the city, leaving bodies behind before anyone even really knows what's happening, including his own mother. From there, he essentially becomes a weapon that everyone else tries to exploit for their own gain. Percival Graves (secretly Gellert Grindelwald in disguise) grooms him for it in the first film and then spends the sequels dangling an answer to his identity in front of him to keep him acquiescent.

It's one of the bleaker character arcs seen throughout either franchise, as Credence's capacity for devastation masks a lonely kid who never got to choose his future. He eventually turns against Grindelwald in "The Secrets of Dumbledore," but by that point his sense of devastation has long been hardened. He was one of the more interesting aspects of the "Fantastic Beasts" movies, which otherwise struggled enough that an ostensible fourth entry is basically a dead prospect.

Bellatrix Lestrange (Helena Bonham Carter) is always having a laugh killing people. She's kills without the political cover the others hide behind; she doesn't really care about an ideology justifying her violence. She's kind of like Fenrir Greyback in that she really, truly loves hurting people, gleefully cackling her way to killing whoever the next teenager is who stands in her way.

She's also one of four Death Eaters responsible for torturing Frank and Alice Longbottom into permanent insanity. Her actual kill count is pretty staggering for a franchise that can occasionally be slightly squeamish about showing on-screen death. She murders her own cousin, Sirius Black (Gary Oldman), in "Order of the Phoenix." She later kills her own niece, Nymphadora Tonks (Natalia Tena), during the Battle of Hogwarts. She tortures Hermione at Malfoy Manor, carving a slur into her arm with a knife, then throws that same knife moments later to kill Dobby (Toby Jones), the house-elf, mid-escape, probably her worst crime among most fans.

She's finally taken down by Molly Weasley (Julie Walters) in one of the more satisfying deaths the franchise has to offer, and it's gratifying to see Bellatrix's rampant sadism put to an end. In the films, Bonham Carter plays her as a lightning bolt of vicious, merciless id, cementing the character's legacy as one of the franchise's most violent and unhinged. (It's hard to imagine that Lestrange was almost played by a different "Harry Potter" star.)

Gellert Grindelwald (Johnny Depp, later recast by Mads Mikkelsen) doesn't get nearly as much screen time in the core "Harry Potter" saga as those ranked below him, but the damage he caused in the past puts him firmly in the upper echelon of deadly wizards. As a young man, Grindelwald built an entire ideology, "For the Greater Good," around the idea that wizards should openly rule over Muggles, a pitch he made directly to a teenage Albus Dumbledore, who ran with it for a time.

Their partnership ends quickly in a three-way duel between Albus, his brother Aberforth, and Grindelwald, which ends with a stray curse killing the Dumbledores' sister Ariana, leaving the entire group unsure who cast the errant spell. From there, Grindelwald goes on to wage a continent-spanning war, amassing followers and bodies across Europe well before Voldemort ever picks up a wand, a period the "Fantastic Beasts" films spend three underwhelming installments failing to properly dramatize.

He's eventually defeated by Dumbledore in their legendary 1945 duel, a fight treated as historic folklore by the time Harry shows up at Hogwarts 50 years later. He spends the rest of his life imprisoned in Nurmengard, the fortress he himself built to hold his enemies. Grindelwald's ideological influence and his ability to build followers and power make him so deadly — he started a state of global warfare for power over non-magic folk. It would have made for a compelling franchise arc if the "Fantastic Beasts" movies hadn't stumbled so badly.

Albus Dumbledore has always had two sides to him, the contrast delineated by his two actors in the film adaptations. Richard Harris brought an affable, old-man comfort to the Hogwarts headmaster; when he passed away and Michael Gambon replaced him, the performance became darker and more emotionally ambiguous. This is, after all, the wizard who ended Grindelwald's continent-wide war single-handedly in 1945, becoming, by his own reputation, the only wizard Voldemort ever truly feared.

It's also worth remembering that Dumbledore's youth looks surprisingly similar to the villains around him on this list. As a teenager, he was on board with Grindelwald's "For the Greater Good" plan to subjugate Muggles, right up until the fateful duel that killed his sister and forced a moral reckoning. He spends the rest of his life atoning for it by quietly orchestrating other people's sacrifices, including his own. Dumbledore engineers his own death at Snape's hands in "Half-Blood Prince" as a calculated strategic move, while spending years grooming Harry for a plan that requires the young man to walk into the Forbidden Forest and die.

He's also one of the most powerful wizards to ever live, lest you forget. Along with his powers of manipulation and his ability to set aside ethics to accomplish years-spanning plans, Dumbledore isn't just any old wizard you would want to engage in a duel. There's a ruthlessness to him, and it marks him as a moral opposite but a peer in terms of capability to wizards like Grindelwald and Voldemort.

Ah, yes. The big, very bad guy. Lord Voldemort topping a "deadliest Harry Potter characters" list is far from shocking. His body count is immeasurable, and his determination to complete his evil goals is fierce and dogged. He murders his own Muggle father and grandparents as a teenager, frames his uncle for the crime, and then spends the rest of his life relying on murder as his path forward, since each of his Horcruxes required killing someone to rip his own soul apart and stash the pieces.

Along with that, he kills a Hogwarts student to power a Basilisk, an old woman for her prized possessions, and plenty of other Muggles just for the sheer capacity to do so. He has a long list of individuals killed to further his aims: James and Lily Potter, Cedric Diggory, Charity Burbage, Bertha Jorkins, Quirinus Quirrell, and eventually Severus Snape, whom he doesn't hesitate to dispatch the second he becomes a liability.

He also spends decades building the Death Eaters into a full-blown terrorist organization dedicated to the ethnic cleansing of Muggle-borns, and very nearly succeeds in taking over the Ministry of Magic outright. In the films, Finnes plays him with an eerie calm that accentuates his long-calculated malice. (Maybe the fact that applying the character's makeup was a completely miserable experience for Finnes helped inform his performance.) As the architect of wickedness behind the entire mainline entries of the series, it would be irresponsible not to have our noseless, psychotic murderer at the top of the list.