10 Oldest Characters In The Harry Potter Universe

4. Fawkes

Newt Scamander Harry Potter
Warner Bros.

Age: Unknown (minimum 80, but likely much, much more)

With the ability to burst into a ball of flames and be reborn from the ashes, phoenixes can live to an "immense" age, to quote their Fantastic Beasts and Where To Find Them entry.

Does that mean they can live forever? Is there a limit to how many times they can be reborn? We don't know. One thing that is clear, though, is that Fawkes the phoenix - Dumbledore's loyal bird - is bloody old.

If Fawkes is alive today, we know that he's at least 80 years old because Tom Riddle bought his wand - a wand which contained one of Fawkes' feathers - in 1938.

But, considering the fact that Fawkes swallows a Killing Curse in the Order of The Phoenix novel, it doesn't seem like there's anything that can actually kill these creatures, and we wouldn't be surprised if Fawkes was really hundreds of years old - hence, his high placement on our list.

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Danny has been with WhatCulture for almost nine years, and is currently Doctor Who Editor and WhoCulture Channel Manager, overseeing all of WhatCulture's Whoniverse coverage. He has been writing and video editing for 10+ years, and first got a taste for content creation after making his own Doctor Who trailers and uploading them to YouTube (they're admittedly a bit rusty by today's standards). If you need someone to recite every Doctor Who episode in order or to tell you about the making of 1988's Remembrance of the Daleks, Danny is the person to ask.