10 Oldest Characters In The Harry Potter Universe

4. Fawkes

Fawkes 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.

In this post: 
Harry Potter
 
First Posted On: 
Contributor
Contributor

Danny has been with WhatCulture for over ten years, and is currently Doctor Who Editor and WhoCulture Channel Manager, overseeing all of WhatCulture's Whoniverse coverage. In 2022, he took charge of WhoCulture and has grown it into the biggest Doctor Who channel on YouTube, and one of the biggest Doctor Who communities on the web full-stop. He has been writing and video editing since his early teens, and first got a taste for content creation after making his own Doctor Who trailers, off the back of a burning obsession with the Matt Smith era of the show. Like many his age, he first got into Doctor Who with the 2005 revival, but has since gone back and fallen in love with the classic years too. If you need someone to recite every Doctor Who episode in order, or to give you a random factoid about the making of Gridlock, Danny is the person to ask!