Dumbledore is Gay!

Like my friend Salve, the thought that Dumbledore (respected headmaster of the Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry in the Harry Potter series) might be gay never entered into my mind, although I always wondered why he wasn’t married. And I also did not read this line by Dumbledore: “You cannot imagine how his ideas caught me, Harry, inflamed me,” to mean anything other than deep respect for a fellow genius, for a bright mind. But now, apparently, there is more to it than I initially thought.

The person Dumbledore is referring to in that line is Gellert Grindelwald, a dark, powerful wizard who, in his adulthood, terrorized the wizarding world much in the same way Lord Voldemort was to do decades later. In their youth, Grindelwald and Dumbledore were best friends, until Grindelwald showed to the wizarding community his true color and Dumbledore had to fight him off. Their duel is one of the greatest duels in the history of the wizarding world.

With JK Rowling’s revelation, I now better understand why Dumbledore was very much taken by the “ideas” of his friend and why he delayed battling with him. Being in love sometimes can make some people do stupid things.

Ah, well. I still adore Dumbledore. I think more so now that he is “out!” (And I understand re-reading the whole series is in order! I think I’ve missed a lot of the finer points of the whole series. Arggggh!)

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Here are some more revelations from JK Rowling:
Neville Longbottom married Hannah Abbot.
Hagrid never married.
Snape’s portrait was put in the Headmaster’s office.

Is Snape good or bad? Here’s Rowling’s take:
“In many ways he really wasn't. So I haven't been deliberately misleading everyone all this time, when I say that he's a good guy. Because even though he did love and he loved very deeply and he was very brave, both qualities that I admire above anything else, he was bitter and he was vindictive... but right at the very very end, he did, as your question acknowledges, achieve a kind of peace together and I tried to show that in the epilogue.”

Okay, so there you go.