Here's an HP question I've never seen asked: Is Dumbledore gay?

[jgraz]

I was struck in book 7 how close he was with his young male friends Elphias Doge and Grindelwald. Especially with Grindelwald, it almost sounded like a first love. Did anyone else get that impression?

[eridani]

1. Not really

I do think it's strange that all of the witches and wizards who marry seem to work for the ministry of magic, and all the Hogwarts teachers seem to be unattached, though.

[XemaSab]

2. Maybe it's like the Catholic church that way...

:hide:

[Matilda]

3. I didn't get that impression,

but I do think Dumbledore was someone who lived principally in his mind. Meeting anyone who had
the same intellectual curiosity and skills as he did would have been very exciting for him, and
probably quite rare, but which sex they were wouldn't be important.

I also wonder whether the reason he didn't marry had something to do with the fact that he'd let
down the two women who early in his life had looked to him for support, his mother and his sister.
Did he feel that he couldn't trust himself to take on that kind of responsibility in a personal
relationship again? We do know that he was haunted by his sister's death; the vision of her death
was his Boggart, so it weighed really heavily with him.

I also noted that all the Hogwarts teachers were single, and I wondered whether there was a reason
for it, or was it just something Jo Rowling didn't think about (hard to imagine, because she pays
such attention to small details). I wonder whether it was felt that as long as Voldemort was at
large somewhere, the families of teachers would be at too much risk, and therefore single teachers
were preferred. It would be interesting to ask Jo Rowling on a forum, if we knew when or where one
was coming up.

[LWolf]

4. I agree.

I think that the teachers were single because living at hogwarts during the school year would put a strain on marriage and family life, to say the least. Unless teachers could bring their entire families to live at hogwarts during the school year, which is problematic, too. Maybe this caused people who wanted to marry and have families to choose other professions.

Just because Rowling didn't include adult/teachers love lives didn't mean that they didn't have them. They just weren't important to the plot, or perhaps relevant for her younger readers.

[yardwork]

5. Actually, it bugs me that none of the romantic pairings are gay.

See my thread entitled HP: What about the Cat?

[Orrex]

6. Wow. Good call!

I'm not a Potter fan, so I can't comment on the implications of Rowling's confirmation, but props to you for figuring it out well in advance of the revelation!

[Matilda]

9. How much of that interview was really about what was in her mind

at the time of writing, and how much is recent hindsight?

Like this: Petunia Dursley would have said to Harry (if she hadn't
changed her mind!): "I know what you're up against, and I hope it turns
out okay". OH, COME ON, JKR! This woman, with her husband, kept Harry
locked in a cupboard for eleven years; for seventeen years she underfed
him to the point of malnutrition, never took him on family outings, gave
him Dudley's old, overlarge, worn-out clothing, never wished him a happy
birthday and gave him rubbish on the rare occasions he got a Christmas
gift at all. And suddenly she's on his side? The hell she was!! She
was so eaten up by jealousy of her sister that it warped her view of
Harry and the whole wizarding world. I've met people like her, and
they NEVER CHANGE. In reality, she should have been charged by the Child
Protection Unit, and in the wizarding world she should have been hexed
from here to Sunday for what she did to Harry.

And Neville and Hannah? I don't have a problem with that relationship
in itself, but why wasn't it in the Epilogue? Because it was said only
in response to all the enquiries she's had since the publication of DH,
I suspect, since Neville was referred to, but not a wife.

Dumbledore being gay doesn't bother me one way or the other (as long as
he didn't get off with Snape), but I think it's a timely way to boost
attention for DH, which has now been out for three months and has ceased
to be a talking point outside of fan sites.

She's a clever woman, Jo Rowling, and I take my hat off to her. But she
cannot ask me to believe in the ultimate goodness of Petunia Dursley.

[CBHagman]

11. "As long as he didn't...

"...get off with Snape." :rofl:

Not that Snape would have countenanced such a thing. Really now!

I tend to believe that the only person with whom Snape was truly vulnerable was Lily Evans. (Insert big sighs here.) And despite all the criticism -- even and especially from his creator! -- of Snape's bitterness and malice, I do believe his was a faithful and sincere love. He chose the side of the good, at great risk to himself, without reward, and at least partly in honor of the one woman he loved.

[Matilda]

12. J.K. Rowling is unfair to Snape!

I noticed on my third reading of PoA (it took a while to sink in) that
Evil Snape conjured stretchers to carry the children back to the castle
after their attack by Dementors, yet Remus and Sirius had allowed the
unconscious Snape's head to bump along the ceiling of the tunnel from the
Shrieking Shack when they levitated him through - and thought it was
funny. Yet Snape's the bad guy, and Remus and Sirius are - heroes?
Immature and irresponsible would be more like it.

And who hadn't taken his wolfsbane potion, putting the lives of everyone
at the school at risk, and betraying Dumbledore's trust at the same
time? Hero Remus.

Snape was as biased against the Marauders as they were against him, yet
he never put the children in danger, whereas Remus and Sirius did, time
and again. They both meant well towards Harry, but neither of them ever
thought things through, and they were, in the end, a bad influence.

And although Snape was a snarky bastard, he didn't allow himself to be
ruled by his emotions, but by his brain, which was better than the rest
of them put together.

[Matilda]

7. You really were right on the mark with that one.

It does make Arianna's death more poignant, and Dumbledore's subsequent
guilt over it even more understandable.

I must admit, I never thought of Dumbledore in a sexual context at all;
the only one I think of as a sexual being is Snape. (And that has a lot
to do with Alan Rickman's voice, which is always in my head when I read).

It's certainly given a new publicity boost to the books - suddenly,
they're front-page news again.

[XemaSab]

8. *mad props*

You *SO* called it.

I am in awe. :D

[jgraz]

13. heh - thanks

:blush:

The best part is the sound of all the Christian freakzoids' heads exploding.

[LWolf]

10. Yes.

Apparently Rowling came out with this at a book reading this week.

http://www.newsweek.com/id/50787

<snip>

In front of a full house of hardcore Potter fans at Carnegie Hall in New York, Rowling, sitting on the stage on a red velvet and carved wood throne, read from her seventh and final book, "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows," then took questions. One fan asked whether Albus Dumbledore, the head of the famed Hogwarts School of Wizardry and Witchcraft, had ever loved anyone. Rowling smiled. "Dumbledore is gay, actually," replied Rowling as the audience erupted in surprise. She added that, in her mind, Dumbledore had an unrequited love affair with Gellert Grindelwald, Voldemort's predecessor who appears in the seventh book.