J.K. Rowling Explains Why Uncle Dumbledore Never Got Married

Just in case you forgot to check The Leaky Cauldron over the weekend, J.K. Rowling dropped a bomb before a crowd of young Potterites who had won an audience with the Harry Potter author at Carnegie Hall on Friday. EW.com was there:

Responding to a question from a child about Dumbledore’s love life, Rowling hesitated and then revealed, “I always saw Dumbledore as gay.” Filling in a few more details, she said, “Dumbledore fell in love with Grindelwald…. Don’t forget, falling in love can blind us.”

“[He] was very drawn to this brilliant person. This was Dumbledore’s tragedy.” She added that in a recent meeting about the sixth movie, she spied a line in the script where Dumbledore waxed poetic about a girl, so she was forced to scribble director David Yates a note to correct the situation.

Funny – we had always pegged perennial bachelor-bear Hagrid, forever doting over his pedigreed lapdragons, to be the secret Nimbus 2000-polisher of the Potter universe. Still, the official outing of not just any character, but the most wizened and respected of them all, is sure to be lauded by the open-minded fans of the series – particularly the ardent gay ones, themselves learning to manage their good-taste-having and disco-loving magical abilities in a drab, breeder-muggle world.

• J.K. Rowling outs Dumbledore! [EW.com]