Dumbledore refutes that he is Gay

Dear Ms Rowling,

I hope this finds you well. As you so accurately recorded me saying to Petunia Dursley once, “Remember my last.”

Mrs Dursley did indeed remember my previous communication to her. You Ms Rowling, do not.

You have written many times of how the story of Harry Potter and a School called Hogwarts just “Came” to you while you were sitting on a train between London and Manchester. I suppose you might say that it was almost like…magic. Indeed it was.

I had wanted for some time to re-introduce the possibility of Witches and Wizards existing side by side with non Magical folk, back into Muggle minds. I wanted them warned and aware, in case there should come a time when Lord Voldermort would grow powerful again and start attacking them. In short, I wanted them armed so that they could seek the help of those in the Wizarding community who might be able to reveal to them their true nature and offer protection. I could not of course break the Statute of Secrecy. I had to find another way.

And so I found you Joanne. The reasons I chose you were many and perhaps having seen you struggling to look after your child on a rather cold, damp, Edinburgh November morning once, you reminded me somewhat of Harry Potter and his struggles. (I had gone to buy a Muggle Newspaper when I saw you, I do believe it is important to keep up with what is happening in both worlds)

So I chose you to tell the story, or at least a part of the story of Harry Potter. You were unaware that I was sitting across from you on that train. As I think I informed you rather early on, I do not need an invisibility cloak hide my presence.

It was child’s play itself to place the story of Harry’s birth into your mind on that occasion. It was child’s play again on the six other occasions that I visited you, in Edinburgh, London, Aberfeldy and once in New York (I was attending a meeting of the Salem Wizard and Witches Congress.) Regretably the last two visits had perforce of circumstance to be made vicariously through Severus.

Now of course the story is complete and you have told the world what happened to Harry at the battle of Hogwarts and how Tom Riddle finally met his end.

I must confess I did hesitate whether I should allow “Writers Block” to end your telling of the tale before those events, after all, with Voldermort gone, the danger had been removed and with it, the threat to the Muggle world.

On the whole, I thought it cruel to leave you confused (when you had in reality been Confunded) as to why you could not “see” how the story ended. That is why I left your ending, “Nineteen Years Later” so thin on detail. I think it much better for Harry, Gini and their children to live their lives with as few people knowing the details as possible.

But you see dear lady, on the whole, you have used the gift and gifts that Harry’s tale has brought you, well. I know of much good that you have done with the treasure you have gained. Like Harry, your early struggles have been good allies in keeping your feet firmly on the ground.

Yet, (and here I must add, that my complaint is one that could and should have been levelled at myself when I had sometimes achieved great things in my own career,) the fame you have found or more accurately found you, might sometimes go to your rather splendid head.

When you finished telling the tale that I gave you, anything else that you might suppose or suspect about parts of the story that I did not reveal, are nothing more than that, suppositions.
Indeed Ms Rowling, the stewardship of the tale, lays upon you a responsibility not to speculate beyond that which I have told you.

I am dictating this from my Portrait at Hogwarts school to someone who has been concerned by things you have said recently about me as an example. You were I am afraid, quite wrong.

I do not deny that I was infatuated with Gelert Grindelwald when he came to Godrics Hollow. You have conveyed my frustrations with my isolation perfectly. It may be that I did indeed have a “crush” on him. If that was so, it was the sort of crush beautifully described by the Muggle writer Robert Graves in his wonderful book “Goodbye to all that” which I very much enjoyed reading shortly after it was published, (It was a gift from Perenelle Flamel in fact.

”For every one born homosexual, at least ten permanent pseudo-homosexuals are made by the public school system: nine of these ten as honourably chaste and sentimental as I was.”

My relationship with Gelert was “Honourable and Chaste.”

I never told you much about “Sex” in the Wizarding world. The rest of the story was too important to convey, for me to become distracted and side tracked. Frankly, I have always felt that people’s privates lives should, as much as possible, remain private.

I never married. I did not trust myself in any realtionship, after letting my sisiter Ariana down so finally and tragically. I kept myself to relationships conducted at arms length. You might find this a strange and certainly an old fashioned idea, but I kept myself really too busy for love. I had failed those I loved so badly, as I am sure Aberforth whose hand you will have guessed by now is writing this, will tell you.

One last note Ms Rowling, you recently wrote down my words to Harry, “Of course it is happening inside your head…but why on earth should that mean it is not real?”

There are tens of thousands, in fact millions of people, who have had a glimpse into a world they would not have seen but for you…and if I am being honestly immodest… me.

Harry’s tale has helped countless children whose real lives are none the less painful than Harry’s was underneath that staircase in Privett Drive.

Arthur Weasley, infatuated as he is with all things Muggle, told me that one of the Healers at St Mungo’s informed him that Muggle Hospitals and especially those dealing with Cancer patients, are full of people who have found reading of Harry and his story, a special place to go to when things get too much in the “real” world.

There are many things much more painful than the Cruciatus Curse as I think you know.

So Joanne, please leave the story as it is. There are no doubt people who will want to speculate about deviant practices in the Dark Arts, of Belatrix’s relationship with Lord Vodermort, of a thousand things that I never told you about. They will get much wrong and some will want to cheapen, dirty and debase a noble tale. For those for whom Hogwarts was a place they loved and love, that will cause them much distress.

The story of Harry and his magical world, is as it appears in the pages I gave you.
With the drying of the last drop of ink on parchment, the tale was sealed. Let those words tell their own tale and perfom their magic, there where they and the story they tell, belongs and lives.

Once More Yours, Albus Percival Wulfric Brian Dumbledore

Given at the hand of his brother, Aberforth.