Professor Albus Dumbledore is a wizard, but that's not the part of his character some muggles still have trouble wrapping their brains around...
Some Harry Potter fans are still struggling with the Hogwarts headmaster's sexual orientation. Just yesterday, in fact, a Twitter user questioned author J.K. Rowling on that very subject, writing, "I wonder why you said that Dumbledore is a gay because I can't see him in that way."
Rowling, a longtime supporter of the LGBT community, had the perfect, sassy response to the now-deleted tweet: "Maybe because gay people just look like... people?"
.@anakocovic21 Maybe because gay people just look like... people?
? J.K. Rowling (@jk_rowling) March 24, 2015The fan acknowledged Rowling's "amazing answer," tweeting (and later deleting), "Yes you are absolutely right. Such an inspiration."
Many media outlets interpreted Rowling's reaction the wrong way, so on Wednesday afternoon, she clarified her initial response: "A minority of people are rushing to judgement without the facts, so here they are: @anakovic21 [the tweeter] did NOT ask an offensive question!"
"My reply to her question was gentle," wrote Rowling, "and her response was very sweet."
Rowling is no bully! In fact, she's long been a vocal supporter of gay rights. She first outed Dumbledore back in 2007 during a fan Q&A in New York. When asked whether the amazingly talented wizard ever found "true love," Rowling answered (per the U.K.'s Guardian), "Dumbledore is gay."
She went on to reveal that Dumbledore once "fell in love" with Grindelwald, a bad wizard he later defeated in battle. "That added to [Dumbledore's] horror when Grindelwald showed himself to be what he was," Rowling explained. "To an extent, do we say it excused Dumbledore a little more because falling in love can blind us to an extent, but he met someone as brilliant as he was...he was very drawn to this brilliant person and horribly, terribly let down by him."
"Yeah, that's how I always saw Dumbledore," she went on. "In fact, recently I was in a script read-through for the sixth film, and they had Dumbledore saying a line to Harry early in the script saying, 'I knew a girl once, whose hair...' I had to write a little note in the margin and slide it along to the scriptwriter, 'Dumbledore's gay!'"
So that's that—Rowling has the final word on all things Potter. This isn't the only time this topic has come up, though. Last year, a fan asked Rowling on Twitter whether Hogwarts had LGBT students, noting, "I like to think its' a safe place for LGBT students."
"But of course," Rowling responded, posting an image that read: "If Harry Potter taught us anything / It's that no one should live in a closet."
(Originally posted March 25, 2015 at 6:16 a.m. PT)