It was a Confringo of words! J.K. Rowling blasted a Harry Potter fan via Twitter on Tuesday, Mar. 24, after the person tweeted that she "can't see" Albus Dumbledore as gay.
In 2007, Rowling outed the beloved Hogwarts headmaster as gay during a Q&A with thousands of fans. A fan asked if Dumbledore ever loved a person, to which Rowling replied: "Dumbledore is gay, actually." She went on to tell the tragic tale of Dumbledore's childhood love who became a dark wizard. According to Rowling, that heartbreak was the character's "great tragedy."
More than seven years later, a fan (@anakocovic21) still had questions about what Rowling so explicitly laid out during that conversation. The user tweeted at the author and wrote that she "can't see him in that way."
Rowling's response was simple. "Maybe because gay people just look like…people," she wrote.
The user has since deleted her account, but Rowling's response has been retweeted more than 8,000 times and favorited by 11,000-plus fans.
In 2013, Rowling told Good Morning America that among the many characters in the Potter series, she personally felt the strongest connection to Dumbledore.
"I feel like I wrote Dumbledore from the back of my head," she said. "Sometimes he said things and told Harry things that I only knew I knew or believed until… I saw that I had written them down in the voice of Dumbledore."
She noted that his death was the most difficult to write. "He was the character who was hardest to leave for me," she shared. "He was the person who I’d have come back physically and sit and talk to me. It would be Dumbledore."
