Quote:
Originally Posted by christiangirl
Their childhood friendship did that by itself. IMO, this is a plot twist I would expect from Passions, not literature.
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Except that they weren't children. Grindelwald didn't come to Godric's Hollow until he was expelled from Durmstrang. He was 16 and Dumbledore, who had just finished at Hogwarts, was 18 -- an adult.
And technically it's not a plot twist, since it isn't really mentioned in the books. It's backstory.
For the record, here is the question and answer as asked and given in the Carnegie Hall event:
Did Dumbledore, who believed in the prevailing power of love, ever fall in love himself?
JKR: My truthful answer to you... I always thought of Dumbledore as gay. [ovation.] ... Dumbledore fell in love with Grindelwald, and that that added to his horror when Grindelwald showed himself to be what he was. 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, and rather like Bellatrix he was very drawn to this brilliant person, and horribly, terribly let down by him. Yeah, that's how i always saw Dumbledore. 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... [laughter]. I had to write a little note in the margin and slide it along to the scriptwriter, "Dumbledore's gay!" [laughter] "If I'd known it would make you so happy, I would have announced it years ago!"
Also, the Dumbledore news seems to overshadowed other tidbits that she dropped at Carnegie Hall, such as that Neville married Hannah Abbot, who became landlady at the Leaky Cauldron.
As to what Aunt Petunia Dursley could not bring herself to say when the Dursleys left Harry in DH, she would have wished him luck, saying: "I do know what you're up against and I hope it's okay."
A rough and partial transcript can be found
here.