Harry Potter Author Reveals Dumbledore Is Gay!

While in New York City on an author's tour J.K. Rowling revealed in response to an audience member's question that Albus Dumbledore, Harry Potter's headmaster at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, was gay.

"Falling in love can blind us to an extent," Rowling explained Friday in front of a packed house at New York's Carnegie Hall, where she capped off her first U.S. book tour since 2000.

Which explains why the brilliant wizard was briefly blinded as a young man by the charm and skill of Gellert Grindelwald, his companion turned arch-nemesis who turned out to be more interested in the Dark Arts than a three-bedroom craftsman in Hogsmeade.

After Dumbledore was "horribly, terribly let down," Rowling explained, he went on to destroy Grindelwald in what is considered in the wizarding world to have been the ultimate wand-toting battle between good and evil.

That love, she said to raucous applause, was Dumbledore's "great tragedy."

"If I had know this would have made you so happy, I would have told you years ago," Rowling said.