Chapter Four Dumbledore’S Queer Ghost Homosexuality and Its Heterosexual Afterlives in J

Chapter Four Dumbledore’s Queer Ghost Homosexuality and Its Heterosexual Afterlives in J. K. Rowling’s Harry Potter Novels

When do the dead truly die? Jacques Derrida cautions against the presump- tion that the dead can be put to rest: “Vigilance, therefore: the cadaver is perhaps not as dead, as simply dead as the conjuration tries to delude us into believing.” He proceeds to suggest that ghosts register long after their passing and to act despite their absence: “The one who has disappeared appears still to be there, and his apparition is not nothing. It does not do nothing. Assuming that the remains can be identifi ed, we know better than ever today that the dead must be able to work. And to cause to work, perhaps more than ever.”1 For readers of J. K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series, Derrida’s words might call to mind the untimely passing of Professor Albus Percival Wulfric Brian Dumb- ledore, Order of Merlin (First Class), Headmaster of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, Supreme Mugwump of the International Confed- eration of Wizards, and Chief Warlock of the Wizengamot (BB x–xi).2 Despite his self-sacrifi cial death at the conclusion of Half-Blood Prince, Dumbledore continues to function both textually and metatextually after his demise, most notably due to Rowling’s surprising announcement of his homosexuality. Dumbledore’s work throughout and beyond the Harry Potter series includes guiding Harry to heroic and heteronormative masculinity, and his ghostly model of queer masculinity provides a touchstone hermeneutic for understanding Rowling’s confl icted treatment of childhood innocence as a theme in her novels. That the Harry Potter books validate heteronormativity as the preferred outcome of adolescence provides the foundational premise of this chapter.3

83 84 • Innocence, Heterosexuality, and the Queerness of Children’s Literature By rejecting normality as a virtue, Rowling endorses non-normativity as a key trait of her heroic protagonist. Readers learn that “Harry Potter wasn’t a normal boy. As a matter of fact, he was as not normal as it is possible to be” (CS 3), and Uncle Vernon, whose opinions readers quickly learn to reject, condemns wizardry: “Marge doesn’t know anything about your abnormality” (PA 19), he warns Harry. Vernon’s discomfort with abnormality and wizardry valorizes them in contrast to his arid conformity, and celebrations of wizardry as a priv- ileged state for those fortunate enough to escape Muggle normativity occur throughout the series. Wizardry thus provides a model through which homosexuals can allegorize their unique sense of difference. Several aspects of the novels—including Harry’s “coming out” as a wizard, the necessity for wizards occasionally to “pass” as Muggles, and the unwarranted cultural prejudices against werewolves—invite readings of Rowling’s novels as embracing a range of queer acts and identities. From this perspective, Vernon’s discriminatory attitude toward gendered and sexual difference, as evident when he declares that he “didn’t want some swotty little nancy boy for a son anyway” (GF 27), affi rms that which this unlikable character denigrates. Nancy is a slang term for homosexual, and Vernon’s homophobia reveals that Rowling thematically endorses homosexuality: quite simply, if Vernon Dursley opposes someone or something, readers are encouraged to support them, including “swotty little nancy boy[s].”4 These dynamics, however queer friendly they may be, remain mostly subtextual or otherwise peripheral to Harry’s narrative trajectory and do not measurably undermine the series’ powerful investment in heteronormativity, in which Harry’s path to heroic manhood necessitates the rejection of femininity and a concomitant apotheosis into heterosexuality. In conjunction with Harry’s heteronormative brand of heroism, stereotypical depictions of women undermine the apparent gendered egalitarian- ism of the wizarding world. Despite the novels’ post-feminist façade, in which women are generally treated as equals to men and sexist attitudes are regis- tered as regressive, Elizabeth Heilman contends that “the Harry Potter books feature females in secondary positions of power and authority and replicate some of the most demeaning, yet familiar, cultural stereotypes for both males and females.”5 Beyond the stereotypical depictions of many female characters, numerous male characters, notably Ron Weasley, Sirius Black, and Albus Dumbledore, stand in secondary positions to Harry so that his masculinity reigns triumphant at the narrative’s conclusion; such hierarchical paradigms of masculine identity cement the predominant heroic heteronormativity of the series.6 In this chapter, I expand upon these previous arguments to dem- onstrate the ways in which Dumbledore and the specter of his homosexuality fortify the heteronormativity of the series by promoting children’s innocence as a virtue, despite Rowling’s mostly deprecatory treatment of this “virtue.” For even when homosexuals such as Dumbledore do not die within a text, they are often metaphorically ghosts and specters, apparitional fi gures who bolster an ideological agenda without being seen to do so, and often one that J. K. Rowling’s Harry Potter Novels • 85 is antithetical to queer agency. In her readings of literary representations of lesbianism, Terry Castle observes the ways in which the apparitional and the spectral become metaphors for addressing lesbianism: “The spectral fi gure is a perfect vehicle for conveying what must be called—though without a doubt paradoxically—that ‘recognition through negation’ which has taken place with regard to female homosexuality in Western culture since the Enlightenment.”7 This dynamic of “recognition through negation” encapsulates many treat- ments of homosexuality in children’s literature, in which childhood’s homo- sociality must be sacrifi ced when protagonists assume heterosexual identities. So too is Dumbledore recognized yet negated in the Harry Potter series: he is insistently present as Harry’s primary mentor to whom the young hero turns during moments of distress, yet he is spectral in his sexuality that fails to register within the pages of the series. This key aspect of his character appears at best obliquely, but it is key to understanding the position of abnormality in the series, in which Dumbledore fractures the expected innocence within children’s fi ction—few other texts of children’s literature afford a gay character such a central role—while nonetheless preserving this innocence through Rowling’s occluded treatment of it. Because Dumbledore refuses the possibility of continuing his earthly existence beyond death, analyzing him as a spectral presence may appear coun- terintuitive to his and the novels’ ethos. Numerous ghosts and poltergeists participate in the unfolding plot (including the Bloody Baron, Nearly Head- less Nick, Peeves, and Moaning Myrtle), but Harry is certain that Dumbledore would reject returning to earth after his demise: “Dumbledore wouldn’t come back as a ghost” (DH 504). Dumbledore’s decision not to cling to Hogwarts as a ghostly presence confi rms his thematic embrace of death: death is not to be feared (as he teaches Harry at the conclusion of Sorcerer’s Stone [297]), and Voldemort’s vain efforts to elude death provoke his depraved acts. Remain- ing on earth as a ghost also reveals one’s emotional immaturity, as evident when Nearly Headless Nick informs Harry of his regret for undertaking such a transformation: “I was afraid of death . . . I chose to remain behind. I some- times wonder whether I oughtn’t to have” (OP 861). Two different types of ghosts are in play in the Harry Potter books and in this analysis of them: the ghost as a tool of social, cultural, and literary analysis, as Derrida and Castle outline, and the ghost as a supernatural being, as a type of character in Rowl- ing’s fantasy world, one which she defi nes as “transparent, moving, talking, and thinking versions of wizards and witches who wished, for whatever reason, to remain on earth” (BB 79). These disparate models of ghosts converge in Albus Dumbledore, as the work he performs requires both his death and the continual effacement of his queer role in leading Harry out of childhood and into salvifi c heroism through death. As he models for Harry and readers the undesirability of a ghostly existence, his homosexuality works spectrally to imbue sexual otherness into children’s literature but only so that its presence can be mostly overlooked to preserve young readers’ innocence (cum 86 • Innocence, Heterosexuality, and the Queerness of Children’s Literature ignorance) of homosexuality. In her reading of Harry Potter and its uncanny and gothic edges, Stacy Gillis argues that “adult desires are embedded within these texts,”8 and such is the case with Dumbledore’s desires to have sex with other men, which can only be declared openly outside the novels’ pages. This chapter’s fi rst unit explores how Rowling condemns innocence as a virtue for children and as a theme in children’s literature. By slyly introducing numerous topics typically considered taboo for children—vulgarity, bestiality, alcoholism, excrementality—she undermines innocence within her fi c- tional world while simultaneously dismissing critics who argue that her books are inappropriate fare for young readers. Given this investment in dismantling children’s innocence as a virtue, Rowling’s reticence to address Dumbledore’s queerness renders homosexuality more taboo than these other topics. The following section addresses Dumbledore’s character in light of his homosexuality, pinpointing textual moments when Rowling obliquely limns the possibility of his queerness and thus subverts expectations of innocence within children’s fi ction while nonetheless upholding them through the obliquity of her depictions. The chapter concludes with an analysis of Dumbledore’s role in constructing Harry’s heterosexuality, as the young hero successfully traffi cs in women and defeats death to emerge as heteronormatively triumphant at the series’ end. To achieve these goals, a queer old man must lead Rowling’s straight young hero.

Harry Potter and the Rejection of Innocence

In Rowling’s wizarding world, innocence is not a prized virtue for preserving the sanctity of children and childhood; on the contrary, it is denigrated as a saccharine palliative that children will nauseously reject. In his commentary on “The Wizard and the Hopping Pot,” one of the stories collected in Beedle the Bard, Dumbledore quotes the bowdlerizing author Beatrix Bloxam, who believes that children’s literature should aspire to the goal of “fi lling the pure minds of our little angels with healthy, happy thoughts, keeping their sweet slumber free of wicked dreams, and protecting the precious fl ower of their innocence” (BB 18). Mrs. Bloxam condemns Beedle’s various narratives (and thereby endorses her sanitized retellings of them) due to “their unhealthy pre- occupation with the most horrid subjects, such as death, disease, bloodshed, wicked magic, unwholesome characters, and bodily effusions and eruptions of the most disgusting kind” (BB 17). Of course, all of these “most horrid subjects” appear throughout the Harry Potter novels, and through this metatextual commentary pillorying innocence as a virtue for children, Rowl- ing defends her books against those who deem them unfi t for young readers. Those dedicated to “protecting the precious fl ower of [children’s] innocence,” Rowling tartly argues, little understand the diffi culties of childhood or the aesthetic tastes of children.9 Dumbledore describes wizarding children’s J. K. Rowling’s Harry Potter Novels • 87 reactions to Mrs. Bloxam’s pristine fi ctions: “Mrs. Bloxam’s tale has met the same response from generations of Wizarding children: uncontrollable retch- ing, followed by an immediate demand to have the book taken from them and mashed into pulp” (BB 19). If innocence is the chief theme of Mrs. Bloxam’s retellings of Beedle the Bard, Dumbledore proposes, it is a theme for which children do not share her enthusiasm. Proponents of socially conservative agendas often deploy censorship as a strong-arm tactic to assert their worldview on others: to preserve their children’s innocence and to disseminate their worldview, censors marshal their efforts to ensure that libraries and schools do not provide their patrons access to information deemed unsuitable for young readers. Believing that their val- ues should triumph over others, censors revel in cultural narcissism, and in the Harry Potter books the leading proponent of censorship is villain Lucius Malfoy. Rowling associates his demand for certain books to be removed from the Hogwarts library to his bigoted efforts against the purported perversity of wizard/human miscegenation: “Any work of fi ction or nonfi ction that depicts interbreeding between wizards and Muggles should be banned from the bookshelves of Hogwarts” (BB 40). In his response, Dumbledore condemns censorship as immoral because it robs children of necessary knowledge, and, in so doing, he condemns enforced innocence as little better than mindless ignorance: “There is not a witch or wizard in existence whose blood has not mingled with that of Muggles, and I should therefore consider it both illogical and immoral to remove works dealing with the subject from our students’ store of knowledge” (BB 42). For Dumbledore, all knowledge is vital for children to understand the world and their place in it, and his fi ght against censorship counterbalances his mistakes in reserving necessary information from Harry—that is, for attempting to preserve Harry’s innocence—during the hero’s violent struggles with Voldemort. When Dumbledore apologizes to Harry—“I cared about you too much . . . I cared more for your happiness than your knowing the truth, more for your peace of mind than my plan, more for your life than the lives that might be lost if the plan failed” (OP 838)—he expresses his regret for privileging innocence and ignorance over experience and knowledge, belatedly conceding that children need all types of knowledge, including painful knowledge, to protect themselves. Innocence, quite simply, will not assist Harry in his adult struggles against evil. In line with her rejection of innocence as a cardinal virtue of childhood, Rowling slips in numerous scenes of controversial subject matter that some adult readers might deem unsuitable for children. Like Dumbledore’s homosexuality, these transgressive scenes are tactfully occluded, and Rowl- ing’s treatment of these potentially controversial topics relies on her depiction of them through absence, in which she refrains from illustrating them graphically while nonetheless strongly hinting at them. Such is the strength of silence as a literary technique, for it is more diffi cult for critics to condemn that which is not there. Gérard Genette proposes that “literature uses signs 88 • Innocence, Heterosexuality, and the Queerness of Children’s Literature . . . not to name a meaning but to ‘deceive,’ that is to say, both to offer it and to suspend it,” and such is the case with much of Rowling’s semiotic play with silences and elisions.10 Few publishers would market children’s novels in which young characters frequently curse and swear, and so frequently Rowling’s characters are described as swearing but readers do not hear the words, such as when Harry “employs a few of Uncle Vernon’s choicest swear words” (DH 45). Rowling’s treatment of vulgarity also highlights the ways in which she circumvents criticism while nonetheless depicting coarse language, such as when Ron mentions that the Weasleys’ gnomes “know a lot of excellent swear words” and when Mundungus Fletcher and Ron say “effi ng” (DH 222, 307, and 374). “Effi ng” is a rather bald euphemism for “fucking,” and the former word immediately calls to mind the latter even while Rowling distances her fi ctions from it. In many ways, “effi ng” synechdochically captures Rowling’s tendency to occlude controversial topics so that they register as humorous rather than as controversial. Another of her tactics in this regard is to elide a potentially offensive word, when surely even her youngest readers can supply it for themselves. When Fred Weasley recounts the riotous antics of their Uncle Bilius, his narration halts immediately prior to a word potentially offensive to those who might censor children’s literature: “He used to down an entire bottle of fi rewhisky, then run onto the dance fl oor, hoist up his robes, and start pulling bunches of fl owers out of his—” (DH 142–43). Readers must supply “ass” (or perhaps its British equivalent, “arse”) for themselves, but Rowling effectively conveys her anal imagery despite the elision. Rowling’s treatment of curse words exposes her primary strategies for introducing mature and perverse topics into her fi ction, often with a humorous twist. No matter how progressive their worldviews, many people consider bestiality a perversion—after all, consensual sex acts demand consent, and animals can never consent to sex with humans—yet Rowling playfully intro- duces this taboo topic into her fi ctions for children. Dumbledore’s brother Aberforth appears to enjoy a fetish for goats: his Patronus is a goat (DH 558), Dumbledore declares that during childhood Aberforth’s favorite story was “Grumble the Grubby Goat” (BB 94), and, in Rita Skeeter’s biography of Dumbledore, Enid Smeek recalls how Aberforth repeatedly threw goat excrement at her (DH 354). This childhood pleasure appears to have meta- morphosed into the adult perversion of bestiality: Dumbledore admits suggestively, “My own brother, Aberforth, was prosecuted for practicing inappropriate charms on a goat” (GF 454, cf. DH 182), and tabloid reporter Rita Skeeter, despite her questionable journalistic ethics, speaks forthrightly when she comments that Albus holds secrets “much worse than a brother with a fondness for fi ddling about with goats” (DH 25). Although Rowling never delineates Aberforth’s transgressions precisely, bestiality appears to be the sexual secret shrouded in Aberforth’s past, especially because, in its slang usage, “fi ddling” denotes sexual play.11 Bestiality is a recurring trans- gression in Dumbledore’s extended family, and he also recalls that his aunt J. K. Rowling’s Harry Potter Novels • 89 Honoria ended her engagement when she “discovered [her fi ancé] in the act of fondling some Horklumps, which she found deeply shocking.” Dumble- dore explains that Horklumps are “pink, bristly mushroom-like creatures” and wonders “why anyone would want to fondle them” (BB 60), but here again the inherent perversity of bestial desires surfaces to subvert conceptions of seamlessly human heterosexuality. When the centaur Firenze joins the Hogwarts faculty, Parvati Patil sighs longingly that he is a “gorgeous centaur,” suggesting the possibility of her interspecies desires, but how would a human and a centaur copulate? Hermione dismisses the concept of bestial romance—“Either way, he’s still got four legs” (OP 599)—but this scene further contributes to confl icted depictions of human/animal desires, which percolate throughout the wizarding world and undermine foundations of normative heterosexuality, while Rowling mitigates their disruptive potential by shrouding the topic’s consideration in obfuscations. Many proponents of children’s innocence believe that children’s literature should be didactic about such dangers to adolescents as drinking alcohol, but Rowling holds no such qualms in her depiction of teen drinking. Even butterbeer is of ambiguous status in regard to its alcohol content; it sounds like an innocuous beverage, along the lines of ginger ale, but Hor- ace Slughorn mentions it in the same breath as wine and mead (H-BP 396). Harry and his friends frequently drink fi rewhisky (OP 738, H-BP 309, DH 79, 84), but because Rowling never labels fi rewhisky as an alcoholic beverage, it is unclear precisely what this beverage is. Certainly, numerous pas- sages—in addition to the one previously cited regarding the Weasley’s Uncle Bilius—detail its inebriating effect: “then [Ginny] was kissing [Harry] as she had never kissed him before, and Harry was kissing her back, and it was blissful oblivion, better than fi rewhisky; she was the only real thing in the world” (DH 116). Also, alcoholic overindulgence is never upbraided in the series as worthy of comment, let alone condemnation. When the Fat Lady chooses “abstinence” as a password for the Gryffi ndor common room, Hermione explains that she (the Fat Lady) recently overindulged in liquor: “She and her friend Violet drank their way through all the wine in that pic- ture of drunk monks” (H-BP 351). Beyond the Fat Lady’s binge, Professor Trelawney reeks of cooking sherry (H-BP 196 and 317); she appears to be a barely functioning alcoholic, as evidenced by the many sherry bottles she hides in the Room of Requirement: “‘I wished to—ah—deposit certain— um—personal items—in the room. . . . ’ And she muttered something about ‘nasty accusations’” (H-BP 541). Despite deep suspicions about her prophetic abilities, Professor Trelawney contributes mightily in the climactic Battle of Hogwarts, dispatching Fenrir Greyback with a crystal ball to his head and exclaiming her readiness to continue the fi ght: “‘I have more!’ shrieked Pro- fessor Trelawney from over the banisters. ‘More for any who want them!’ . . . And with a movement like a tennis serve, she heaved another enormous crystal sphere from her bag” (DH 646). A heroic alcoholic, Professor Trelawney 90 • Innocence, Heterosexuality, and the Queerness of Children’s Literature escapes the tragic yet moralizing ending that would teach children valuable lessons about the perils of alcohol abuse. For the Mrs. Bloxams among her critics, those who would recoil at the thought of coarse subject matter degrading children’s innocence, Rowl- ing employs a jaunty but mostly subtextual anal and excremental humor, such as when Fred Weasley threatens Zacharias Smith, who has questioned Harry’s magical abilities, with a “long and lethal-looking metal instrument” that would be appropriate for anal intrusions: “Or any part of your body, really, we’re not fussy where we stick this” (OP 343), he menaces. She employs a tired anal pun when Ron tells Harry, “Harry, we saw Uranus up close!” and, in case any young readers missed the joke, Ron continues to explain, “Get it, Harry? We saw Uranus—ha ha ha—” (OP 795, cf. GF 201). Fred and George Weasley see the humorous and profi table side of constipation in one of their magical products—“Why Are You Worrying about You-Know- Who? You Should Be Worrying about U-No-Poo—The Constipation Sensa- tion That’s Gripping the Nation!” (H-BP 116)—and Mr. Weasley recounts how Willy Widdershin’s antics resulted in a literal shitstorm: “One of his jinxes backfi red, the toilet exploded, and they found him lying unconscious in the wreckage covered from head to foot in—” (OP 489). In these examples, anality and excrementality are present yet absent, mostly hinted at in veiled threats, puns, and elisions. As much as Rowling undermines innocence as a children’s virtue through her repeated rejections of the “Mrs. Bloxams” among her readers, in a key scene in which Lupin broadcasts hope to the wizards and witches resisting Voldemort, she relies on the language of innocence for Lupin to inspire his auditors: “‘The Boy Who Lived’ remains a symbol of everything for which we are fi ghting: the triumph of good, the power of innocence, the need to keep resisting” (DH 441). Assuredly Harry symbolizes goodness and the necessity of fi ghting evil, yet readers might well wonder exactly what this power of innocence is, since Rowling mostly denigrates this “virtue” as adults turn- ing a blind eye to children’s need for knowledge. Also, if Harry represents the power of innocence, readers might also wonder exactly of what quality or crime Harry is innocent. Lupin’s words treat children’s innocence as the goal of Harry’s fi ght, but Harry would be unable to undertake his struggle with Voldemort if innocence were his weapon. Dumbledore, after realizing his mistake of shielding Harry from knowledge at the close of Order of the Phoe- nix, helps Harry to grow into heroic maturity rather than to remain mired in innocence, yet Harry fi nds himself again frustrated in Deathly Hallows because Dumbledore did not share with him much information necessary to succeed in his quest. Lupin’s speech expresses a melancholic longing for children’s innocence, but one that is unsuitable to the narrative circumstances warranting its broadcast to wizards and witches caught up in a mortal struggle against the darkest of evils.12 Although innocence is not a primary virtue in the Harry Potter world, it is not therefore dismissed as wholly irrelevant to J. K. Rowling’s Harry Potter Novels • 91 children’s lives, and Rowling’s shadowy depictions of homosexuality adum- brate that children should be preserved from candid knowledge of human sexuality, in contrast to the series’ mostly egalitarian views.

Dumbledore’s Homosexuality

Similar to Rowling’s depiction of curse words, bestiality, alcoholism, and excrement, in which she obliquely includes taboo subjects and vulgarities in her novels while refraining from addressing them directly, her treatment of Dumbledore’s homosexuality teeters between representation and absence. Within the series, very little addresses Dumbledore’s sexuality—whether homosexual or heterosexual—but Rowling herself proffered conclusive, if metatextual, evidence that he is gay: “My truthful answer to you . . . I always thought of Dumbledore as gay,” she announced to her audience at a Carnegie Hall reading. She proceeded to elaborate on her character and his sexual history:

Dumbledore fell in love with Grindelwald, and 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? . . . Yeah, that’s how I always saw Dumbledore. In fact, recently I was in a script read through for the sixth ﬁ lm, 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!13

Surely Rowling perceived that announcing Dumbledore’s homosexuality would generate a mixed reaction, pleasing her progressive fans and providing ammunition for critics seeking to censor Harry Potter. And so she cloaked his homosexuality, which creates a paradox in this series that so energetically dismisses innocence as a children’s virtue: homosexuality establishes the limit to children’s knowledge within this fantasy world, and in turn, Rowling sacrifi ces Dumbledore’s sexuality as a plotline. Spectral traces of homosexuality nonetheless surface to corrupt seamless conceptions of universal heteronormativity while ironically helping to construct Harry’s heroic and exemplary heteronormativity. In terms of his composite portrait, Albus Dumbledore is “the greatest wizard in the world. . . . Everyone says so” (CS 314), and he is likewise acknowledged as the “greatest headmaster Hogwarts ever had” (SS 58). His genial temperament is evident in his fondness for sweets—lemon drops (SS 10, CS 204), custard tarts (CS 82), “Acid Pops” (H-BP 181), and toffee éclairs (H-BP 92 • Innocence, Heterosexuality, and the Queerness of Children’s Literature 493)—whose names he frequently uses as passwords to his offi ce. Rowling describes Dumbledore’s eyes as twinkling on numerous occasions (SS 16, 299; CS 330; PA 228, 420; GF 188, 307, 452), which often indicates his sly sense of humor, and readers also learn of his hobbies, including chamber music and tenpin bowling (SS 103). The portrait of Dumbledore that emerges is of an immensely talented wizard and a kindly man who supervises Hogwarts admirably, as Torbjørn Knutsen observes: “Dumbledore seeks to inculcate in his students the public-school virtues of classic liberalism: individual bravery, decency, dependability, diligence, honesty, kindness, and solidarity.”14 Dumb- ledore is such an impressive fi gure that some readers see godlike qualities in him, such as in Nicholas Tucker’s affi rmation that Dumbledore possesses “the air of an omniscient divinity about him.”15 Yet at the same time that he is widely venerated, Dumbledore’s behavior is deemed strange by others. “I always said [Dumbledore] was off his rocker,” declares Ron, and the narrator records that Ron “look[ed] quite impressed at how crazy his hero was” (SS 302). Likewise, Fred interjects that “Dumb- ledore’s not what you’d call normal, though, is he? . . . I mean, I know he’s a genius and everything” (GF 161). Ron’s and Fred’s comments place Dumble- dore outside the parameters of normal wizarding behavior without explicitly stating their reasons for believing him to be somehow abnormal. In these brief scenes, Harry Potter’s confl icting sense of normativity bubbles to the surface: wizards’ abnormality is prized as a virtue because it offers an escape from Muggle conformity, but it is unclear whether abnormality within the wizarding world is considered to be a similar virtue. Several faint glimmers of Dumbledore’s sex life that readers might per- ceive indicate a heterosexual orientation: “I haven’t blushed so much since Madam Pomfrey told me she liked my new earmuffs” (SS 11), Dumbledore confesses, and his blush at a compliment from a woman hints (incorrectly, it appears) of a sexual attraction. Also, Dumbledore dances with Pomona Sprout, the female professor of Herbology, at the Yule Ball (GF 424). More than obscuring Dumbledore’s sexuality, Rowling sets this topic beyond the boundaries of polite discourse. In a key scene addressing his mentor’s interiority, Harry asks him what he sees in the magical Mirror of Erised, which reveals one’s deepest desires, and Dumbledore humorously replies, “I? I see myself holding a pair of thick, woolen socks” (SS 214, cf. DH 21).16 Harry is surprised by Dumbledore’s evasive response, but he soon realizes that he should not pry into his mentor’s personal affairs: “It was only when he was back in bed that it struck Harry that Dumbledore might not have been quite truthful. But then, he thought, . . . it had been quite a personal question” (SS 214). Dumbledore’s personal life, as this scene suggests, lies beyond the purview of Harry’s concerns, and thus it is beyond the purview of readers’ concerns as well. Rowling suggests to her readers in this scene that Dumb- ledore’s private life is not their concern, a stance that she contradicted when publicly announcing his homosexuality. J. K. Rowling’s Harry Potter Novels • 93 With a retrospective eye following Rowling’s “outing” of Dumbledore, other elements in his characterization indicate that his abnormality from wizarding culture is akin to queerness, revealing spectral traces of his homosexuality. Dumbledore comfortably expresses his feminine side, as he confesses his fondness for the textile arts—“I do love knitting patterns” (H-BP 73)—and his fashions as a young man cast him as a dandy, in a scene when he “draw[s] many curious glances due to the fl amboyantly cut suit of plum velvet that he was wearing” (H-BP 263). The Weasleys’ Auntie Muriel informs her audience at Bill and Fleur’s wedding, “Before he became so respected and respectable and all that tosh, there were some mighty funny rumors about Albus!” (DH 153). In regard to Dumbledore’s tragic love for Grindelwald, little indicates that the relationship moved beyond an asexual boyhood crush: the narrator mentions “a full-page photograph of two teenage boys, both laughing immod- erately with their arms around each other’s shoulders” (DH 253), and Bathilda Bagshot remarks, “The boys took to each other at once” (DH 356). Beyond these slightly suggestive remarks, readers cannot know the extent of Dumble- dore’s fi rst (and perhaps only) love, and no evidence confi rms whether Grin- delwald ever reciprocated his affections. Rowling is so reticent in her depiction of Dumbledore’s relationships that it is diffi cult to draw fi rm conclusions regarding their romantic content, but his friendship with Elphias Doge appears similarly tinged with spectral hints of homoerotic affection. In his eulogy “Albus Dumbledore Remembered,” Doge describes their friendship as based upon a shared sense of alienation— “Our mutual attraction was undoubtedly due to the fact that we both felt ourselves to be outsiders” (DH 16)—and then recalls how they planned to travel together following graduation: “When Albus and I left Hogwarts we intended to take the then-traditional tour of the world together” (DH 18). Their contemporaries, however, are dismissive of their friendship. Auntie Muriel taunts Doge about his youthful dedication to Dumbledore, dismissing his affections (“Oh, we all know you worshipped Dumbledore” [DH 154]), and Dumbledore’s brother Aberforth more colorfully condemns Doge’s affection for Albus: “Thought the sun shone out of my brother’s every orifi ce, he did” (DH 563). This line, with typical Rowlingian ambiguity, hints at an anal attraction while refusing to state it. These ghostly traces of homosexuality, which mostly transpired in the series’ backstory, ensconce Dumbledore’s desires as a matter of the historical record rather than of the narrative present. Even fewer traces of Dumbledore’s homosexuality register in the narrative present, except in Rita Skeeter’s attempt to uncover pederastic undertones to his mentoring of Harry: “I devote an entire chapter to the whole Potter-Dumbledore relationship. It’s been called unhealthy, even sinister. . . . Dumbledore took an unnatural interest in Potter from the word go. . . . It’s certainly an open secret that Potter has had a most troubled adolescence” (DH 27). Intriguingly, Rita employs the lex- icon of queer theory in her reference to Harry’s “open secret.” Eve Sedgwick 94 • Innocence, Heterosexuality, and the Queerness of Children’s Literature describes the open secret as “a very particular secret, a homosexual secret”; she elaborates that it includes “the swirls of totalizing knowledge-power that circulate so violently around any but the most openly acknowledged gay male identity.”17 Carolyn Dean likewise identifi es the inhibitory force of an open secret: “The open secret was (and still is) a means of regulation via its repres- sive (‘don’t tell’) and its productive features (a secret endlessly spoken and staged and thus itself knowledge-generating) but was also a form of sadistic entrapment.”18 Harry’s open secret of his troubled adolescence, however, is not identical to Dumbledore’s closed and closeted secret of his homosexuality, and so it seems unlikely from this passage that wizarding society generally acknowledges yet never speaks of Dumbledore’s sexuality. Rita’s suggestion that Dumbledore’s interest in Harry is “unnatural” points to pederastic perversions, but she is merely pointing out, albeit in a gratuitously provocative fashion, what every wizard already knows: that Dumbledore and Harry do indeed share a unique relationship. Draco Malfoy twice observes that Harry is Dumbledore’s favorite student (GF 729, OP 155), and, despite his status as a villainous character, there is little reason to doubt his assertion. Likewise, Rufus Scrimgeour criticizes Harry’s attachment to Dumbledore when he cannot convince Harry to join the Ministry of Magic, referring to him as “Dumbledore’s man through and through” (H-BP 348, cf. 357, 649). Rita’s gossipy accusations of pederasty between Dumbledore and Harry cast perverse suspicions on an otherwise asexual mentoring relationship, yet Harry’s attachment to Dumbledore is nonetheless depicted as exces- sive and thus as an obstacle to his incipient manhood. Particularly in Order of the Phoenix, Harry feels slighted when Dumbledore fails to pay him suffi cient attention. After Dumbledore defends him at a ministry hearing, Harry craves his mentor’s continued consideration: “He felt it would sound highly ungrate- ful, not to mention childish, to say, ‘I wish he’d talked to me, though. Or even looked at me’” (OP 157). Feeling somewhat aggrieved due to Dumbledore’s inattentions, Harry peevishly refuses to seek out his assistance—“He was not going to go to Dumbledore for help when Dumbledore had not spoken to him once since last June” (OP 273)—and he perceives Dumbledore’s interest in him as motivated solely by external factors: “that’s the only bit of me Dumbledore cares about, isn’t it, my scar?” (OP 277). Such scenes as these do not expose Harry’s queer desire for Dumbledore, nor Dumbledore’s queer desire for Harry, but they do reveal that Harry, in his quest for heteronormative heroism, relies too heavily on Dumbledore at this point of the narrative and that Harry must surpass this relationship along his narrative trajectory toward heteronormativity.19 Rather than seducing Harry into homosexuality, Dumbledore facilitates Harry’s maturation into heterosexuality. As Harry’s mentor, he voices the texts’ numerous themes, guiding the protagonist and young readers to partake of his wisdom. Dumbledore advises Harry to live in the present rather than in fantasies (SS 214), and, in awarding Neville Longbottom the J. K. Rowling’s Harry Potter Novels • 95 necessary points allowing Gryffi ndor to triumph in the house-cup competition, he praises him for his courage in the diffi cult task of standing up to one’s friends (SS 306). He teaches Harry that one must bear responsibility for one’s actions, that one’s choices defi ne a person more than one’s abilities (CS 333), and he consoles Hagrid about the fi ckle turns of popularity, advising him to maintain his principles (GF 454). He admonishes Cornelius Fudge to consider individuals on an individual basis: “You fail to recognize that it matters not what someone is born, but what they grow to be!” (GF 708). In a potentially oblique reference to his sexuality, Dumbledore makes a plea for an ecumenical alliance against evil: “Lord Voldemort’s gift for spreading discord and enmity is very great. We can fi ght it only by show- ing an equally strong bond of friendship and trust. Differences of habit and language are nothing at all if our aims are identical and our hearts are open” (GF 723). Dumbledore’s homosexuality can be construed as such as difference of habit, yet it is one that Rowling obscures throughout her texts, preserving children’s innocence from homosexuality while simultaneously establishing Dumbledore’s lessons as the series’ moral core. Like Harry, children should learn from Dumbledore, but also like Harry, they should do so while remaining innocent of his sexual orientation.

Dumbledore’s Heterosexual Afterlives

Because Rowling assails innocence as a children’s virtue, her reticence con- cerning homosexuality is surprising, and also surprising is that some pas- sages hint at Harry’s latent homophobia. The young hero never comments on Dumbledore’s homosexuality (of which readers see no evidence that he is aware), but some scenes capture his discomfort over same-sex attraction. When Mrs. Weasley questions Harry about her son Bill’s attractiveness, he experiences a mild queer panic:

Mrs. Weasley and Bill were having their usual argument about Bill’s hair. “ . . . getting really out of hand, and you’re so good-looking, it would look much better shorter, wouldn’t it, Harry?” “Oh—I dunno—” said Harry, slightly alarmed at being asked his opinion; he slid away from them in the direction of Fred and George. (OP 171).

The mere possibility of commenting on male attractiveness discombobulates Harry, and in a later scene, when Ron is disguised with a beard, mustache, and heavy eyebrows as part of their plan to break into the wizarding bank Grin- gotts, Hermione asks, “[H]ow does he look, Harry?”, to which Harry cracks a joke in response, and, by so doing, proclaims his heterosexuality: “Well, he’s 96 • Innocence, Heterosexuality, and the Queerness of Children’s Literature not my type, but he’ll do” (DH 523). In treating masculine attractiveness as a matter of discomfort or of trivial humor, Harry disavows any queer potential within himself. To conclude that the above scenes reveal Harry’s homophobia would over- look Rowling’s candid attention to her characters’ maturation from sexual innocence to experience. Initially, even heterosexual attractions signify shame and embarrassment, or at least the ways in which children attempt to shame and embarrass one another for expressing an interest in the opposite sex: “Potter, you’ve got yourself a girlfriend!” crows Draco Malfoy in an attempt to humiliate Harry (CS 61). Romances begin slowly in the series, such as when Hermione dates Viktor Crum and Harry develops a crush on Cho Chang, and teen heterosexuality is described obliquely, such as when Professor Snape patrols the school grounds during the Yule Ball and embarrasses amorous teens for their sexual indulgences: “Snape had his wand out and was blast- ing rosebushes apart, his expression most ill-natured. Squeals issued from many of the bushes, and dark shapes emerged from them” (GF 426). Rowling also employs coyly euphemistic phrases to narrate teen passion—“Fleur and Davies looked very busy to Harry” (GF 427, cf. 429)—and Harry’s ﬁ rst sexual experience with Cho is a kiss unseen by readers, an encounter signiﬁ ed by ellipses rather than narration:

He could not think. A tingling sensation was spreading throughout him, paralyzing his arms, legs, and brain. She was much too close. He could see every tear clinging to her eye- lashes . . . (OP 457)

Harry’s muted reaction to his fi rst kiss—“Half of him wanted to tell Ron and Hermione what had just happened, but the other half wanted to take the secret with him to the grave” (OP 457)—captures the confusion many adolescents confront when experimenting with sexuality, and Harry soon realizes that he is insuffi ciently prepared for dating and that he needs Sirius to “give him some advice about girls” (OP 461). Ron’s juvenile reaction to Harry’s kiss—“Ron made a triumphant gesture with his fi st and went into a raucous peal of laughter. . . . [He] made a noise that might have indicated jubilation or disgust, it was hard to tell” (OP 458)— marks him as sexually innocent, if not as stunted, and when he confronts Ginny about her relationship with her boyfriend Dean Thomas—“I don’t want to fi nd my own sister snogging people in public!”—Ginny humiliates him for his lack of sexual experience: “Just because he’s never snogged anyone in his life, just because the best kiss he’s ever had is from our Auntie Muriel . . . If you went out and got a bit of snogging done yourself, you wouldn’t mind so much that everyone else does it” (H-BP 287). Continuing her assault on her brother’s sexual innocence and ignorance, Ginny compares him to his more sexually experienced peers to accentuate his psychosexual immaturity, J. K. Rowling’s Harry Potter Novels • 97 pointing out that Harry “snogged” Cho Chang, that Hermione “snogged” Viktor Krum, and that his reticence to “snog” with a girl indicates his sexual immaturity (H-BP 288). Ron energetically begins his courtship of Lavender Brown to disprove Ginny’s accusations, and Rowling depicts the amorous physicality of this relationship with oblique phrasings and humorous euphe- misms, such as the comparison between the noises accompanying Ron and Lavender’s embraces to a plunger being pulled from a clogged drain (H-BP 313). Readers also witness Ron and Lavender sharing a “thoroughly nonverbal good-bye” (H-BP 329) and engaging in “vertical wrestling” (H-BP 352). As Ron grows increasingly experienced in heterosexual courtship, and as Harry grows increasingly interested in his sister Ginny, an erotic triangle forms, with Harry worried that his best friend will disapprove of his desire for his sister. Erotic triangles clarify the homosocial foundations of many heterosexual attractions, in which men bandy for authority and power vis-à-vis each other through their mutual desire for a woman (even in this instance, when Ron’s affections for his sister are fraternal rather than amorous).20 In a number of scenes, Harry phantasizes about Ginny, only then to fret over Ron’s reaction to his erotic pursuit of his sister (H-BP 417, 472, 519). In an internal dialogue encapsulating these amatory dynamics, Harry ponders the confl ict between his allegiance to Ron and his desire for Ginny:

She’s still Ron’s sister. I’m his best mate! That’ll make it worse. If I talked to him ﬁ rst— He’d hit you. What if I don’t care? (H-BP 515–16)

When Harry kisses Ginny, at the very moment of the fruition of his heterosexual desires, he seeks Ron’s approval: “Harry’s eyes sought Ron. At last he found him . . . wearing an expression appropriate to having been clubbed over the head. . . . [T]hey looked at each other, then Ron gave a tiny jerk of the head that Harry understood to mean, Well—if you must” (H-BP 534). The muted violence of this encounter, in which Ron momentarily looks like he has been physically assaulted, is quickly resolved, yet it nonetheless highlights the potentially violent repercussions of triangulated desire in which men negoti- ate with each other regarding whom they may love. By tacitly negotiating Ginny’s love-life, Harry and Ron successfully traffi c in women, and Harry returns this favor to Ron when he convinces his friend that he feels fraternal affection, but not sexual attraction, for Hermione. He therefore endorses their relationship and awards her to him: “I love her like a sister and I reckon she feels the same way about me. . . . I thought you knew” (DH 378). By successfully bonding over women, with Ron ceding his self- assumed fraternal authority over Ginny and Harry ceding any preemptory 98 • Innocence, Heterosexuality, and the Queerness of Children’s Literature claim to Hermione, lingering tensions between the two friends dissipate. In many ways the idea that Ginny and Hermione are traded between men robs them of their amatory agency, but male authority over female sexuality is often assumed in the Harry Potter novels. When Fred admonishes Ginny for her active lovelife, suggesting that she is “moving through boyfriends a bit fast,” she responds angrily yet with little effect on her brother: “Ginny turned to look at him, her hands on her hips. There was such a Mrs. Weasley-ish glare on her face that Harry was surprised that Fred didn’t recoil” (H-BP 121). Ginny warns her brother that he will not dictate the terms of her lovelife, nor will she seek to please his sense either of amatory decorum or of feminine innocence; in turn, Fred’s nonchalant reaction implicitly informs her that he will continue assessing the probity of her actions according to his, not her, amatory metrics. Harry and Ron’s successful resolution of their heterosexual competition for women stands in marked contrast to Dumbledore and Grindelwald’s failure to resolve their homosocial and/or homosexual desires. Because Dumbledore is gay, he cannot undertake a successful trade in women with Grindelwald, and therefore, rather than cementing their relationship through a female family member, Dumbledore’s sister Ariana dies in the fi ght among Dumbledore, Grindelwald, and Aberforth. As Aberforth explains, Dumbledore neglected his sister when he and Grindelwald planned a new wizarding world order, and Ariana died in an unintended melee (DH 566–67). Beyond the ways in which Ariana’s death renders homosexual desire complicit with mortality, Dumbledore’s relationship with Grindelwald must fail within the narrative logic of the series and its confl icted treatment of children’s innocence: if their love fl ourished over their lifetimes and Dumbledore and Grindelwald lived together as contented homosexuals, Rowling would need to depict homosexuality rather than treating it merely as a ghostly presence. Furthermore, through Dumbledore’s role in his sister’s death, Rowling once more proves that heterosexual Harry is the better man than homosexual Dumbledore, as Dumbledore himself admits: “Harry, I have known, for some time now, that you are the better man” (DH 713). Harry’s heterosexuality protects Ginny as he negotiates his role in her life, whereas Dumbledore’s homosexuality could not afford similar protection to his sister. Dumbledore’s queer infl uence on adolescent sexual development is most evident in the multivalent and metaphorical beast within Harry that must be tamed so that he may succeed in fi nding love and conquering death. The hero’s inner beast assumes three primary forms: that of a snake, of an unidentifi ed yet “drowsing creature,” and of a phoenix. Harry perceives an inner presence, often a monstrous one, within him on several occasions, such as when he infi ltrates the Muggle-Born Registration Commission, and “rage roared in him like a snake” (DH 249). When he lies to Griphook to ensure the goblin’s assistance in robbing Gringotts, Harry similarly feels a small snake moving within his body (DH 516). This serpentine inner beast repeatedly threatens J. K. Rowling’s Harry Potter Novels • 99 Dumbledore, as evident when Harry recalls for Sirius Black how he wanted to attack his mentor: “I thought I was a snake. I felt like one” (OP 481). In another scene, Harry feels “again that terrible, snake-like longing to strike Dumbledore, to bite him” (OP 622). Readers learn that Harry carries part of Voldemort within him (DH 686), and so it is easy to ascribe these nega- tive emotions solely to his enemy’s presence within him. Nonetheless, such an anodyne resolution to Harry’s inner anger overlooks the ways in which Harry and Dumbledore struggle to communicate with each other regarding their mutual desires. The snake’s symbolism throughout Western culture as sexual desire should not be ignored in these scenes, especially given Rita’s accusations of pederastic undertones in Harry and Dumbledore’s relationship. In their phallic forms, snakes metaphorically embody male sexuality, and Har- ry’s inner phallus aggressively attacks his mentor to establish his heteronormativity. Quite simply, this phallic beast wards off contact with Dumbledore’s queerness. In complementary contrast to Harry’s inner beast that menaces Dumble- dore, his interiority also signifi es his desire for Ginny. When Harry believes his chances of winning Ginny’s affections are increasing, his inner beast is comforted, such as when Hermione informs him that Ginny has squabbled with her boyfriend Dean; in response, the “drowsing creature in Harry’s chest suddenly raised its head, sniffi ng the air hopefully” (H-BP 423). This shifting interior beast of desire, in seeking to wound Dumbledore (and thus to eradi- cate any possibility of homosexual attachment) and to win Ginny (and thus to consummate his heterosexual desires), metaphorically registers Harry’s growing independence from Dumbledore and his growing attachment to Ginny. Harry’s interiority is also signifi ed by a phoenix, Dumbledore’s pet and longstanding symbol of rebirth. Dumbledore describes his pet Fawkes to Harry in terms of the healing power of its tears and its faithfulness (CS 207), but he omits in this roster of miraculous traits that for which these mythical beasts are most famous: they do not die but are continually reborn from the ashes of their immolation. Phoenix symbolism runs throughout Harry Pot- ter, particularly in the name of the Order of the Phoenix, which Dumbledore supervises: “Dumbledore’s in charge, he founded it,” Hermione reports (OP 67). Harry’s wand is made in part from a phoenix (DH 360), and the phoenix song is “the sound he connected with Dumbledore” (GF 664). The phoenix powerfully connects Harry to Dumbledore, and he feels it acutely when he needs his mentor’s support—“A powerful emotion had risen in Harry’s chest at the sight of Dumbledore, a fortifi ed, hopeful feeling rather like that which phoenix song gave him. He wanted to catch Dumbledore’s eye” (OP 139). After Dumbledore dies, his inspirational presence lives within Harry: “Harry felt, as he had felt about phoenix song before, that the music was inside him, not without” (H-BP 615). Through the phoenix, Harry interiorizes Dumble- dore’s wisdom, learning through his mentor’s sacrifi ce the meaning of death and the essential hope necessary to defeat Voldemort. 100 • Innocence, Heterosexuality, and the Queerness of Children’s Literature As Harry’s inner beast becomes less aggressive to Dumbledore when the snake is tamed, more attuned to Ginny when the drowsing creature awakens, and more connected to Dumbledore through the sad beauty of the phoenix song, Dumbledore also facilitates Harry’s readiness for death. He describes death as the “next great adventure” (SS 297) to Harry, and his thematic proclamations regarding the unavoidability yet the inevitable transience of death lead the young hero to accept his mentor’s assessment of death’s ulti- mate unremarkableness: “You think the dead we loved ever truly leave us? You think that we don’t recall them more clearly than ever in times of great trouble? Your father is alive in you, Harry, and shows himself most plainly when you have need of him. . . . You know, Harry, in a way, you did see your father last night. . . . You found him inside yourself,” Dumbledore explains (PA 428). In preparing Harry to die, Dumbledore paradoxically prepares his protégé to triumph over Voldemort and thus to live out his years happily and heterosexually, the genial pater familias of an attractive brood of children. As Roberta Seelinger Trites argues, “Harry’s sexuality will become even more clearly implicated in his understanding that death makes us mortal. Accept- ing sexuality and mortality gives adolescents the ability to better understand the power and limitations of their own bodies,”21 and in this manner, Dumb- ledore’s lessons on death and his occluded homosexuality build Harry’s heterosexuality and, indeed, his very life beyond death that emerges after Voldemort is forever vanquished. Although Harry Potter, both the hero and the novels, may not be a model of children’s innocence because Rowling concentrates so acutely on his psychosexual maturation throughout the series, he nonetheless needs guidance from childhood into nascent adulthood, and Dumbledore queerly provides the necessary mentoring for Harry to accede into normative heterosexuality. With his homosexuality spectrally occluded and by dying to clear the stage for Harry’s apotheosis into heroism, Dumbledore plays the role of the self-sacrifi - cial queer, gladly fading away from the plotline to facilitate heteronormativity. Meanwhile, children remain mostly innocent of homosexuality within the series, never learning the details of Dumbledore’s sexual past. Consequently they are protected from exposure to homosexuality while it nonetheless builds the heteronormativity of the series. Aside from some occluded swear words and excremental humor, would Mrs. Bloxam have wanted it any other way?