Our Meeting With J.K. Rowling

Had J.K. Rowling not outed Dumbledore, I would have started this note about our Carnegie Hall adventure differently. But being a former newspaper reporter, it's hard to write about the loving conversation the grand wizardess (or witch) had with her extremely admiring fans when she dropped a bomb in the middle of the chatter.

When it happened, my news radar shot up: "Oh my gosh! ‘Dumbledore is gay' will be all over the Internet tonight."

First you need to know that my 8-year-old son, John, and 999 other Harry Potter fans beat the odds and won two tickets to Scholastic's J.K. Rowling Open Book Tour that wrapped up this past Friday. The evening New York event was to be the only truly public event of her 2007 United States visit. Being John's mom and the original Harry Potter fan in the family, I got to go too.

From our very lucky vantage point, 13 rows back from the stage in that venerable theater, we had a clear view of Jo on her red velvet and gold throne with the large video screen towering behind her. Considering this is the age of technology, the throne and its accompanying table with a vase of roses and a glass of water, were almost elegant

For me, the real story of the evening was that this woman, now one of the most famous in the world, was so moved by the raucously applauding crowd that she was near tears. She smiled and laughed with the audience like each and every person there was an old friend. And she seemed so truly grateful to see everyone that she shared one of her favorite passages from Deathly Hallows with them. She had a warm voice, and as she made her way through the story of Ron's return to Harry and Hermione, she even became a little bawdy, laughing until she couldn't go on when she described the part about Ron holding up the Deluminator and saying he heard, "Hermione coming out of my pocket."

The Dumbledore bombshell came in the midst of several pre-selected questions about the characters' love lives from fans who had traveled from as far away as Hawaii. Did Neville find love? Yes. He married Hufflepuff Hannah Abbott, whose proprietorship of The Leaky Cauldron would make the formerly geeky Neville "cool" in the eyes of his Hogwart's herbology students.

Did Hagrid get married? No, she said, disappointing an older fan, who became so distraught that the apologetic Jo finally blurted out to gales of laughter, "I kept him alive, come on!"

Then someone wanted to know if Dumbledore had ever found love. "My truthful answer to you -- " she said, pausing, "I always thought of Dumbledore as gay." Then there was literally a collective "gasp" and a roar of applause. To which she responded: "If I'd known it would make you happy, I would have announced it years ago."

I'm guessing she wanted to announce it herself before word got out that she had scribbled a note revealing Dumbledore's sexual orientation to the director of the sixth Harry Potter movie after she reviewed a script that had the headmaster reminiscing about a past female love interest.

After the questions, John and I joined a long line that snaked around to where Jo sat scribbling her signature at the rate of one book every three seconds. She was surrounded by copies of Deathly Hallows and Scholastic employees who grabbed anyone who lingered too long. Somehow Jo managed to look at and speak to everyone in line and she even hugged one sobbing little girl.

John and I brought Sorcerer's Stone and Chamber of Secrets for her to sign. When it was our turn, John leaned in and told her "You are the best." and she laughed and told him, "I like your (Hogwart's) T-shirt!" I got a warm smile and a "Yes!" when I said, "It meant a lot that you included those of us who stuck with you in your Deathly Hallows dedication."

To me, even though I knew the "Dumbledore is gay" headlines would dominate the news, "including us" was what the evening was really about: J.K. Rowling included us, all of us, in the adventure.