J.K. Rowling says Dumbledore and Grindelwald had ‘passionate’ sexual relationship

Harry Potter author J.K. Rowling has angered her fanbase after confirming beloved character Albus Dumbledore had a "passionate" sexual relationship with Fantastic Beasts villain Gellert Grindelwald.

Rowling revealed several years ago that Dumbledore, the Hogwarts headmaster, was gay, despite there being no mention of his sexuality in her best-selling books. However, this is the first time she has confirmed the relationship between Dumbledore and Grindelwald was indeed intimate.

J.K. Rowling has revealed that Dumbledore (played here by Michael Gambon) had a “passionate” sexual relationship with villain Grindelwald.

"It was passionate and it was a love relationship," Rowling says in a bonus commentary feature on the Blu-ray version of Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald. "But as happens in any relationship, gay or straight or whatever label we want to put on it, one never knows really what the other person is feeling. You can't know, you can believe you know.

"I'm less interested in the sexual side – though I believe there is a sexual dimension to this relationship – than I am in the sense of the emotions they felt for each other, which ultimately is the most fascinating thing about all human relationships."

The film's director, David Yates, then adds: "This is a story about two men who loved each other and ultimately have to fight each other. It's a story for the 21st century."

The commentary was first reported by RadioTimes and has since kicked off a passionate debate (as well as lighthearted banter) about Rowling's tendancy to reveal details about her characters in the years after her books are published.

At the heart of many of the complaints is the fact Rowling did not reveal Dumbledore was queer in the original Harry Potter books, with some people pointing out that she could have done this in a way that wasn't sexually explicit.

It's not the first time Rowling has surprised audiences with a significant detail about one of her characters well after her books hit the printing press.

In 2015, some people questioned why Noma Dumezweni, a black actress, was set to portray Hermione Granger in the stage play Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, when the character was played by white actress Emma Watson in the Harry Potter films. While fans of the books had taken it upon themselves to determine that Granger was white – thanks to her film portrayal – Rowling pointed out that race had never been discussed in the pages of her popular novels.

"Canon: brown eyes, frizzy hair and very clever," she wrote on Twitter at the time. "White skin was never specified. Rowling loves black Hermione."

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