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to agitate readers. J.K.R. implies that people who didn’t see Dumbledore as gay were insensitive or were too naïve to see it. And it’s not exactly a message of tolerance that when Dumbledore allowed himself to love a male friend, he realized he was being a fool. Most of the time in the Harry Potter books, young love is the best of all possible emotions, and nearly every character meets a soul mate for life at an early age. Since Dumbledore is the only gay character, it’s just totally negative that his soul mate turned into his dark evil twin. It was so devastating to Dumbledore that he basically never got over it, and he lived his life as an old, celibate, stereotypical British headmaster-type because of it. That is not a message of hope for the gay community, or for anyone.

J.K.R. compares Dumbledore with Bellatrix Lestrange, the obsessed Death Eater who is completely bewitched by Lord Voldemort. That’s a really harsh comparison. Most readers think of Dumbledore as a leader instead of a follower, and it’s obvious in the book that he broke away from Grindelwald after a very short time—about as long as Harry dated Cho Chang in OotP.

The story of Grindelwald and Dumbledore was about a friendship gone bad, and J.K.R. was wrong to insist that sexual attraction was the key. It’s not a failure on the part of the readers if they didn’t automatically assume that Dumbledore was gay.

Verdict

J. K. Rowling is a bold progressive who wanted the world to know that she wrote the character of Albus Dumbledore as a gay man. But opinions differ about the wisdom of outing an elderly character whose sexuality doesn’t really matter much to the plot. Did Jo miss a big opportunity to write more openly about Dumbledore and Grindelwald without the smokescreen of Rita Skeeter’s harsh prejudices? Or did J.K.R.’s statements leave a lasting legacy of tolerance that her gay readership will applaud for years to come? The verdict is: Absolutely—yes—it is important to the story, and J.K.R. was courageous for revealing the sexual orientation of this incredibly inspirational character.

Does Harry Potter die in Deathly Hallows?

No

Harry never truly dies in DH, although he comes close. The Avada Kedavra spell thrown by Voldemort can’t kill Harry because Voldemort shares some of Harry’s blood, which is protected by the unselfish death of Harry’s mother, Lily. Voldemort takes the blood forcibly from Harry and uses it for his own return in GoF, which ironically means that he can no longer kill Harry, and therefore Harry never dies in the forest. The only part of him that dies and disappears is the Horcrux from the scar on his forehead. J.K. Rowling admits as much on her official site:

Q: What exactly was the mutilated baby-like creature Harry saw at King’s Cross in chapter 35 of “Hallows”?

A: I’ve been asked this a LOT. It is the last piece of soul Voldemort possesses. When Voldemort attacks Harry, they both fall temporarily unconscious, and both their souls—Harry’s undamaged and healthy, Voldemort’s stunted and maimed—appear in the limbo where Harry meets Dumbledore.

Harry has already figured out nearly everything he and Dumbledore talk about, and he doesn’t have to be in the afterlife to imagine he is seeing the train station and the deformed baby-crux that represents Voldemort. The horrible baby under the train bench is probably just a memory of the deformed cauldron baby from GoF, when Peter brings Voldemort back to his human form. Since Harry regains consciousness so quickly in the forest and his body is never under any sort of stress, there’s no reason to think that Harry is ever completely dead.

Yes

If people die when their souls leave their body, then Harry is definitely dead. The trip to “King’s Cross” seems like a dream, but throughout the books there is the message that souls are real and can move from place to place, even if a body is destroyed, which is how Voldemort survived so long after Harry vanquished him the first time. That’s also the explanation for ghosts that choose to stay in the world and the spirits