Yes. Your eyes are not mistaken. Albus Percival Wulfric Brian Dumbledore has been outed by none other than Jo herself at a reading at Carnegie Hall. Rowling revealed that she always thought of Dumbledore as gay.

The question was: Did Dumbledore, who believed in the prevailing power of love, ever fall in love himself?

JKR: My truthful answer to you… I always thought of Dumbledore as gay. [ovation.] … Dumbledore fell in love with Grindelwald, and that 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? But, he met someone as brilliant as he was, and rather like Bellatrix he was very drawn to this brilliant person, and horribly, terribly let down by him. Yeah, that’s how i always saw Dumbledore. In fact, recently I was in a script read through for the sixth film, 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!”

The comments are already reeling about this new tidbit of info. If people are going to starting hating on this fact now, when they loved Dumbledore all this time, well that’s absolutely ridiculous. He is a great character with a lot of depth and secrets, and this was just one of the many. I can’t believe people are getting so worked up about it. I personally love it. I always thought Dumbledore was quite fabulous!

Other highlights from the Q&A: Neville finding love, Molly vs Bellatrix and so much more. You can read all about it at The Leaky Cauldron.