On August 2, 2006, at the second night of the Harry, Carrie, and Garp
event at Radio City Music Hall in New York City, J.K. Rowling gave a reading from Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, and then answered questions from the fans.
Nine year old Cory Mayer from Bordentown, New Jersey, asked:
In a recent interview you hinted at two main characters
and possibly Harry Potter too. Was Dumbledore considered one of the main characters or
we have the chance to see him in action once again? Since he is the most powerful wizard of all time and Harry Potter is so loyal to him, how could he really be
?
J.K. put her head in hear arms and replied:
I feel terrible. The British writer Graham Green once said that every writer had to have a chip of ice in their heart. Oh no. I think you may just have ruined my career. Umm, I really can’t answer that question because the answer is in book seven but, you shouldn’t expect Dumbledore to do a Gandalf. Let me just put it that way. I’m sorry.
Then author Salman Rush
came up to ask a question, to which J.K. reacted:
I’m not that sure this is fair. I think you might be better at guessing plots than most. But anyway, off you go.
Mr. Rush
then asked:
Until the events of Volume 6, it was always made plain that Snape might have been an unlikable fellow but he was essentially one of the good guys. Dumbledore himself had always vouched for him. Now we are suddenly told that Snape is a villian and Dumbledore’s
. We cannot, or don’t want to believe this. Our theory is that Snape is in fact, still a good guy, from which it follows that Dumbledore can’t really be
and that the
is a ruse cooked up between Dumbledore and Snape to put Voldemort off his guard so that when Harry and Voldemort come face to face, Harry may have more allies than he or Voldemort suspects. So, is Snape good or bad? In our opinion, everything follows from it.
J.K. cautiously replied:
Well, Salman, your opinion, I would say is, right. But I see that I need to be a little more explicit and say that Dumbledore is definitely
. And I do know – I do know that there is an entire website out there that says – that’s name is DumbledoreIsNot
.com so umm, I’d imagine they’re not pretty happy right now. But I think I need – you need – all of you need to move through the
and I’m just helping you get past
.
My original thesis
This web site has been updated several times since it was created a little more than a year ago, just a few days after Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince was released on July 16, 2005. But the site’s opening remarks have not changed since that first day. My first words were:
Dumbledore Is Not
! Well… maybe not. At least, I don’t think he is.
And I also said this:
All of the clues point to two possibilities, that Dumbledore’s not really
, or at the very least, that Snape’s not really a
Eater, and he
Dumbledore because Dumbledore ordered him to, as part of a grand plan.
So, I’ve never claimed for sure that Dumbledore is not
, just that there are lots of clues that make us wonder if it’s possible or not that he’s still alive, or that something else sneaky was happening up on the tower that night.
Most of all, I also said:
Think of this site as Half-Blood Prince therapy.
How what J.K. said fits with this site
The most important aspect of the theories and clues on this site is that there’s more going on in Half-Blood Prince with the ”
” of Dumbledore than meets the eye. And J.K.’s first answer to the question of Dumbledore all but confirms this. Even though J.K. is insisting that Dumbledore is
, when asked point-blank about it by the
, J.K. answered:
I really can’t answer that question because the answer is in book seven…
That’s really important. Dumbledore is
, but that’s not the whole story, because the answer to what is really going on with Dumbledore
be told in Book 7.
In addition, the second most important aspect of this site is the belief that if something is going on, Snape must be in on it, which mean’s he’s on our side. When Salman Rush
asked:
So, is Snape good or bad? In our opinion, everything follows from it.
J.K. cautiously replied:
Well, Salman, your opinion, I would say is, right.
There you have it. It’s as not black and white as the ending of Half-Blood Prince would have you believe. Everything follows from whether Snape is good or bad, as we’ve been saying on this site.
By the way, it’s interesting to point out that Mr. Rush
, who J.K. herself had just acknowledged to be “better at guessing plots than most”, described in his question almost word for word, this site’s theories about Snape.
Where does this leave us?
So, what does that mean to us here at DumbledoreIsNot
.com?
I’ve never claimed for sure that Dumbledore was still alive. It’s only that there are clues that make it possible to think he’s not
, and even if he is really
, perhaps thinking about these clues could make us all feel a little better about the terrible events at the end of Half-Blood Prince, which is what J.K. said she wanted.
And I think J.K.’s protestations aside that Dumbeldore really is
, her comments pretty much confirmed that there was more going on up the tower that night than was obvious, and she said we’d find out more in Book 7.
It’s impotant to note that these new comments by J.K. don’t magically make all the clues we’ve uncovered go away, all of which lead to the conclusion, to which Salman Rush
agrees, that Dumbledore and Snape were up to something.
Is Dumbledore alive? Is Snape on our side?
The answer is, it’s still up to you, as it always has been since the day we started this site, to read all the clues, go back into the books, examine all the evidence and decide for yourself.
And if this web site has any purpose at all, perhaps it’s most important purpose is to remind us that, no matter how the story turns out, to paraphrase Dumbledore himself, he
have only truly left our hearts when none here are loyal to his memory.