Like many people who grew up as book lovers, my childhood is filled with the world of Harry Potter. My love story with the Harry Potter books is not out of the ordinary, but special all the same. When I was a child, I sat down with my father as he read Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone to me, and I was instantly hooked. I was too young to be able to read a chapter book yet, but my brain managed to follow along with the story and want more of it. Memories of the books always come hand-in-hand with loving memories of my father reading to me, midnight release parties at the book store, and long family road trips with the books on tape.

However, the series has aged and so have I. Any new memories I form now with the Harry Potter franchise are not as precious as the ones formed during my childhood, and it’s because of this that I’m able to look at something penned by JK Rowling with a critical eye. Originally, when the news broke in 2007 that JK Rowling intended for Albus Dumbledore to be gay, I wasn’t affected. I didn’t know I was queer at the time, so I was able to forget about what I know now to be a cop-out for undeserved diversity points.

When the time came that I realized I was queer, only a couple of years ago, I realized something fishy about Dumbledore’s retconned sexuality: it was cheap. Wherever you stand on what counts as officially canonical when an author announces “facts” outside of the main official story, the fact remains that if Rowling had kept her ideas about Dumbledore’s sexuality quiet, the mainstream would not think twice before establishing him as heterosexual. She did not write the books with explicit statements towards his sexuality, and worse, there was hardly any hints beyond subtext for readers to cling to. Even the movie adaptations did not include even the slightest hint towards Dumbledore being gay, and since the fact of his homosexuality is never mentioned in any way, shape, or form in the pages of the books this apparent character trait of his remains as closeted as Dumbledore himself.

I grappled with the painful realization that I would not be able to see someone like me within the pages of Harry Potter if I revisited them. If I did re-read the series, I would only be searching for hints towards a truth that was never stated out loud, and thus easily crushed under the thumb of the heteronormative society I lived in. I had to settle with the fact Dumbledore was not written for anyone like me. Rowling was scared of the backlash, so instead of writing the no-nonsense truth about Dumbledore, she withheld for the sake of “the children” and waited until later to speak it in an interview.

I'm not the first person, queer or not, to say this. Everything about Dumbledore’s sexuality has pretty much been said about this point. But if you ask me, the loudest voices about the situation were the ones calling Rowling for being cheap. This debate is as old as the hills, but I feel like ultimately the portion of readers who were hurt by this cop-out must have made their way towards Rowling.

Except it hasn’t. In the recent canonical continuation of the Harry Potter universe, the play Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, Rowling was presented with a golden opportunity to write queer characters into her universe with much fewer limitations than before. While I admit there is the possibility that her publishers could have pressured Rowling into keeping Dumbledore’s sexuality under wraps during the original Harry Potter days, it’s clear she was not given these restrictions for this continuation. The times are different: the world is more accepting towards LGBTQ people than before. She’s not only well-established as a big name, but she’s working on the West End in London, the same place where Kinky Boots, a show about drag queens and featuring many LGBTQ characters.

The door was wide open for Rowling and she didn’t take it. But not only that, she seemed to drop hints right and left about a potential romance between Albus and Scorpius, Harry Potter and Draco Malfoy’s sons respectively. The play seems to be loaded with moments that can easily be read as queer, both in the play and the stage directions, which were published for Potter fans to read. Scorpius is seen to be jealous of Albus and Delphi’s flirtation, a character states that they “belong together,” Scorpius is described as “heartbroken” when Albus severs their friendship, and Scorpius even gives up an entire kingdom for Albus’ sake (x).

While I’m not writing this article to bash Rowling or to call any of this queer-baiting, I have to say I feel let down. Rowling had her chance to redeem her standing on LGBTQ representation after the Dumbledore fiasco, but she didn’t take it. While we’ll likely never know why she chose not to write in any queer characters in The Cursed Child, I can only pray it wasn’t out of lack of respect for the LGBT community. I shudder to think of the outcome if Rowling pulled another Dumbledore with Albus and Scorpius (or any of the other characters in The Cursed Child).

While I cannot speak for the rest of the LGBT community, I myself am a little heartbroken that I still have yet to see the day where there is a character like me in the universe of

Harry Potter, which I love so dearly. To quote many parents in regard to their misbehaving child, I’m not mad at Rowling, I'm just disappointed.