I’ve immersed myself in JK Rowling’s fictional world for the past while, escaping to a fantasy realm that has been richly satisfying on many levels. Prior to this Potterfest, I had only read the first one when it came out, and enjoyed it for what it was: a fantastic read for 11-year-olds. Its intriguing pagan slant, with one of the four Houses at Hogwarts, the Machiavellian Slytherin, home to students who value ambition, cunning and have a hunger for power, seemed refreshingly holistic to me. However, glimpses of the Potter films at various Christmasses didn’t encourage me to go further with the series, I found them overly sentimental and not at all as witty or insightful as Rowling’s writing, so I just let the Potter mania wash over me ever since. But the enthusiasm that the final instalment of the series generated among my friends recently made me curious to see what the fuss was about, and in particular how Rowling dealt with the adolescence of Potter and his friends.

In the main, I have been blown away by the experience of reading all seven books, and believe Rowling thoroughly deserves her success. An elegant, clear writer, she is a master storyteller, on a par with Tolkien, and each book had me turning pages well into the early hours of the morning, in thrall to her suspenseful art. Her stories have compelling resonance because of her wonderful understanding of the human condition, and in particular the subtleties of feeling, and her deep appreciation of the extraordinary power of grief. Like an exquisite painter, with emotions as her paint, she has created several very moving masterpieces of characterisation, each one painted with loving care and attention to detail. But they are also placed in a recognisably shoddy political and bureaucratic world of corruption and greed, mendacity and propaganda, with a compelling, sinister background theme of racial purity and supremacism.

A complex psychological truth informs many of the characters: from the multi-layered guilt of wise old Dumbledore and his knowledge that he should avoid real political power, to the unrequited love for Harry’s mother that continually tormented and motivated Snape, for which he sacrificed his life, to the irreparable damage that being orphaned did to Tom Riddle. And yet, being orphaned and subjected to abuse by his aunt and uncle did not damage Harry to the same degree. Dumbledore’s (and Rowling’s) core value is love, and in particular maternal love. Whether a child knows he was loved (Harry’s mother gave her life to protect him) or not (Tom’s mother bewitched his father to fall in love with her, and died in a black depression when the spell broke, leaving her son to fend for himself in an orphanage) seems to be the key to good character in Rowling’s world. However, hers is no simplistic understanding of humanity, with evil clearly delineated and projected on to the baddies, this is a world fraught with ambiguity and moral uncertainty, with, for example, nearly all the race of house-elves preferring slavery to freedom. Voldemort attempts to kill Harry, frightened by a prophecy, and yet by committing that act he creates in Harry a soul brother and equal: an enemy with the capacity to undo him. Fear of death leads to evil, which leads to self-destruction. It is the reaction to fate that matters, not the fate itself.

The turbulence of adolescence is achingly recreated by Rowling in the dynamic, enduring relationship between the three friends, Hermione Ron and Harry. The bad tempers, the misunderstandings, the huffs, the hatreds, jealousies, the tongue-tied obsessions and awkwardness, the tolerance and patience, the humour and affection. Though mindful at all times that she’d have a million parents sending howlers of outrage to her if she was overtly sexual or crude, she still managed to convey the queasy horrors of teenage infatuation and the monster-like nature of jealousy and desire with an artful grace. Rowling’s hero, Harry, is a profoundly sensitive boy, and she does for teenage boys what Joss Whedon did for teenage girls with his heroine Buffy. In choosing opposite-sex protagonists for their mythologies, both manage to say something wise and enlightening about gender roles and expectations, as much wish-fulfilment as reality, and both writers manage to stretch the boundaries of possibility for their readers and viewers, allowing the imagination of both boys and girls to fly to places they’ve never been encouraged to before.

But as I put down the last of the seven books, with a fond regret, I realised something important was missing for me. It’s as if a peculiar Invisibility Spell had been cast over Rowling’s world, that only those who have experienced such invisibility will recognize. In all the hundreds of characters, magical and muggle, teenage and ancient, eccentric and traditional, there is not one gay character. At all. The wizard world, loathed and treated with extreme suspicion by the uber-Muggle suburban Dursleys because of a profound fear of difference, has no place for sexual variety.

Not one gay wizard, not one lesbian witch. Even on conservative American television, Whedon managed to weave in a teenage lesbian love story between the witch Willow and her beloved Tara. Despite Slytherin sleaze, there is not one bitter and twisted leather queen; despite Hufflepuff egalitarianism, there is not one loving pair of arts and crafts lesbians. I am not looking for caricature or stereotype here – I’m simply clutching at straws. There is the merest joshing at Ron and Harry’s friendship a couple of times, inoffensive and teasing. At one of Slughorn’s parties, one male guest brings another man as his companion, but of this nothing more is said. In the Triwizard tournament, one of the challenges has each wizard competing to save someone important in their lives; Harry’s greatest potential loss is revealed to be his best friend Ron – and Harry has to save him from the bottom of a lake. This is treated without any embarrassment or awkwardness by the two boys. And, lastly, unlike in When Harry Met Sally, this Harry loves Hermione as a sister, no more and no less. And that, dear reader, is the sum total of references to anything remotely resembling homosexuality in the entire Harry Potter series.

How, in Rowling’s incredible imagination and forensic insight into teenage life, did she fall under this Invisibility Spell? How is it possible to create such chilling and sadistic scenarios, such utterly grotesque and stomach-churning tales of violence greed and malice, and make no room at all for one variant of the human condition? Is a snog between two boys more taboo than the acidic sadism of the line “Kill the spare” uttered by Voldemort? Given that she is an expert at describing inner conflict and loss, loneliness and a sense of profound alienation, how could a gay character fail to qualify on dramatic grounds, or at least for curiosity’s sake? How could she avoid the issue of homosexuality in a British Public School, Wizard or Muggle, or at least its more familiar companion, homophobia? Given that modern Britain has extremely visible gay politicians and policemen, soldiers and sailors, singers and entertainers, children’s TV hosts and Big Brother winners, given that even Doctor Who flirts outrageously with both men and women, and given that at least two of the actors playing Hogwarts’ professors are gay to my knowledge, this Invisibility Spell is no minor detail. It’s quite a piece of work.

I have no desire to chastise Rowling for falling under this spell. I have a great respect for the creative process, and her vision of the world has introduced millions of children to the joy of reading books. I know that if Rowling felt obliged to bring gay characters into her world for realism’s sake, they would feel out of place – creativity is organic, it can’t be forced, and no artist of integrity should change their vision to make lives easier for other people. But Rowling has wilfully ignored the evidence of history, that so many people burned as witches, scorned as shamans, tolerated as weirdos, and honoured as healers have been sexual outlaws. She could easily have chosen to expand Colin Creevey’s hero-worship of Harry into something more like a boyhood crush; easily given Professor MacGonagall a life-long witch companion; easily added a layer of internalized homophobia to Draco Malfoy’s bullying character, so desperate to please his parents. All, alas is mere fantasy on my part. It’s only a story, after all. However, as I write, it’s a story that, the world over, children are discussing after their summer holidays.

The sad result of this Invisibility Spell is pain, especially to gay teenagers. Sometimes being ignored is a greater wound than being hated, especially in the school yard. In this vast and complex mythology, seemingly comprehensive, ostensibly holistic, supposedly delighting in eccentricity and diversity, gay teenagers the world over will get to the final chapter of the final book, in which our teenage heroes have paired off and become parents themselves, and they may not know enough about themselves to feel cheated, or angry, or be able to name their confusion, their loss. Like Harry, whose constant search for a father figure, a role model to guide him, to tell him how to live, proved frustrating and elusive, gay teenagers have to figure it out for themselves, and come up with their own answers, follow their own judgment, and find their own countercurse to the Invisibility Spell.

Update 20th October 2007: Thanks to Ronirokit, who comments below, I hear that J K Rowling, speaking in Carnegie Hall in New York yesterday, spoke about how she has “always” thought of Dumbledore as gay. A transcript of her talk is here.