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I want to know if Rita's Skeeter's words here are accurate.

"“Oh, now, I’m glad you mentioned Grindelwald,” says Skeeter with such a tantalizing smile. “I’m afraid those who go dewy-eyed over Dumbledore’s spectacular victory must brace themselves for a bombshell – or perhaps a Dungbomb. Very dirty business indeed. All I’ll say is, don’t be so sure that there really was a spectacular duel of legend. After they’ve read my book, people may be forced to conclude that Grindelwald simply conjured a white handkerchief from the end of his wand and came quietly!”

Considering we don't have enough canon to tell us the accuracy this specific statement, I want an answer considering Rita's words in other contexts to see how much faith JKR tends to put in her words. We know that JKR expected us to read between the lines by Dumbledore's sexual orientation, so is something similar happening here?

TheAsh
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    How could Grindelwald have gotten the Elder wand if it was unbeatable? It must be beatable otherwise it would never have changed hands. – Edlothiad Sep 11 '17 at 09:19
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    Read the seventh book. EVERY known transfer of power was through murder or post-battle sneakiness. There is no record of non-murder mid-battle transfers. – TheAsh Sep 11 '17 at 09:21
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    I tried reading the first book, I fell asleep after 3 pages. If we approximate there to be around 6000 pages, that would mean it would take me 2000 nights, that's approximately 6 years. Be back soon with confirmation. On a more relevant note, why does murder mean they weren't beaten? Surely beating someone could end in death? – Edlothiad Sep 11 '17 at 09:24
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    @TheAsh See also https://scifi.stackexchange.com/q/41282/4918 "Did J.K.Rowling always consider Dumbledore gay?" and https://scifi.stackexchange.com/q/12560/4918 "How was Dumbledore able to defeat Grindelwald, since Grindelwald had the Elder Wand?" In both of those you will find JKR's and the books views directly, and we have enough evidence without considering Rita Skeeter's writings. – b_jonas Sep 11 '17 at 09:30
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    A better question would probably be if her QWC articles are reliable, as most of the information there is both extremely relevant and completely uncollaborated. – ibid Sep 11 '17 at 10:58
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    Actually, since her QWC articles are generally accepted as cannon, it would show that JKR intended Rita to be a reliable, if often detail-exaggerated source. – TheAsh Sep 11 '17 at 11:05
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    There's no "innuendo" about Dumbledore's sexuality. Dumbledore. Is. Gay. He had a romantic attraction to Grindelwald. We'll see him with a boyfriend, I think, in the next Fantastic Beasts movie (after his falling out with Grindelwald). Also, it wouldn't be much of an innuendo for her to imply that, because magical society, per JKR, is more accepting of non-straight orientations than Muggle Britain. Dumbledore was probably already known to be gay. – Adamant Sep 11 '17 at 16:54
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    @Adamant - I believe OP is referring to Rita Skeeter's remarks in book seven. They were innuendo enough that it wasn't obvious to most readers before JKR said so at Carnegie Hall, but JKR has said in interviews that it was supposed to be implied. – ibid Sep 11 '17 at 17:06
  • @ibid - correct. – TheAsh Sep 11 '17 at 20:36
  • I edited the question. Can it be unheld? – TheAsh Sep 11 '17 at 20:42
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    If you want to know the full details of what happened in the Grindelwald duel you'll probably have to wait until the end of Fantastic Beasts... – The Dark Lord Sep 11 '17 at 20:54
  • @TheDarkLord Obviously. I'm just curious what we can extrapulate now. That Skeeter quote is completely unnecessary in book 7, and JKR is fond of dropping hints for later works in apparantly extranious quotes. – TheAsh Sep 11 '17 at 21:00
  • Yes, but she didn't know she was going to do Fantastic Beasts when she wrote Deathly Hallows. – The Dark Lord Sep 11 '17 at 21:08
  • @TheDarkLord hard to beleive she didn't have the backstory in her head. Anf even if not, that quotes to obvious not to be retconned in. – TheAsh Sep 11 '17 at 21:11
  • I do not think that anything Rita Skeeter says can be believed..Remember all that shit she wrote about Harry in The Goblet of Fire.. – Jaideep Khare Nov 02 '17 at 18:42
  • @JaideepKhare Was Rita really lying then? – TheAsh Nov 08 '17 at 17:34
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    Rita might be correct here. Dumbledore and Grindelwald were old teenage friends who had to separate just because of different ideologies and fear of social judgement. Also, Dumbledore loved Grindelwald. So, Dumbledore couldn't risk a duel which could kill Grindelwald. Dumbledore definitely stole the Elder Wand which forced Grindelwald to surrender because he couldn't stand against Dumbledore with Elder Wand. – user931 Jun 02 '18 at 12:20
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    @Solo Dumbledore did? Was it in the books? Apart from Skeeter's word, that is? – Aniket Chowdhury Jun 03 '18 at 19:25
  • See also Who killed the eldest brother and stole the Elder Wand? How could Dumbledore ever become the owner of the Elder Wand? – lly Jun 03 '18 at 23:11
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    @Aniket That's speculation, obviously. Wait for upcoming Fantastic Beasts movies.. – user931 Jun 04 '18 at 06:25
  • @TheAsh Not at all, but she was repeating vicious slander about Hermione if you accept the books as reliably narrated and Harry's affection as earnest, rather than extracted via love potion. – lly Jun 05 '18 at 09:57
  • @Solo Rita did never claim that Dumbledore stole the Elder Wand before Grindelwald surrendered. It still leaves room for the possibility that Grindelwald just surrendered, perhaps in fear, and Dumbledore took the Elder Wand after having “beaten” Grindelwald, just like all other defeats of former Elder Wand owners in that book are rather unspectacular. – Holger Jun 05 '18 at 09:57
  • @Solo That's fine for headcanon but, knowing we have 3+ movies of buildup to the event, it'd be anticlimactic. Might I offer teenage Tom Riddle helping Dumbledore and learning about horcruxes firsthand, with regret over lost love and fallen family remerging them to a powerful Grindel. who redeems himself through surrender? All the more reason for Riddle to see kindness and regret as harmful vanities – lly Jun 05 '18 at 10:05

2 Answers2

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Rita's a snake

In a 2007 wrap-up chat for Bloomsbury, Rowling gave a frank assessment of Ms Skeeter's veracity:

Is [R]ita [S]keeter still reporting[?]

Naturally, what could stop Rita? I imagine she immediately dashed off a biography of Harry after he defeated Voldemort. One quarter truth to three quarters rubbish.

Her story on Hermione drugging Krum, Potter, & al. with love potion was based on accounts from Pansy Parkinson but not otherwise supported by the text (HP&GF).

but not necessarily wrong here...

She has a legitimately true account of Dumbledore somewhere thanks to having drugged the historian and Dumbledore-family friend Bathilda Bagshot with veritaserum (HP&DH). The majority of her known articles deal with real events, retold salaciously.

A big theme of the Potter books, though, is how everyone was dishonest to the children 'for their own good' and adults who looked like saints and heroes are, after all, just human. Where they have become selfless, it's very often because of a need to atone for great earlier mistakes.

Egbert the Egregious seems to have won the wand in an actual duel (Tales of Beedle the Bard) but that's based on medieval lore. The wording HP&DH uses ("the wand came... after... slaughter") actually implies usurpation in the usual way: murder or sneakiness.

Similarly, the only in-universe 'proof' of the great duel is the very unreliable testimony of Dumbledore's school chum and fanboy Elphias Doge. It's possible Riddle helped (playing the role of the atomic bomb in the WWII analogue); it's possible Dumbledore scored a cheap shot (ditto); it's possible he talked a still moony Grindelwald into feeling sorry about the deaths of Dumbledore's family members and all the other wizards being harmed 'for the greater good'; it's even more probable he used some reunion and guilt to provide an opening for a cheap shot, such as remerging Grindelwald from a horcrux. (Thematically, love shouldn't be a weakness, but Grindelwald may have forfeited that through his inhumanity to others.) We won't know until Ms Rowling decides to write on the topic...

or right...

...which will likely happen as part of the screenplays for the 5-movie Fantastic Beasts series. Apologies if it goes without saying to all y'all, but looking this up is the first that I knew that there will be not just one but four sequels to the Fantastic Beasts movie, all wrapped around the developing story of Dumbledore and Grindelwald.

Since it seems that the climax will be the great duel, I have to assume the way it will shake down is a show-stopping action sequence, mixed with heart-wrenching speeches and some twist, likely duplicitous. 'For the greater good'.

TL;DR: It's very likely we're going to see a huge wizard battle c. 2024 but there's going to have been some truth in Rita's words. What the truth is can be guessed at but the intervening four movies will likely rearrange a lot of the details.

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lly
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If she had payed enough attention and at the time was an animagus then we can assume that deep down in that statement there is some truth. She always seems to tell the truth although she does twist it to a point where it is hard to tell, but at the bottom of her articles there is some truth. For example in book 4 when hermione becomes obsessed with her because she is reporting things that didn't seem possible for her to knowbut she was reporting things that actually happened. So if she had the brains to actually spy on Grindelwald and Dumbledore (if she was even reporting at that time) i see no reason why she should completely blatantly lie.

Niffler
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  • What reason do we have for thinking that Rita was either a reporter or an Animagus in the 1940s? She doesn't strike me as being particularly old. – The Dark Lord Jun 04 '18 at 09:29