The Harry Potter franchise has cast a spell over us for decades. It seems society is insatiable when it comes to stories about the little boy who emerged from under the stairs and dated his best friend’s sister (and murdered a man with no nose along the way).

The latest instalment in the wizarding world is the new Fantastic Beasts film, The Secrets of Dumbledore, which takes us back to a time when everyone’s favourite bearded father figure wasn’t simply a whimsical elderly educator but was, in fact, young and hot.

Yet, I have to question why Dumbledore is so universally beloved, and why his death is often remembered as the saddest part of the books. At best, he was an eccentric who should not have been trusted to run a school. At worst, he was guilty of reckless child endangerment and normalising dressing gowns as daywear. The truth is, Harry Potter was actually about the boy who lived, no thanks to the kooky old man who kept putting him in danger.

Even at the time, circa 2005, I thought the hysteria around Dumbledore’s death was strange. This was not an isolated incident of public grief, a mere shock to fans. It was a real Princess Diana moment, but for unlikeable nerds who know how to read.

I remember sitting, heading to university, in the quiet carriage of the train, when I heard a loud wail of pain. It emerged from a group of high school girls sitting near me, one of whom was crying dramatically. The entire carriage swivelled its heads, such was the ferocity of this early morning emotion. “Dumbledore is dead,” she sobbed loudly, and I noticed that in her hands was a fresh new copy of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, held open three-quarters of the way through. Across from me, a middle-aged woman slammed her copy of The Half-Blood Prince shut in exasperation. Judging from her bookmark, she’d just been wildly spoiled.

At this point I was still a fan of the Harry Potter franchise, long before author J.K. Rowling’s determined campaign to tarnish whatever joy I could find in the books with both her commitment to broadcasting her views about transgender people and strange additions to the Harry Potter canon, including confirming that most wizards in the novels, until recently, defecated on the floor.

It’s worth reiterating who Professor Albus Dumbledore actually was. He was the school principal of Hogwarts and allegedly a very talented and powerful wizard. He was also the nemesis of one of his former pupils, the evil Lord Voldemort. Personally, I think it’s always a warning sign when teachers maintain relationships with students outside of school, especially when they try to kill each other with spells and the like. Dumbledore’s relationship with our protagonist Harry is even more concerning, crossing the line from educator to father figure when it suits him; manipulating his poor homeless orphan emotions to recruit him into a personal war with dark wizards.

I’m not saying we need to cancel Dumbledore – I’m just saying that maybe when he died, killed by yet another of his students, it was perhaps the understandable consequence of an educator who failed to draw defined boundaries between his professional and personal lives. As an example, my mum, a teacher for 43 years, has never been murdered by the evil spells of a former student. Perhaps our sympathy and grief for the death of this man are misplaced.