Back to the Future

Blog Post 6

In the Harry Potter series it’s clear that majority of the Hogwarts students believe Divination to be a complete joke. Firstly because most of them fail to be able see the future themselves, but also because it can be quite difficult to respect the subject when they have no respect for the teacher. Aside from Parvati and Lavender, almost everyone believes Trelawney to be a fraud. We see McGonagall, the definition of prim and proper, treat Trelawney like a joke. Even Dumbledore seems to know that she fails at most of her predictions.

Since many of the character’s don’t respect Sybil, we tend to take her as a joke as well. However, on a reread it is quite evident that many of her predictions and even Harry and Ron’s predictions for their Divination homework were correct!

When we first meet Trelawney in Prisoner of Azkaban, she is immediately made out to be a nutter. She’s described with her draped shawl and large eyeglasses in a comedic way. Harry tends to feel that her eyes are always magnified which makes her even more laughable. Right after the students meet her, McGonagall immediately discredits Sybil and her predictions, making the students and the readers see Trelawney as a fraud too. From the beginning though, a lot of Trelawney’s predictions were a bit off, but still mostly there.

For example, in all of Prisoner of Azkaban Trelawney warns Harry about the grim. While she was a little wrong in that it wasn’t exactly the grim, Harry did still have a major interaction with a big dog. In Goblet of Fire, she predicts Harry was born in midwinter due to the position of Saturn, causing him to lose his parents young in life as well as his mean stature and dark hair. While Harry was not born in midwinter, Voldemort was. Voldemort also had the same physicalities pointed out by Trelawney. She was sensing Voldemort’s horcrux in Harry. ROWLING KNEW ALL ALONG THAT HARRY WAS A HORCRUX. But also not to mention her other ACTUAL prediction about Lord Voldemort's return with the help of his greatest servant in PoA. She wasn’t too shabby.

Not only can she make some somewhat accurate predictions and some real spot on predictions, Trelawney's strange sayings also tend to come true as well. She says she can’t sit at the table because she would be the 13th, and the first to stand at a table of 13 will die first. But… there were already 13 at the table if you count Peter Pettigrew, and who was the first to stand? Dumbledore. And who was the first to die out of everyone at the table? Dumbledore.

While Trelawney wasn’t always 100% on the mark, she definitely wasn’t totally off it. In Goblet of Fire, even Harry and Ron got the hang of it. While they weren’t being completely serious about it, they predicted all 3 tasks of the triwizard tournament. They said Harry would be “in danger of burns”, “lose a treasured possession”, and be “stabbed in the back by someone he believed was a friend” as well as “come off worse in a fight”. All of these predictions came true. Harry fought a dragon, lost Ron in the second task, was betrayed by Barty Crouch Jr, and came off worse in his fight with Voldemort.  

Maybe Divination isn’t entirely a joke. While the students and reader typically discredit Trelawney and their own future telling, it isn’t always so incorrect. Rowling wanted us to not believe anything having to do with Divination because in reality, she was telling us exactly what was going to happen later in the individual books as well as the whole series. She was just hiding it all in plain sight.