Rules of Divination

[magpie1112 at yahoo.com]

No: HPFGUIDX 25553

--- In HPforGrownups at y..., caliburncy at y... wrote:
> It seems to me that all the canon instances we have suggests that 
> seeing is not done without some kind of "medium".  


Professor Trelawney's prediction (the true one, I mean) comes on her 
quite by surprise.  She drifts into a trance and makes her 
prediction, and then can't remember it after she comes to.  She may 
have been prodded by the crystal ball, but it seems like a totally 
separate occurrence.


> Trelawney does say a couple things during class 
> without first using an aid (all the comments she drops at random in 
> the first lesson), but the assumption might be that she divined 
> them beforehand.  (And she IS a fraud, but that's immaterial)


I dunno - I think that Professor Trelawney is a fraud about 98% of 
the time.  At the end of PoA, Dumbledore says "That brings her total 
of real preditions up to two.  I should give her a pay raise...."  I 
think she has the gift of prediction, but a very, very weak one (one 
that she doesn't seem to be able to harness).  So she makes up for it 
by her knowledge of divination - and knowledge and skill are often 
two different things!


> So what are the rules of Divination, do you guys think?  Under what 
> circumstances does one 'see'?  Surely it's not just a randomly 
> inspired statement that happens to also fit in with the current 
> direction of the conversation?


I think that much like any of the other gifts in cannon (parseltongue 
for example), the true ability to make _accurate_ predictions is 
something a wizard or witch is born with.  And it's probably similar 
to what Trelawney experienced; you "see" something quite by chance, 
depending on the intensity and importance of a particular vision.  
Though I'm sure others with stronger abilities probably remember 
their visions.


Denise (who would love to hear some accurate predictions about book 5)