Parvati and Ron/Trelawney

[sevenhundredandthirteen]

No: HPFGUIDX 47663

--- In HPforGrownups at y..., jodel at a... wrote:

> Actually, it's a bit amusing how many of these "phoney" predictions 
come out 
> right on the money. Trelawney has got to have at least *some* 
degree of a 
> gift. That prediction to Lavendar DID turn out -- on exactly the 
day she said 
> it was going to. And Sybil can't have had any kind of inside 
knowledge about 
> it. The problem was that once Lavendar got her bad news from home, 
no one 
> worked the prediction backwards to the correct interpretation. No, 
not even 
> Hermione. As Hermione pointed out, the pet had been killed on a 
different 
> day, and Lavendar only *heard* about it on the day Trelawney 
predicted. 
> Lavendar is convinced that Trelawney predicted that her rabbit 
would be 
> killed. But she didn't. She said that the thing she most dreaded 
would happen 
> on a given day. Clearly what Lavendar most dreaded was getting bad 
news from 
> home. Which happened. *Exactly* as Trelawney said it would.

An ambigous "something bad will happen to you on this day" (which, 
essentially is all 'the thing you dread will come to pass' means) 
isn't really an exact and accurate or very specific prediction for 
Lavender. I think the idea behind Trelawney's prediction is very 
simple- chances are, something a bit bad or sad will happen on *any* 
given day. She puts the date of the so-called "thing that you're 
dreading" well enough into the future so that Lavender might ponder 
it for a while, then forget about it. Then, when the day rolls 
around, and something awful occurs, Lavender automatically remembers 
the prediction and calls it divination, whereas, if Lavender had a 
perfectly happy contented day, she wouldn't have remembered the 
prediction at all. 

The idea is, if I predict you will be kicked by a horse 1000 times, 
and one out of those 1000 times you actually do, you will remember 
the one time I predicted it correctly, and say I'm psychic, and you 
will have forgotten about the other 999 times altogether. This, IMO, 
is why Trelawney makes so many predictions during the first class- so 
that at least one of them might come true, and she can then direct 
focus to that one and brush away the rest. 

Most of the "predictions" are really just inferences from people's 
personalities- that is, Lavender is obviously superstitious, so will 
believe what Trelawney says, Neville is obviously unco-ordinated. In 
fact, at the very start of the lesson, Trelawney asks Neville if he's 
Grandmother is well- to get him paranoid, then, the next time she 
predicts something his way he'd again feel shaky- no wonder he breaks 
the tea-cup! In a way, Trelawney actually provoked him to break the 
cup, by making his worry about things elsewhere.  Trewlawney 
predict's Harry's death so frequently he just gets bored and yawns at 
her. Obviously Harry hasn't died even once- Trelawney was just aware 
that Harry was getting up to dangerous and life threatening 
activities (fighting Dragons etc) and that he had a good chance of 
dying. If he had, surely Trelanwey would be procclaiming the Inner-
Eye, and when he didn't, she just moves forward and does it next time 
it's likely.

I could predict that I will knock something over every morning, and 
sure enough, by each evening I'm sure I will have- only because I'm 
an extreme klutz, not because I'm psychic. I think Trelawney is just 
very good at observing student's personalities- she could have evne 
been spying on then whilst they waited for the ladder to drop down 
from the trapdoor on the first Divination lesson to get a better idea 
of the personality types. She predicts flu will disrupt the class in 
February. February? You mean winter??? Yes, very omniscient.

And also, because we've never been included in Lavender's thoughts, 
we don't really know what it is she dreads most- but as Hermione 
pointed out, if she was dreading it, it wouldn't have come as a shock 
at all. If she was really waiting around until the sixteenth of 
October awaiting what she was dreading, she wouldn't have been 
shocked. In fact, I'd wager that what Lavender dreads most is a 
prediction from Trelawney apparently coming true- she trembles at the 
very thought when Trelawney puts it to her.

~<(Laurasia)>~