Trelawney and Ignorance

[amanitamuscaria1]

No: HPFGUIDX 96364

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, Ms Mo Me <fauntine_80 at y...> 
wrote:
> Subject: Trelawney and ignorance
> 
> GOF - uk edition - pg 177 - Trelawney to Harry: "
> .....I think I am 
> right in saying, my dear, that you were born in
> mid-winter?"
> "No," said Harry. "I was born in July."
> 
> What's this about?
> 
> 1) Trelawney doesn't know who Harry IS (the boy who
> lived)? Has 
> Dumbledore - for whatever reason? - kept Trelawney
> inside Hogwarts 
> since he first hired her (before Harry's birth) and
> kept her ignorant 
> of the Harry/Voldemort incident? 
> If she knows the story about Harry isn't it sort of
> weird that she 
> doesn't know when he was born? He IS - after all -
> rather famous!
> 
> 2) Could it be that Trelawney was actually *right*
> about Harry being 
> born in mid-winter? In this case - what does that mean
> to the story? 
> And why would somebody (Dumbledore ?) lie about
> Harry's birthdate? To 
> keep someones (Voldemorts ?) attention away from
> someone else 
> (Neville ?).
> 
> This has probably been talked about before - but
> Trelawneys ignorance 
> on the issue of Harry's birthday confuses me.
> Theories?
> 
> Inge
> 
> 
> Mo:
> 
> We know that Trelawney doesn't remember when she makes
> and ACTUAL prediction.  (in PoA, after HP's final, she
> makes a prediction and then when HP tells her about
> it, she doesn't recall it and thinks he is crazy)
> 
> I think Trelawney doesn't even KNOW that she made the
> prophecy about HP or she would be all over it. (Can
> you imagine: "I, the GREAT Trelawney predicted the
> downfall of LV....")  DD doesn't want people knowing
> about the Prophecy, so he keeps it a secret, BUT he
> was smart enough to hire Trelawney to keep her around
> in case she ever made any more predictions.  We know
> that no one else knows the Trelawney can make actualy
> predictions too, becase McGonagal even thinks she is a
> fraud.  
> 
> So, since DD is keeping things under wraps, he doesn't
> let Trelawney know of her own prophecy, and
> henceforth, Trelawney doesn't bother to think when HP
> was born.
> 
> ~Mo
> 
AmanitaMuscaria now - Do we have any evidence that anyone is keeping 
an eye on Trelawney, for more predictions? There's no mention of 
portraits in her room, even if they could see through the gloom and 
stay awake! So she could be making a (true) prediction a day.
One wonders what else she might not know - anything about Voldemort, 
perhaps? She presumably doesn't know about the Chamber being opened 
in Harry's second year, anything about Sirius or Pettigrew, or the 
Tri-Wizard Tournament.
I thought the interaction with Umbridge was JKR showing us a cruelly 
funny disconnectedness of Trelawney with the real world, but looking 
at it from T's utter unworldliness, it has a different cast - I was 
seeing Luna as the 'holy fool' in this tale, but Trelawney fit the 
role much better. I wonder if Dumbledore has perhaps confided in 
McGonagall, as I thought she was altogether too solicitous of 
Trelawney - I was waiting for a touch of exasperation to appear in 
the scene in the Great Hall.
By the way, on another topic - someone asked where Snape went when he 
preceded Harry up to the Great Hall when Umbridge tried to expel 
Trelawney - I wondered if he'd gone to get DD?
Cheers. AmanitaMuscaria