The Prophecy

[justcarol67]

No: HPFGUIDX 126129


Brodeur wrote:
> I was just reading over OOTP and I was wondering why Lord Voldemort
had so much "faith" in Trelawney. Everybody seems to think that she is
loony and crazy.  Why is it that Voldy would care so much about a
Prophecy made by somebody who he  knows nothing about? Besides the
fact that a Prophecy is not always correct or  true. 
> 
> 
jina haymaker responded: 
> I think that Voldy trusted this Prohecy because Trewlawney went into
her trance like state and then predicted what was to happen. There
seems to be very few true predictions but you can tell the different
between them. Wasn't Trewlawney's grandmother a very well repected Seer?

Carol adds:
Voldemort wasn't present, but I agree with Jina that the spy, whoever
he was, would have recognized the Prophecy as genuine because of the
change in Trelawney's voice and her obvious transformation from her
ordinary self to a conduit for the prophecy as she entered the trance.
The style of the prophecy, too, is not that of ordinary speech. I'm
quite sure that Trelawney was not in the habit of referring to
Voldemort as "the Dark Lord," for example. The spy (almost certainly a
Death Eater) would have put all this together and drawn the conclusion
that it was a legitimate prophecy. Voldemort, as a Legilimens, would
have known that he spoke the truth--and might even have been able to
visualize the scene himself based on the spy's memory of the event.
(Whether he could *hear* it or not, I don't know. Legilimency seems to
depend mostly on visual memories.)

At any rate, Trelawney's identity was secondary to the Prophecy
itself, which LV would have recognized as true to form, operating as
real prophesies operate in the WW. Probably he had never heard of
Sybil Trelawney and wouldn't have cared whether she was regarded as a
fraud in other circumstances. It was only *this* circumstance, the
prophecy concerning himself and a yet-unborn baby, that mattered. 

At that point, IMO, Dumbledore realized what had happened and became
concerned for her safety, fearing that LV might try to kidnap her and
torture the rest of the prophecy out of her if Legilimency failed.
That, I'm sure, is why DD hired her; not because he realized that she
wasn't wholly a fraud but because he wanted to protect her, even if it
meant exposing his students to useless fluff masquerading as magical
education. 

Carol