Sybill Trelawney

Template:HP character Professor Sybill Patricia Trelawney is a fictional character who appears in J.K. Rowling's series of Harry Potter novels.

In the British editions of the books, her name is consistently spelled as "Sybill". In the American editions, from her first appearance in Prisoner of Azkaban through Order of the Phoenix, her name is spelled as "Sibyll". But in the American edition of Half-Blood Prince, it is re-spelled as "Sybill", matching the UK edition. The name "Sybill" alludes to the Sibyls of classical Graeco-Roman tradition, who were oracles that made cryptic predictions about the future which often could not be understood until they had already come to pass.

Trelawney is portrayed as wearing many gaudy bangles, cloaks and shawls, many covered with shining sequins. She is said to wer thick glasses, which cause her eyes to appear greatly magnified, giving her an insectoid appearance. She affects ethereal and misty tones when speaking. Her classroom is in the North Tower of Hogwarts. A fire is always going, scented quite heavily with perfumes that often make students fall asleep, but which are designed to make students able to make better predictions.

She is the great-great-granddaughter of the celebrated seer Cassandra Trelawney, named after Cassandra, the Trojan prophetess in classical mythology. Despite frequent comparisons to Cassandra, she does not live up to her ancestor, having made only two verifiably correct, and unimaginably important, prophecies (although the Trojan Cassandra was blessed to make true prophecies, but cursed always to be disbelieved).

Emma Thompson played Trelawney in the third film, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, and reprised the role in the fifth installment, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix.

Trelawney at Hogwarts

Trelawney is professor of Divination at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. She first appears in the third book of the series, when Harry and his friends Ron Weasley and Hermione Granger start divination lessons. The friends generally believe Trelawney is a fraud, with which the teachers (particularly Professor Minerva McGonagall) are inclined to agree. According to McGonagall, her credibility as a Seer is undermined by a habit of making a prediction each year that one of her students will die—pronouncements which have never yet come true.

Trelawney predicts Harry's imminent demise in his very first lesson. During every class thereafter, she continues to predict that his death could come at any time, to the great irritation of Harry and his friends. Eventually, in part due to this habit of Trelawney's, Hermione drops the class. Harry and Ron continued Divination studies until their fifth year, at the end of which they fail their O.W.L. exams and are not allowed to continue further—although neither was upset about this.

In October 1995, Professor Trelawney is put on probation by Dolores Umbridge, Hogwarts High Inquisitor. This news pushes Trelawney into a spiral of anxiety and paranoia, and she is subsequently seen around the school clutching a bottle of cooking sherry and moaning about her victimisation at Umbridge's hands.

File:Umbridge 2509pot2.jpg

Umbridge sacks Trelawney in the film version of Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix.

Her fears are proved justified when Umbridge summarily dismisses Trelawney and humiliates her in front of the entire school, although Dumbledore exercises his remaining authority as Headmaster to prevent Umbridge evicting Trelawney from the grounds of Hogwarts.

It is later revealed, in Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince that Dumbledore feared for Trelawney's safety if she left the school, since Lord Voldemort would probably want to obtain the prediction she made concerning him. Dumbledore hires the centaur Firenze as Trelawney's replacement. Trelawney is reinstated after Umbridge is ousted from Hogwarts and returns to the Ministry of Magic. Much to her displeasure, Trelawney now has to share responsibility for teaching Divination with Firenze. She shares one conversation with Harry about the night when she made the prophecy about him and Lord Voldemort, where she reveals to him that it was Severus Snape who overheard her and Dumbledore and delivered the information to Lord Voldemort.

In Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Sybill is seen aiding in the fight against Voldemort and the Death Eaters by throwing crystal balls on them (including one which knocks out the werewolf Fenrir Greyback).

True prophecies

Trelawney has been at Hogwarts since 1979 (17 years, by the end of Harry's sixth year) and has made only two real predictions, both involving Lord Voldemort. The first prediction was during her interview for her teaching post at Hogwarts, which took place in the upstairs room of the Hog's Head public house. She is unaware she made the prophecy, having gone into a prophetic trance, and only remembers feeling slightly faint and unwell. She then recalls being interrupted as the pub's barman and Severus Snape burst into the room. The first prophecy states:

"The one with the power to vanquish the Dark Lord approaches... born to those who have thrice defied him, born as the seventh month dies... and the Dark Lord will mark him as his equal, but he will have power the Dark Lord knows not... and either must die at the hand of the other for neither can live while the other survives... the one with the power to vanquish the Dark Lord will be born as the seventh month dies..."

This meant that the only person who would be able to conquer "the Dark Lord" would be born at the end of July ("as the seventh month dies") that year, have had parents who narrowly escaped Voldemort 3 times ("thrice defied him"), and would be identified and marked by Voldemort himself ("mark him as his equal"). This prediction is believed to refer to Voldemort ("the Dark Lord") and Harry Potter (who was born on July 31). However, it could have also applied to Neville Longbottom (born July 30). Part of the prediction came to pass on the night of October 31, 1981, when Harry unknowingly stripped Lord Voldemort of his powers by surviving the Killing Curse, or Avada Kedavra. It was this event that gave Harry his scar.

At the end of Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, Professor Dumbledore reveals that he understands the prophecy to refer to Harry as opposed to Neville. However, he believes that, in a self-fulfilling prophecy, the exact choice of who was meant to be raised up as Voldemort's foe was made by Voldemort himself, when he chose to go after Harry, thereby marking him as his equal (both were half-bloods, and Voldemort gave Harry his scar) (afterwards, J.K. Rowling again confirmed on her website that by Voldemort's choice, Harry became the one concerned by the prophecy and that while Neville "remains the tantalizing might-have-been", it "does not give him either hidden powers or a mysterious destiny"). Dumbledore also believes that the power the Dark Lord knows not is love.

Dumbledore answered Harry's questions at the end of Order of the Phoenix, with his own belief that this line means either one of Harry and Voldemort must kill the other.

The legend on the true prophecy in the hall of prophecies in the Department of Mysteries, Ministry of Magic, says:

SPT to APWBD

Dark Lord

and (?)Harry Potter

Here, SPT refers to Sybill Patricia Trelawney, who made the prophecy to Albus Percival Wulfric Brian Dumbledore, i.e., APWBD.

When Severus Snape overheard the prophecy, he reported the first half to Voldemort, whilst Dumbledore had a complete copy of it, drawn from his memory, placed in the Hall of Prophecy in the Ministry of Magic. After his downfall and resurrection, Voldemort attempted to seize the record to hear the prophecy in its entirety; however, the record was destroyed during the battle at the end of Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. In Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince Dumbledore tells Harry that he and Harry are the only two people who know the full prophecy. He also states that the eavesdropper was ejected from the building by Aberforth before Trelawney completed the prophecy. Dumbledore's and Trelawney's versions of events are contradictory, and cannot both be true. Trelawney had no reason to lie, since she was not even aware of having made the prophecy, and could not in fact have known that Snape was listening had he been ejected while she was in the trance. It is not clear how much of the prophecy Snape actually heard, or whether he reported everything he heard to Voldemort. Dumbledore stated that he only reported the first half of the prophecy, and as a result Voldemort acted without benefit of the warnings in the latter part.

The second true prediction occurred during the events of The Prisoner of Azkaban'. Trelawney again fell into a trance and recited:

"It will happen tonight. The Dark Lord lies alone and friendless, abandoned by his followers. His servant has been chained these 12 years. Tonight, before midnight... the servant will break free and set out to rejoin his master. The Dark Lord will rise again with his servant's aid, greater and more terrible than he ever was. Tonight... before midnight... the servant... will set out... to rejoin... his master...."

This prophecy was fulfilled when Peter Pettigrew's true identity was revealed and he escaped to rejoin Voldemort and nurse him back to health in Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban.

Other predictions

A passing reference in Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince suggests that Trelawney's abilities as a Seer may have been underestimated. Towards the end of the book, she is heard complaining that Dumbledore and Firenze have been ignoring her frequent warnings of death and destruction. In a brief encounter with Harry, she produces a tarot card and murmurs "... the lightning-struck tower... Calamity. Disaster. Coming nearer all the time...". This presciently describes Dumbledore's death atop the Astronomy Tower at Hogwarts, which occurs in a later chapter entitled The Lightning-Struck Tower. This Tarot card (The Tower) is generally considered representative of disaster or life-altering change.

Earlier in the year Trelawney is shown trying to predict the future with playing cards and coming up with "A dark young man, possibly troubled, one who dislikes the questioner". She dismisses this as nonsensical, but unbeknownst to her Harry is in fact hiding to avoid her as she makes this prediction.

Other statements she has made have been proven true by subsequent events. In her first Divination class, she tells the perennially clumsy Neville Longbottom, when doing tea leaf readings, to use a blue teacup after breaking his first one, which he promptly does. Lavender Brown is informed that the thing she dreads will happen on October 16; on that date Lavender is informed that her pet rabbit Binky was killed by a fox (Hermione dismisses it as purely coincidental). Trelawney also predicts two dismissals, one around Easter from her class (this is shown to be an overworked Hermione), and Remus Lupin (he leaves at years' end after his secret is exposed).

One superstition of Trelawney's is demonstrated when she joins a few of the Hogwarts staff and students for the Christmas dinner in Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban. Trelawney was worried about sitting at the staff table. She states that "I dare not [join the staff table], Headmaster! If I join the table, we shall be thirteen! Nothing could be more unlucky! Never forget that when thirteen dine together, the first to rise will be the first to die!". In Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, from page 80 (UK hardback) Harry, Ron, Hermione, Arthur Weasley, Molly Weasley, Fred, George, Bill, Ginny, Lupin, Sirius, Tonks and Mundungus (13 characters) dined together. On page 86 (UK hardback), the first line describes Sirius rising from his chair. Sirius died later in the book (and no one else who was sitting at the table died before him). On the other hand, Mrs Weasley had got to her feet earlier, "to fetch a large rhubarb crumble for pudding", and she did not die. Similarly, when Trelawney reluctantly joins the aforementioned Christmas dinner at Hogwarts, it is Harry and Ron who rise from the table first, yet it is Dumbledore who was the first to die of the group, albeit three years later.

Portrayal of the character

Rowling has often stated that she does not believe in magic, and doesn't intend that her readers should believe in it either. Dumbledore emphasizes to Harry that his fate is not directed by the prophecy itself, but by Voldemort's response to the prophecy. In killing Harry's parents, Voldemort himself drives Harry to seek the confrontation the prophecy describes, and he would do so even if the prophecy did not exist. In addition, Voldemort's pursual of Harry will force the two to eventually face, thus the statement that "neither can live while the other survives."

See also

• A new light on the prophecy editorial by Mugglenet