HP

I didn't post anything last night because I was out watching the latest Harry Potter film.  I didn't nerd out this year like I did the year before - no midnight showings, no costumes, no themed snacks - but Harry was a part of my childhood experience and so to make up for the lack of nerdiness, I am going to use this opportunity to reflect on the predictions and prophecies of Professor Trelawney.  I know.

Emma Thompson was sadly not in HP.7.1 but that is not going to deter me.

And when I say I am going to reflect, I mean I am going to copy a bunch of reflections I found on the internets when I looked up "Prof. Trelawney true predictions."

Right.  So first there were the two boring - I mean, important - ones...the one in book 3 where she freaks out at the end of Harry's final about Pettigrew and Lord Voldything, and the one discussed in later books but which actually occurred prior to the start of the series about the "Chosen One."  And both of those came true.  Whatever.

I think what is more hilarious is that, although she is clearly presented as a fraud, JK Rowling writes in most of her predictions as coming true.  Perhaps this is a comment on real-life fortune-tellers; perhaps it is just an inside joke.

For instance:

• In her first lesson, she told Neville to take a blue cup after he broke his first one so that her pink cups would remain unsmashed...after he heard this, he broke his cup, took a blue one, and broke that too.
• She told a Gryffindor classmate, Parvati Patil, to beware of red headed men...much later, Harry and Ron (a red-headed "man") took Parvati and her twin to the Yule ball, where they rudely ignored them for the whole night.  Still later, Ron started going out with Parvati's best friend Lavender Brown, who started to ignore Parvati.
• She predicted classes being cancelled due to sickness...which happened.
• She told Lavendar that the thing she was dreading would happen on 16 October...Hermione's skepticism aside, it is true that on that day, Lavender got a note that her pet rabbit had been eaten by a fox.
• She predicted that someone would leave their class forever...later that year, Hermione dropped out.
• One Christmas at Hogwarts, she said that when thirteen dine together, the first to rise will be the first to die.  Harry and Ron got up from the table first together, but Albus Dumbledore was the first among those at the table to die...however, she was unaware that Scabbers, aka Peter Pettigrew, was sitting at the table, and so technically the first person to get up from a table of 13 that night was Dumbledore when he rose to welcome Trelawney.
• Some time after that, thirteen members of the order dined together, and the first to rise was Sirius, who was the first to die from among that setting.
• She told Dolores Umbridge that she saw dark events ahead when Umbridge was first appointed High Inquisitor at Hogwarts...later Umbridge was dragged off and imprisoned by centaurs in the Forbidden Forest.
• In the sixth book, Harry overhears Trelawney shuffling through some Tarot cards and talking to herself, saying first that a troubled dark young man is nearby who dislikes the questioner...that would be Harry...and secondly that she repeatedly draws the Lightning-Struck Tower card, indicating approaching disaster...soon after, Dumbledore was killed at the top of the Astronomy tower.

...Ah HarryPotterFandom...how rabid you are.  Fabulous stuff, eh?