Re: Professor Trelawny - totally worthless??

That's a good point, but the situation can be looked at another way:
In interviews and in the books, JKR stresses the "McBeth" problem of
prophecies--do they come true because it is destined, or because
someone tries to one-up Fate and thus create the very circumstances?
In OotP (IIRC), DD explained that the only reason that the prophecy in
the Hall of Mysteries is true is because Voldemort himself made it true
when he set out to circumvent these supposed pre-ordained occurences.
DD also remarked that there are many, many prophecies in the Hall that
were never fulfilled. Also consider how vague Trelawney's prophecies
are (when not in True Seer mode); a dreaded occurences finally
happening, beware a redhead man, someone gonna get burned... I mean,
that's the kind of crap you get out of Fortune cookies. No, I take
that back....fortune cookies are sometimes inspirational. I could walk
up to a random person and say "you will have ill health in the future",
"beware the speeding car driven by the young ones", "it shall rain on
the Ides of March" or some other nonsense and still have good chance
of being correct, because these are things anyone can reasonably
predict. Based on this, I'd say Trelawney's role is two-fold in the
book: to provide the initiating motion of the story and to drive home
the theme of fate vs. choice. Come to think of it, she also provides
good comic relief. Watch out, Ron.

.

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