Sybill Trelawney and the Unexpected Gift | Harry Potter for Grownups

Chapter Three

"Albus says you prefer to reside in the North Tower rather than in the West Wing with the other regular teachers," the Deputy Headmistress said, disapproval in every click of her smart, polished heels.

"Yes," Sybill said, slightly breathless with the effort of keeping up with Minerva's brisk pace. "The Inner Eye needs quiet if it is to See properly."

She ignored Minerva's snort.

"Here it is," Minerva said when the door clicked obediently open to the neat swish of her wand.

The room was clean enough, but it looked as if it hadn't held a living soul in centuries.

Sybill shivered, and it was on the tip of her tongue to ask Minerva if she would stay for a cuppa, an odd impulse, to be sure—Sybill was accustomed to being left to her own devices and had come to prefer it—but the room felt so dead and empty that it frightened her.

"You may reset the wards as you wish," Minerva said. "The door will always open, of course, to the Headmaster and to Madam Pomfrey, our matron, in case of emergency."

"Not to you?"

"No."

"You'll want to get in," Sybill said.

"I sincerely doubt that." Minerva's smile was tight and not at all reassuring. "If that's all, Professor Trelawney—"

"Call me Sybill. Please."

"If that's all, I'll be getting on with my duties."

And Sybill was left alone in that dreadful room.

~oOo~

Sybill Trelawney had never had friends, so she didn't miss them. But she did miss Professor Dorsett and their regular teas. They reminded her that she existed—Sybill the person, not the Seer.

If pressed, Sybill would admit to having harboured a hope that Minerva McGonagall might come up for the occasional tea, or invite her down, just as a friendly, collegial gesture. They were the only two witches near in age at Hogwarts, and it might have seemed natural.

But it quickly became clear that Minerva McGonagall would never—ever—consider Sybill Trelawney a colleague or worthy of any conversation beyond what was required for the discharge of her duties.

Meals were torture. There were the voices, as always, but they were more frequent and more intense than they had been when she was student. Sybill couldn't help the prognostic ejaculations that escaped her, while Minerva seemed incapable of simply ignoring them as everyone else learned to do. Her barbed comments stung and ruined what little appetite Sybill had.

Funny, but she seemed to affect Minerva similarly.

One night, after Sybill's statement that they wouldn't be having langoustines again, which was a pity, because Minerva loved them, the Deputy Headmistress set down her fork, pushed away from the table, and left without a word. So she was not there to see the new professor—that boy Sybill had seen at the Hog's Head, in fact—grab at his throat, his face red and looking like it had got on the wrong end of an Engorgement Charm. He spent a week in the infirmary recovering from a severe allergic reaction.

After that, none of the staff wanted to sit next to her at table, and eventually, Sybill asked the Headmaster to grant her leave to take her meals in her rooms.

Over the months, the rest of the castle became unbearable as the voices got louder.

As her Gift had grown over the years, the voices, those occasional bursts of intimate human contact, had become her companions. The Hopes and Fears of clients and people passing her tiny basement flat in London had been like momentary WWN broadcasts from someone else's life, and they had been a comfort.

But here, in a castle full of magical adolescents—whose voices had always been the loudest and most insistent—it rose to a terrifying cacophony of anger and anxiety and desire. Alarmingly, much of what Sybill Saw lately was death and danger. The recent unpleasantness seemed to have redirected the Inner Eye towards the Dark, and it didn't want to let it go.

She left her rooms less and less as the months passed. Teaching ten children at a time, twenty-four hours per week nearly killed her. She was assaulted with negativity—most of it trivial, but occasionally, what she Saw was devastating.

"Find a way to survive," Professor Dorsett had advised her, and Sybill did. Increasing amounts of Firewhisky helped, but what really did the trick was selecting one student per class on whom to focus. The resulting images and voices that arose within her crowded out, mostly, the babble from the others. The things she Saw for her chosen students were almost inevitably bad—accidents, bereavements, and, occasionally, death.

The Deputy Headmistress came to speak with her about it.

"Professor Trelawney," she said, her long legs sticking out awkwardly from the velvet pouf on which she sat, "I must ask you to refrain from frightening the students pointlessly. The Headmaster has had several owls from parents. Surely even you can see—lower-case 's'—how distressing it is to hear that a teacher has predicted that their daughter will die from a Kappa's bite or that their son is destined for Azkaban."

Sybill told the Deputy Headmistress that she would guard her tongue henceforth, and when Minerva left, Sybill finished a bottle of Ogden's and wept. She could no more prevent herself from uttering what she Saw than she could stop her heart from beating. Perhaps a quickly deployed Tongue-Tying Jinx . . . ? But Sybill was not up to that kind of magic, and certainly not wandlessly or wordlessly. Maybe she'd have to cut out her tongue.

Because she needed to stay at Hogwarts.

Sybill Trelawney might have been nearly a Squib, but she was no fool.

Something had happened during her interview at the Hog's Head—something that had to do with young Snape, who, as everyone knew, was a Death Eater. Sybill didn't understand what it was, but Dumbledore had done a complete volte-face after the interruption of their interview. He'd already told her that, impressive as her credentials were, he was planning on discontinuing Divination as a Hogwarts subject in the wake of Professor Dorsett's unexpected demise . . . and then he was shaking her hand and insisting that she move into the castle right away—that very night, in fact, and had even gone with her to her flat to collect her things.

The Death Eaters wanted her. Something about what he'd heard had convinced Snape that she was the real thing, a true Seer, and they would expect her to use her Gift for their benefit.

Sybill wondered now if Professor Dorsett didn't have more of the Sight than she'd claimed.

Eventually, she pulled herself together. After all, what choice did she have? What choice had she ever had? But what could she do?

Strangely enough, the answer came to her in Professor Dorsett's gravelly voice: Do what you're best at. Put on a show.

The following Monday, when she heard herself tell William Weasley that the half-moon would be his saviour and his curse, she quickly drew his attention to the sloppy astrological chart spread across his table.

"See!" she cried. "See how Mars conjuncts Venus to oppose Jupiter here!" She pointed to a random section of the chart for 1997 and let her voice go hollow and deep for effect as she spouted nonsense: "That allows the moon to exert its influence in Scorpio."

She knew her ruse had worked when the Weasley boy grinned over at his table-mate. He'd forgotten all about the dire prediction in favour of a comfortable conviction that Professor T was off her nut.