Sybill Trelawney and the Unexpected Gift | Harry Potter for Grownups

Chapter Six

Sybill Trelawney learned her second big secret at the age of fifty-six.

Her tower, along with much else at Hogwarts, had been destroyed in the battle, but that didn't matter, because what Sybill had Seen came to pass.

The Boy Who Lived had died. And lived. She hadn't understood—still didn't, really—but the Inner Eye hadn't been wrong. Sybill had merely misinterpreted.

And after the dead were buried and the Dark Magic cleared from the castle and its grounds, Minerva called Sybill into her makeshift office and invited her to live with her.

"With you?"

"Yes," Minerva said. "At my cottage in the village. For the summer. We can't stay here during the repairs, it's too dangerous. The castle's enchantments are very unstable."

"But you don't even like me."

Minerva took off her square-rimmed glasses and looked at her. "I daresay, Sybill, that I don't really know you."

"Then why would you ask me to stay with you?"

"Because we can help one another."

Sybill failed to see how she could ever help Minerva McGonagall, and said so, and that was how she learned her second big secret, only this time, it wasn't about her.

"I had no idea," she said after Minerva told her.

"No one did. I made sure of it."

"But how did you—"

"Not alone. Albus helped. We spent the summer after Elph died together in the castle. He stayed by me the whole time, even slept on a Transfigured bed in my room so I wouldn't waken alone at night."

"He was a good friend."

"He was."

Sybill Trelawney and Minerva McGonagall never became good friends. But they did help one another that summer, Minerva tending to Sybill during the sickness that accompanied her first sober weeks. For her part, Sybill was never certain what she offered Minerva, who still often snapped at her when a prediction escaped her, but Minerva's irritated words were no longer laced with disdain, and if Minerva ever took anything stronger than Gillywater, Sybill didn't see it, so perhaps her presence was a help after all.

August came and went, and the castle was repaired. Minerva and Sybill moved back into it, and the former took her place as Headmistress. The children returned, and with them, the voices, but the visions were less Dark now, and when Sybill felt a thirst for something more than pumpkin juice, she called on Minerva, who came without question or recrimination, only endless cups of tea, after which she made Sybill read the leaves for her. Sybill Saw nothing of Minerva's future in them, of course, but making things up was a good distraction. She went heavy on the Hope and easy on the Fear.

There was one night after the war when Minerva appeared at Sybill's door, eyes hollow-looking and hands shaking. Sybill knew better than to ask her what was bothering her—Minerva had never shared a confidence beyond the basic fact of her alcoholism—but Sybill took her in, put her in her own bed, and called a house-elf to deliver a message to Deputy Headmistress Vector that the school was in her capable hands for at least a day.

Over the twenty-four hours that followed, Sybill read to Minerva, Muggle novels—Rob Roy and The Bride of Lammermoor—that she thought might appeal. Minerva never said anything about Sybill's selection, but the night after she'd left, a house-elf came to Sybill's room bearing a parcel that turned out to be the collected works of Charles Dickens.

Three years later, when Minerva came to Sybill's tower to tell her that she planned to discontinue the teaching of Divination at Hogwarts, Sybill was not alarmed. She'd Seen herself, grey and impossibly wrinkled, dying in her bed in the very room in which they sat.

Sybill Trelawney, who had never had friend nor lover, trusted in two things: the Gift and Minerva McGonagall. Neither ever failed her.

~FIN~