Before I get started on this topic, I need to sincerely apologize to everyone who regularly reads this column. No, I did not run out of new topics. No, I did not die. Many of you have written in to me before saying that you admire how I can balance school, work, sorority, and writing this column. Well, the absence is a true testament that it is not always as easy as it seems. Besides, this is the FIFTH column and we all know what that means….gotta wait a little.

All joking aside, I owe it to my faithful readers to catch up. I intend to do this with my increased boredom, which is also known as Winter Break. For this week’s question, I had some help from a few people on, but it was something that I had personally been speculating on for some time. Onto the question, which happens to be: Is Trelawney a puppet for Voldemort?

What do we really know about Trelawney? She teaches Divination at Hogwarts, she seems to be a joke to rest of the staff, some of the students believe her to be a fraud, she is in love with Lupin (see Quibbler 2), and she was defended by Dumbledore in Order of the Phoenix. She is also the granddaughter of a “true Seer” and the holder of many prophecies about our Harry. But, have you ever noticed how she refers to Voldemort?

In every book and passage, people who are on “Harry’s side” refer to Voldemort as You-Know-Who or get scared away at the mention of anything about him. People who are on “Voldemort’s side” always refer to him as the Dark Lord. If you look carefully, this is how Trelawney refers to him in her prophecies. Since we have never really had a look at other types of prophecies, we do not know if this is a trend or just something about Trelawney’s predictions. With what we know, though, we can guess that her prophecies mean one of two things.

Firstly, we can assume that Trelawney’s predictions are legitimate. After all, they are stored in the Department of Mysteries and act like true prophecies. We know that Trelawney has enough Seer blood in her to have the capability to make a true prophecy. Also, Dumbledore believes her prophecies to be true enough to hire her and eventually defend her later on against Umbridge. It seems kind of fishy though…

Which brings us to option two: Trelawney is working either under own will or someone else’s to prophesy events to happen. This can mean a variety of things. If Trelawney is working under her own will, perhaps she is trying to brainwash certain people (Dumbledore, Harry, et cetera) to get them onto Voldemort’s side. More likely, though, an outside force to aid Voldemort is controlling Trelawney. Perhaps her “trance-like states” only occur when she is being controlled (such as through occlumency). If this is true, perhaps Dumbledore identified it that evening in the Hog’s Head and that is why he hired her. If this were true, he could monitor the trances and the activities of Voldemort.

I personally believe that Trelawney is going to play a huge part in the next two books. There is a definite reason that Dumbledore hired her in the first place, but allowing her to stay at the end of Order of the Phoenix definitely is a big move. Yes, she is annoying and Harry dislikes her, but she is the key to his fate. Why her, you ask? Well, we do not really know at this point because we do not know enough about her. But, please consider my theory about her being on the dark side or being controlled by the dark side. Rowling decided to use the specific wording for a reason.

Again, thank you all for being such loyal readers and I appreciate your patience. My next article will be a difficult one for some of you to stomach because it will be very very controversial. Here is a hint: the Weasleys use time travel a lot, so what if Arthur Weasley knows what will happen to Harry and uses him to help win the Minister of Magic position? Stay tuned because you will want to hear this one! Until next time…

If you'd like to contact Erin, you may do so here.

12/22/03

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