Here’s one-hundred words for Sybill. This one is Sybill alone with her tea leaves.
“Seeing the Obvious”
by MMADfan
Sybill sipped her tea. She’d been certain Dumbledore wasn’t going hire her, despite what the cards had declared the day before, then lo and behold! He was offering to get her a drink and assuring her the job was hers. The cards hadn’t let her down after all! Now to see what the tea leaves had to say …
A skull? If that was a snake … the Dark Mark? But no, she had it upside-down. It was obviously a wine bottle with a ribbon around it. A pity; the Dark Mark would be dramatic. She reached for a bottle of red.
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Wow … she should have gone with her first instinct … the Dark Mark. Bless her heart, though. She did try!!
She’s always just a bit off! 😉
Haha, a bit off for sure, dear Sybil.
I commented first on your #8 drabble and what I found and said there, counts here too: you ascribe her a greater Gift (albeit that Sybil herself doesn’t see – See? – it) than is usually done. And I must say I do not at all object against it at all. How foolish and abject she may be shown in the books, in the movies and in ff, I still do have a bit of a soft spot for her.
Also, your standpoint (if I rightly interpret it, that is) would give a more plausible explanation for these two major predictions about Voldemort and Harry (or Nevil) than the books do: as if these predictions sort of fell from the sky, in Sybils case. Plus that if she were really ‘Ungifted’ a man like Albus would never have hired her, no matter that it was ‘only’ for Divination.
As you may understand: I’m really enjoying your drabbles! ❤
Yes, I think that Sybill doesn’t recognize a genuine prediction when it’s staring her in the face — or coming out of her mouth, particularly on those occasions when she’s fallen into a trance that she can’t even remember.
When in the course of her day, she does actually see something that might be an omen, she’s so used to having made stuff up, that any genuine prophetic insight that she comes up with gets lost, even in her own mind, amongst all the predictions that she makes as window-dressing to cover her (apparent) lack of Sight. And even when she does See something — as when she see the Grim in Harry’s tea leaves — she doesn’t interpret it correctly, going with the glib interpretation rather than having a more nuanced one for the specific situation. She looks no further than she has to, in other words — being both insecure about whether she has the Gift or not and frightened of what she sees any time her Sight does seem to kick in a little.
Very interesting comments! They really got me thinking about her!
Yes, that must be an explanation too: making up so much, throughout the day, that she becomes blinded to the ‘real’ stuff that comes from her.
Just goes to show you that Divination is a skill–the signs are always there; it’s the interpretation that can be faulty.
Yes, once you see & notice the signs, they still depend on interpretation, or they might as well remain obscured.