Harry Potter: Is Sybill Trelawney a "broken clock"?

[Anne-Marie Gagne]

I feel like there's a lot of eye-rolling and doubt regarding Divination in the Harry Potter books from almost everyone in them, especially in regards to Sybill Trelawney. There's a saying that I think a lot of people would feel fits her perfectly: "Even a broken clock is right twice a day."

Now my question to you all is: do you feel, given the information we know of her from the books and from JKR later on, that she was a "broken clock"?

Personally, I feel that Trelawney wasn't as gifted with having prophecies come to her (we only see her have the two in the series) but that she was actually very good at seeing the future in short bursts. For example, with Neville and the broken cup when they did the tea readings in third year and with Umbridge's demise at the end of fifth year. I feel like a lot of doubt came down to her excessive sherry consumption which I think was really just an unhealthy coping mechanism to the outcome of the end of the first war against Voldemort since it was her prophecy that caused the end of it at the cost of the Potters' lives.

[Aquaria Sandalwood]

I tend to think that, based on the evidence in the series, she was a seer, but I also think she had too much ego about it, which led to others seeing her as being a phony. And it's possible that her ego about what a great seer she was, having come from a line of seers and having given a notable prophecy herself, made her think that she was better than she was. Or maybe she just wasn't good at recognizing what was a premonition and what was just a thought.
So to summarize, in my opinion she was gifted in the arts of divination, but not as good as she thought she was/let on about.

[Lex Green]

I think that within the series, there are actually a lot more examples of Trelawney being right than it seems - I can't recall any right now, but I'm fairly sure there were lots of little predictions that were correct, just maybe not as directly or obviously as things like the prophecy. However, I also think she is/was being held to an almost impossibly-high standard. Unfortunately, we don't know of that many other seers within the HP universe, so we don't really have anyone to compare her too, but it appears that even gifted seers don't sit around making prophecies all day every day. When she did have huge moments and make a completely accurate, full-fledged prophecy, they were completely right, but the majority of her predictions were just sentences mentioned in passing, and we don't know for sure whether these should be expected to be correct when coming from a seer. It may be that the most powerful seers are only guaranteed to be right when they make a prophecy, and otherwise, don't make predictions, and possibly, Trelawney tried to make more predictions in her day-to-day life for some other reason, such as because she felt her job was threatened or lacked confidence in her ability in the first place.

[Galena May]

I find the comparison a bit rudish, to be honest, no offence intended. In my opinion, she was indeed a Seer, but as someone said before me, perhaps one with a lot of trauma, which may have interfered with her seeing abilities, diminishing her psychic energy further and making her make mistakes.
Let me now explain that we possess limited psychic energy, and though Seers are gifted with more, their psychic energy also has its limits.
Psychic energy is a form of energy, and using it a lot can make the Seer feel tired because they have to channel a lot of energy to get correct readings besides also doing the normal things non-psychics do (manipulating the Universe to tell us something we are not naturally supposed to be knowing can be exhausting even for a psychic, the same way a ballet dancer would feel tired after long hours of practice in holding their body in unnatural positions, and readings can come out wrong if less than required psychic energy is used, and doing readings all day can make the psychic prone to mistakes, just like overpracticing can injure a ballet dancer and cause stress fractures).
Even a truly gifted psychic cannot make correct predictions all day. Somewhat like anyone no matter how good at their craft/field would get tired and start messing up if they did the same thing multiple times a day, a psychic can only do so many readings at a time with their full attention.
For those who aren't familiar, the negative energy of a non-believer can negatively affect the accuracy of a reading and cause negative ripples in a Seer's positive aura, interfering with the prediction. A believer tends to get far more accurate readings from a Seer as opposed to a non- believer.
Teaching Divination meant that Sybill Trelawney had to watch and guide her students all day, expending a lot of energy, more than any normal psychic would be able to manage, given the population of Hogwarts ( please also note that a large majority of students were NOT gifted with seeing abilities, a significant subset of whom were also non-believers, including our Hermione, so it must have been even more stressful for Sybill Trelawney). She taught tarot reading, crystal balls, dream journaling, tasseography. There was barely anything she didn't teach to the whole school as an elective for every year. I can only imagine how much psychic energy she was expected to expend to teach all these sub-types of Divination (let's remember that as readers/movie watchers we only followed Harry's year, but she taught all the years, and her student pool was peppered with non -believers), and as a result it is quite natural that she always looked lost, clumsy, and a bit humorously mad.
Maybe that's why Hogwarts made it an elective, not compulsory. No matter how many times you say that this cIass is for believers, a gap still remains when it comes to a school. Hermione did a favor to both parties by walking out, in my opinion.
About the prophecies that she got correct, they were indeed prophecies, and since these were so big in importance and channeled with profound energy, she got them correct despite her exhaustion. So, no, in my opinion, she was not a broken clock, but a gifted seer who received far less credit than she deserved.
The profession of Seeing tends to be looked down upon by non- Seers, because it is difficult to believe, given that non - Seers possess lower ability to detect the range of frequencies that Seers can detect. People who go by " if you cannot detect it, it doesn't exist" tend to negatively criticize the profession, which further adds to the pressure of a Seer/Divination teacher.
Let me briefly explore why Firenze didn't face the same problem. Firenze was a Centaur, someone known to get easily offended, and dangerous to face once offended. Because of this, he was far less prone to being mocked than Sybill Trelawney was. Also, given that ALL centaurs are more well - known for astrological predictions, as compared to Seers (a bias resulting from Seers being a subset of witches/wizards, all of whom are not Seers), Firenze rarely, if ever, faced the issue of being subjected to the negative energy of non-believers.
Moreover, Firenze specialized in Astrology only, and Astrology uses little to no psychic energy, because you can merely make pre- recorded statements from the position of the stars/planets in the sky. Astrological events are largely the same worldwide, and do not need psychic energy to be used at the time of reading. Astrological predictions only require correct knowledge of the planetary influences due to their relative position. Tarot reading/Seeing, on the other hand, is heavily reliant on using personal psychic energy at the time of each and every reading , as opposed to pre- existing knowledge.