Everyone knows that Professor Trelawny’s Divination class was wretched at best. Not only was the room stuffy and clouded with perfume, Trelawny wasn’t exactly the most clear instructor. (Seriously, if you can’t teach Hermione Granger anything, perhaps you’re in the wrong profession.) Still, despite all of this, Harry and Ron may have picked up much more from Divination than we originally thought. In their first Divination class in Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, the boys are forced to read each others tea leaves. At first, it seems like their bull sh*tting their way through their assignment. (And really, who could blame them?)
Ron reads out of Harry’s tea cup saying, “There’s a blob a bit like a bowler hat. Maybe you’re going to work for the Ministry of Magic. But this way it looks more like an acorn…. A windfall, unexpected gold. Excellent, you can lend me some….and there’s a thing here that looks like an animal…yeah, if that was its head it looks like a hippo….no, a sheep.”
This all seems like utter rubbish that Ron made up, until you remember that Harry eventually becomes Head Auror at the Ministry of Magic. The year after Ron makes this prediction, Harry wins 1000 Galleons at the Triwizard Tournament. Also, the hippo/sheep the Ron sees is probably Buckbeak the Hippogriff which Hagrid introduces the boys to later that day.
Not to be outdone, Harry isn’t exactly terrible with his predictions for Ron. After Professor Trelawny urges him to broaden his mind, he looks in Ron’s cup and says, ” …you’ve got a crooked sort of cross, that means you’re going to have trials and suffering, but there’s a thing that could be the sun…so you’re going to suffer but be very happy…”
We tend to forget about the youngest Weasley son and all that he goes through as Harry’s BFF, and with his family. Ron does in fact suffer a great deal throughout the Harry Potter saga. In the Prisoner of Azkaban, his leg gets mauled by Sirius (in dog form). In the Order of the Phoenix his father is horribly attacked by Voldemort’s prize pet Nagini. In the Half-Blood Prince, his brother Bill is attacked by the Fenrir Greyback, which leaves him horrible disfigured forever. And, worst of all in the Deathly Hallows, his older brother George loses his ear, while his other bother Fred is killed. Despite all of this, Ron ends up happily married to Hermione, he helps George run Weasleys’ Wizard Wheezes and he becomes an Auror. Just as Harry predicted, he suffers, but he gets a relatively happy ending.
Perhaps this is just the one subject that Hermione was garbage in that the boys actually excelled in?
