Cassandra Trewlaney

[Mozarts Confutatis]

Okay then, I am cobbling together a Fan-fic, and Cassandra popped in for a few chapters as a character. It the occurred to me that we have no idea what Cassandra Trewlaney, Great-Great-Grandmother of Professor Sybill Trewlaney, looks like, or acts like.

So, I come here to the MNFF community for answers to hopefully help me in writing.

Do you think that Cassandra, who is a renowned seer, would be anything like Professor Trewlaney? (i.e. Bangles, giant glasses, perfumed fire, constantly predicting death.)

Would she look at all like Sybill Trewlaney? If not, what do you think she might look like aside from similar facial features?

Do you think there is any possibility of her having a friendship with Albus Dumbledore?

Would she be similar to her classical namesake? (NOTE: Cassandra, in classical legend, was a princess of Troy, who was gifted with the ability to see the future by her lover, the Greek God Apollo, with the slight catch that no one would believe her.)

[Karaley Dargen]

Do you think that Cassandra, who is a renowned seer, would be anything like Professor Trewlaney? (i.e. Bangles, giant glasses, perfumed fire, constantly predicting death.)

I always saw that as Sybill Trelawney's way to compensate. She doesn't really think she has the "true" gift, so she puts on that whole "mysterious" act to fool others (and definitely herself, too) into thinking that she is more... well, mysterious than she actually is.

Would she look at all like Sybill Trewlaney? If not, what do you think she might look like aside from similar facial features?

This, on the other hand, I can imagine very well. Sybill might even have looked like Cassandra as a child, causing relatives to comment on that and everyone to expect that she would show the same talents. That would certainly explain why Sybill never chose an other career path. If everyone always expected her to be like Cassandra because she looked like her, maybe at some point she started believing in it herself, too (or maybe she just didn't want to disappoint).

As for the accessories - I can see Cassandra wearing glasses, but not the big, magnifying ones - rather subtle ones that make her look intelligent. I imagine her with slightly curly, but not frizzy hair, and wearing necklaces - in essence, I see her as a toned-down version of Sybill. Like Sybill saw pictures of her as a young woman and tried to imitate her "style" but exaggerated everything.


Do you think there is any possibility of her having a friendship with Albus Dumbledore?

Dumbledore struck me as a person who doesn't believe in Divination a great deal. He often comments on how the true meaning of a prophecy is given to it by yourself etc... and he's the Transfiguration Professor - possibly it's McGonagall's aversion against the subject that makes me see Dumbledore in that light, but I always thought she was similar to him in her beliefs. And didn't Dumbledore even consider cancelling the subject altogether the year he hired Trelawney?

I think their areas of interest are just too far apart for them to be friends. They might have known each other, and maybe discussed certain matters in an academic context, but I can't really see them spending a lot of time together or having deep conversations. I'm not even sure their paths would have crossed a lot at all...

[Equinox Chick]

Do you think that Cassandra, who is a renowned seer, would be anything like Professor Trewlaney? (i.e. Bangles, giant glasses, perfumed fire, constantly predicting death.)
I doubt she acted the same way as Sybil Trelawney, for the simple reason that she appeared to have been a respected Seer, so probably didn't need to make wild mad predictions. In looks though, it's just struck me that perhaps Cassandra did look like that and Sybil copied her


Would she look at all like Sybill Trewlaney? If not, what do you think she might look like aside from similar facial features? See above, but I'm thinking they're far apart generationally to look totally different.

Do you think there is any possibility of her having a friendship with Albus Dumbledore? Um, no, actually. I think that although Dumbledore is old (115 when he dies) I always imagined Cassandra Trelawney to be much older than him. If you allow 25-30 years per generation then she has to be 100-120 years older than Sybill, who I always imagine as being in her late thirties - early forties. Dumbledore is about 70 years older than her. Mind you, he could have known her, I just didn't get the impression that he'd been her friend.

Would she be similar to her classical namesake?
She was believed so probably not. She was also a mother whereas Cassandra, until she was abducted by Agamemnon, was a virgin priestess.

Interestingly, Sybil is the one whose prophecies are not believed ... some of the time she doesn't believe them herself. I'm thinking of that passage in HBP where she's reading tarots and is actually seeing what will happen to Dumbledore (the 'Lightening Struck Tower' 'a young man who dislikes his questioner'). She thinks she's being ridiculous, but she's right.

~Carole~

[ToBeOrNotToBeAGryffindor]

Interestingly, Sybil is the one whose prophecies are not believed ... some of the time she doesn't believe them herself. I'm thinking of that passage in HBP where she's reading tarots and is actually seeing what will happen to Dumbledore (the 'Lightening Struck Tower' 'a young man who dislikes his questioner'). She thinks she's being ridiculous, but she's right.

That is very true. It's only when she's not trying to correctly divine events that she actually does so. Namely, the one from PA about Peter and the one about Harry and Voldemort. I believe that Dumbledore only hired her on to keep anyone from finding her and somehow extracting this information. Canonically, when she does have a genuine prophesy, she doesn't remember that she did it. Perhaps Dumbledore was concerned that she would unintentionally have another prophesy revelation in the presence of the wrong people, or maybe he just wanted her on hand in case she did have another one.

Back to Cassandra...

I agree with Kara and Carole about her appearance. To me, she would have worn the same things as Sybill, but in much heavier moderation. Meaning, she wore glasses, but normal ones, bangles, but only a couple, and a simple shawl, which is common for the period in which she would have had her heyday anyway.

As to her talent, for a man like Dumbledore, who is sceptical about the entire subject of divination anyway, to consent to interview Sybill simply because of who her great great grandmother was means that her abilities were either very strong or very exaggerated. Many figures in history gain much of their fame posthumously as the tales of their exploits assume added 'details', which are tacked on by various storytellers. Who can really say how much of it is fact or fiction. For all we know, Cassandra could have been as much of a nutcase as Sybill, but in her particular generation, she really was seen as mysterious instead of mad. Every old, overdone joke had to be new at some point, so maybe Cassandra was really Sybill classic. If she's older than Dumbledore, then it's entirely possible that she is and he only has her 'legend' as a reference, not actual knowledge of her, either in person or from someone who did know her personally.

Take that for what you will.