Disclaimer: Unfortunately, I don't own anything. I'm just playing with JKR's dolls .
Sybill Trelawney turned reluctantly to the box that sat upon the desk before her. Really, she thought, why am I here? She doubted whether she would have been so keen to build a friendship with her new colleague if she knew how obsessed he was with muggle technology, despite what the fates may have been urging her to do.
But build a friendship she did, and so she had come to find herself in an unfamiliar house, in the middle of her summer, with a smiling man who rattled on incessantly about the importance of muggle technology, and the huge benefit it could have for the wizarding world.
"I mean, it's incredible Sybill, really. All of things you can do with this computer β you can talk to people anywhere in the world on it!" He enthused.
"Really?" she responded, irritation colouring her tone. Please, please don't mistake that for β
"I knew you'd understand why this is so important! Here, I'll show you how to use it, let me just put some music onβ¦" he leant over and hit a few keys absently, and, as Sybill noted in bewilderment, moved a smaller box which seemed to be attached to the whole.
And then the screen changed, music began, colours began to flow across the screen, and Sybill froze.
"It's called a 'Visualizer'" he muttered distractedly.
But she didn't hear him. She didn't hear the music either. She was entirely enraptured by the screen. Here, at long last, was a physical illustration of that which she had spent years trying to describe to people. Here was how life felt to her.
She watched in awe as colours and shapes blossomed on the screen. She watched as they wove together, telling a story that none but them could fully comprehend. She watched as the colours and the shapes grew in intensity, in frequency, as they reached some unquantifiable conclusion. A conclusion that was so definite it could hardly be disputed, but simultaneously so subtle that she doubted that anyone could have said for certain what that conclusion was.
She watched as the colours and shapes faded from the screen, only to begin anew. She watched them weave another story, so similar and yet so different from the previous one. She watched as the lights yet again reached their conclusion, and retreated into her own thoughts.
For years, she had struggled to make people understand what it was like to be like her. A self-professed seer, she made her prophecies on the movement of the planets, on tea leaves and palms, on crystal balls. And a lot of guesswork.
Sybill wasn't stupid β she could see that she hardly possessed any of the talents of her great-great-grandmother, and she often wondered why no-one called her out for being a fraud.
But, but, there was a tiny speck of doubt in the back of her mind; a tiny, niggling suspicion that there was something more going on in her life.
Like on the computer screen, Sybill would watch silently as the subtle colours of the world, the mood of the people and the planet itself, shifted. Subtle, slow, unnoticed by most, but shift it did. And, like on the computer screen, she would see them build in intensity, in importance, and she would know that some unidentifiable conclusion was coming.
And yet, like on the computer screen, blink, and you would miss it. And always she would find herself missing it. A conclusion would be reached, and in the back of her mind, she felt that she should know what it had been, but, like a dream, she could never quite remember it.
And then, the world would begin to shift again, and the colours would start to grow.
"Yoo-hoo, Sybill? Are you okay?" he called, waving a hand before her face, pulling her out of her trance.
She turned her face to him, tears in her eyes, a smile on her face. Finally, she could show the world, she could show them that she wasn't a freak. She could make them understand.
"Yes."
