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.