I can make out the younger children from the older ones by where they sit, helplessly chatting away when they notice my presence, equally frightened but just as amazed. I tighten my grip on the wooden desk beneath me and sigh softly, entwining my hand with Camila's underneath so I wouldn't stutter or freeze like an imbecile.
                          
Headmistress McGonagall flicks her wrist once so that all candles are lit from both sides of the dining hall and the students immediately go quiet, eyes wide and all slightly frightened by her attitude today.
                          
"Listen carefully and give your undivided attention to your Co-Headmistress of Hogwarts, Lauren Jauregui."
                          
My breath hitches inside my throat but it's now too loud to hear it, McGonagall's words triggering something inside each and every student. I glance first at Camila who nods slightly and then towards McGonagall, where green eyes close in annoyance before they open up again. "Silence!"
                          
The hall once again goes quiet and I take a deep breath, thanking the headmistress with a small nod. I shakily grab the piece of paper in front of me and read over the first sentence, not finding enough strength to read it at all. I wanted these words to come from me, and most of them explained how much of a good headmistress I would be, except this wasn't the case at all.
                          
I look down at the speech in my hands and turn it around, feeling my heart clench at my own decision. If this meant I could finally speak for myself, then that's would I would do. "When I was fully capable of speaking and understanding the language, I was never able to tell my own story growing up. I could never grow up to tell others that I missed my mother and father, or that I wished I had been born a muggle, or that I wished I hadn't been born at all. I couldn't tell them that I was only a six year old girl hoping that I wouldn't grow old to die in a room with no one by my side but Voldemort...because no one would care to listen. No one cared to listen because the entire world only knew one story... And it was about the cruel, cold hearted serial killer who worked as Voldemort's slave."
                          
I decide to look up for the very first time to see every pair of eyes looking straight at me, intently and so curiously that maybe I had a chance at changing the way the thought of me. These were the words I had been dying to tell the world and maybe it wasn't what I had planned but I was going somewhere. I didn't have to tell them my story now, but I could at least tell them that the story that awaited me would be a good one. A heroic one. One no one would ever forget. 
                          
I look up at the chandelier hanging elegantly above me and sigh, "I stand in front of you all tonight, in attempt to tell the story brave and heroic man once told me when I needed hope the most. One that he can no longer live to tell."
                          
I swallow away the lump in my throat, "This man saw the best in me when no one else cared to listen...when no one else wanted to understand the difference between a monster and a victim. Had things been different if people understood? I was simply a sad child, not an angry one. And that's a tremendous difference. I was not constantly in rage, in need for revenge, or cruel. I was simply a child who faced fears everyday, or felt unwanted the next. I had always wondered if that was enough to change the way people thought of me. I wondered if I could prove that I wasn't the devils creation at all, I could be freed...freed to show the world that I was more than an evolving folklore."
                          
I look down at Camila again and her eyes make my heart flutter, just enough to calm the aching in my chest. "I stopped believing I could ever explain myself when I realized people only understand from their level of perception. The worlds hate for me had been as easy as throwing an ugly stone into an ocean of vast bodies...but no one ever understood how deep that stone sunk...lower and lower until it was nothing in meaning. It was a feeling that I loathed."
                          
I feel the tears sting my eyes and almost every other child in the room gasps. Unbelievable, the monster did cry. 
                          
"Dumbledore became my best friend," I almost whisper into the quiet hall. "This man was someone who made me feel safe and secure with his presence alone and now more than ever, his absence haunts me. I can never grow old enough to make him proud, I can never make enough memories with him now that I'm no longer caged like an animal. I will never love anyone else like I did with Dumbledore, a love between a daughter and her father whether it's biological or not. That poor old man held my hand throughout it all just for a little while when I truly needed it, but will forever hold my heart."