My name is Terry Boot

I wish to speak in particular to the students of Hogwarts. The older ones will remember me.

I was born to Muggle parents. I was taken away from them when I was so young that I don't even remember them. I was told I was a mudblood and given to Amycus Carrow to be his slave.

Or perhaps you don't remember? I was the quiet boy called 'boot' who sat on the floor in the corner of Transfiguration class, who dodged your kicks and never reacted to your jeers. I spoke of myself in the third person, and tried my best to seem simple-minded, because it was safer that way.

But here's the truth. I am a wizard, and I have always been one. The Sorting Hat itself told me so when I put it on during what should have been my first year at Hogwarts. It didn't hesitate at all to sort me into Ravenclaw House.

I have a wand that works well for me, and I've been studying spells and charms, just like you. I'm best at Transfiguration, Charms, Runes, and Arithmancy.

For those of you who pride yourself on your class standings, remember this: you can never claim to be first in your class, because you've never competed against a good number of your true classmates. Those missing classmates have had to hone the qualities that the Founders sought even more keenly than you. They are incredibly brave, they have bonds of loyalty that will never be broken, no matter what the Protectorate decrees, they have wit beyond measure, and they had learned cunning through painful experience. They may call you 'master' or 'mistress,' and you might think you control them, but you don't. That is because magic is not something you can simply declare doesn't 'belong' to a muggleborn. We didn't steal anyone's magic; we didn't need to, as it bubbles up inside of us, impossible to deny. As truly as it does for those who have a tapestry showing eight generations of pureblood descent.

Voldemort's claim of 'blood superiority' is a lie. We are your equals. Just an accident of birth could have put any one of you in our position. Think what it might have been like for you if you had the same magic in you that you've always had, but someone took you away from your family and made you a slave, just because of who your parents were.

Think of yourself, sitting on the floor, barefoot in winter. Hoeing beets in the field, trying to walk fast enough to stay ahead of the whip. Toiling in a coal mine, in total darkness, while still feeling your magic inside of you like a glowing ember.

Someone who is truly a witch or a wizard can't blow that ember out.

The Protectorate never will, either.