Boulogne-sur-Mer was unlike the sheer white cliffs of Elephant Mountain or Dover they had passed earlier. As far as the eye could see, the land was almost perfectly flat, making the building perched atop the cliff especially conspicuous.
"There." Miss Gordon pointed at it. "You'll turn back from there."
"What is that place?" asked the British cavalryman competing against Georgiana.
Georgiana looked at the others.
"It used to be an orphanage," said one of the Boulogne-sur-Mer garrison soldiers. "But it's useless now."
"Why would an orphanage be built in a place like that?" Miss Gordon asked.
No one answered.
It was understandable to put things like asylums or leper colonies somewhere far from human habitation. But a group of children with no fathers or mothers—why had they been placed there?
Georgiana could not say whether it was good or bad, because the orphanage Voldemort had stayed in had been in London, surrounded by plenty of people.
Sometimes she thought even less deeply than Voldemort. She had believed that establishing a wizarding orphanage would solve the problem of some girls bearing children out of wedlock, while also saving the wizarding population.
Voldemort, however, had known to place the orphans of pure-blood nobility with foster families he considered reliable.
Perhaps only those who had experienced it firsthand understood how terrible orphanages could be. Before coming to this world, Georgiana had never imagined that parish boards would send children from orphanages to textile mills as "apprentices."
Some nobles also sent their children to the navy at thirteen, and certain famous factory owners, such as Wedgwood, had begun working as potters alongside their fathers and brothers at a very young age. Thus, the concept of "child labor" was difficult to define.
In order to achieve social advancement, factory owners sent their daughters to aristocratic