Voldemort listened to Douglas's account, picked up his insulated cup, and took a sip.
Hearing about Harry's childhood, he briefly compared it to his own distant memories of the orphanage.
Well, an inexplicable satisfaction welled up in his soul.
The Boy Who Lived, who had sent him fleeing in disgrace, had not lived like a hero either.
Bullied like that by a Muggle, and he had not even used magic to fight back.
He was far inferior to Voldemort at that age. To think someone like that had caused his downfall back then.
Dumbledore took off his glasses, pulled a handkerchief from his robes, and slowly wiped the lenses.
"Douglas."
Dumbledore put his glasses back on, his gaze growing deep and distant.
"Your anger stems from the era you live in."
"But you have completely overlooked the era I was born into."
Dumbledore's voice lost its usual lightness.
In its place was a desolation steeped in the passage of years.
"Eighteen eighty-one."
Dumbledore named the year.
"That was the year I came into this world."
"What exactly did British Muggle society look like back then?"
Douglas tipped a plate of potato noodles into the pot.
"Don't use history to justify indifference, Headmaster."
Dumbledore shook his head.
"This is not a justification. It is a question of the dimensions of one's understanding."
Dumbledore extended a withered finger and pointed toward the distant night sky.
"In my childhood memories, London in the Muggle world was always shrouded in thick, blackish-yellow smoke."
"It was a warped era in which the overt use of child labor had only just ended."
Dumbledore's tone was as heavy as cast iron.
"But the letter of the law could not hide the bloodshed at the bottom of society."
"Tens of thousands of Muggle children still crawled through mines