"It was a perfectly good prompt to throw off the spell and I figured you had something in mind but I don't super want to tell Miranda all about it if she isn't actually curious, which she does not seem to be."

"I will find a separate excuse to tell her. Have we heard back from the Poppy people?"

"I got a form letter, but it said they would interview some people who had given applicable advance consent and get back to me, so."

"Thanks."

And a little while later, "Miranda?"

"Yeah?"

Conversational privacy - "Cam said that I should tell you explicitly that I picked up that your father's a Muggle and your mother Muggleborn because the rules you are operating under don't treat 'wouldn't care and probably knows' the same as 'definitely knows' and wouldn't allow telling me?"

"...okay, thanks. How did you figure it out, when was it -"

"First time you got into a fight with one of the girls in your year - well, didn't have the details at that point, but you don't talk about your father and your mother didn't have elves or family friends with elves or family friends informally setting up a match for you -"

"Most people buy 'Nnenne is eccentric and immigrated from Igboland as a child' as an explanation for that part. She is and she did."

"Sure, but there are more Muggleborns than people with no extended family for other reasons. I don't think you're at risk of exposure in general."

"Okay. Thank you."

"Sure! Take care."

"- as long as you already know do you have a read on who would care and how much -"

"The world's going to be changing a lot, really fast - and I overestimated how much people'd care if I were involved with Cam. At least within here I think you're fine."

"Okay, thanks."

"Of course."

(Based on the message from the Elves, time is in fact passing in Revelation while the door is closed - but about a thousand times slower than in Milliways. The initial note saying that everything worked fine was composed a minute after the door closed, and arrives the next day.)

"Huh. I guess that's more convenient than if they were going a lot faster than us - and, come to think of it, if Arda's stopped, the daeva worlds have to be slow not to have noticed anything wrong..."

"Maybe that's why my correspondence is taking so long - and that fairy didn't want a resummon so soon?"

"Yeah, she said she had something the next couple weeks - it'd been more than that on our end, but probably not on hers - the time stuff is weird. I approve, though. It is nice to be able to guiltlessly take an afternoon off occasionally."

"It is!"

"Speaking of which I think I have learned about as much from your books as can be learned from books."

"And now you want volumes two through seven?"

"I am surprised 2179 does not consider it uncivilized not to provide all of their citizens with basement-dwellers for practice. And demonic elephants for the elephants."

"Basement dwellers seem like they would not be worth the time, honestly, I don't get the appeal."