"We brought a list to cross-reference within Anitam. There are relatively few discrepancies considering how much any given one would propagate - I only know a few dozen people in Voa but they match, I asked Maitimo -"

"He has an accurate list of Voans for you?"

"Yes - not a spying thing, we just soak up information about the people around us and find it intolerable not knowing someone's name and he does that moreso, having that fancy computing implant that can keep track of it all for him. He and the magic telepath one spent, when they first met, several hours just comparing three hundred thousand people to see what the overlap was like."

"...and what was it like?"

"Between their worlds it's overwhelming. All the same people, except the Stone Age magic set have fewer of them."

"...given how discrepancies would propagate the subset must be rather - surgically selected."

"Indeed. The whole thing is - it can't even be 'meddling powerful aliens', the amount of power required is unthinkable - and yet here we all are. The magic telepath version of my brother also met and fell for a version of the red princess. They don't have reds but she was some local thing with some equivalencies."

"How many of these worlds are there?"

"It would be strange if the answer were 'four', wouldn't it be."

"...a little. Why is the answer provisionally four?"

"That's the ones which have interacted so far."

"This one, other Amenta, other Elves...?"

"Pre-industrial place with yet another species and a very useful magic system. Those ones are clean and friendly, if this Voa wants to send a delegation or anything."

"Likely we will want to send delegations to all the relevant places."

"On pre-industrial planet - it's called Earth - I am named Timothy and am a member of a secret caste of magic people."

"The name similarity is uncanny. I'm assuming in all cases they're normal names for their backgrounds."

"Yep. Totally unremarkable until you line them up, and our parents when interrogated sometimes say they were torn between several names or picked it out of a book or settled on it as a compromise - my niblings are Katin and Ana and Elemi, Timothy's are Catherine and Joanna and Jeremy -"

"Bizarre."

"Isn't it just. You'll be the first to hear if we learn the answer - well, once it reaches me, anyway."

"I appreciate that."

And Anitami delegates go home.

Timothy goes first through the portal to Earth, invisible and warded and on a broomstick, planning to check what state the world is in.

Fredrick appears with a pop just outside the portal the instant Timothy goes through it. "Hi," he says, looking right at Timothy even though Timothy is definitely invisible. "It's okay, it's really me -"

"Expelliarmus." He lands.

He lets his wand go flying. "There was a saying in Gryffindor," he says, "that if you picked a fight without declaring yourself you had to kiss them or kill them. Please do kiss me."