#so people can micromanage what they want to know about sjflsghkfjk

[birlwrites]

[spoilers] the noble and anciente house of rosier<3

as requested on ao3 by people who wanted spoilers afhslghsljfhgsjkdhfj - i'll be tagging this type of post as 'atfhv spoilers' so you can block (or search for) these posts as desired!

if you do NOT want spoilers about what's going on with evan, then do not click the read more. i'm not going to fully unpack it because i do want to leave some things to be discovered, but it's going to be a LOT of information way before you'll find it out in the story

okay, with that disclaimer, hERE WE GOOOOOOOO

okay SO. this might not make sense if you haven't read chapter 27 of ttdl. i mentioned in the comments that i think now people have enough information to potentially call evan out on a very specific lie, which was......... a true but slightly misleading statement

so here's the thing: that lie is not a lie evan ever told us, because regulus told it for him way back in chapter 6:

The Rosiers are one of very few Dark families that claim not to have a family magic. Evan insists that for them, practicing Dark Arts is really more about being friends with the right people. He attends every meeting of Regulus's Dark Arts study group and spends the whole time chatting with the other members instead of working on anything. The other Dark families are collectively skeptical about whether the Rosiers really don't have a specialty or whether they're just pretending, because they're one of the oldest families in the network—they've had generations upon generations in which they could have developed a family magic. And maybe there is a specialty. But as far as Regulus knows for sure, Evan's practice of Dark Arts extends only to flipping through Regulus's books sometimes and pointing out spells with funny names.

now, regulus *is* aware that this might not be true, but frankly, he doesn't devote a lot of mental energy to it, because he has a lot of other shit going on and evan just doesn't seem to. care that much? about practicing dark arts? (which renders his interest in joining reg's side a little unexpected, hmm??)

let's get into the lie. as you've probably guessed by now, it's about the rosier family specialty, which absolutely does exist and has been cultivated for centuries to be as subtle as possible, much like the family image. evan's used it before - evan uses it a LOT, actually, although there are a lot of details about its use that i'm not going to get into on this post (feel free to ask if you want the whole rundown on how it works but this post is really about evan not the family magic).

but the first time evan uses it really blatantly in front of regulus is in chapter 27, and here it is:

He trails a hand along one row of books like he's looking for something, speaking faux-absentmindedly, but it doesn't stop almost every person in earshot from looking at least vaguely interested. Some people even blatantly look up from what they're doing. Evan has distinctly become the center of attention, without even needing to talk particularly loudly.

aaaaaaaand some more:

Regulus is interested despite himself—he knows Evan is making all of this up, and yet something about how he's saying it makes Regulus want to know more, as if this is real information that Evan is sharing with him.

regulus is interested despite himself. he KNOWS it's fake, but the magic evan is using is catching regulus along with everyone else in the room. regulus just doesn't notice it happening. (this is a little bit of an unusual use for the rosier specialty - it's not out of the ordinary, but it's very blatant compared to how they normally use it)

as for what type of magic it is....... you know how regulus is good at runes because he learned them very young for the black specialty? yeah<33

okay now go reread chapter 12 and take a look at how long it takes for regulus to start telling evan things