Regulus Black Is Not Spiraling
Regulus Black wasn’t thinking about the smiling stranger from the café.
Absolutely not.
He was thinking about important things. Like the fact that his neighbor’s dog was still barking every night at 2 a.m. Or the new edition of his poetry book was arriving two days late. Or how his brother hadn’t texted him back since Tuesday, probably because he was busy doing something loud, illegal, or both.
But he was definitely not thinking about the man with the floppy hair and the dumb glasses who had asked him, with such open, hopeful sincerity, whether he liked that stupid book.
(He did think about how the man’s smile had faltered just slightly when he said “not really.” Which was fine. Regulus wasn’t emotionally irresponsible enough to care about some stranger’s wounded literary pride.)
He was, however, annoyed. Annoyed because he’d spent the last two days reading the rest of the book out of pure spite.
Spite-reading was a dangerous game, but Regulus was a professional. It started with a single line—"It couldn’t end this way, not with the salt wind still clinging to his bones." Ridiculous. Melodramatic. Annoyingly... compelling.
He didn’t like it, per se. But he also didn’t stop.
And now he had thoughts. Opinions. The kind you only got when a book really wormed its way under your skin. It was irritating. He didn’t even know why he’d finished it. He wasn’t invested in the main character’s redemption arc.
He wasn’t.
He just thought maybe the author had almost done something brilliant. If he’d just stopped trying so hard to be poetic and let the story breathe—
Regulus groaned and let his forehead fall onto the table with a thump. He was back at the café. Same table. Same drink. Same everything. Except now, he was haunted by a book and the ghost of some stranger’s dumb dimples.
“You alright there?” the barista asked, walking by with a raised brow.
“Fine,” Regulus muttered.
“You looked like you were communing with the furniture.”
Regulus didn’t dignify that with a response. Instead, he cracked open his notebook—something between a journal and a dumping ground for overachieving thoughts—and scribbled: "Characters are not personalities. Brooding isn’t depth. No one needs this much fog.”
Then, beneath it: "But the pacing improved. Chapter 12 actually hit. Also, the boat metaphor worked better than it should have.”
He stared at the second note, crossed it out violently, then rewrote it smaller, like that would make it less real. And then—because apparently, today was a day for personal failure—he Googled the author.
J.F Potter, said the website. Reclusive. Young. Mysterious. No photos. No interviews. Only one published novel, with a cult following and enough literary hot takes to fuel several very aggressive book clubs.
Regulus scoffed. Of course the man didn’t use a real name. Probably thought it was more artistic.
His phone buzzed with a message from Barty:
>Are we still on for dinner or did you run off with a barista again?
Regulus sighed, typing back:
> I do not fraternize with baristas.
> You fraternize with literary men who loiter and ask invasive questions about your reading habits.
> That happened once.
> And now you’re re-reading the book you insulted.
Regulus turned his phone face down, stared out the window, and took a slow sip of his coffee like it could wash the whole morning out of his head.
Unfortunately, it couldn’t.
Worse, he had the distinct feeling that this wasn’t over. The way the stranger had looked at him; interested, amused, almost fond—like he couldn’t wait to hear more of Regulus’s very harsh, very correct opinions.
Regulus sighed again and flipped back to the first page of the book. Maybe he'd annotate it. Just to keep track of the flaws. For personal satisfaction. Not because he wanted to be ready if that stranger ever showed up again and asked for round two.
Definitely not because of that.