Chapter Text
Regulus leaned deeper into the velvet booth, absently turning the stem of his wine glass between his fingers while rain crawled slowly down the tall windows behind Lucius. The entire place radiated the kind of expensive intellectual atmosphere university districts loved to cultivate: low amber lighting, dark wood, shelves of overpriced wine nobody under forty could actually afford and at least three separate tables occupied by academics loudly pretending they did not despise their colleagues’ publications. Somewhere in the background, soft jazz melted into the constant hum of conversation and clinking glassware.
Lucius, naturally, looked perfectly at home in it.
He occupied expensive spaces with the unconscious ease of someone raised around old money and older expectations, one arm resting lazily against the back of the booth while city light reflected gold against the signet ring on his hand. Everything about him carried the precise polished composure associated with men from powerful legal families; immaculate tailoring, controlled posture, the calm measured stillness of somebody who had spent most of his adult life inside conference rooms where a single misplaced sentence could cost millions. Even now, halfway through a second glass of wine, Lucius looked less like a man relaxing after work and more like a senior partner temporarily lowering his guard for strategic purposes.
Regulus, meanwhile, looked like someone who had not fully recovered from spending the last six hours trapped inside an economics department.
His tie sat slightly loosened beneath the collar of an otherwise expensive coat, dark curls still damp from rain while irritation lingered visibly around his mouth in the specific exhausted way common among people forced to spend entire workdays around financial projections and ambitious men explaining markets with religious conviction. Economics, Regulus privately believed, attracted two categories of people almost exclusively: individuals with superiority complexes and individuals emotionally damaged enough to mistake spreadsheets for personality traits. Unfortunately, his profession ensured prolonged exposure to both.
Which was particularly unfortunate because economics had never actually been the life Regulus intended for himself.
At seventeen he had imagined something quieter. Literature, maybe. History. Something academic in a way that allowed distance from people instead of constant strategic interaction with them. He had always preferred observation to performance, long evenings with books to networking dinners crowded by men discussing investment structures like military campaigns. But old money families rarely treated younger sons as individuals for very long, and the Black family especially had perfected the art of converting personal ambition into obligation.
Then Sirius had detonated the entire succession structure at twenty-one by publicly abandoning both the family business and every expectation attached to the Black name.
The scandal had lasted months.
Officially, Sirius now played guitar in a mildly successful alternative rock band called the Marauders alongside several equally unsuitable friends from school. Unofficially, according to Walburga Black, he had transformed himself into “a humiliating public experiment in wasted breeding.” Regulus still occasionally saw photographs online; Sirius half-drunk onstage somewhere in Berlin or Amsterdam, smiling with the reckless unconcern of someone who had escaped aristocratic expectations so thoroughly he no longer even recognized them.
The family, naturally, had never forgiven him for it. Which left Regulus inheriting responsibilities originally intended for someone else. And unlike Sirius, Regulus had never possessed the particular kind of recklessness necessary to burn his life down publicly and survive the aftermath smiling.
“He’s getting worse,” Black said at last, in the resigned tone of someone discussing a chronic medical condition rather than one of his oldest friends.
Lucius barely looked surprised. “In what sense?”
“In the sense that I am becoming genuinely concerned.” Regulus took another slow sip of wine before continuing, gaze drifting briefly toward the rain beyond the windows. “Severus is going to evolve into some kind of urban legend haunting the chemistry building. Or he will die before finishing his thesis. Possibly both simultaneously.”
That earned the faintest twitch at the corner of Lucius’s mouth. But before he could reply, Regulus was already continuing with the steady inevitability of someone who had clearly spent several weeks accumulating grievances.
“He’s stopped answering messages again. I asked him three days ago whether he was alive and he responded yesterday at two in the morning with the words ‘currently yes.’ No punctuation. Nothing else.”
“A reassuring level of emotional openness,” Lucius observed dryly.
He knew Severus personally, though mostly through Regulus. Their social circles overlapped occasionally in the strange insular ecosystem orbiting universities, law firms and research departments; the kind of highly educated professional circles where everyone knew everyone indirectly through conferences, institutional politics or mutual academic acquaintances. More recently, marriage had complicated the situation further. Lucius had married Narcissa Black barely a year earlier, which technically made him Regulus’s family now. Though in the distant, aristocratic, old-money way where nobody entirely understood the actual relation but everyone still attended the same winter galas and funerals.
Still the truth had to be said: Lucius had encountered dozens of brilliant difficult people throughout his life. Severus still managed to stand out.
“He once ignored seven consecutive calls because he was irritated with a spreadsheet. Or maybe graphs in Origin? Honestly, I stopped understanding halfway through the explanation. Apparently some axis alignment looked ‘structurally dishonest.’”
Lucius took a measured sip of wine, expression unreadable above the rim of the glass. “That does sound serious. Even I know Severus is perfectionist.”
“The terrifying thing is that nobody in his department even questions this behaviour anymore,” Regulus continued, leaning back deeper into the velvet booth with visible disbelief still lingering around his mouth. “Lase week I talked with a guy he shares an office with. Apparently if Severus disappears for seventy-two hours people just assume he’s become emotionally entangled with whatever he’s working on.”
Malfoy gave a quiet hum into his wine glass, long fingers resting elegantly against the stem. “I think STEM people do tend to form unhealthy attachments to their research, as I heard.”
“Lucius, he talks about failed experiments like personal betrayals.”
“That is because he is insane,” the blonde replied smoothly, as though discussing established scientific fact rather than a mutual acquaintance.
Black exhaled sharply through his nose, somewhere between irritation and reluctant affection. The truly unfortunate thing about Severus, Regulus reflected sometimes, was that prolonged exposure eventually made his behaviour start seeming reasonable through sheer repetition. One adjusted psychologically over time. Like developing resistance to a toxin.
“You know what he said to me last month?” Regulus asked finally, lowering his glass onto the table with quiet emphasis. “Completely seriously.”
Lucius already looked entertained. “I suspect I am about to regret asking, but please, tell me.”
“He said, and I quote, ‘human interaction becomes significantly more tolerable when minimized.’”
Malfoy nodded thoughtfully, expression remaining perfectly composed despite the statement itself.
“An alarming philosophy, but how fitting for your friend.”
“He said it while drinking coffee that looked capable of dissolving flooring materials,” Black continued darkly. “Honestly, I don’t know what he puts into those drinks anymore. At this point I suspect laboratory solvents.”
“To be fair,” Lucius replied lazily, “that is also very academia. Neither of us pursued doctoral research ourselves, but we orbit enough academic circles to recognize certain universal patterns regardless of discipline.”
His tone carried the calm detached amusement of somebody who had spent years observing university professionals from a safe legal distance and concluded that higher education gradually destabilized people in highly specific ways. Corporate law firms were ruthless, certainly, but academia possessed something uniquely concerning about it; entire departments populated by brilliant exhausted individuals surviving almost exclusively through caffeine, ego and intellectual spite.
The rain outside thickened slightly, blurring city lights into long distorted streaks of gold and white across the windows. Near the bar, a group of law students burst briefly into loud laughter before immediately lowering their voices again when several older professors looked over in collective irritation.
The blonde gave a quiet amused hum before setting the glass carefully back onto the table. Around them the restaurant continued pulsing with the low expensive energy unique to university districts after dark - exhausted academics pretending not to eavesdrop on one another’s conversations, junior associates performing intelligence too aggressively, doctoral students discussing institutional politics with the emotional intensity of revolutionary movements.
Regulus somehow hated places like this, even if it was his natural environment just like for Malfoy.
Not because they were unpleasant exactly. The wine was excellent, the lighting flattering and the company tolerable by unusually generous standards. But expensive academic spaces always carried the same underlying atmosphere of performance. Everyone constantly signalling intelligence, status, influence, future potential. Economics departments were particularly unbearable for it. Entire rooms filled with men speaking about markets in the tone medieval priests once reserved for scripture.
At least Severus never performed.
Socially catastrophic, yes. Aggressively difficult, certainly. But never artificial.
“The worst part,” Black continued after a moment, turning the stem of his glass slowly between his fingers again while light shifted softly across the table between them, “is that Severus genuinely doesn’t understand why people find him intimidating. He thinks glaring at someone in complete silence for thirty seconds is normal conversational behaviour.”
Malfoy gave a small sound of recognition into his wine, the corner of his mouth twitching faintly with what looked dangerously close to amusement.
“Ah,” he said smoothly after another measured sip. “Then he and Tom truly are alike.”
Regulus closed his eyes immediately, already sounding exhausted by the direction this conversation had taken.
“No.”
“What?” Malfoy asked with infuriating calm, leaning back slightly deeper into the velvet booth as though genuinely unaware he had just introduced a socially catastrophic idea into existence.
“Do not start,” Black muttered darkly, lowering his glass onto the table with the solemn caution of someone attempting to contain a future disaster before it fully formed.
“I merely observed a similarity,” the blonde replied innocently, which in Lucius Malfoy’s case usually meant he had already become intellectually entertained by the possibility of ruining several lives at once.
“That sentence has historically led to catastrophically bad decisions when spoken by you,” Black informed him darkly, opening his eyes again just long enough to point vaguely across the table in accusation. “Your observations last time finished with disaster.”
Lucius ignored that with effortless elegance, though the faint curve lingering around his mouth suggested he remembered the incident in question considerably more fondly than Regulus did. The blonde looked far too entertained now that Tom had entered the conversation.
Which, unfortunately, Regulus recognized immediately. Because Malfoy only acquired that particular expression when intellectually amused by ideas likely to inconvenience everyone around him.
He was much closer with Tom Riddle than Regulus had ever been. The two had met years earlier during Lucius’s law studies while Tom completed a second degree alongside political theory research, and somehow formed the kind of deeply concerning friendship only possible between highly ambitious men who respected intelligence more than morality. They understood each other in ways Regulus found vaguely alarming; both coldly analytical, socially strategic and entirely too capable of treating ordinary interpersonal conflict like competitive sport.
Lucius, Regulus sometimes suspected, liked Tom precisely because he was one of the only people capable of matching him conversationally without becoming either intimidated or exhausting. Maybe Tom was still a bit better, but the intellectual stimulation remained the same.
Unfortunately, Tom appeared to feel similarly.
Malfoy spoke about him with the same detached fascination wealthy collectors reserved for dangerous artifacts; admiration tempered carefully by the constant awareness that catastrophe remained permanently possible.
“Tom once spent an entire dinner,” Lucius said lightly after another sip of wine, “correcting a historian’s use of the phrase ‘inevitable political collapse.’”
Regulus groaned softly into one hand immediately, already looking spiritually exhausted by the concept alone.
“Oh, for god’s sake.”
“He considered the wording intellectually lazy.”
“Of course he did,” Regulus muttered into his wine with the exhausted resignation of somebody already fully capable of predicting Tom Riddle’s behaviour without ever voluntarily interacting with him for extended periods.
“He also described a political philosophy paper last semester as ‘structurally incoherent beneath decorative vocabulary.’”
Black looked up immediately.
“…In public?”
“Of course in public. Even more - at a conference,” Lucius replied calmly. “Next to its author.”
Regulus stared at him in open disbelief now, fingers still resting against his temple like the conversation itself was beginning to induce neurological strain.
“And people voluntarily continue inviting him to be a keynote speaker?”
Malfoy smiled faintly over the rim of his glass, the expression carrying equal parts amusement and inevitability.
“Because unfortunately,” Malfoy said smoothly, the faint amusement still lingering around his mouth, “he is usually correct.”
“That is honestly worse,” Regulus replied immediately, sounding genuinely disturbed by the concept.
Lucius only lifted one shoulder slightly in response, the movement elegant and unconcerned. Rain continued sliding slowly down the windows behind him while soft jazz drifted through the restaurant beneath the constant low hum of expensive conversation.
“He once ended a relationship,” the blonde added after another sip of wine, “because he referred to his field as ‘basically politics.’”
There was a long pause.
Then Black slowly lowered his glass onto the table with the careful controlled movement of somebody attempting to process information almost offensively stupid.
“And the guy said that,” he repeated carefully, staring at Lucius across the booth in disbelief, “to Tom Riddle. A political theorist.”
“Yes.”
Regulus blinked once.
“…That man should not be allowed near intellectual professionals without supervision.”
Lucius laughed quietly at that, the sound low and brief enough to disappear almost immediately beneath the music and rain.
“Tom apparently spent forty-five minutes explaining why political theory and electoral politics were fundamentally different disciplines.”
“Forty-five?” Black sounded genuinely alarmed now.
“He had examples.”
For a moment Black simply rubbed both hands slowly over his face, expensive watch glinting briefly beneath the warm amber restaurant lighting while rain continued tapping softly against the windows behind Lucius. Somewhere near the bar a group of graduate students had transitioned from intellectual discussion into the kind of emotionally charged argument only possible after two glasses of wine and prolonged exposure to academia.
Regulus watched them briefly with tired recognition.
University people truly did possess a unique ability to transform ordinary conversation into ideological warfare.
“Why,” he asked eventually, lowering his hands again with visible resignation, “are brilliant academics all like this?”
Lucius tilted his head slightly, considering the question with mock seriousness while idly turning his wine glass between elegant fingers.
“I believe prolonged exposure to higher education eventually removes the parts of the brain responsible for ordinary social interaction. Or empathy.”
Regulus snorted softly into his wine despite himself.
The truly horrifying thing was that Lucius was not entirely wrong.
Academia seemed uniquely capable of producing people simultaneously brilliant and catastrophically unequipped for normal human interaction. Years spent in highly specialized intellectual environments gradually distorted behaviour in strangely specific ways until entire departments began functioning according to social rules incomprehensible to the outside world. Economists treated disagreement like blood sport. Historians held century-long grudges over interpretations of dead kings. Philosophy professors communicated almost exclusively through arguments nobody else could follow. And scientists, from what Regulus had observed through Severus, eventually stopped recognizing basic self-preservation as a meaningful concept.
“Severus already behaved like this at seventeen, though,” Black admitted after another sip of wine, expression softening briefly with reluctant familiarity. “Academia merely refined the problem.”
Lucius gave a quiet hum of acknowledgment.
“He always sounded vaguely offended by the existence of other people,” the blonde observed calmly. “Or his own existence.”
“Exactly.” Regulus pointed vaguely across the table with visible vindication. “Most teenagers grow out of that stage. Severus turned it into a personality structure.”
That finally earned a more genuine flicker of amusement from Malfoy.
Lucius rested one arm lazily against the back of the booth, expression sharpening gradually the longer he considered the comparison now forming in his mind. Which, unfortunately, Regulus recognized immediately. The blonde only looked that entertained when approaching ideas likely to end catastrophically for everybody involved.
“You know what the truly concerning part is?” Lucius asked eventually, voice smoothing lower with the unmistakable calm of somebody arriving at an idea he personally found extremely entertaining.
Regulus immediately looked wary across the table. That tone never led anywhere healthy.
“What?”
Malfoy took another unhurried sip of wine before answering, expression remaining perfectly composed despite the increasingly catastrophic direction of his own thought process.
“They would absolutely understand each other.”
Black stared at him for approximately half a second before rejecting the concept outright on instinct alone.
“No, they wouldn’t.”
“Yes,” Lucius replied calmly, already sounding far too certain, “they would.”
“Lucius,” Regulus said flatly, setting his glass down with quiet emphasis, “Severus thinks political science exists primarily to justify rich people talking too much. And I’m sorry but you or Tom are like Wikipedia definition of justifying rich people talking too much.”
“And Tom,” the blonde countered smoothly, ignored Regulus words completely “believes most STEM researchers communicate like emotionally damaged machinery and they are not capable of having a conversation longer than two minutes if it is about anything else than their research.”
Regulus gestured immediately across the table with visible triumph.
“…See? They would hate each other.”
Unfortunately, even as he said it, Regulus could already hear the problem. Because hatred implied emotional disengagement. And neither Severus nor Tom seemed psychologically capable of remaining disengaged once intellectually provoked.
Lucius clearly noticed the same realization crossing Regulus’s face because the faint amusement around his mouth sharpened almost instantly.
“Oh no,” Black muttered quietly, already regretting the entire conversation.
“Yes,” Malfoy replied with terrifying serenity. “Exactly. Instead of hate they may become fascinated immediately.”
Regulus let out a tired sound somewhere between a laugh and a sigh, leaning back deeper into the velvet seat. Because the horrible thing, the genuinely deeply concerning thing, was that he could already see it happening with painful clarity. Two deeply isolated, catastrophically intelligent men with superiority complexes large enough to distort gravity itself meeting somewhere inside an overpriced university wine bar and realizing, probably within minutes, that they had finally encountered someone capable of keeping up with them intellectually. Not socially, certainly not emotionally, but cognitively, which for people like Severus and Tom was probably far more dangerous.
It sounded less like romance and more like the beginning of an internationally concerning event.
Regulus already had enough problems involving his family without voluntarily engineering new disasters between emotionally dysfunctional academics. Sirius alone generated enough chaos to satisfy the Black family quota for at least another decade. Narcissa continued pretending the family remained respectable despite being married to Lucius Malfoy, which required impressive psychological commitment. Their mother considered modern society a personal attack. And somewhere in the middle of all that, Regulus himself had somehow become the only relatively functional Black sibling entirely by accident.
He absolutely did not need Tom Riddle and Severus Snape discovering one another.
Unfortunately, he was also becoming increasingly unable to stop imagining it.
“You are thinking about introducing them,” Regulus said flatly, narrowing his eyes across the table with growing suspicion.
Lucius did not even bother denying it. The blonde merely adjusted the cuff of his sleeve slightly before replying with calm terrifying honesty, “I think it would be educational.”
“It would be apocalyptic,” Black corrected immediately.
“Those are not mutually exclusive outcomes.”
“Lucius.”
“Regulus.”
“You cannot introduce Severus Snape and Tom Riddle to each other like two highly aggressive intellectual cryptids and then act surprised when something terrible happens.”
That finally earned a more genuine laugh from Malfoy, brief but unmistakably real beneath the low murmur of the restaurant around them. Rain continued tapping steadily against the windows while soft jazz drifted somewhere overhead, but Regulus barely noticed either anymore because Lucius had acquired that particular expression again, the composed elegant look of a man becoming intellectually invested in a terrible idea.
Historically, this never ended well for anyone nearby.
“And yet,” Lucius said smoothly after another sip of wine, amusement still lingering faintly around his mouth, “I suspect watching them attempt normal conversation would be one of the greatest experiences of my adult life.”
Regulus stared at Lucius for several long seconds, increasingly convinced that somewhere within the last five minutes this conversation had crossed the invisible boundary separating “mildly concerning social observation” from “actively preventable disaster.”
Unfortunately, Malfoy appeared to have crossed that boundary with enthusiasm.
The older man looked entirely too composed, fingers resting lightly against the stem of his wine glass while rain and city light shimmered softly across the windows behind him. Regulus had known Lucius long enough to recognize the precise expression currently settling over his face: the calm elegant look of someone becoming intellectually entertained by an idea with catastrophic potential. It was the same expression Lucius acquired before high-risk legal manoeuvres, deeply unethical dinner conversations and several extremely questionable decisions involving old money social politics.
Historically, this never ended well for anyone else involved.
“You are taking a disturbing amount of pleasure in this,” Regulus said flatly.
Lucius did not even attempt denial. “I enjoy observing rare phenomena.”
“These are not rare phenomena,” Black replied immediately, gesturing vaguely with one hand toward the increasingly horrifying scenario forming between them. “These are two emotionally dysfunctional academics with severe superiority complexes.”
“Exactly.”
Regulus exhaled heavily through his nose, already sounding spiritually exhausted.
Somewhere to their left, a table of postgraduate law students had begun arguing about internship placements with the aggressive desperation of people who had not slept properly in months. One of them used the phrase “corporate litigation pipeline” with enough enthusiasm to suggest possible psychological damage. Another kept talking about billable hours in the same tone religious people reserved for moral virtue.
Regulus looked briefly horrified before returning his attention to the much more immediate problem sitting across from him in an expensive suit.
“You do understand,” he said carefully after a moment, lowering his voice slightly, “that Severus does not actually like people.”
Lucius lifted one shoulder in a graceful half-shrug. “Neither does Tom. But he’s much better at hiding that.”
“No,” Regulus corrected immediately. “But Severus dislikes people in a very specific way. He dislikes them… weirdly.”
Malfoy looked entertained already.
“Weirdly?”
“Yes. Severus dislikes people like someone permanently irritated by the existence of unnecessary noise. Tom dislikes people like a Roman senator preparing an execution.”
That finally earned a genuine laugh from Lucius, low and brief beneath the quiet jazz drifting through the restaurant.
“That,” the blonde admitted, “is remarkably accurate.”
“I’m serious,” Black continued, leaning forward slightly now with the solemn intensity of someone attempting to explain an approaching natural disaster. “Severus avoids departmental events because he says listening to academics speak casually causes him ‘neurological fatigue.’”
“And Tom,” Lucius replied smoothly, “attends departmental events exclusively to start intellectual fights.”
“Exactly.” Regulus pointed at him immediately. “That is exactly the problem.”
The jazz shifted lower somewhere in the background, brass and piano melting softly into the warm hum of the restaurant while rain continued tapping quietly against the glass. A server passed nearby carrying a tray of wine bottles, and Regulus watched him disappear into the crowd with the distant envy of someone wishing he had chosen a profession involving significantly fewer unstable intellectuals.
“The horrifying part,” Regulus admitted after a moment, turning his glass slowly between his fingers, “is that I can actually picture the conversation.”
Lucius’s attention sharpened immediately. That alone was deeply concerning.
“Go on,” Malfoy said smoothly, leaning back slightly deeper into the velvet booth with the calm interest of a man settling comfortably into the early stages of somebody else’s future disaster.
Regulus exhaled quietly through his nose before continuing, already sounding exhausted by the hypothetical despite being the one constructing it.
“Severus would arrive annoyed before the date even technically began because he considers blind dates, or dates overall, fundamentally humiliating. Not awkward. Humiliating. He thinks the entire concept resembles socially sanctioned psychological evaluation conducted under artificial lighting.”
Lucius nodded once with visible seriousness. “Reasonable.”
“No, not reasonable,” Black corrected immediately. “He genuinely believes introducing two strangers romantically is structurally absurd because attraction cannot be efficiently predicted through social compatibility metrics.”
The blonde looked entirely unsurprised by this information.
“That does sound very Severus.”
“He once explained to me for almost thirty uninterrupted minutes why most romantic compatibility is statistically unsustainable long-term because people mistake novelty for emotional connection.”
Lucius took another slow sip of wine. “How uplifting.”
“He was completely serious,” Regulus replied darkly. “I asked him whether he had considered becoming less psychologically alarming and he told me that was ‘an emotionally manipulative expectation.’”
That finally earned a quieter laugh from Malfoy. Outside, rain continued sliding down the tall restaurant windows while soft jazz drifted through the low hum of conversation around them. Somewhere near the back, two lecturers had begun arguing about faculty funding with the grim exhausted intensity of men preparing ideological warfare. Regulus ignored them completely. Because unfortunately he could now picture this entire scenario with horrifying clarity.
“He’d spend the first ten minutes silently judging Tom’s coat,” Black continued eventually, rubbing briefly at his temple like the mental image itself was beginning to exhaust him.
“To be fair,” Lucius replied calmly, “Tom’s coats are extremely judgment-worthy.”
“Tom owns winter clothing that somehow communicates institutional authority,” Regulus continued. “Not wealth exactly. Something worse. Every coat looks like he’s about to calmly explain why an entire political structure is fundamentally unsustainable.”
That finally earned a more genuine flicker of amusement from Malfoy.
“That,” Lucius said smoothly, “is because Tom dresses like someone perpetually expecting to be photographed beside very serious bookshelves.”
“He dresses like an editorial about authoritarian elegance.”
“And yet somehow impeccably tailored.”
“That honestly makes it worse.”
Because it did.
Tom possessed the deeply irritating ability to look composed in ways that appeared almost historically curated. Everything fit perfectly. Dark wool coats. Expensive gloves. Structured collars. Even his scarves somehow looked intellectually condescending. Regulus had once watched three postgraduate students become visibly nervous because Tom entered a faculty dinner wearing black cashmere and looking mildly disappointed in the architecture.
Meanwhile Severus dressed like someone permanently engaged in hostile negotiations with physical existence itself. Nothing he owned appeared intentionally selected beyond basic functional necessity. Black coats. Dark sweaters. Cheap charcoal shirts purchased, Regulus strongly suspected, in identical batches to eliminate unnecessary decision-making. Severus once admitted, with complete sincerity, that owning multiple versions of the same clothing reduced “avoidable cognitive irritation,” which Regulus had privately categorized as one of the most psychologically revealing statements ever spoken aloud by another human being.
The man approached personal appearance the way exhausted researchers approached laboratory maintenance: minimally, reluctantly and only to the extent required for continued professional survival.
Tom, meanwhile, looked curated down to the level of cufflinks. Severus looked like he considered fabric an administrative burden imposed unfairly upon humanity.
Their visual contrast alone would probably destabilize nearby observers.
“Severus would hate him immediately on aesthetic principles,” Regulus muttered.
“No,” Lucius corrected softly, already far too entertained again. “Severus would decide Tom looks pretentious. Which for Severus is significantly more dangerous.”
Black stared at him over the rim of his wine glass for several long seconds.
Because unfortunately that was true.
Severus did not actually react strongly to people he merely disliked. Ordinary arrogance bored him. Conventional academic vanity irritated him briefly at most. The truly catastrophic reactions only occurred when someone managed to provoke genuine intellectual engagement beneath the annoyance.
And Riddle absolutely would.
Severus would spend the entire evening internally dissecting everything about him. The measured way he spoke. The deliberate posture. The absurdly controlled facial expressions. The expensive coat. The political vocabulary. Every calm elegant sentence Tom produced would sound, to Severus, like an invitation to ideological violence.
Which meant he would become interested.
God help everyone involved.
“Oh god,” Black said quietly. “You’re right.”
“I usually am.”
“That was not an invitation for narcissism, Lucius.”
“And yet the opportunity presented itself naturally.”
Regulus closed his eyes briefly again, visibly reconsidering several life decisions simultaneously. Then he snorted despite himself before continuing.
“Then Tom would say something unbearably pretentious within the first five minutes,” Regulus continued, already sounding tired by the hypothetical conversation alone. “Not intentionally, which somehow makes it worse. He’d say something like-”
Black paused briefly, lowering his voice into a colder, smoother imitation clearly designed to mock Tom specifically.
“‘Intellectual isolation is the inevitable consequence of competence.’”
Lucius tilted his head thoughtfully.
“That does sound very him,” the blonde admitted after a moment. “Although honestly I think the phrasing is slightly too restrained.”
Regulus looked horrified. “You see? This is exactly what I mean. The man speaks like every sentence has undergone editorial review before leaving his mouth.”
“To be fair,” Malfoy replied calmly, “Tom does revise spoken arguments mentally while other people are still talking.”
“That is not a personality trait. That is neurological warfare.”
The rain outside had thickened now into a steady silver blur across the windows, city lights melting into distorted ribbons behind the glass while the restaurant grew gradually louder around them. Several tables nearby had drifted from professional conversation into the slightly slurred intellectual combat typical of academics two drinks beyond self-awareness.
Regulus barely noticed anymore.
Unfortunately, the imaginary dinner between Severus Snape and Tom Riddle had now become vividly cinematic inside his head.
“And Severus,” Black continued darkly, “would immediately decide Tom was completely insufferable.”
“Yes,” Lucius agreed with alarming calm.
“At which point,” Regulus said, already sounding resigned to catastrophe, “he would start arguing.”
“Mm.”
“He’d become sarcastic.”
“Certainly.”
“He’d start correcting Tom’s wording purely out of spite.”
“And Tom,” Lucius added smoothly, clearly enjoying himself far too much now, “would become fascinated immediately.”
Regulus pointed at him across the table at once.
“Exactly. That is exactly the problem.”
Because that was the thing about Tom. Most people reacted to him in one of two ways: intimidation or attraction. Sometimes both simultaneously, which generally produced disastrous results. Tom possessed the kind of charisma that functioned less through warmth and more through overwhelming certainty. He entered rooms the way certain people entered negotiations: already expecting control. Coldly articulate, academically ruthless and entirely too aware of his own intelligence, he moved through political and university spaces with the terrifying composure of somebody who had not seriously doubted himself since adolescence.
And unfortunately, he knew exactly what that did to people.
Students admired him too easily. Colleagues resented him too predictably. Journalists found him compelling despite themselves. Even older professors who disliked him still listened when he spoke, which Tom appeared to regard as the natural order of the universe.
Lucius had once described him, not entirely jokingly, as “structurally persuasive.”
Regulus personally found that horrifying.
Unfortunately for everyone involved, Severus Snape was almost entirely immune to that kind of charisma. Or any charisma, honestly.
If anything, he found it irritating.
The more socially controlled someone appeared, the more aggressively Severus seemed compelled to identify flaws beneath the performance. Tom’s elegance, the measured voice, the impossible self-possession, all of it would immediately trigger the specific kind of intellectual hostility Severus reserved for people he suspected of being performative.
Which meant, naturally, that Tom would become interested almost immediately.
Because Severus was one of the only people likely to look directly at Tom Riddle and react not with fascination or intimidation but with visible annoyance.
“Severus would absolutely tell him to shut up at least once,” Regulus muttered eventually, sounding less concerned about the possibility itself than by how inevitable it felt already.
Lucius looked genuinely delighted by the image.
“Oh, Tom would love that.”
“That,” Black replied flatly, “is because Tom is psychopath, sociopath and fucking maniac.”
“No,” Malfoy corrected. “Tom is intellectually under-stimulated. There’s a difference.”
“I sincerely doubt there is.”
The blonde only smiled faintly into his glass, which Regulus unfortunately recognized as confirmation rather than disagreement.
“He publicly humiliated a senior professor because the man misquoted Machiavelli,” Regulus continued darkly, still visibly offended on behalf of a stranger he had never even met.
Lucius, meanwhile, remained infuriatingly composed.
“He corrected an error.”
“That is not how normal people describe public intellectual assassination.”
The blonde only lifted one shoulder slightly in response, entirely unmoved by the distinction.
Regulus leaned forward now, increasingly animated by the sheer psychological damage of this conversation.
“He made the poor man forget his own argument halfway through the panel.”
Lucius took another slow sip of wine before answering with complete serenity, “A memorable educational experience.”
Black stared at him across the table in silence for several long seconds.
Rain continued sliding down the restaurant windows behind Lucius while warm amber light reflected softly across polished wood and expensive glassware. Around them conversations rose and fell beneath low jazz, academics and law students performing intelligence in slightly different dialects of exhaustion.
Regulus suddenly felt surrounded.
“You people,” he said at last with exhausted disbelief, “are the reason normal students are afraid to speak during seminars.”
“Fear encourages preparation,” Malfoy replied smoothly.
“That,” Regulus informed him flatly, “is genuinely evil.”
Lucius only smiled.
Which, unfortunately, confirmed everything.
The truly concerning thing about men like Lucius and Tom was that neither considered intellectual intimidation morally questionable if the argument itself remained correct. They approached discussion the way litigators approached courtroom strategy or political theorists approached ideological conflict: precision mattered more than comfort. Weak reasoning deserved dismantling. Poor preparation invited consequences.
Regulus, despite spending years around economists, still occasionally found this mindset deeply alarming.
“You realize,” he continued after a moment, “that most people experience conversation as a socially cooperative activity.”
“And most people,” Lucius replied calmly, “are rarely saying anything worth remembering.”
“That may be the bleakest thing you’ve said all evening.”
“It’s also statistically defensible.”
Black closed his eyes briefly again.
“God. You really are friends with Tom.”
For a moment they sat quietly while the storm outside thickened, rain striking harder now against the windows. The restaurant had grown warmer as the evening deepened, conversation louder and looser beneath the low jazz. Regulus loosened the sleeves of his coat slightly before leaning forward again, lowering his voice with the solemn gravity of someone discussing classified information.
“You know what Severus did last winter?” Regulus asked eventually, already sounding exhausted by the memory itself while turning his glass slowly between his fingers.
Lucius looked immediately interested. “Something concerning?”
Black gave him a flat look. “The fact that this question is necessary says troubling things about both of you.”
Malfoy only smiled faintly into his wine.
Regulus exhaled quietly before continuing. “He got into an argument with a biophysicist during some interdisciplinary research event because the man described chemistry as ‘basically applied physics with prettier glassware.’”
Lucius blinked once, visibly unsurprised by how catastrophically specific the conflict already sounded.
“Oh no.”
“Oh yes,” Regulus replied darkly. “Apparently Severus considered this an unforgivable intellectual offense. The argument lasted so long he missed his train home because he was still explaining, in increasing detail, why physicists should not be allowed to speak confidently about molecular systems they fundamentally did not understand.”
A faint smile appeared immediately around Malfoy’s mouth.
“That,” he admitted after another sip of wine, “does sound extremely Severus.”
“That’s what worries me,” Regulus admitted eventually, quieter now beneath the soft jazz and rain. “Tom would actually enjoy this behaviour.”
“Of course he would,” Lucius replied smoothly, as though the conclusion itself was obvious. “Tom thinks intellectual conflict is a form of intimacy.”
For a moment neither of them spoke after that.
Not because the statement sounded shocking.
Because it sounded correct.
Rain continued sliding slowly down the restaurant windows while conversation blurred softly around them, academics and law students dissolving into background noise beneath low amber light and expensive wine. Somewhere nearby someone laughed too loudly at something probably unfunny. Glass touched glass. A waiter crossed the room carrying another bottle toward a table of exhausted lecturers arguing about university funding.
Regulus barely noticed any of it anymore.
He looked slowly up from his glass instead, expression flattening with growing realization.
“…That may be the bleakest thing you’ve said tonight.”
Lucius tilted his head slightly. “And inaccurate?”
Again, Black found himself unable to answer immediately.
Because Severus was exactly the same.
That was the truly catastrophic part.
Severus argued hardest with people he respected. He became sharper, faster, more intensely alive when intellectually engaged. Most people experienced his attention as aggression because, admittedly, it often sounded aggressive. Severus interrupted when interested. Became more sarcastic when emotionally invested. More precise. More relentless. He approached intellectual engagement with the same intensity other people reserved for emotional vulnerability.
Most normal humans found this unbearable.
Tom, Regulus suspected with growing horror, would probably interpret it as flirting.
Or worse, seduction.
And the truly alarming thing was that he would probably be correct.
Regulus knew enough about Tom Riddle’s personal life to recognize the pattern. Tom had relationships occasionally, technically speaking, but never anything stable. Never anything lasting. Intelligent people interested him briefly, attractive people distracted him briefly, ambitious people entertained him briefly, but eventually everyone became predictable to him. Too emotionally obvious. Too easy to impress. Too eager for approval.
Severus, meanwhile, approached human attachment like a suspicious animal encountering a trap.
Which meant Tom would become obsessed almost immediately.
“Oh, for god’s sake,” Regulus muttered quietly, mostly to himself now. “This is a terrible idea.”
Lucius smiled into his wine with terrifying calm.
“Yes,” he agreed softly. “I think it might be.”
And then, unfortunately for everyone involved, they started planning.