flip the page (and you'll find me)

also found on ivysaturn's AO3

Harry Potter's appetite is wildly erratic. Sometimes he will not eat for days and sometimes he binges for weeks.

He asks his fiance -- an arranged marriage, thanks mom and dad -- if she thinks he is beautiful and when she says yes he feels not satisfaction but anger. I am not supposed to be beautiful to you. I am not supposed to be ANYTHING to you.

His fiance, Luna Lovegood, does not understand him. It is not for lack of trying. She tries to understand him, tries to love him, be his friend, be his future wife, but Harry Potter does not do romantic love and since he cannot love her he decides to hate her.

Harry Potter is also a writer. Short stories and novellas and sometimes poems are his staple but this year -- his fifth year, the year of the Triwizard Tournament -- he wants to write a book.

But most days he is preoccupied. He is starving or binging or doing something in between and he thinks about it so much he has no time to think about anything else. When he does write he notes with no small amount of dissatisfaction that it is getting harder and harder to do so.

He finds a journal. It's a diary, really, previously belonging to one Tom Riddle and Harry decides it's his now. He needs a place to store his thoughts lest they overflow and drown him in his slumber.

He writes about his eating disorder. He writes about his bride to be. He storyboards for his novel.

The book writes back.

The owner of the diary takes the form of a ghost and starts trailing him, leaving the diary partly by means Harry has no idea of. "Love, Harry. There are so many different kinds of it. You define love by romance. That holds you back."

So Tom Riddle teaches him that platonic love is a thing too. He also teaches him that if you do not like something it is better to destroy it rather than yourself.

"Burn the tournament to the ground if you hate it so much. Burn the whole world, Harry."

Cue; Death, arson, and the Trifecta War.