Disclaimer: The year is 1899. A young aspiring writer journey's to the allure of Paris, a true Bohemian paradise, where he hopes to become a famous writer. Once there he seizes the oppurutnity of a life-time at the possibility of writing a play for Paris' most exotic nightclub, The Moulin Rouge. Once he enters the owners inner circle he meets the exotic and alluring Ginerva, a fiery courtesean and star of the Moulin Rouge. In order to win the owner, Arthur Weasley, over he must take advantage of Ginerva's passionate advances. However another man is promised to her bed. The Duke and his influental heir are in town and looking for suitable investments when Arthur suggests they invest in Ginerva, the star of the show and aspiring actress. To do so, Draco [the heir] must woo her. But what happens when he finds her in the arms of another man? What happens if it is not Ginerva he feels jealous about? What happens when people fall in love with someone they're not supposed to? A twisted web of love, lies and deception. Welcome, to the Moulin Rouge.

NOTE:To construct this story I am using the help of the transcript from the movie 'Moulin Rouge'. Sadly, I do not own it nor do I own the characters of Harry Potter. The majority of the dialogue to begin with is recognisable from the movie [mainly the first one or two chapter] however in later chapters my own dialogue will be in there as well.

Moulin Rouge

There Was a Boy

Paris 1899

There was a boy ... A very strange -enchanted boy ... they say he wondered very far ... very far ... Over land and sea ... A little shy ... And sad of eye ... But very wise -was he ... And then one day -a magic day he passed my way ... And while he spoke of many things -fools and kings ... this he said to me ...

The night was black and cool against his skin. The stale scent of sweat and grime and alcohol hung low and heavy in the evening air. The whispering of the cool breeze fluttered the net curtains that hung like filthy cobwebs over the gaping holes that were the windows of his humble little flat. The floorboards felt harsh and brutally rough on the soles of his feet as he shifted them underneath him. He probably had a few splinters already. He could not bring himself to care. A pigeon fluttered onto the windowsill and cooed as it's head bobbed from side-to-side. There was a chill running over the fine hairs on his arms but he didn't want to move to wrap the sheets around him. He couldn't bring himself to move over to the bed.

The bed -where they had slept together -made love to one another -where he had recited plays, songs and poetry to the one he loved. Tears once again began to cloud his eyes, hot and heavy and raw with emotion as they etched wet trails down his face. The fluttering of wings drew his attention up to the window. The moon shone brightly and hung low in the sky behind the Eiffle Tower. The stars twinkled, one bright than all the rest. Beneath the window sill lay his beloved type-writer -but it was so much more than any mere object. It had once gleamed so beautifully, brand new with bright brass keys.

He tilted his head back and swallowed past the heavy lump that was nestled at the back of his throat. He sniffed as another tear fell through his black lashes. It ran down his neck, where before hot lips had been devastatingly familiar, and now -it was cold.

He stood stiffly from the floor, his muscles heavy and numb from his foetal position. His tailbone ached from where he had been sitting for a long period of time on roughened wooden floorboards. He was a danger to himself at this point, and he was fully aware of that fact. He felt empty, nothing was willing him to live any longer. His life was desolate. He stretch out his arms, his legs, his back, and ran both of his hands through his ruffled hair that hung thickly with grease against his forehead. His skin felt as though it had layers of dirt upon it. It was disgusting but he could not even think about considering a bath -for reasons alone he could not fathom.

The type writer gleamed in the moonlight -beckoning him.

A wary sigh hissed through his lips. He was really thirsty, but as he looked at all the empty absinthe bottles lying around he knew that there wasn't not a drop to drink in his home-like prison. He fixed his gaze upon the gleaming body of the typewriter -still shiny underneath a layer or two of dust -and ran his finger along one side. Still shiny black underneath. Any other day -month -year -time even, he would have smiled at the gleam of polished black. But today -he couldn't.

It was almost as though he had forgotten how to smile, and how to laugh. He hadn't forgotten how to cry. Oh, the bitter sweetness of it all. He hung his head, the burning familiarity of loneliness and tragedy welling up within his derailed mind. He turned gleaming, accusing eyes on the type-writer -the only thing that remained of a broken promise. He was a broken man with a hundred broken promises. Where was his redemption? Where was his salvation?

He felt to lost.

He sat himself down before the type-writer, the seat creaked underneath his light weight and he smoothed his fingertips lightly over the worn brass keys. Hello old friend, were the first words that popped into his head as his lip twitched. He didn't smile, though. He had forgotten how to smile. His fingertips trembled as he touched the keys -it had been so long since he had written anything. All of a sudden a familiar sensation ignited within his hands -the itch to write, to type, to allow his fingers to create a world he had lost in his dreams. And so he typed.

THE GREATEST THING YOU'LL EVER LEARN
IS JUST TO LOVE AND BE LOVED IN RETURN

As soon as that quote -the quote that had intoxciated thousands and ended quite a few lives -was written, his fingers continued on their morbid journey, dropping the first few bread-crumbs of a long and twisted tale.

The Moulin Rouge. A nightclub. A dance hall and a bordello ruled over by Arthur Weasley. A kingdom of night-time pleasures, where the rich and powerful came to play with the young and beautiful creatures of the underworld. The most beautiful of all these creatures ... was the woman I was meant to have loved. Ginvera. A courtesan, she sold her love to men. They called her 'the sparkling diamond', and she was the star -the of the Moulin Rouge.

He pressed his left hand roughly against his forehead in a frustrated bid to relive the memories that were bubbling up to the surface of his head. The emotion was welling up in his throat and he knew he would be unable to stop the sounds from escaping. And so one by one quiet, strangled sobs began to rip themselves from his throat and puncture through the silent gloom. He voice, though he was crying, sounded discintly foreign to his own ears. He hadn't spoken for a long time. He returned his gaze to the barely written on page and sighed. Time was escaping him yet again. He ran a grimy hand down his face, inhaled the musty scent, and flexed his fingers over the keys once again -preparing to type.

The man I loved ... is ...

He diverts his gaze, unable to watch the word be printed out into black-and-white. For as soon as it was printed, it would be true. And he could not face that reality. Not yet. Could he? He cracked his watery eyes open and peered outt rhough the window, his fingers hovering over the terminak brass keys. The broken moulin rouge stared back at him, a ghostly shadow before the alluring white moon.

And so he typed.

... dead.

He turned his unwilluing gaze back to the typewriter, staring at the one word that was the cause of everything, including his broken promise. He felt his body begin to tremble, already he could feel himself succumbing to his emotions. His head was beginning to feel dizzy with the heat of his turmoil and the aggression with which he tried to fence the bursts of emotion off. He knew it was hopeless. He had isolated himself from everyone that he loved and who had helped him progress into the stage of grief he was in now. They had helped him -and he had refused them entrance into his life.

That was about to change. Inhaling deeply, he began trying to soothe his emotions. He resumed typing.

I first came to Paris.. one year ago. It was 1898, the summer of love. I knew nothing of the Moulin Rouge, Arthur Weasley, or Ginerva. The world had been swept up in bohemian revolution, and I had traveled from London to be a part of it. On the hill near Paris was the village of Montmartre.

He could still see himself now, as he typed the words. He had stepped off of the London train in the heart of Paris and had been enthralled by the occupants of the city; the smell of baked baguettes, and fresh meats and cheeses as he strolled through the Bohemian paradise. It was what he had dreamt of what he had craved. Everything was exactly what he had needed, freedom, solitude, a passion for writing and the will to write it all down. His head and been full of fantasy and he had been plagued by his militant father's stern attitude towards Paris, and writing poetry and stories filled with love. He had sneered when down at him when he'd announced he was to depart to France for an adventure into the romantic era of his life. His father had merely sneered at him and proclaimed that Paris was, "A village of sin!"

He hadn't cared. He turned his back on his father, finally taking the journey he had dreamt his whole life of taking. He had ventured to Paris and built his nest in the center of the bohemian world. Musicians, painters, writers.. They were known as 'the children of the revolution'. Yes, he had come to live a penniless existence. He had come to write about truth, beauty, freedom and that which he believed in above all things- love.

'Always this ridiculous obsession with love!' He froze, hands poised over the keys, a cold droplet of sweat ran an icy trail down the side of his hot face. He scoffed and rolled his eyes. That gruff voice of his father was enough to make him realise that he had been a fool to chase of after -especially when he had been a virgin in the matter. No prior experiance had tainted him when he had first arrived in Paris.

He shifted in the stiff-backed chair, the old wood creaking as he did so. He slid the sheet of paper out of his type writer and steadily, with experiance fingers, inserted another sheet in it's place. Upon the blank canvas the words came easily to his talented hands, spinning the first threads of the web he was creating.

There was only one problem- I'd never been in love! Luckily, right at that moment, an unconscious Italian fell through my roof.

He snorted, practically visualising how his roof had caved in. He glanced up at where the hole still remained in his cieling, light music twinkling down as they all drunk themselves silly upstairs. They hadn't invited him. He would not have joined them even if they had. He twisted his lip bitterly. He did miss them, deep down underneath the brutally emotionless shell he had created for himself. But he wasn't ready. He could not face it all. Not yet. A trilling laugh resounded from the room above his and he felt the corner of his mouth twicth a fraction. He would never forget that laugh -the laugh of Colin Creevey an incredibly small man forever armed with a camera. He felt his head grow light as he recalled the first time he had met Colin. It was right after the unconscious Italian, who was a dark-skinned boy by the name of Blaise Zabini, had fallen through his cieling and was hanging my a rope of tangled bedclothes. He hastened to type the most bizarre sentence of his life.

He was quickly joined by dwarf dressed as a nun.

He flinched as he remember Colin slamming his apartment door open and snapping a photo of him at his type writer, much like he was now, and then a few picture's of the Unconscious Italian. He smiled as he relieved the memory ...

Colin placed the camera back down to rest on his small belly and grinned cheesily up at him, extending a hand and twirling a worn cane in his free hand, "how do you do good sir, my name is Colin Marie Raymond Creevey-Lautrec Monfa"

Harry, still stunned beyond himself to fully comphrehend what the small man was saying, opened his locked jaw in bewilderment, "w-what?"

Colin waved his question away with a flick of his cane and walked over to the unconscious man hanging from the cieling by his foot. He checked his pulse, and held a small pocket-mirror over his mouth and nose to check as to whether he was still breathing normally. He was still alive, clearly, as Colin continued to prattle on, "I'm so terribly sorry about all of this. We were just upstairs rehearsing a play!"

He was too dumfounded at that moment in his short five-minute stay in his apartment that all he could do was repeat his previous, "what?"

'A play' he typed with vigour, trying to recapture his previous admiration for such an enthusiastic and strange occurance in the day, 'something very modern called Spectacular, Spectacular' According to Colin, the play was supposed to be set in Switzerland and the Unconscious Italian was supposed to have the lead role, however, he apparently suffered from a strange sickness called narcolepsy.

'Perfectly fine one moment and then suddenly *snore* Unconscious the next' was the way that Colin had phrased it in his hyperactive voice. Perhaps he was always hyper, or on some form of medication that was keeping him wired enough to talk at rabbit-hopping speed. He could feel himself loosing grip on his mind whilst he wrote, reliving the moments as he wrote them down ...

A voice from above drew Harry and Colin's attention to a group of faces peering down through the hole in the cieling, a bald man with a head that looked like a polished egg, an elderly man with a long whispy white beard, and a man? ... woman? ... person, with ludicrous make-up upon their face and a strange outfit on. It was this ... person ... who had spoken. "How is he?" one glance towards the still unconscious man swinging from nothing but thin bedsheets caused an exasperated sigh from the person's mouth. "Wonderful. JUST wonderful! Now that the narcoleptic Argentinean is now unconscious. Therefore the scenario will not be finished in time to present to the financier tomorrow" the person's voice was a dramatic, high-pitched drawl that sounded too strange to his ears.

The bald man nodded vigorously, allowing his perfectly circular rose-tinted glasses to bounce upon his nose, "he's right, Colin, I still have to finish the music"

All Colin did was grin wildly, clearly a plan had formed within his warped little mind as he annouced to the crew, "find someone to read the part!"

The man-woman-person who he later found out was named 'Audrey' for whatever reason, folded their arms across their chest and snorted sarcastically, "where in heavens name are we going to find someone to read the part of a young, sensitive Swiss poet-goatherder?"

He snorted as he recalled how wide Colin's grin had become when he had looked up at him that day. 'Before I knew it, I was upstairs, standing in for the unconscious Italian'

There was only one word that Harry could describe Colin's singing. Mind-numbing. It was technically one word as it was hyphenated. He had checked. He could not help but cringe as the theremin trilled a strange mystical tune out, along to the clinking of glasses. All of this accompanied by Colin's singing, made his head scream in agony. Audrey had been thinking along the same lines in regards to the instrumental droning that was taken place, and was quick to hush the crest-fallen musician. "Oh, stop stop! Stop, stop, stop, stop! Stop that insufferable droning. It's drowning out my words. Can't we just stick to a little decorative piano?"

There had been a chasm of artistic differences over Audrey's lyrics and the musicians, Flitwick's songs. They intelligent minds had collided haphazardly as they tried to sort out the mess. The fight had amused him at the time, and would so now, if he could even remember how to smile let alone laugh and feel amused.

The doctor, who was also known as Dumbledore, or Albus to those who had known him longer, was vague and rather quite mad. He had stroked his beard whilst mumbling in his aged voice, "I don't think a nun would say that about a hill"

Flitwick, too, was frowning in thought. "What if he sings, 'The hills are vital, intoning the descant'?"

Colin snorted at this and then flapped his hands around, "no, no. The hills quake and shake-"

Dumbledore trembled as he spoke, "No, no, no, no. The hills-"

A person bolted upright in the bed and growled in a sensualy raspy voice, "the hills are incarnate with symphonic melodies!" as soon as he had woken up, Blaise the Italian and fallen unconscious once again onto the tangled mass of sheets upon the bed. A bickering war ensues, each debating on ideas for what the poetic-goatherd would say if he were perched atop a hill. None of the ideas were fitting. Harry, now strapped in the attire of what everyone assumed a poet-goatherder would wear, was atop a ladder as he tried to project his idea to the group. They had all bowed their heads into a circle and could not even see him when he raised his voice and wove his arms over his head.

Sighing he did the only thing that he could think of to gain their attention. He drew in a deep breath and projected his voice, trained and engineered by the finest choir in all of England, "the hills are alive with the sound of mu-u-u-sic!"

The room had gone deadly quiet. You could hear a pin drop to the garrett below. And that is when Blaise decided to once again revive himself. He leapt forth from the bed, and focused his smouldering dark gaze on Harry and advanced further into the room, "the hills are alive with the sound of music! I love it!" he exclaimed in a rough italian accent, his speech slurred vaguely from sleep.

The arguments had stopped and for once he had felt as though he belong. He had found people who would stop and listen to the things he had to say. Even as he continued to sing what next popped into his head, 'with songs they had sung for a thousand years', he had not expected what dramatic consequences his actions would cost him. He snorted gravely to himself, savouring the taste of the bitter irony of it all. He had not expected Colin to suggest that Audrey and he should write the play together, and it was clear that Audrey had been indefinately offended by the proposal.

"Goodbye!" Audrey had announced as he? ... she? ... THEY stormed from the apartment, never to be heard from by any of them again.

Colin had been quick to salute him at the time, all of them were blissfully unaware of what would befall them as they decided to take on this amazing opportunity. However, Flitwick was had still been rather skeptical about his writing abilities.

"Colin, Weasley will never agree. No offense" Flitwick said and then became flabbergasted as he realized that Harry could easily hear him. "Oh I mean ... have you ever had any experience in doing this sort of thing before?"

Harry had merely grinned, and shrugged. At least they thought he had talent. "Nope, this is my first" sadly, his words didn't have the amazed reaction he was hoping for. If anything Flitwicks face had dropped even more into a panicked frown.

Blaise who was now awake, let out a joyous cry, "Ahh! The boy has talent!" the Italian went to place a comforting hand upon Harry, however as he was on a ladder, the rash action landed with Blaise's hand smothering Harry's crotch. Upon seeing this, Blaise whipped his hand away and chuckled awkwardly, "I like him! Oh ... er ... nothing funny. I just like talent."

Colin began gushing at the raw talent that Harry seemed to possess, specially when it came down to improvisation, whereas Flitwick was still fretting about convincing the owner of the Moulin rouge. "How will we convince Weasley?"

But Colin had had an ingenious plan -well they had all seen it as ingenious at the time. The plan was simple -Ginvera. They had dressed him in the Italian's best-cut suit and had managed to pass him off as a famous English writer. And once Ginerva heard his take on modern poetry, she would be astounded and insist to Arthur Weasley that he should write 'Spectacular, Spectacular.' The only problem was he had kept hearing his father's voice in his head, ranting and raving about how he would 'end up wasting your time at the Moulin Rouge with a cancan dancer!' He still thought that Colin was made, even to this very day one year later. But it didn't matter now. What was done was done, and there was nothing he could do about it.

Harry panicked as the voices swirled around, mingling with one another and confusing him. He began to hyperventilate, not knowing what to do. Everything seemed back-to-front; up was down, left was backwards, North was Africa, and he suspected that there may have been a Lion a witch and a wardrobe hiding in the old battered alcove just out of sight. "No, I can't write the show for the Moulin Rouge!" he objected, breaking free from the circle of people that were closing in on him, preventing his mind from thinking clearly. He bolted for the hole in the floor where the Italian had fallen through where now a ldder stood, propped in between the two floors.

Colin was not having any of it. As Harry began to descend out of sight, he peered over the hole and demanded, "Why not?"

Harry panicked and felt his tongue rolling freely within his mouth, words tumbling out in a gushing breath, "I don't even know if I am a true bohemian revolutionary"

Colin looked horrified, his hand flying to his mouth as he stumbled over his words. "Do you believe in beauty?"

Harry swallowed cautiosuly. "Yes"

Blaise peered over with smouldering eyes, "Freedom?"

"Yes, absolutely"

Flitwick chimed up, "Truth?"

"Positive."

Dumbledore bent over, his long beard tickling at Harry's nose. He suppressed a sneeze as the raspy voice grated in his ears, "Love, my boy? Do you believe in love?"

"Love?" Harry asked, not sure that he had heard right. "Love. Above all things, I believe in love. Love is like oxygen, love is a many-splendored thing, love lifts us up where we belong. All you need is love!" he was grinning now and he didn't care. There were many forms of love and they were all true and powerful.

Colin was laughing manically by this point, like a giddy little imp, "See, you can't fool us. You're the voice of the children of the revolution!" he grabbed a green bottle that practically glowed in the dying light, "Lets drink to the new writer of the world's first bohemian revolutionary show!"

They had all assumed that it was the perfect plan. He was to audition his poetry for Ginerva and he would also taste my first glass of.. absinthe. It was a strong drink, with a vile backlash at the back of his throat. He had spluttered through his first glass but the Bohemians were adamant that he drink more. He had tried to refuse but they hadn't wanted to accept 'no' for an answer. He still remembered how the little green fairy on the bottle had winked at them all as they threw on their best clothes, and marched along the rooftop, singing at the tops of their lungs. He felt his chest constrict, still sure that he could hear them all singing out, 'YEAH FREEDOM, BEAUTY, TRUTH, AND LOVE!'

They were the children of the revolution. The true Bohemians. The men who would conquer the modern world with songs and plays and stories of beauty, freedom, truth and above all things ... Love. People would come from the next country over just to hear what he had had to write.

And then, in the blink of an eye, or perhaps it had been a side-effect of the absinthe, he would never know, they were off to the Moulin Rouge, and he was to perform his poetry ... for Ginerva.

A/N: Well there was the first chapter, I hope you like it and I hope it was not too confusing for you.